Abstract: Bound by the duty of survival, life is static in motion. Before retiring after 17 hours of plying from the hearth to the fields, life begins at 4 in the morning. Fetching water, cooking, sending kids to school is what women did and continue to do without male support. With a trip to the fields bearing the cross of animal dung, they begin their attempt to keep themselves going. They are no romanticized ‘solitary reapers’ of William Wordsworth. Instead women who need to hasten the chores of the field in order to make it on time for the children returning from school. The Kafkaesque routines of domestic chores continue, followed by a visit to the fields and fodder collection. The frugal dinner of dal, chapatis and potatoes simmer. Men and children wait for their ‘elixir of life’ while the cattle is provided its sustenance.
Keywords: women’s health, gender division of labour, male migration, patriarchy, Uttarakhand, hill economy, resource-intensive processes, Migrant/ Non-migrant households, patriarchy, environment degradation, survival, reproductive health
Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Franz Kafka’s, ‘Metamorphoses’ is bound by duty towards his family1. Gregor’s compulsion of discharging his duty resulting in physical and psychological oppression is re-lived by every woman in Garhwal, a region in the mountainous state of Uttarakhand. Set in the extremely backward PauriGarhwal district this paper attempts to examine the gender division of labour as a key form and expression of women’s subordination and investigates its importance in ascertaining the health of the Garhwali women. The issues of work and health, the paper argues, are of key significance when seen in conjunction with each other, to understand the nature and forms of gender inequality and for an evaluation of women’s status in Garhwali society. Particularly in this historical context of the Chipko movement, which saw strong and sustained protests by Garhwali women against the commercial felling of forests, there is a tremendous need for disentangling myth from the reality of women’s lives and understand the level of desperation they are pushed into.
The paper is divided into four sections. Against a brief socio- historical understanding of colonial and post-colonial development of the region in the first section, it moves to understanding the gender division of labour in the second and women’s perceptions of its implications for health in the third. The last section is the discussion and conclusion.
The Post-colonial Yoke: Agricultural Decline and Migration in Uttarakhand, India
Embedded deeply in the economies of the plains, the Garhwali hill economy is witness to a steady erosion of its natural resources and peasant subsistence that continues to the present times. While pre- British Uttarakhand was marked by its own forms of hierarchy and oppression, there existed a symbiotic relationship between the people and ecology. Market forces initiated under colonialism subjected the region to environmental and forest degradation and socio-economic transition disrupting this indigenously developed ecosystem (Dangwal 2009; Bisht 2004; Baumann 1997). Colonial policies in relation to land revenue, agricultural cultivation and commercial forestry forged new systems and new relationships, setting the hill agriculture on a downward spiral. The region was subjected to widespread ecological and environmental damage and socio-economic transition, causing people to leave hill villages for new avenues of survival and sustenance. However the post- colonial development in the region when it was part of the State of Uttar Pradesh also came in the form of resource-intensive processes which ignored the pre-existing social- economy of the local people. The new Approach focussed on industrial and political centralisation, extension of law and order machinery, transport and communications and other forms of infrastructure undermining the village self-sufficiency. A critical review of development planning and implementation of plans in the region locates this failure of development in the idea of ‘internal colonialism’ where the hill regions’ resources were being exploited by the state without adequate compensation or balanced development in return2.
Degradation of forest and land created a precarious situation drastically reducing areas of land cultivable for subsistence. The indigenous redistributive systems increasingly failed to meet growing needs of the growing population. Deforestation pushed cultivated areas to critical limits. Today the balance between forests and land appears irrevocably destroyed. As numerous studies of hill development have shown, post-colonial development policy has not resulted in any noteworthy improvement for natural resource conservation or sustainable development (Bandyopadhyay and Shiva 1988; Haigh 1988; Mehta 1996; Guha1991). In these circumstances, more and more peasants turned off the land to sustain themselves. Some just sought to bridge the growing gap between household subsistence production exemplified in the low productivity of land and the consumption needs of their families. Since there was no alternative employment locally, they migrated to find supplementary off-farm employment in the cities. Migration in this area was therefore partial, male-dominated and interestingly greater amongst the landed group (Dhobal 1977; Whittaker 1984; Rana 1995; Bora 1996;
Mehta 1997; Pathak 1997; Bisht 2002; Mamgain 2004; Sehdev 2008; Jain
2010).
For 13 years after the formation of the state of Uttarakhand in 2000, the successive state governments – with their policy makers – have recklessly pushed an economic growth model that totally disregards the state’s special mountain character. Ignoring the geo-economic specificity of the region, they have doggedly pursued misplaced development priorities which promoted deforestation, road construction, dams on large and small rivers, hotels and resorts by riversides. Thus poverty and environmental degradation continue to exist, but have complex political and socio-economic roots which are obscured by the growth narrative of the Uttarakhand politicians and bureaucrats3. Peasant livelihoods still define the Uttarakhand state where agriculture continues to be the major occupation for 70 percent of its population. However, it provides nothing but a low and unstable annual income to the people, causing a sizeable out-migration of male members from the family, leaving behind a large number of female headed households. As per the BPL survey 2008, about
36.5 percent of the population of the state lives below poverty line (GOI 2009).
Thus the sale of labour power as migrants has now emerged as an inevitable option and a key survival strategy. However, despite the dependence on the influx of money from outside, the problem of underdevelopment of the local economy remained. Remittance was largely invested in consumption and not production. In fact, the processes and patterns of migration and migrant labour exploitation are such that they necessitate the continuation of subsistence agriculture and production of use values via the peasant household economy.
While out-migration now constitutes a permanent feature and also preferred livelihood option for hill families, the persistence of subsistence agriculture has had serious consequences for the peasant women of the region, who are historically and contemporarily active economic participants. As compared to the declining trend of women’s labour force participation in many parts of the country, women continue to constitute a significant proportion of the labour force as peasant cultivators in this hill region. According to the 1991 Census, 46 percent of the total workers and 58 percent of cultivators in Garhwal are women. Male migration has increased the burden on women of this region, who continue to be constrained with their meager resources. Moreover, it is increasingly apparent that the productive and domestic roles of Garhwali women are carried out in a physical and social landscape marked by the degradation of life sustaining resource of land, water, forests, and the shortage of male labour. Women’s labour now appears to be stretched to its limits, fuelled by a cultural ideology that assigned them multiple roles in social production along with the exclusive responsibility of reproduction. Studies of hill women have pointed to heavier demands placed on their labour (Sidh and Basu 2011; Bisht 2004; Chopra and Ghosh 2000; Bhatt 1998; Pande 1996; Mehta 1996; Pokhriyal 1993). It is in such a context that our study of women’s work and health is situated.
Our study villages Phulan and Khaliyan are two of the eleven villages of Yamkeshwar block of PauriGarhwal district which was surveyed by the researcher in 2003. The survey confirmed the pattern of productivity decline-related male-migration which took place across all caste groups and land holding categories. Remittance amounts sent varied widely. It was clear that the region merited a broad description as money order economy, but more specifically it was a dual- economy where subsistence agriculture continued to be important, with remittance playing a significant role. Phulan and Khaliyan which constitute a microcosm of the wider region were then studied intensively, with several follow-ups, the most recent round of fieldwork being in October- November 2013. In-depth interviews were conducted with 38 women of different age- groups from migrants and non-migrant households (with different duration of migration of their husbands and sons) and from different caste and class groups. Methodologically, the study therefore adopts a political economy perspective strengthened by historical materialist feminist analysis from an ethnographic study across three generations to study continuity and change. It explores how patterns of health and illness are shaped by evolving modes of economic and patriarchal organisation and the gender division of labour. Women’s health is examined as a complex concept encompassing biological, psychological, social and cultural dimension.
The Field Setting
Phulan and Khaliyan (part of the same Gram Sabha) are typical hill villages visibly struggling to survive under the pressures of ecological destruction and economic hardship today. Situated in the Yamkeshwar Development Block, off the Rishikesh- Dogaddamotorable road, the villages stand at an elevation of 1300 to 2000 m along the degraded ridge of the Hiul river valley in the southern part of Lesser Himalayas. A distinguishing feature of the valley is that it falls in the drier agro- ecological zones with almost no access to water.4
The two villages together have a total of 102 households with a population of 482. Brahmins and Rajputs constitute 66 percent of the households while the remaining belongs to Scheduled Caste5 (34 percent). All households have land (range from 0.10 to 12.5 acres; average is 3.52 acres)6 though the majority (64%) have less than 3 acres. Even within this marginal-holding economy, land distribution is not equitable between the three major caste groups, though there are no landless households even amongst the Scheduled Castes. The difference between the high and low castes is particularly sharp. The majority of Scheduled Caste (SC) households (60.9 percent) have land ranging from 0.01 to 2.00 acres only, as against 42.5 percent Rajputs and 35.5 percent Brahmins in this category. A significant proportion of upper caste households (33 and 23 percent Rajputs and Brahmins) have the largest holdings of 4.00 to 5.00 acres. They also tend to have best quality land with higher yields. A few SC households (20 percent) may have more than 5 acres of land too– but that is of poor quality compared to the land of the upper caste.
Village economy is basically agrarian and farming is still the principal source of livelihood for the majority of households. All households in Phulan and Khaliyan cultivate land. All except eight households have livestock. The mixed crop-livestock subsistence farming system that predominates in the region is based on specificities/ peculiarities of the mountain agricultural system like terracing, ‘verticality’ (exploiting a range of vertical ecological belts and fields), crop and cropland rotation, seasonal manuring and farming with simple farming equipment. This governs production system even today, rooting the Garhwali peasants’ life in land, domestic animals and forests. But not all is the same.
The villages today register high incidence of net out-migration with 71 percent of the households (i.e. 72 households) being categorised as ‘currently migrant households’ with at least one male member migrated out (having spent 6 months or more of the preceding year away from home primarily to work). Presence of migrant households cuts across all categories of land ownership and caste group7. Yet very few families uproot themselves completely and abandon their village home forever. Absence of lucrative job opportunities in the new destination and inadequate remittance necessitates persistence of subsistence agricultural economy, forcing villagers to practice a blend of temporary labour migration, cultivation of family land and animal rearing to make ends meet. In these changed circumstances, it is the left behind, mostly women (also elderly and children) who toil in the villages. The new situation demands new kinds of responses and households have responded by evolving new forms of household and gender distribution of work with implications for the health and well- being.
Gender Division of Labour
Work in mountain villages can be divided into three broad groups: agricultural production, animal husbandry and domestic work. This categorisation however is more a tool of data organisation and analysis than representative of a substantive differentiation in the tasks themselves. As the opening quote of the paper reflecting daily life of women in the village reveals, that the continuum between work in the field, tending to animals and housework, requires woman’s lives to be ‘fluid and flexible’, making it hard to separate actual work time spent in any one category of work. Men even traditionally participated in only few of these tasks (like ploughing, sowing, grazing cattle), but women move more quietly across the different forms of labour.
Tables 1 and 2 illustrate the gender division of labour in agricultural and animal husbandry task. It was also
Table 1: Main Types of Women’s and Men’s Agricultural Work
revealing that the
Table 2: Main Types of Women’s and Men’s in Animal Husbandry
so-called typical male tasks were never performed exclusively by men. Women have always provided substantial, highly laborious and heavy ‘assistance’ to men as they ploughed, sowed, threshed and terraced. We find that the multiple tasks that are assigned to women involve physical movements and positions which cause great physical strain and fatigue. For instance, hoeing and weeding, harvesting are arduous tasks requiring high levels of bodily exertion for hours. Threshing of millets using huge wooden clubs to beat the ears (‘mandai’), a highly tedious job is assigned to women. The experience is particularly harsh during the peak agricultural seasons, the monsoon and winters. Between the two, animal husbandry stands more severely affected by the ecological degradation than agriculture. But in both these domains the female division of labour has been subject to considerable transformation.
Survey of all 102 households of the village showed that women not only continued performing all their traditional tasks but took on responsibility of newer and even male tasks. Whether the woman was a wife or mother and whether she had her husband or young son working on the family farm in the village were factors that determined the kind of responsibilities she had to take on. As stated above migration of adult men in the family categorised a household as migrant or non- migrant. Gender division of labour was notably influenced by this factor. But over and above the responsibility for different tasks, the quantum and load of work that women had to perform was influenced by her caste and class position and how much land she cultivated. Presence of daughters in laws and young daughter who could assist the woman also governed the workloads.
Table 3 shows a marked difference exists between migrant and non-migrant households. In migrant households the performance of all male tasks with the exception of ploughing has been taken over by women. For ploughing women have to hire labour. But even hiring labour has several negative repercussions and paradoxically even accentuates women’s work. Interviews with women showed that the better- off, upper caste women
pay substantial wages, but for the not- so well off, ploughing intensifies their own labour. Women have to labour on the ploughman’s
Table 3: Tasks with Gender Division of Labour in Migrant and Non-Migrant Households (In Percentage)
field in exchange for male assistance. Further, the peasant culture of the region thrust upon women additional tasks like cooking for labour. Moreover, the cultural principle of male domination operates to blur the distinction between the hired and the hirer. Hired men, whether of high or low caste, are difficult workers and harass women in several ways. Thus we found that though an overall patriarchal control over female labour persists in migrant and non- migrant households8, for women in migrant households load increases and their labour is intensified.
It is expected by the families that women of poorer households will continue to expand labour inputs as exchange (a traditional practice given up by the better- off) towards other’s labour inputs on their fields. Women move from field to field. Men help on their own land alone and never during reciprocal labour on others land. The Schedule Caste women from Loharsand Auji households are the most over-worked. Apart from working on their own/sharecropped land, they labour on high-caste patrons land for wages or remuneration in kind9 besides performing reciprocal labour on land of kinsmen in lieu of male services.
Note and Key:
f: tasks performed predominantly by females (90 percent or more)
M=F: Tasks with approximate equal (50-50) participation
Mf: Tasks more male oriented than female for tasks not exclusively or predominantly any one sex dominated
Fm: Tasks more female oriented than male for tasks not exclusively or predominantly any one sex dominated
m: tasks performed predominantly by males (90 percent or more)
N: number of households where activity is carried out
M: tasks performed exclusively by males (100 percent)
F: tasks performed exclusively by females (100 percent)
With the significance that animal husbandry has for this rainfed, dung- manure based agricultural economy, 92 percent households in Phulan and Khaliyaneven today herd domestic animals (‘dangars’). But in the context male migration we observe a feminisation of these tasks as well. Most marked change has occurred in the tasks which were traditionally male- task viz. grazing and small animal care. In migrant households these tasks today has shifted to women, or are borne by very elderly men, if present in the households. Traditional pastoral system called ‘goath’ in which the cattle were impounded in the fields for three- four months under the care of adult men have become almost extinct10. All other animal husbandry tasks (cleaning the cowshed, fodder collection, preparing stall-feed, stall feeding and milking) whether in the migrant or non-migrant households are the exclusive domain of women. Labour re-organisation that is required for labour sharing in these animal husbandry tasks takes place among women themselves, with daughters mostly assisting in fodder collection, cleaning the cowshed and feeding the cattle. Households who own less livestock may have shorter work hours, but they lack access to sources of dung- manure, milk and even earning from sale. Environmental degradation has made these tasks more laborious and women bear the brunt of these negative changes.
Scheduled Caste women were observed assisting upper caste women in grazing and fodder collection. Payments for this work are not always in cash. Typically it includes in-kind payments such as grains, vegetables or in the form of rights to cut grass or lop ‘fodder trees’ belonging to the upper castes. For the poorest Auji women this additional labour is indispensable as it fetches food grain for her household.
It is also important to point out that the Scheduled Caste women particularly the auji and lohar, are also engaged in traditional caste work outside of agriculture and animal husbandry tasks. Within artisan production, women’s and men’s productive labour is delineated by caste and gender. Men in general are more directly involved than women, yet women’s degree of involvement varies from partial or supplementary involvement (as in ironsmithery or tailoring) to total non-participation (as in masonry). In activities like ironsmithery, women pump bellows and often deliver the finished work. Tailor caste women assist in sewing clothes. Besides, they accompany men when they drum in the village. These women also help men in construction and repair work in their patron homes, carrying splintered rocks in baskets to construct walls, and haul slate for roofs.
Domestic labour in Garhwal is like elsewhere culturally legitimised as exclusive domain of women’s work and involves multiple duties of nourishment, maintenance and caring of family members. Culturally men have refrained from carrying head loads of water, cleaning vessels, re- dunging the floors and childcare. They participate only minimally if required by circumstances. Living in the hills makes innumerable household tasks difficult and back breaking such as chopping and collecting firewood, filling and carrying water, fuel collection necessary for subsistence It is important to emphasise these laborious tasks have become all the more exacting due to water shortage and deforestation.
Domestic labour is managed by all women of the household together – the adult women (mostly wives) being in-charge of cooking, sewing, childcare and the younger women (mostly daughters) of the heavy household tasks such as washing clothes, fetching water, washing utensils. Migrant and non-migrant households do not show any variation, but size of family does change quantum of work. But larger families also involve an intra-gender distribution of tasks. In the harvesting season, mothers-in-law may take over some domestic tasks from daughters-in-law to release them for the agricultural labour in peak season. Differentials in the quantum and nature of domestic work are also evident between upper and lower caste women as on an average Scheduled Caste households are larger, with more work and also located in fringes of the village far from water sources and forest.
It is very clear that the household re-organisation of labour for any domain of work in the village means a gendered re-organisation with an increased burden on adult women and girls. Participation of boys and men in these activities is minimal. In Garhwali society, all young girls are educated but are equally well socialised into the practice of hard work. In contrast, boys are increasingly set free from work in the pretext of focusing on education. Boy’s education is emphasised in emulation of male migrants for urban employment. Men tend to shirk their allotted tasks. Migrant men in particular, are privileged to exercise their options for leisure and impose their interests within the household.
A comparative perspective across generations shows how quantum and the nature of women’s work burden has drastically altered over generations. From old women’s narratives, the sheer volume of agricultural, domestic and animal husbandry labour seems to have been enormous in their times. The sheer quantum of older women’s traditional work was large and they were carried out under oppressive conditions of surveillance, nutritional deprivation, lack of care and violence a situation which eased and changed only as they grew older. Comparing the situations of mothers-in-law and their daughters-in-law, the historical picture that emerges is that quantum of agricultural work in terms of agricultural operation and heavy domestic work (of grinding, pounding, churning, storing) have certainly reduced. Today’s women have comparatively lower burdens deriving out of smaller land cultivated size, and smaller families and an overall reduction in patriarchal pressures.
However quantum of work does not tell the whole story. Women’s work today has intensified because they have to undertake male work, multiple new activities and responsibilities and considerable mental burden of family survival, children’s well-being and their future. They are left behind to independently maintain traditional food system but they also have a double dependency on men: for cash and other men for labour. Women’s work has become so physically and mentally consuming that they have little time or energy to build on the freedom from direct patriarchal control and the woman has little more than informal power. Remittances have changed economic status of households, but given the small earnings of most migrants, with little direct benefit to most women. Rather women have got involved in status conflicts and conflicts over control of the paltry amounts sent. Moreover, despite their contributions, women’s economic value is low. For most women, the work-reward balance is thus iniquitous and unjust.
In sum, women are also subjected to newer forms of economic control by men. Old forms of patriarchy and ensuing gender relations continue to operate in the work domain and in the household relations of production. Both migrant and non-migrant husbands use the socially embedded ideology of patriarchy to confine women to use value production and the new ideology to redefine themselves as primary breadwinners and deny women material control These conditions create different implications for women’s health.
Changing patterns of work and implications for women’s health
Against the background of the connections between environment and economy, gender division of labour that we have explored, we now focus on women’s reproductive and physical health. It investigates the experiences, definitions and explanations of women’s physical states and illnesses and the pains and sufferings that derive from them. Our enquiry into women’s health was directed at exploring the relationship between reproductive health and general physiological, emotional and mental well being in order to arrive at a holistic understanding of women’s experiences of ill health and their health status. While psychosocial and emotional health is very significant outcome of gendered subjectivities, but they require a separate treatment11, and hence for this paper we will focus on only physical health. It is based on qualitative material gathered from our interviews. Going by women’s own descriptions we focus on the following questions: How do women describe their physical ailments/ afflictions? What view do they have of their causes? Which signs and symptoms do they consider important or unimportant? Do they see the link between their productive and reproductive function and general health?
In our interviews with the women, women referred to number of mild and severe (‘choti’ and ‘bari’) and recurrent health problems that they suffered throughout their life span. Our in- depth interviews with the women revealed a host of health conditions which on the basis of symptomology and frequency of reporting could be categorised as musculoskeletal (‘bai’) and weakness (‘kamzori’) ranked the highest, followed by respiratory (‘shawas’) illnesses. Last were eye problems, headaches, fevers and coughs and colds, gastrointestinal ailments and skin infections. Accidents or risk of accident was another theme that emerged in their interviews. Heavy work and repeated pregnancies was implicated in much illness especially musculoskeletal, respiratory, weakness and eye ailments.
Musculoskeletal Health Problems (‘bai’)
Musculoskeletal illness and pain is a predominant health problem of village women. Women suffer from a host of chronic muscular/ joint pains locally called ‘bai’ –pain in the hands, legs, knee, elbows, neck and backs. Chronic pains disable their functioning intermittently or at times so severely as to handicap them.
Women overwhelmingly and emphatically attribute ‘bai’ to the enormous, laborious and hazardous work that they do. Young girls from a very early age are compelled to adopt postures that are detrimental to bone integrity, such as carrying heavy loads. The different types of agricultural operations also require sitting, standing or stooping for long periods of time. Such tedious and time-consuming work, combined with nutritional deprivation that begins early in childhood, is further aggravated by early marriage, repeated pregnancies and years of lactation. This ensures that women are afflicted by musculoskeletal pain beginning as early as 30 years of age. The most affected joints are of the knee, back, hips, shoulder, arms and wrists.
“Five years back I started having health problems. My joints got affected with ‘bai’ and my back started to hurt. Every morning I was stiff. I am now unable to do strenuous work. I relate my ill health to my life full of backbreaking work; I feel that work for Garhwali women is inevitable “ (Prabha, 38 yrs,Brahmin,Phulan).
“I’ve been walking up and down, bending and climbing, carrying head loads of firewood, fodder and other weights. I’ve worked in the fields and forest
like this since I was 9 – 10 years old My back, knee and elbow joints started to pain thirteen-fourteen years back. But for last three-four years, it has been getting worse”. (Rashmi, 39, Auji-dom, Phulan)
In addition to detailed descriptions of causal relationship between baiand labour, many women sum up the cause of ‘bai’ as `wear and tear’.(‘jorghisjatehain; haddighisjatihai’) The elaboration of the concept of
`wear and tear’ often drew women into more detailed reflections of how their bodies had to be `constrained’ by their working lives.
“My health is failing because of the heavy workload. Now my joints, particularly upper and lower limbs pain a lot now. They are worn out- because of overuse I think. Our life and work in the hills causes our bones and joints to wear. With age it becomes worse. Look at me now. I find bringing water most troublesome. Weeding also aggravates my joint pain. While threshing and pounding the grains my hands become sore”. (Kamla, 48 yrs, Gusai- Dom,Bangar- Khaliyan)
Backs are another great source of pain. Backache or ‘kamardard’ also affects both young and old, though the pain differs in intensity. Older women complain of constant severe pain, while the younger women say that the pain increased with work. Bending at work – whether in the field or cutting grass – is perceived to harm the back.
Though both ‘bai’ and backache are not considered a ‘threatening state’, they are experienced as nagging hurdles, which render difficult the performance of daily tasks and responsibilities. Pains aggravate during peak agricultural seasons, when women often work up to 18 hours. Women identified field labour of long duration, particularly during monsoon as ‘bad phases’ when they suffered more pain. Women reported pressures to ‘keep going’ under extremely difficult circumstances.
‘Kamzori’: Weakness
Weakness (‘kamzori’) is the second most strongly felt and reported health problem. Women would ask for takhatkidawa – medicine to give strength. Women felt continuous fatigue – as if they were just dragging their bodies to function. They routinely spoke of ‘incessant weakness’ or feeling drained out. Few women also experience blackouts and fainting.
Women associate their weakness with ‘khoonkikami’(lack of blood translated literally), an outcome they perceived of frequent childbearing and poor diet. Older women in their interviews attributed this condition to the inadequate food that they received as daughters-in-law, despite shouldering the heaviest burden.Several closely spaced pregnancies and deliveries worsened their state.
“I feel weak and drained out. It’s all the result of overwork and forced starvation I faced as a young buari. I got married at the age of 14. My mother-in- law was very strict and hard- hearted woman. She would make me do all the work except milking the cows. She feared I might drink the milk in the cattleshed itself. I worked for 18 – 20 hours a day. She would not give me food to eat or allow me to rest or even change out of the wet clothes. My poor health is the result of this kind of life. Today women get rest. In our time where we got any rest? Fields were many, animals many more. I remember even to fill my stomach I had to steal food. I used to hide ‘pindalo’ (yam) in the ‘pinda’ (cattle feed) when it was being put to cook. When ‘pinda’ used to get cooked, the ‘pindalo’ also got cooked. I would hide and eat it in the cattle shed when I went to give the feed to the cattle”. (Parvati, 65 yrs, Brahmin, Phulan)
“My body has become so weak because I had so many children. There is nothing to eat. I also had to do all the work. I definitely felt weak after giving birth to 10-12 children. Here work is enormous, diet is not sufficient and rest is minimal. Men do less work hence they are healthy. Bearing children, having nothing to eat and working endlessly I have become weak and feel my body has dried up. There is no blood in my body now”. (Tola, 75 yrs, Auji-Dom, Phulan)
Majority of women appear to be undernourished, thin and having less body fat. Bodily stress and breast-feeding usually worsens conditions of weakness. To me as a researcher, anaemia seemed evident in their pale face, eyes, nails and skin and they probably had very low haemoglobin levels.
Respiratory illness (‘shawaskibimari’)
Older women suffer from a chronic condition commonly called ‘shawaskibimari’ (breathlessness). According to women this condition usually sets in by mid- fifties. Several women report getting breathless while walking and this condition worsens when they have to walk long distances, carry weights or climb to greater heights.
“I suffer from ‘shawas’ and ‘bai’ both. My joints get swollen and cause a lot of pain and I feel breathless doing any work. Even if I walk a little I pant. I cannot even climb 100 metres. Now I get very breathless climbing to Mohanchatty. Breathlessness and ‘bai’ together makes this trip unbearable”. (Gyaniswari, 60 yrs,Brahmin, Gorpa- Phulan)
Chronic illnesses like ‘shawas’ are clearly a part of a complex chain of cause and effect connecting the women’s bodies to their circumstances. These conditions may also be related to the fatigue and strain involved in carrying heavy loads in the mountainous terrain and cooking on ‘chulhas’ ( wood stove)in closed poorly ventilated kitchens etc.
Eye Ailments
Visual disturbances especially ‘weak eyes’, ‘ watering eyes ‘and ‘pain in eyes’ are conditions that aggravate for women over forty. This is perhaps also related to cooking on firewood and working in very strong sun in the mountains. Cooking exposes women to high levels of smoke as the ‘chulha’ does not have a chimney and hence smoke stays in the kitchen. The situation is worse in the monsoons when wet wood is used in these open stoves. In the winter season, people sleep in rooms with burning logs. This is no less hazardous to health. Women have not even heard of smokeless ‘chulhas’. Indeed most find no association between the smoke and their eyes problems. On the contrary almost all women feel that smoke serves a positive function of keeping termites, woodborers and other pest out of their kitchens! Doctors at the PHC have noted vitamin A deficiency.
Even though some of these ailments like chronic cough, cold, fevers and seasonal diarrhoea were common to women and men, women experienced longer and more severe occurrences indicating that women experienced a perpetual state / condition of ill-health. The combination of fever and nagging headache, and a ‘drained-out’ feeling was linked with laborious tasks. In particular, weeding and harvesting the crops or long walks into the forest and carrying head loads of fodder and fuel wood were reported as cause of this condition. They often describe their total body state as having fever in the bones viz. ‘haddikabukhar’. According to them this does not get recorded in the thermometer.
The Accident Risk and Injuries
While not an illness, but accidents were important health issue for women in ecological terrain like the mountains. The close association between environment, work and gender is again brought out forcefully by reviewing cases of accidents in the village. Accidental hazards are high, resulting from working atop trees and walking with headloads over treacherous mountain terrain. Women frequently reported accidents while performing their work responsibilities. Mostly they alone are victims, since they traverse long distances and encounter risks while collecting fodder, firewood and water. Accidents that commonly occur are slips and falls from trees, rocks etc. or attacks by wild animals in the forest like bear or baghs (panther) etc. Women are also bitten by snakes while cutting grass. Our household survey revealed twenty-four accident cases in the two villages. Of these twenty were females. Eight women fell from the tree while lopping wood, three fell off a cliff while collecting fodder, and another eight were bitten by snakes when cutting grass or weeding in the fields. One had died in a road accident
Many women’s bodies are permanently scarred due to these accidents. The medical officer at the PHC, Yamkeshwarconcurred that accidental injuries and deaths of children and men are fewer than those of women. Moreover since medical aid is not available immediately, the injury worsens and women may never completely recover. Savitri’s case reveals the general picture:
“Around 10 years back I fell from a tree and seriously injured my back. I was admitted in Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi (where my husband lived) for four-five weeks. I was told that my back had got injured and I must not perform heavy work or carry loads. After staying in Delhi for 3-4 months, I returned to Phulan. All this while my kin in the village had supported my family. Now I had to return to fend for myself. Life in village did not permit me the luxury to heed to the doctor’s advice. I resumed my daily chores- my back did not create trouble immediately. But after a month or so I started getting continuous pains. I went to Delhi again to a government dispensary and collected some medicine. But I did not get any relief. Later on insistence of my elder son, I also went to a private nursing home in Rishikesh. The doctor gave me injection for strength, few tablets and asked me to take rest and nourishing food”. Savitri returned to her village and in spite of being aware of the doctor’s recommendation, she went back to performing strenuous agricultural, animal husbandry and domestic tasks. “What else to do. If I don’t work my children and my animals will starve”. Pain in the back and feeling weak are states that Susheelahas learnt to live with. (Savitri, 42 yrs, Brahmin, Phulan)
Poor dalit women who suffer accidents and incapacitation may face serious problems of daily livelihood. Veshesvari’s’s accident put an end to the prospect of securing the caste- based payments.
“Eight months back I fell down while collecting some firewood, injuring my hip. I have not been able to resume my rounds with my husband who drums while I collect the ‘dadwar’ (payment made to lower caste for work). With difficulty I manage to walk small distances. I am waiting for my death”. (Veshesvari’s, 75yrs, Dom,Gorpa- Phulan)
Veshesvari’s appears permanently disabled and handicapped as far as many of the female responsibilities are concerned. She is helpless and dependent on her husband and she feels miserable as he even fetches water! Veshesvari’s manages to take care of domestic work within the home. She prays for death to relieve her of the pain and misery of such a life. Many such women are left at the mercy of their family or villagers for their basic requirements, causing not only physical but immense mental and emotional suffering.
Thus the women’s descriptions of the relationship between body and social context calls out a complex representation of the nature of their occupation, the specific bodily movements the jobs required of them, their relationship to their various tasks and the way in which all these things had an impact on how they felt. What comes out strongly is that they have little room for manoeuvre in the deployment of their bodies in relation to work. In addition to the detailed description of the relationship between the ‘pain-morbidity’ and the context of labour, their accounts were combined with the experience of not being able to stop, of having to go beyond one’s limits. Women protested and complained explicitly about the kinds of intolerable conditions of work in which they were obliged to operate. But under the existing life conditions they were constrained, as work for them never really stopped.
While responses of chronic illnesses/ problems are most prevalent and uniformly distributed across most women, it is the older and the Scheduled Caste who suffer more acutely. In the context of the women’s lives, we found that several of these chronic health problems set in early becoming extremely severe and debilitating as life progresses. However as our narratives have shown among the younger age group, women from economically poorer households, especially the Scheduled Caste (like Tola, Veshesvari, Kamla,Rashmi) suffer more frequently and acutely. The range of problems that they endure is also much wider and serious. The constant exertion and heavy work that they carry out, along with their poor nutritional status has a deleterious effect making them more weak and prone to illness. No significant difference in health conditions of migrant and non-migrant women is visible as both are subject to economic hardship, work pressures and gender discrimination with only marginal variation. It is only among the better off migrant households that younger women claim to be better cared for and healthy.
Conclusion
It is often stated that theoretically work gives dignity and variety of freedoms like, remuneration hence autonomy, control over resources, contact to outside world, freedom to spend some of the earning and means to rest and get food. This case study shows that in transitional economies like Garhwal, the male- dominated migration process has very complex effects on gender division of labour with concomitant implications for woman’s maneuverability and their health. The analysis of our data reveals that the larger process of capitalist transformation has taken advantage of, built upon and negatively changed the character of historically existing traditional gender division of labour. Old patriarchal ideology continues to operate in the work domain and in the new and changing shapes gender relations within household relations of production. In fact in the new monetized economy, contribution of women to the household subsistence economy and household maintenance is generally valued less than a man’s contribution (cash income). In the final analysis, our data reveals that outside capitalism has built upon and reinforced sexual inequalities of traditional patriarchy. It helps us to argue that female labour in subsistence economy has undergone an expansion and intensification in order to provide cheap male wage labour. Women are now more responsible for family survival. Since remittance is less, women have to intensify their work in subsistence agriculture to sustain their households and themselves.
Not only do Garhwali peasant women shoulder extremely heavy workloads in the household, it is the near compulsory nature of work, in harsh environment, with extended hours of work that negates their health. Given the cultural glorification of women’s work, the extra work generated by male absence is rarely considered to be putting an unfair or untenable burden on women. On the contrary, a gender discourse operates which conceptualises women’s bodies as tough, hardy and having incessant capacities for toil. As the interviews revealed women themselves see the link between their general poor health and their work life. Thus, women’s health cannot be understood without complementing the framework based on work with other frameworks related to gender roles and women’s position in the society.
The study also strongly highlights that health differentials are vitally linked to biological, social and economic production. Gender division of labour and the cultural sanction to it have had severe repercussions for women’s health. Both economic factors and patriarchal ideology affect female morbidity and reproductive ill-health. Thus together the patriarchal control of labour, sexuality and fertility adversely affect women’s health. Therefore women’s power, value and status as tested out in the arena of health do not reveal a favourable picture. Hence for the Garhwali peasant woman ‘….Gregor’s cycle continues, waiting to be metamorphosed’ even today.
NOTES
1 Kafka, Franz. “Metamorphoses”, Bantam Classics, 1972. Print.
2 The concept of internal colonialism has been discussed at length by Maudsleyin ‘E. A New Himalayan State in India: Popular Perceptions of Regionalism, Politics and Development’ which appeared in Mountain Research and Development, Vol. 19, No.2, 1999.
3 The HDR of Uttarakhand (2009) states that “Growing at one of the fastest rates, Uttarakhand is poised to bridge the gap in per capita income from the average of all India to become part of the leading states in the country. The results of the Economic Census 2005 indicate Uttarakhand has performed better than the all-India average in terms of growth of employment as well as growth in enterprise” ( SDR, 2009 : 30).
4 Mud irrigation channels (called “kutchiguls”), which obtain water from natural springs, irrigate a negligible three acres of the total 1138.4 acres in the field area, all of which lies in the low flat lands in valley where a large settlement of Phulan village is located
5 Brahmins and Rajputs, the higher ranked and ritually “pure” groups constitute the majority of the 102 households. The Dom (schedule castes) ranked lowest in the caste hierarchy in the region are the remaining 34 percent. “Dom” or”Dumara” is the local village term. It is considered an old, degrading term, which the Dalits don’t like to use, as it implies untouchability. They prefer to call themselves Shilpkars. Most of the Shilpkars in the area claim to be Aryas, i.e. followers of the teaching of AryaSamaj. However their claim to arya identity is made with little conviction and local shilpkars exhibit little understanding or awareness of AryaSamaj teachings.
6 Keeping in mind the peculiarities of the terrain and that it’s a marginal landholding economy, referring to agricultural studies done in the region; we developed six categories of land in order to describe patterns of land use and key factors of the farming in this area. Agricultural Census in India classifies the agricultural holdings into 14 classes, which are further grouped into six categories ranging from 0.02 hectares each (sub-marginal) to 10.00 hectares each (medium). According to this classification system, most agricultural holdings in our study villages are sub-marginal, marginal or small (see National Council on Agriculture Interim Report in soil survey and soil Map of India, Delhi Ministry of Agriculture, Agrarian Reform part XV p.150 and 209). However compared to the plains, the size of the landholdings in the Garhwal hills is small. Keeping in mind the peculiarities of the terrain in hill areas, a small operational holding of 1.00-2.00 ha each is considered big. Studies done in Himalayan region consider 2 hectares (or 4.94 acres) as basic economic holding for an average household (Bora 1996). Hence this classification is not suitable in the hill areas and we therefore develop our own categorization, based on few agricultural studies done in the region. Though we find that differences in land ownership among the households are not very large, six size-classes or sub-groups are made, since we feel using smaller categories will be more useful in analysis as it will bring out finer differentiations. (For details see: Kishore and Gupta (around 1977) Rural Area Development – Research planning and action in Naurar Watershed in Bhikhiasen block of Almora District, UP, 1976. Department of Agricultural Economics. Govind Ballabh Pant Institute of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Nainital; Pokhriyal (1993): Central Himalayan Agriculture, Delhi: Indus Publication; Bora (1996) Himalayan Migration. A study of the Hill Region of Uttar Pradesh. Delhi: Sage Publication).
7 Brahmins and Rajputs have higher percent of migrant households (82 and 71 percent respectively). But even for Schedule Caste households it’s not so low at 52.2 percent.
8 As Table 3 shows seven of the fifteen agricultural tasks identified as traditionally women’s tasks continue to stay with the woman. This is true of both out migrant and non migrant households.
9 They also work under the traditional system of labour and grain exchange called “khalkiya-gusai” which was based on interdependency between upper and low caste groups in the village.
10 Gaoth system required the cattle to be fed and penned in temporary sheds(called pallao or pharkas) constructed on the field for three-four months. This shed was moved from the field along with the cattle, depending on where the manuring was required. This way the cattle were forced to cover the fields systematically with their dropping.
11 These aspects have been dealt in a separate paper titled “Poor Women’s Health and Stresses of Life: A Case Study from PauriGarhwal” in the forthcoming CSD Report, 2015
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Mehta, G. S. Uttarakhand: Prospects for Development, New Delhi: Indus,1996.
Mehta, Manjari, “Our Lives Are No Different from That of Our Buffaloes: Agricultural Change and Gendered Spaces in a Central Himalayan Valley”. Feminist Political Ecology Global Issues and Local Experiences. Dianne Rocheleace et’al, (ed.), London: Routledge, 1996. Print.
Pande, P. N. Drudgery of the Hill Women. New Delhi: Indus, 1996.
Pathak, S. “State, Society and Natural Resources in Himalaya, Dynamics of Change in Colonial and Post-Colonial Uttarakhand”, Economic and Political Weekly, April 26, (1997) pp. 908-912.
Pokhriyal, H. C. Agrarian Economy of the Central Himalaya: A Study of the Agrarian Structure and Economy of the Garhwal and Kumaun Himalaya. New Delhi: Indus, 1993.
GOI, Uttarakhand Development Report. Planning Commission, Government of India, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2009.
Rana, R. S. “Garhwali Women: Limits to Change”, Economic and Political Weekly,May 11, (1996) pp. 1125-1126.
Sehdev, M. Moody Migrants: The Relationship between Anxiety, Disillusionment, and Gendered Affect in Semi-Urban Uttarakhand India. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation McGill University: Montreal, 2008.
Sidh, S. N. and S. Basu. “Women’s Contribution to Household Food and Economic Security: A Study in the Garhwal Himalayas, India”. Mountain Research and Development, 31. 2, (2011) pp.102- 111.
Whittaker, William. “Migration and Agrarian Change in Garhwal District, Uttar Pradesh”. Understanding Green Revolutions: Agrarian Change and Development Planning in South Asia, Twin P. Baylis-Smith, et’al, (ed). Cambridge, London: Cambridge UP, 1984, pp. 109-135.
Bandyopadhyay, J. and S. Shiva.”Agricultural Economy of Kumaon Hills: A Comment”. Economic and Political Weekly, 14.41 (October 13, 1979), pp.1733- 1736.
Baumann P. C., “Historical Evidence on the Incidence and Role of Common Property Regimes in the Indian Himalayas”. Environment and History, 3.3 (October 1997), pp. 323-342.
Bhatt, K. Madhya Himalaya Ki Mahilaon Ki SamajikAvamArthikStithi, Delhi: Eastern Book Liners, 1998.
Bisht, R. Environmental Health in Garhwal Himalaya: A Study of PauriGarhwal, New Delhi: Indus, 2002. Print.
—. Hill Women of Garhwal: A Study of Their Work and Health in the Context of Ecological Degradation and Male Out-Migration, Unpublished Ph.D.Dissertation, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2004.
—. “Caste, Gender, Health: The Experiences Of Work And Child Bearing Among Dalit Women Of Garhwal”. Glimmerings of an Awakening – Dalit Women’s Health and Rights. Imrana Qadeer (ed). Penguin India (Hindi), 2012.
Bora, R. S. Himalayan Migration.A Study of the Hill Region of Uttar Pradesh. New Delhi: Sage, 1996. Print.
Chopra, Ravi and Deepa Ghosh, “Work Patterns of Rural Women in Central Himalayas”. Economic and Political Weekly, 35. 52/53,(2000) pp. 4701-4705.
Dangwal, D. D. Himalayan Degradation. Colonial Forestry and Environmental Changein India. Delhi: Foundation, 2009. Print.
Dhobal, G. S. Development of the Hill Areas: A Case Study of PauriGarhwal District. New Delhi: Concept, 1977. Print.
Guha, Ramachandra. The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistancein the Himalayas, Delhi: Oxford UP, 1991. Print.
Haigh, Martin J. “Understanding ‘Chipko’: The Himalayan People’s Movement for Forest Conservation”. International Journal of Environmental Studies, 31, (1988) pp. 99-110.
Jain, A. Labour Migration and Remittances in Uttarakhand, ICIMOD Case Study Report, 2010.
Mamgain, R. P. Employment, migration and livelihoods in the Hill Economy of Uttaranchal, 2004,http://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/32303.html.
Mehta, G. S. Uttarakhand: Prospects for Development, New Delhi: Indus,1996. Mehta, Manjari, “Our Lives Are No Different from That of Our Buffaloes:
Agricultural Change and Gendered Spaces in a Central Himalayan Valley”. Feminist Political Ecology Global Issues and Local Experiences.Dianne Rocheleaceet’al, (ed.), London: Routledge, 1996. Print.
Pande, P. N. Drudgery of the Hill Women. New Delhi: Indus, 1996.
Pathak, S. “State, Society and Natural Resources in Himalaya, Dynamics of Change in Colonial and Post-Colonial Uttarakhand”, Economic and Political Weekly, April 26, (1997) pp. 908-912.
Pokhriyal, H. C. Agrarian Economy of the Central Himalaya: A Study of the Agrarian Structure and Economy of the Garhwal and Kumaun Himalaya, New Delhi:Indus, 1993.
GOI, Uttarakhand Development Report. Planning Commission, Government of India, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2009.
Rana, R. S. “Garhwali Women: Limits to Change”, Economic and Political Weekly,May 11, (1996) pp. 1125-1126.
Sehdev, M. Moody Migrants: The Relationship between Anxiety, Disillusionment,and Gendered Affect in Semi-Urban Uttarakhand India. Unpublished Ph.D.Dissertation McGill University: Montreal, 2008.
Sidh, S. N. and S. Basu. “Women’s Contribution to Household Food and Economic Security: A Study in the Garhwal Himalayas, India”. MountainResearch and Development, 31.2, (2011) pp.102- 111.
Whittaker, William. “Migration and Agrarian Change in Garhwal District, Uttar Pradesh” Understanding Green Revolutions: Agrarian Change andDevelopment Planning in South Asia, Twin P. Baylis-Smith, et’al, (ed).Cambridge, London: Cambridge UP, 1984, pp. 109-135.
Acknowledgement
I would like to acknowledge the assistance provided by Dr Altaf Virani in making tables for this paper.
Contributor:
RAMILA BISHT. Is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Social Medicine & Community Health (CSMCH), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She holds an M.A. in Psychology and M.Phil and Ph.D. in social sciences in health from JNU. Before joining CSMCH in 2008, she has taught at the Centre for Health Policy, Planning and Management, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai for 14 years. Her research interests comprise issues related to health disparities, women’s health; health policy and administration; comparative health policy and halt care reform. She has been involved in several health services research projects and programme evaluations studies. Until recently, most of her research has been highland economies, with some work in the Maharashtra. She is the author of Environmental Health in Garhwal Himalayas (Indus publication, New Delhi, 2002). She was awarded British Society of Population Studies LEDC visitor award, 2010.she was an embedded fellow in 2010 in the ESRC Rising Powers Network Award entitled ‘India’s challenge in a globalising healthcare economy: social science directions’.
