In Chhattisgarh it's the women who wear the pants
Like most city people I used to think that women in rural India, especially in a state as troubled as Chhattisgarh, were probably meek, submissive and had no option but to accept their lot in life. They are often like that in the cities so why not in the hinterland? Not so in Chhattisgarh. Savita Rath, an activist I met in a village on the outskirts of the city of Raigarh, is 34 years old and single. And she doesn’t give a damn about anything. She hitches up her green saree and asks me in Hindi if I voted for Barack Obama or John McCain. This is clearly a test. An ardent Obama supporter, she recalls that her family had been divided between the two candidates and she didn’t go to work for three days leading up to the Nov 4 elections, until her candidate won.
After she finished her high school, Savita trained to be a teacher and taught in the village school. Until the day the principal made a pass at her. She slapped him in public and announced if he didn’t apologize to her in front of the entire school, she would lodge a complaint with the police. A panchayat was held and she appealed to the village elders. Before she could go to the police the school principal’s father begged her to let it go and prostrated at her feet. “He was my elder and it was not right that he was begging me and touching my feet,” she says. So she resigned. Soon after she joined a not for profit organization and has since been working on issues like right to health, food and land rights.
Savita isn’t the only one. From villages near Raipur to some near Raigarh, I met several remarkable women. One village that has been embroiled in a fight to keep a local steel maker out was worried about intruders. The villagers put up a barricade and a group of women kept a round-the-clock watch for days. In another village the residents had been protesting another company that was trying to acquire their land when the police launched a laathi charge. One woman snatched the stick out of a cop’s hands and beat him back with it.
And they do all this while they cook, clean, and work in the fields. They also take care of the flourishing business of tendu leaves – these are dried and used as a cheap substitute for tobacco. Having a lucrative business has helped boost their self worth and independence.