16 - Women in South Asia by South Asian Media Net

S O U T H

A S I A N

Editor Imtiaz Alam Senior Assistant Editor Maheen Pracha

Contents Four Years of the South Asian Journal In this Issue

Consulting Editors Bangladesh Reazuddin Ahmed India K K Katyal Nepal Yubaraj Ghimire Pakistan I A Rehman Sri Lanka Sharmini Boyle

Women's Empowerment in Pakistan Khawar Mumtaz Women and the Indian National Movement Visalakshi Menon Gender and Women in Sri Lanka Dr Sepali Kottegoda Women's Empowerment and Local Self-Governance Dr V Gayathri

Publisher Free Media Foundation

Girls' Madrassahs in India Dr Yoginder Sikand

Facilitator South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA)

Poverty Alleviation in South Asia Syed Mohammad Ali

The Right to Transparent Governance Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze, and Nikhil Dey Economic Cooperation between the Two Punjabs Dr Ranjit Singh Ghuman India's Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN Paranjoy Thakurta Interview: Dr Muhammad Yunus Ziaul Karim

Address 09 Lower Ground Eden Heights, Jail Road Lahore, Pakistan. Tel: 92 42 587 9251, 587 9253 Fax: 92 42 587 9254 Email: sajournal.subscribe@gmail.com Website : www.southasianmedia.net

Documents: The Persistence of Underdevelopment Dr Raghuram Rajan Statement South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR) Meeting, March 2007 Declaration SAARC Journalists' Summit III Journalists Above Divides New Delhi, April 2, 2007

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Four Years of the South Asian Journal The South Asian Journal has now completed four years of publication. When we decided to bring out an academic and topical journal for the region to overcome the deficits of information and researched-based analysis of major issues and challenges faced by the countries of the region, the sceptics had doubts about an ambitious endeavour of first of its kind. They had thought that South Asia has no historical significance, nor has it any significant future, given the failure of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to take off as a vibrant regional entity. In a region marred by inter and intra state conflicts, they advised, not to waste time and energies on such an idealistic pursuit. They were wrong. The South Asian Journal not only continued to maintain fairly a good standard, but also stirred the academic, intellectual, political and journalistic interest in the most pressing issues faced by the region and member countries of SAARC and brought crucial policy matters on the agenda of academic research and public debate. The 16 issues, so far produced, have helped create a better understanding of most issues among the leading circles across our borders. As we struggled to reach out to scholars and researchers across various sectors and disciplines, we did face difficulties in bringing the right scholars on board. But, gradually, the Journal succeeded in winning the attention of many distinguished scholars and creating a wider network of experts and researchers. It was too difficult, and still tedious, to transport the Journal across the obstructive check posts in our countries. Thanks to the support from South Asian Free Media Association's (SAFMA) national chapters, we were able to dispatch the Journal to every country. The efforts to expand readership are continuing, even though costs are too high on postage. The Journal is now respected as an authentic publication and referred to by the scholars and writers on various issues. It provided a wholist view and covered most important issues faced by each country and the region as a whole. Special focus on one or the other issue helped in comparative reading of the similar subjects across the region, on the one hand, besides the coverage of a variety of current developments kept the people informed on latest developments, on the other.

organizations, academicians, researchers, technocrats, entrepreneur, cultural figures, leading personalities and politicians and the people at large are now more and more willing to forge cross-border networks and undertake bilateral and multilateral projects, despite various nation-state centric obstructions. A South Asian fraternity and communities of people are emerging before our eyes at a much faster face than the slower movement by the lethargic bureaucracies at the SAARC level. By becoming a credible vehicle for informed debate on policy issues, the Journal has brought together the best minds on a common platform to pursue a wholsitic agenda for progress, development and empowerment of our people. The South Asian Journal Conference-I, 'Envision South Asia', held on April 29-30, helped generate valuable research across various disciplines and sectors by 14 research groups that have now been published in a 14-volume series of South Asian Studies. The conference formed South Asian Policy Analysis (SAPANA) network, a virtual think-tan, to pursue its research-based policy formulation initiative for an informed public discourse and influence decision making processes. The editorial section of the South Asian Journal reiterates its commitment to peace, progress and partnership in the region. It will continue its efforts to reach out to larger sections of our intelligentsia and create a fraternity of conscientious South Asians. The Journal will remain open to pluralism and fair debate and will continue to critically evaluate all those polices and positions that fall short of genuine aspirations of our people. We will welcome all concerned scholars and readers to contribute to this collective effort to realize a shared destiny and common good. To facilitate this process of South Asian collective thinking, all the hurdles in the way of connectivity, academic partnerships, free flow of information, and free movement of scholars and journalists must be lifted.

South Asia is now brewing with the ideas of regional cooperation and the South Asian scholars are increasingly engaged in research and policy formulation in various fields for the collective wellbeing of our people. The information and knowledge deficit about each other is being gradually, though slowly, overcome. The efforts to move towards creating a South Asian free trade area, a customs and tariff union, regional development fund, energy grid and communication linkages are finding more receptive environment and conducive conditions. Increasing numbers of civil society

panchayat (local council) members in the South Indian state of Karnataka, in terms of their performance of the roles envisaged for them and whether, in the process, they have become “empowered”. She also attempts to explain the perpetration of inequalities in spite of the presence of enabling factors such as education in the state.

In This Issue (The views expressed in this journal are solely those of the authors)

Women's Empowerment in Pakistan

Women and the Indian National Movement

Visalakshi Menon, a historian at Jesus and Mary College at the University of Delhi, examines how Indian women have engaged in the country’s national liberation movements. She argues that Indian feminism emerged in the context of the anti-imperialist struggle, and provides a historical overview of the role played by a number of prominent women in different political stages of the movement for independence from the British. She examines how this political activity affected women's mobility outside their homes, their access to education, approach to marriage, and perception of themselves as “citizens”.

Gender and Women in Sri Lanka

Dr Kottegoda, co-director of the Women and Media Collective in Sri Lanka, explores the changing relations of gender and, in particular, the construction of “woman” in the process of economic development and social change in Sri Lanka. She argues that an examination of the impact of state-sponsored economic development policies over the last several decades have changed the lines demarcating the primary roles of women and men, e.g., as main income earner/decision maker, or in terms of physical mobility and the ensuing changes in women's ability to travel out of their homes or country for employment. These developments indicate that significant changes are taking place in the area of gendered social identities which warrant recognition and examination.

Women's Empowerment and Local Self-Governance

iii

Khawar Mumtaz, a leading development activist and codirector of Shirkat Gah in Lahore, examines the economic strategies employed by the Government of Pakistan to “empower” the country's women. She argues that the social dimension of empowerment is not captured by any of the indicators used to measure it, and that it is this that determines the resources and processes available to the disempowered. Ms Mumtaz assesses the extent to which the government's commitments and policies for women's empowerment are reflected in its economic policies in the context of the social obstacles women face in Pakistan today.

Dr V Gayathri, a consultant at the Institute for Human Development in India, looks at the factors that boost women's effective political participation in the existing system of disadvantages the face. She examines the role of women

Girls' Madrassahs in India

Yoginder Sikand, reader at the Department of Islamic Studies at Hamdard University in India, provides a sociological overview of religious education for Muslim girls in India. He argues that, by combining Islamic education with modern subjects to varying degrees, these schools have begun to play a major role in promoting literacy as well as Islamic awareness among Muslim girls, who are among the most educationally deprived sections of Indian society.

Poverty Alleviation in South Asia

Syed Mohammad Ali, a development analyst and columnist from Pakistan, analyses the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers as a mechanism to increase South Asian countries' ownership of international development processes, while better reflecting the concerns of the poor. He seeks to contextualize the PRSP process from a historical and institutional perspective, and identifies means whereby the effectiveness of the PRSP process can be assessed to understand the challenges of alleviating poverty

The Right to Transparent Governance

Aruna Roy (a prominent human rights activist in India), Jean Dreze (a leading economist and honorary professor at the Delhi School of Economics), and Nikhil Dey (a founding member of the Mazdoor Kissan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) movement in India), examine India's struggle for the right to information in the context of the state of Rajhastan. They capture ordinary people's perceptions of self-governance in terms of their right to demand the accountability of public funds and functionaries, and the right to work through a national employment guarantee act.

Economic Cooperation between the Two Punjabs

Dr Ranjit Singh Ghuman, a professor of economics at the Punjabi University in Patiala, India, looks at the common history and socio-cultural and political affinity of the Indian and Pakistani provinces of Punjab. He examines the potential for and rationale of cooperation between the two Punjabs in terms of agriculture, industry, technology, and trade. Dr Ghuman also analyses the cost of discordant relations between India and Pakistan in terms of the two Punjabs, and recommends steps to improve mutual cooperation.

India's Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN

Interview: Dr Muhammad Yunus

The Persistence of Underdevelopment

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a leading Indian journalist and director of the School of Convergence in India, look at whether East Asia and South Asia can form a unified economic zone similar to the European Union (EU), through a free trade area (FTA) agreement with ASEAN in the near future. He argues that the international economic power balance is shifting in this region's direction, and that, despite being deeply divided on certain political, social, and religious fronts, it is imperative that South Asian governments come together in economic terms to the benefit of all. By winning the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, Dr Muhammad Yunus, “the banker to the poor”, has shown how peace and the eradication of poverty are interlinked. Ziaul Karim, associate editor of www.southasianmedia.net, interviews the Nobel Laureate to explore the genesis and development of the Grameen Bank as a bank for the poor, particularly poor women; the underlying philosophy of a poverty-free world; and the concept of “social business” as an answer to the capitalist view of profit-making as every human being's aim. In a paper presented at the 22nd Annual Conference of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists, Raghuram Rajan, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), questions the persistence of underdevelopment, arguing that the initial inequality in endowments and opportunities leads to self-interested constituencies that perpetuate the status quo. He suggests that we need to understand better how to alter factor endowments when societies do not have the internal will to do so. (Courtesy of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics).

Women's Empowerment 1 in Pakistan Khawar Mumtaz

he extensively used term, “empowerment,” is often nebulous and vague with policy makers giving it varying meanings. In their analysis of “buzzwords” that are part of contemporary development policies Andrea Cornwall and Karen Brock include “empowerment” as one of the words that once “spoke of politics and power [and has]… spun into an apolitical form that everyone can agree with.”2 There are also serious concerns about how to measure “empowerment” especially of women, the poor and marginalized. The search for ways of measuring empowerment has led to setting indicators; however these at best address material conditions and not necessarily the underlying power dynamics. United Nation's Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), for instance includes seats in parliament held by women; number of female legislators, senior officials and managers; female professionals and technical workers; and ratio of estimated female to male earned income. The Millennium Development Goals, agreed upon by all governments in 2000, set indicators for women's empowerment as ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education; ratio of literate females to males of 15-24 years old; proportion of seats held by women in national parliament; and share of women in wage employment in the non-agriculture sector. Among indicators for women's development and status are those under the UN Genderrelated Development Index (GDI) that include life expectancy and estimated female earned income.3 Others have defined empowerment as the ability to make choices, have a say in decision making, have agency (the ability to act upon goals defined by self), etc. Maternal mortality rate and negative sex ratio (fewer women proportionate to men) are yet other indicators of women's social status and by extension their empowerment. Whether achieving the above in Pakistan would be able to cumulatively result in women's empowerment remains a moot question; that it will improve women's condition is probable. If empowerment is a “process of change” as argued by Naila Kabeer and entails “expansion in people's ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them,”4 then current evidence from Pakistan indicates that improved conditions of albeit small percentage of women (seats in representative bodies, education, or higher incomes through jobs) have expanded the space for them but their exercise of choice remains limited. There are many instances that exemplify this fact, for instance the case of Samia Sarwar (1999), an educated 29 year old woman belonging to a well to do family from Pakistan's northwestern province (NWFP), whose mother was a practicing medical doctor, and

who was killed with the connivance of the immediate family for wanting to take a divorce from a separated addict husband. The husband who had remarried neither supported Samia, nor their children.5 The missing element that does not get captured in any of the indicators and measures is the very critical social dimension that determines the resources and processes available to the disempowered (women and men) as well as their control over them. This paper seeks to examine the extent to which Government's commitments and policies for women's empowerment are reflected in its economic policies. It begins with an overview of the situation of women in the country and the barriers faced by them, looks at the principle policies of women's empowerment and governments' economic polices to point out the gaps if any between the two sets of policies and makes suggestions for addressing them. Obstacles Faced by Women The perception of women as having lower status at all levels is the principle barrier in the way of gender equality and is reinforced both by customary practices and the laws of the land. Women's education, health, labour force participation, mobility, decision making, etc. all reflect the unequal situation of women in Pakistan. Given the positive correlation between primary school education and women's well being the lack of access to education is one of the most widely acknowledged obstacle in the way of knowing options and making choices. Despite the increase in female literacy (40%) the gap between male-female literacy is persistent (25% according to PSLM 2004-05) with rural female literacy at 29% (rural Baluchistan and Sindh lag behind at 18% and 13% respectively). In fact in the latter two provinces the gender gap has increased by 2%.6 The reduction in the gender gap in primary level enrollment is attributed to a drop in male enrolment. The female enrolment drops drastically at the middle and secondary levels with fewer schools for girls than for boys and due to the distance between home and school (more than one-third girls never attend school for reasons other than cost).

Percent of Population 10 years and older 1998-99 PIHS

2001-02 PIHS

2004-05 PSLM

Male

Female

Both

Male

Female

Both

Male

Female

Both

Urban Areas:

Rural Areas:

Overall:

Punjab

Sindh

NWFP

Balochistan

Notes: 1.

Population aged 10 years and older that is literate expressed as a percentage of the population aged 10 years and older. Literacy: For all surveys, literacy is taken as the ability to read a newspaper and to write a simple letter.

Female labour force participation rate has risen from 13.7% of the 1998 Census to 15.93% in 2003-2004 (LFS 2003-2004). Currently the female labour force participation rate is at 15.9% out of the total LFPR of 43.7% (LFS 2003-04) with the rural rate at 19.5% and urban at 9.4%. Women's participation in the formal sector is under 10% and may be attributed to the limited formal employment opportunities for women, as well as to the place of work. The bulk of the female labour force is in the informal sector where women are usually atomized as home based piece-rate workers in both urban and rural areas.7 Having no or scant knowledge of production processes women are vulnerable and dependent on those supplying them with work, often middlemen, or men in their own households. Women's informal sector work is closely associated with poverty, for instance in Pakistan 60% of home-based workers belong to households that are below the poverty line.8 Table 2: Distribution of Employed: employment status and sex (%) Employment Status

2001-02

2003-04

Total

Male

Female

Total

Male

Female

Employers

0.8

0.9

0.3

0.9

1.1

0.1

Self-employed

38.5

42.4

15.7

37.1

41.4

15.9

Unpaid family helpers

20.8

16.4

46.9

24.1

18.3

52.8

Employees

39.9

40.3

37.1

37.9

39.2

31.2

Total

100

Source: Labour Force Survey 2003-2004

Table.1.: Literacy -Population 10 years and older -by region and province

Overall Region and Province

Women's poor health status is evident from the negative sex ratio in the country -105 males to 100 females-- according to the latest figures, widening in the case of Balochistan (115 males to 100 females) and reversed only in the case of NWFP (99 males to 100 females attributed to excessive migration from the province), and the maternal mortality rate at 350-500 per 100,000 that has remained static since over a decade. Poor quality and coverage of services and women's lack of information and knowledge about health issues are indicative of the state of women's health.

The 5 % quota for women in public sector jobs (now raised to 10% by the cabinet), also remains unfulfilled with just 2.8% women in the sector other than in education and health where women's positions are provided for specifically. Women's subsistence production or unpaid family work in both urban and rural settings remains invisible where the bulk of the female labour force is to be found. In the formal sector women often find that their wages are lower than those of males in comparable work in both rural and urban areas; they are usually assigned low skill jobs; and excluded from collective bargaining because of their employment as contract workers. Participation in trade union activities is further hampered due to fear of physical insecurity and sexual harassment. Of the financial support mechanisms for women, zakat and bait- ul- mal and micro credit schemes, the former two do not manage to reach those needing most

support usually because of complicated procedures. Credit now more available for women through various schemes reaches only 5% of the poorest. However, where it gets to poor women assessments show that the impact is positive e.g. the Khushali Bank and NGO Kashf's lending programmes.9 Political space for women opened up with the Local Government Ordinance 2000 but has been subject to elite capture in many places. Women's participation in politics remains hostage to physical mobility and prevalent social norms. A recent study of 7 villages shows that distance to polling stations is known to prevent women from voting, poorer households are less likely to vote and women within them even less, and that literacy was positively correlated to women's voting with literate women more likely to vote but still 20% less than illiterate men.10 Under these circumstances poor women's voices are unlikely to be heard in planning and development. In terms of access and control of assets, women's ownership of land has to be viewed in the skewed framework of overall ownership where a minority controls most of the land and less than half of rural households own any agricultural land. Women of all classes with a few exceptions are usually kept out of inheriting property or forfeit their right in favour of their male kin.11 Women's Empowerment: Government Commitments The Government of Pakistan is officially committed to women's empowerment as a signatory to the Beijing Declaration and Programme of Action, CEDAW that it ratified in March 1996,12 the Child Rights Convention (signed in 1994) and its Optional Protocol, a number of ILO conventions including Conventions 100 and 103, ICPD Platform of Action (and other UN conferences of the 90's), the MDGs, and regional agreements under SAARC (Trafficking of Women, the SAARC Social Charter, Girl Child), etc. Among the principle policy documents are the National Plan of Action (NPA) and the National Policy for Development and Empowerment of Women (NPDEW). The National Plan of Action was developed through a broad-based two-year joint Government and civil society process to implement the Beijing commitments. It was formally adopted in 1998 and continues to be the basis of defining programmes and policies for women's development. The NPA in line with Beijing Conferences holistic approach to women's empowerment addresses the 12 critical areas identified by the latter.13 All the chapters are interconnected highlighting the integral link all the aspects to women's empowerment i.e. without basic human rights, power and decision making, education and training, etc. women cannot enjoy due status or play a full role. The Chapters on Poverty and Economics contains six Strategic Objectives ranging from the adoption of “macro and micro-economic policies …aimed at eradicating poverty and reducing gender based inequities”; to focus on low income and rural women, increase “women's ownership, control and management of productive assets e.g. land, and formal credit;” cushion women against structural adjustment;

integration of women's concerns in all sectoral programmes and policies; and extension of ongoing programmes to women in order to overcome “traditional sociocultural norms that constrain women's mobility.” Actions are specified under each Strategic Objective and include distribution of land to poor and landless women, affirmative action in the recruitment of women, review of macro and micro policies as well as labour laws from the gender lens, among others.14 The Chapter on Economy also with six Strategic Objectives include development of data that shows women's contribution to the national economy, empirical research to discover linkages between “control over income” and “power in decision making”, diverse and expanded education and training opportunities, updating and “strict enforcement” of labour laws in the formal sector, adoption of “an integrated approach to raise productivity and income of self-employed women” and for incorporating women's concerns in agricultural programmes related to “training, livestock and credit”. Recommended actions include review of existing data on women's labour force participation, capacity building for gender disaggregated data and use of female enumerators, sensitization of research institutions, review of policies and their reform.15 National Policy for Development & Empowerment of Women (NPDEW) promulgated in 2002 provides a vision, goal and guiding principles for improving women's status in Pakistan and implicitly reinforces the provisions of the NPA. The vision includes “gender equity and equality” and the goal includes “empowerment of Pakistani women … for the realization of their full potential in all spheres of life….” Among guiding principles are the “universally recognized rights and responsibilitybased approach,” recognition of women's worth and value of their work and contribution in all spheres of life, women as equal partners in development and as agents of change. Social Empowerment

Table 3. Women’s Empowerment: NPDEW 2002 Economic Empowerment

education health law & access to justice violence against women women in the family & community girl child

poverty access to credit remunerated work women in the rural ec onomy & informal sector sustainable development

Political Empowerment power & decision making

Note: All measures outlined above will equally apply to elderly women, and girls with disabilities and other marginalized groups. NPDEW. p.13

The section on Economic Empowerment of Women (Table 3) includes safety nets for poor women; access to: land, agricultural and livestock extension services support facilities and mechanisms for rural women; affordable housing schemes; credit especially to female heads of household for businesses, properties and house building. The policy provides for capacity building and equal opportunities for women in paid employment, appropriate legislation for the of ILO Convention 100 (equal

remuneration for work of equal value) and prevention of sexual harassment of women workers in work places for formal sector workers. For women's work in the rural areas and informal sector the emphasis is on “recognizing, counting and making visible women's real economic contribution” in the national economic indicators.

by inherited inequalities. The four pillars to achieve poverty reduction on the basis of its analysis are: l Accelerating economic growth while maintaining macroeconomic stability with a

special focus on the rural economy; Finally the policy proposes urgent measures for the inclusion of women in all tiers of decision making bodies pertaining to the environment and for mandatory assessment of impact of development and environment projects, programmes and policies on women. It further provides for training, skills and information to women in natural resource management, conservation of women's indigenous knowledge related to traditional medicines and management of natural resource and research to highlight the link between women and the environment. The Government's Economic Policies Reduction of poverty is central to Government's economic policy. It launched its full PRSP in December 2003 (following the Interim-PRSP of 2001).16 It incorporates the Millennium Development Goals (to be achieved by 2015) in its targets, and is itself incorporated in the Mid Term Development Framework 2005-2010.17 Both, the PRSP and MTDF emphasize the integration of women across all sectors, promoting gender responsive budgeting approach in each line ministry and department, and making gender concerns a part of the macro economic framework. It is currently being revisited and revised for the next three years (PRSP2). The PRSP recognizes the multidimensional nature of poverty in the country with income as well as non monetary aspects. It acknowledges that:

l Improving governance and consolidating devolution for delivering better

development results and ensuring economic and social justice; l Investing in human capital with effective delivery of basic social services; l Targeting the poor and the vulnerable into the mainstream of development.

The different pillars while interconnected fail to mainstream social concerns. Examining Women's needs are directly addressed only through pillar three (education, special education and health) and partially pillar four (microfinance and social safety nets). As an improvement upon I-PRSP which did not include the gender dimension at all except in education and maternal mortality, the full PRSP addressed the other issues related to women's livelihoods included in Chapter Six (Addressing IPRSP Gaps: Employment, Gender and Environment). Here it reiterated the NPA and NPDEW as its points of reference and GoP's commitment to mainstream gender as a policy and the need to empower women for equitable access through removing social and economic constraints.19 Integral to the chapter are a set of significant economic indicators (the Gender Equality Matrix) that are separate from the Gender Indicators included in the overall monitoring framework of the PRSP. The former are however not mainstreamed in the document nor monitored because of separate listing.20 Various vertical programmes already introduced under the NPA and NPDEW are considered to be a part of PRSP.

and female primary school enrollment of poor households is lower than that of the non-poor. l Relatively poor communities have inadequate access to public health services l The poor are characterized by inadequate access to public services l The nature of employment and poverty are related in urban areas.18

The Education Sector Reforms Action Plan (2001-2015) and an Education for All Action Plan (2001-2015) is embedded within PRSP. The primary objective is of achieving 100 percent literacy and reducing the gender gap in literacy. Towards this end programmes with compensatory components (free books, stipends, meals) as well as private-public partnerships have been introduced; women's technical schools one in every tehsil, and introduction of technical education stream in secondary schools (five for girls in each district) has been envisaged. There is also a special focus on women and children with disability.

It further notes higher dependency ratio to earning members in poor households, higher levels of female labour force participation in poorer households, and little impact of their earning on poverty reduction due to lower wages. Importantly, the PRSP recognises the dynamic nature of poverty with a cluster of households huddled close to the poverty line dropping into poverty due to climate vagaries or personal risks (death, illness, etc.). Unemployment is perceived as a major source of this vulnerability. The PRSP declares that “poverty reduction efforts must address the gender dimension in order to deal with poverty meaningfully” and that “removal of the social and economic constraints that have hampered their [women's] access to and use of resources” is imperative (PRSP, 2003: p.93). It also acknowledges that income is dependent on capabilities and provision of opportunities that are influenced

With reference to health high population growth rate, high incidence of low birthweight babies and maternal mortality are seen as major challenges in the PRSP along with communicable diseases. The National Health Policy (NHP) focuses on health sector investments for expanded and quality services and gives priority to primary and secondary healthcare services making a shift towards preventive rather than the curative approach to health care. Its ten key areas for reform include promoting gender equity through increasing the number of Lady Health Workers to 100,000 (by 2005) and improved maternal healthcare. The medium term health strategy aims at increased health sector public expenditures (less than 1% currently) for priority areas including reproductive health and strengthened primary health care facilities with appropriately trained staff and availability of emergency obstetrics care (EmOC)

l The rural poor are highly vulnerable to droughts l Poverty incidence varies across provinces l Education is the most important factor distinguishing the poor from the non-poor

facilities. The longer term objective is to provide one local resident midwife/Lady Health Visitor for a population of 3000-5000. The population sector focus in PRSP is on reducing the population growth rate (to 1.6% by 2012) through the implementation of the Comprehensive Health Package introduced under the Population Policy, 2002. The strategy includes developing linkages between “poverty, family security and life span healthcare to improve the status of women”. Other strategies for women are micro-credit, zakat, expanding women's presence in the civil service, increasing women's share in wage employment in the non-agriculture sector, and women's increased seats in Parliament. Employment generation is one of the key poverty reduction strategies under the PRSP, and its two indicators are the “total employed labour force” and reduced “unemployment.” The reason for unemployment is attributed to the decade long deceleration of economic growth. Increase in the rate of growth of economy is expected to reduce unemployment. The PRSP follows the NPDEW in its strategy and includes training, promoting female labour based industries, protection under labour legislation, etc.21 Enforcement of the quota (recently doubled to 10% through a decision of the cabinet) for women's employment in government is stressed. For women micro-credit as envisaged under pillar four of PRSP is a major initiative with existing micro-credit institutions (Khushali Bank, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, the First Women's Bank, etc.) mandated to expand their coverage with special focus on female headed households and women with disability. In the longer term gender responsive budgeting (GRB) is envisaged for analysing and ensuring budget allocations to address gender inequality. GRBI is currently being piloted in two districts of Punjab. The absence of gender disaggregated data is also recognized and the need to rectify the gap is also noted. Finding the Gap To sum up Government's analysis of women's situation in the country, its policies and programmes that are backed by multi- and bi-lateral donors one can see that: l There is awareness of problems and bottlenecks l There is recognition of women's mainstreaming as integral to poverty reduction. l Key strategies for mainstreaming are seen as asset creation, capacity building, employment generation, representation public bodies (local government, parliament) l Need for gender sensitivity within administrative systems with greater presence of women l Identifying blockages in budgetary allocations. A number of vertical programmes are underway in this connection (GRAP, Gender Mainstreaming, Women's Political School, GRBI, etc.) The shift to a gendered approach is evident form a number of programmes like the Gender Responsive Budgeting Initiative, and Gender Mainstreaming underway with

UNDP support. Another major shift is the involvement of other ministries in genderbased programmes rather than placing all women related programmes in the Women's Ministry (and departments). GRBI as well as Gender Mainstreaming involve the Finance Ministry (Federal and Provincial), the Planning and Development Departments, Ministry of Local Government, Economic Affairs Division, Ministry of Women Development and the Federal Bureau of Statistics more actively in the implementation process. Potentially building capacities of the various tiers of different departments, and of women local councillors and parliamentarians for their active participate in decision making can have far reaching results. However the progress on key measures related to women appears to be slow and in some instances minimal; similarly Pakistan has achieved modest to high economic growth but has failed to achieve poverty reduction. This merits a closer look. Many analysts are in agreement that women's poor status as well as poverty is rooted in social and cultural organization of society.22 Thus the main challenge to programmatic interventions is posed by persistent social/cultural factors that impede women's access to services including schools, work places and healthcare centres pose. Denial of property and inheritance rights, violence often imbedded in customary practices, absence of protection and justice to women, their lack of information about legal, economic or political rights, combine with constrained mobility keep women socially excluded and unable to seize opportunities. Increasingly religion is also used to restrict women's participation in public life. In official approaches a basic problem is that of the gap between policy intent and programmatic content. While PRSP intends to build human capabilities and “empower individuals to face equal opportunities” the programmes do not address existing power structures at the root of inequity and poverty. For example, asset creation for women is included in the PRSP but to date no serious initiative in this direction is evident like land distribution (except micro-credit). Similarly, other than recognizing and counting women in the informal sector no regulation is in sight for ensuring fair payment for women's work. The micro-credit programmes may provide relief and benefit to households, they do not necessarily enhance women's decision making. The continuing presence of discriminatory legislation is indicative of the rights approach not being given high priority.23 The issue of social exclusion also remains unaddressed. Administrative bottlenecks from bureaucratic red tape, to half hearted commitment to women's uplift, to the time lag between policies drafted at the federal level and their comprehension as they go down the tiers to the provincial and then to the district levels, to the quality of implementation and services, all combine to thwart the impact of programmes. The innovative national level Tawana Pakistan programme is a case in point. The programme was suspended due to the lack of coordination and resistance by the concerned ministry.24 It was showing evidence of improving the nutritional status of girls, encouraging the most marginal communities and castes in villages to send children to school, empowering women to take local action, and acting

as a potential equaliser in a stratified and fragmented social structure.25 Similarly, basic health units continue to be nonfunctional (66%), only 20% of births are attended by a trained birth attendant, there is absenteeism of school teachers and health personnel, very few officials in Punjab districts knew of GRAP, a major 5-year long administrative reform project. Local officials are largely unaware of government's international commitments and policies and programmes flowing from them (e.g. MDGs). Non-assimilation into Government's mainstream activities of vertically implemented innovative programmes. For instance the Lady Health Workers Programme that is running since 1994 and has expanded its spatial coverage (by 47% in 2005) lacks synergy with available government health services and fails to link its awarenessraising with the services. Absence of quality data that is relevant and timely. Despite several measures to improve the data it still falls short of requirement. Ideally sex disaggregated as well as gender sensitive data is needed. The former is required for monitoring situations where information is needed by individuals (males and females); and the latter, for issues important from the gender perspective (maternal mortality, for instance).26 The population census is carried out decennially and is critical for assessing long term outcomes the reliance is on administratively produced data and surveys for government planning. While systems of sectoral data collection (HIMS, EMIS) exist they are weak in quality of data and the poor data collection mechanism results in delays affecting monitoring as well as future planning. The LFS though regularly produced with sex disaggregated data it proves to be inadequate because of its sample size and failure to capture district level information. The administrative data generated in health and education sectors excludes private sector and semigovernment facilities and the PSLMS that has questions for generating data for PRSP outcome indicators, and people's satisfaction with services, leaves out urban slums. Effective monitoring from the gender perspective is also not in place as is acknowledged by the government in its reports. Within the PRSP appropriate output and outcome gender indicators are included for social sectors but are missing for other components like economic, macroeconomic, legal and governance. Compared with other developing countries with similar per capita GNP, Pakistan's human development is lower. This “social gap” is not primarily of resource availability but closely related to the country's fiscal policy and patterns of public expenditure. For instance 3.3% more of Pakistan's GDP is spent on defense than other countries at the same income level, and at the same time there is under-spending in the social sectors.27 Thus all the above factors combine with poor implementation of programmes; unstable governance systems; fragmented social structure along lines of class, caste, kinship, ethnic, religious and other divides prevent Pakistan from achieving higher levels of human development and more specifically meeting its own goals of women's

empowerment. That the necessary political will is missing in moving towards gender equity and equality seems to be true. Recommendations Given that Government policies already include a number of measures that would go a long way in removing some of the obstacles to women's empowerment a strong recommendation would be for the full implement the existing provisions. Below are some key measures that would help in making a difference for women until more radical redistributive measures are considered. It is also critical that the role of existing power structures in creating social exclusion be recognised as a major hurdle to women's empowerment and must be incorporated in economic policies (PRSP). Gender indicators need to be developed and set for all PRSP sectors and gender based policy appraisals of all sectors (GRBI) should be made an integral part of planning and assessing budgetary allocations for gender blindness. Similarly discriminatory legislation needs to be removed and protective legislation e.g. on domestic violence is required. At the administrative level bottlenecks in programme implementation need to be removed; gender sensitive data generation and filling of gaps in existing coverage (slums, private schools, and health care services); research be commissioned to identify potential drivers of women's empowerment and examine the impact of measures like women's political participation and identify obstacles. Other measures with potentially beneficial impact on women include ensuring safety for girls to attend schools; incentives for the enrolment of the most marginalised groups; simple mechanism for free health services for poor women as a social protection measure;28 facilitation in getting ID cards made. This would also open a number of avenues of accessing resources (social protection, credit, etc.). A comprehensive Women Employment Strategy for PRSP 2 would be advisable to ensure that sectors and occupations which employ women are expanded, training needs are identified and labour laws revisited from the perspective of women's home based work. Filling of public sector employment quota (10%) must be taken on a priority basis as government employment legitimises women's work. References l Budlender, Debbie, Data Requirements for Gender Responsive Budgeting in Pakistan. Finance Division. 2006. (Mimeo) l Budlender, Debbie, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper: Monitoring indicators for gender. (Mimeo. 2005) l Caldwell, Zarrin T., “Closing Gender Gaps: Why It Matters”, Feb 24, 2006. http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/127480/1/ l Cheema, Ali. Determinants and Drivers of Poverty in Pakistan: Governance Impediments to Pro-Poor Change in Pakistan. (Revised Thematic Paper). ADB. 2006 l Cornwall, Andrea and Karen Brock, Beyond Buzzwords. UNRISD. Programme Paper Number 10. Nov. 2005. l Gazdar, Haris, Determinants and Drivers of Poverty: Rural Economy and Livelihoods.

(Draft revised thematic paper for ADB), Islamabad. 2006. Akmal with inputs from A.R. Kemal, A.I. Hamid, Imran Ali, Khawar Mumtaz, Ayub Qutub. Pakistan National Human Development Report 2003 - Poverty, Growth and Governance. UNDP, Islamabad. 2003 l Kabir, Naela, “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women's Empowerment”, Development and Change. Vol. 30 (1999), 435-464. l Kabir, Naila, Khawar Mumtaz, Asad Sayeed, Citizenship and Social Protection: Towards a 'Transformative' Agenda for Pakistan. (Draft for DFID). Islamabad. 2006 l Montgomery, Heather, Meeting the Double Bottom Line The Impact of Khushali Bank's Microfinance Programme in Pakistan. (mimeo). ADB 2005. l Mumtaz, Khawar, Gender and Poverty in Pakistan. ADB. Islamabad. 2005 l Mumtaz, Khawar, “Engendering PRSP-2”. Paper presented at the National Consultation on PRSP 2, Islamabad. May 2006 l Mumtaz, Khawar, (Engendering the Poverty Reduction Approaches in Pakistan.” UNIFEM. New Delhi. Nov. 2006 l Mumtaz, Khawar and Meher M. Nosherwani, Women's Access and Rights to Land and Property. Scoping Paper for IDRC, Delhi. May 2006 l Accelerating Economic Growth and Reducing Poverty: The Road Ahead, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. GOP.2003 l Between Hope & Despair; Pakistan Participatory Poverty Assessment, National and Provincial Reports. Planning Commission (GOP), Islamabad. 2003 l Hussain,

14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Endnotes 1 This paper builds upon the author's paper: Engendering the Poverty Reduction Approaches in Pakistan. Paper written for UNIFEM. Nov 2006. 2 Andrea Cornwall and Karen Brock, Beyond Buzzwords. UNRISD. Programme Paper Number 10. Nov. 2005. p. iii 3 Besides female adult literacy rate and combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary schools. 4 Naila Kabir, “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women's Empowerment”, Development and Change. Vol. 30 (1999), 435-464. p 3. 5 See for details of the case, WLUML Newsheet. Vol. XI. No 1. April/May 1999. pp 1-4 6 Government of Pakistan, Statistics Division Federal Bureau of Statistics. June 2005. PSLM 2004-05 is the first round of a series of surveys planned to be conducted up to 2009 to provide district level data in health, education, water supply and sanitation, and household economic situation and satisfaction by facilities and services, for planning district level poverty reduction strategy as well as rapid assessment of programmes initiated under PRSP and MTDF. 7 According to the LFS 2003-04 informal sector accounts for 70% of employment in jobs outside the agriculture sector. 73% of those employed in rural areas are in the sector compared to 67% in the urban. 8 National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW), The Status of Home-Based Women Workers in Informal Sector. Draft Report of Policy Research. 2004. p.27 9 See for discussion on micro-credit Khawar Mumtaz, Gender and Poverty in Pakistan. ADB. Islamabad. 2005 10 Cheema, Ali. Draft paper for ADB. 2005. 11 Khawar Mumtaz and Meher M. Nosherwani, Women's Access and Rights to Land and Property. Scoping Paper for IDRC, Delhi. May 2006 12 There is a reservation on Clause 29 and a general declaration iterating the primacy of Pakistan's Constitution over the provisions of the Convention. 13 The 12 critical areas are: poverty, education and training, health, violence against women, the economy, power and decision making, institutional mechanisms for the advancement

25 26 27 28

of women, human rights, media, environment, and the girl child. The issue of women with disabilities cuts across all critical areas. The National Plan of Action for Women. Ministry of Women and Development. GoP. Islamabad. 1998. pp 3-7 Ibid. pp. 45-48 This section draws from the author's paper, “Engendering PRSP 2”. INGAD. May 2006 The MDGs, however, have been criticized for their vertical approach and for a) ignoring the critical role of socio-political context at the root of poverty; b) lacking in a focus on economic, political and social reforms; c) failing to go beyond delivery systems; and d) not addressing social exclusion and gender bias that stand in the way of equitable access and utilization of services and opportunities. PRSP, pp16-17. Accelerating Economic Growth and Reducing Poverty: The Road Ahead, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. GOP.2003. p. 93 Budlender, Debbie, “Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper: Monitoring indicators for gender”. (Mimeo. 2005) See PRSP for details. pp. 95-96 For example see, Akmal Hussain et al, Pakistan Human DevelopmentReport. UNDP. Islamabad. 2003; Pakistan Participatory Poverty Assessment. GoP. Islamabad 2003 The Women's Protection Act (Nov 2006) reduces a number of clauses of the Hudood Ordinances that victimized women. Its effective implementation has to be seen. The programme offered freshly cooked mid-day meals to girls aged 5-12 in over 4000 primary girls' schools to improve their nutritional health and increase their attendance at school. It increased the nutritional status of girls, school enrollment went up, teacher attendance increased. In addition it mobilized local women through School Committees to action and gave them a sense of empowerment. or evidence from the field, see Naila Kabir, et al, Transformative Social Protection. 2006 Debbie Budlender's , Data Requirements for Gender Responsive Budgeting in Pakistan. Finance Division. 2006. (Mimeo) Naila Kabir, et al, “Transformative Social Protection in Pakistan.” Report for DFID. 2006 One proposal is for health insurance and fee exemptions through a simplified system of provision of cards to Zakat and Bait-ul-Maal recipients which would entitle them to full health care coverage at government health facilities. Kabir et al. Op cit.

Women and the Indian National Movement Visalakshi Menon

major event in the lives of Indian women in the twentieth century was their engagement with nationalism. It brought about significant changes in their lives. There is no doubt that Indian feminism emerged in the context of the anti-imperialist struggle. As the well-known feminist historian Bharati Ray puts it: I argue that the twentieth-century women's movement in India was inextricably bound with the freedom movement. This is not to say that the women's movement in India is unconnected with the growth of other movements like the workers' or peasants' movements, but, rather to state that the crucial juncture or the historical point from which feminist consciousness began to be fashioned arrived with the freedom struggle.1 Aparna Basu also endorses this. According to her, “it is doubtful if a century of preaching and social work would have brought about the same change in the position of Indian women as was achieved in the wake of two decades of political struggle in India.2 This is not peculiar to India. There is a general consensus that feminist movements in the Third World have “almost always grown out of the same historical soil and at a similar moment, as nationalism.”3 This has been amply demonstrated by Kumari Jayawardene as well in her impressive work titled Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World.4 The contrast is with Europe, where nationalism has had more jingoistic overtones and could be used to legitimize the subjugation of minority ethnic groups and women. Hence, as Gisela Kaplan observes, it is relatively rare for feminists in Europe to align themselves with groups and ideologies promoting nationalism, except in the case of specific local political events.5 Kumari Jayawardane, who has studied a range of nationalist and feminist movements in the Third World, maintains that “Women's role was only 'contributive' to nationalist movements. Men were the movers of history, because they organized and set the parameters for nationalist movements.”6 This observation is undoubtedly applicable to India. From the very inception of the Indian National Congress, whether it was in the early Moderate phase or that of the Extremists, or even in the Gandhian movement, we can see that at every juncture the initiative was in the hands of men. If we look at the formal history of the Congress, we find that only on three occasions in

1917, 1925 and 1933, were there women Presidents.7 Apart from Sarojini Naidu, there was no woman on the Congress Working Committee( CWC) until 1946 (Jawaharlal Nehru's sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit would be a special invitee on some occasions.) Thereafter we have Kamladevi Chattopadhyay, the spirited Gandhian-cum-Socialist from Mangalore and Mridula Sarabhai, yet another Gandhian from Ahmedabad, on the CWC. Even in the Constituent Assembly, while women were appointed to the various sub-committees and participated enthusiastically in the deliberations, the final Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution was an all-male body. But our argument here is that these parameters are not sufficient to give us an idea of the extent and nature of women's participation in the Indian National Movement. Women attended the early sessions of the Indian National Congress, though in small numbers and more often as observers than as delegates. Even as early as in 1889, it was reported that ten women had attended the Congress session at Bombay. We have this rather quaint description of the elaborate arrangements that were made for women at the 1901 session, held in Calcutta: There were two platforms for the ladies, one reserved for those who observed the purdah system and this was screened off with chicks and curtains. There was also a separate entrance for them so arranged and screened off that they could step out of their carriages and go to their platform without exposure to the outside gaze. There was also a separate tent provided for their use the approach was similarly excluded.8 It was in the anti-Partition of Bengal movement of 1905-8 that the participation of women in large numbers was first noted. Their activities ranged from the observance of arandhan, or refusal to light the kitchen stoves on 16 October, (the day the Partition came into effect), to putting aside a bowl full of grain for the movement every day, to smashing foreign bangles, to singing Bande Mataram and other stirring patriotic songs, to attending public meetings and special ladies' meetings and arranging receptions for prominent nationalist leaders like Surendranath Banerjee.9 Sarladevi Ghoshal (later Chaudharani), the niece of Rabindranath Tagore, was one of the most prominent figures in this movement.10 Under the guidance of Annie Besant, the Irish Theosophist, as well as Margaret Cousins, another Irishwoman who had been part of the Suffragette Movement, a women's movement was clearly beginning to take shape in India in the second decade of the twentieth century. Women participated in large numbers in the Home Rule Movement of 1916-17 and also began to lobby for electoral representation in the new legislatures that were to be created as part of the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms.11 It was also in this period that a dynamic figure appeared on the political firmament. Her name was Abadi Bano Begum, but she was more popularly known as Bi Amman. She was the mother of the famous Ali brothers, Maulanas Shaukat Ali and Mohammad Ali. She had no formal education but had defied the family elders and insisted that her sons should go to an English school in Bareilly rather than the traditional madrasa.12

When her sons were arrested at the beginning of the First World War, she threw herself into the political movement, addressing meetings and traveling all over northern India. She was also active in the Anjuman-e-Khawatin-e-Islam, formed in Lucknow and other cities of UP at this time to further the cause of women's education and to secure property and inheritance rights for women.13 By 1917 Bi Amman had become a prominent public figure in India and was invited to join the women's franchise delegation headed by Sarojini Naidu, which was to visit Madras and meet Edwin Montague, the Secretary of India. Interestingly, she declined the invitation, and some of the reasons that she gave were deeply political. What was the need, she queried, to beg for concessions from outsiders, i.e., the British? Would it not be better to make our demands to our own husbands, our brothers and our sons? It would be more befitting for the women of Hindustan to send a deputation to the Congress and the Muslim League. In any case she felt that it was important for Indians to register their protest against the manner in which the Secretary of State was being kept away from all influential sections of Indian public opinion. Her own sons, the Ali brothers, were in jail and their petition to the Government of India, asking for an audience with the Secretary of State, had been turned down.14 Significantly, Bi Amman's position was vindicated. In spite of all the arguments put forward by the women who went to meet the Secretary of State, as well as the subsequent delegation to England in 1918, followed by the deputation to the Southborough Commission which visited India in 1919, the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms did not give women the vote. All that it conceded was that the Legislative Councils, when they were constituted, could debate the issue and decide whether women should be allowed to vote or not. Thus ultimately, it was the Indians themselves who decided in favour of giving representation for women in the 1920s. One more incident from Bi Amman's life needs to be narrated. It gives us an idea of the extent of her commitment to anti-imperialism as well as her feminist bonding. In June 1917, Annie Besant was arrested for her Home Rule League activities. This arrest opened the floodgates. There was a wave of protest all over the country. Zamindars, taluqdars and lawyers all expressed their indignation and resolved to join the Home Rule League. Bi Amman was also stirred to the quick. In a letter to Subramania Iyer of the Home Rule League on 4 August 1917, she wrote: In the glorious days of our great Prophet…and in those of his early Khalifas…we the women of Islam also used to shoulder our share of the burden and march along with our men, even to the Holy Wars. It is true that in recent times we have been leading much more retired lives, but nevertheless, I do not think that we women are at all inclined to shirk today such duties as the changing times may once more require us to perform.15 She then went on to explain that she, along with her daughter in law Amjadi Begum (wife of Mohammad Ali), had been sworn in as members of the Maharashtra Home Rule League some months earlier. She felt that “In these days it is not sufficient

merely to have a belief. One must openly profess it, and, if need be, proclaim it from the housetop.” She also made her small monetary contribution for the cause. Explaining the strained financial circumstances of the family, especially since the internment of the Ali brothers, she nevertheless wanted “our great sister to share our modest pocket money” and hence “would be greatly obliged if you would kindly accept Rs.10 per month from us”.16 The unique character of the Gandhian mass movement made it possible, even mandatory for women to participate in large numbers. Much has been written about this17 but what is significant is the way in which the Mahatma picked up traditional women's activities like the charkha, and made it mandatory for everyone in the Congress to spin khadi. In doing so he gave a new dignity and significance to this occupation. There were other such “womanly activities” which were upheld and practiced by Gandhiji even in his personal life. He had himself observed that women were particularly suited to take part in his movement since satyagraha called for patience, strength and the ability to endure hardship which women were constantly practicing in their daily lives: …woman is the incarnation of ahimsa. Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. Who but woman, the mother of man, shows this capacity in the largest measure?….And she will occupy her proud position by the side of man as his mother, maker and silent leader. It is given to her to teach the art of peace to the warring world thirsting for that nectar. She can become the leader in satyagraha which does not require the learning that books give but does require the stout heart that comes from suffering and faith.18 This was first seen in the 1920s, during the Non-Co-operation Movement. By December 1921, most of the prominent Congress leaders had been arrested. The annual Congress session was to be held in Ahmedabad. Gandhi appealed to the women to attend the session in large numbers. There were 141 women delegates at this session and 14 women on the Subjects Committee. After the regular session, a Ladies' Conference was held at the same venue. 6,000 women attended this session, which was presided over by Bi Amman, who was over 70 years old by this time. Travelling to Ahmedabad was in itself an experience for these women, which has been vividly described by Krishna Hutheesingh, the younger sister of Jawaharlal Nehru.19 At Ahmedabad, they met women from other parts of the country in large numbers. After the regular Congress session, a Ladies' Conference was held at the same venue. Some 6,000 women attended this meeting, which was presided over by Bi Amman. She spoke about the divide-and-rule policy of the British Government and declared that the ills of this country could only be cured by its own people, not by the British. She asked her sisters to emulate the examples of Sita and Hazrat Zainab and enroll themselves as volunteers in the Congress movement.20 After the session, when they returned to their homes, these women felt invigorated.

Gone was the despair and loneliness that had surrounded them ever since the arrest of their menfolk. They threw themselves into political activity, organizing meetings, often in defiance of prohibitory orders. Gandhiji in any case had asked them to be ready to go to jail When the wife and sister of C.R.Das were arrested in Calcutta, Gandhi had written in Young India on 15 December 1921: And now that the Government of Bengal have dragged the woman into the line of fire, I hope that the women all over India will take up the challenge and organize themselves. In any case, they were bound, when a sufficient number of men had been removed, for the honour of their sex to step into their places. But now let it be side by side with men in sharing the hardships of jail life.21 He also had a suggestion for the women that they should “quietly but without loss of time …collect names of those who are ready to enter the line of fire. Let them send their offer to the women of Bengal and let the latter feel that their sisters elsewhere are ready to follow their noble example.”22 While few women were arrested in the Non-Cooperation Movement, in the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930-33, it is estimated that some 17,000 women went to jail. The metaphor of salt caught the imagination of the women. On 6 April 1930 when Gandhiji and his group of Satyagrahis arrived in Dandi to break the salt law, hundreds and thousands were filling the water's edge. And still they kept coming, thousands of women amongst them, striding like proud warriors, gracefully balancing their pitchers of maroon-red earth and shimmering brass that scattered a thousand hues as the sunrays struck them. Even as I lit my little fire to boil the salt water, I saw thousands of fires aflame dancing in the wind. The copper pans sizzled in laughter while their bosoms traced the white grains of salt as the heat lapped up the last drop of water.23 In the subsequent movements too, women played an important role. What is more, as Sucheta Kripalani, the Uttar Pradesh Congress leader, has pointed out in her writings, Gandhi would sometimes choose to send women out, often alone, to deal with extremely violent situations. She was herself sent to Noakhali in 1946 to restore the confidence of a shattered people in the wake of some of the worst communal incidents in that period. Gandhiji's own niece, Abha was also similarly sent to work alone in a difficult village. Sucheta writes that she pleaded with Gandhiji that she was too young to go to work in such a village where there was intense bitterness between the Hindus and the Muslims. But he was firm in his decision and said: “Abha shall go. Nobody dare touch a hair on her head and she is bound to succeed in her mission.” He proved to be correct.24 The whole experience of jail-going was an important one in the Gandhian movement. Prior to the advent of Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian Nationalist Movement, there was a general dread of going to jail and many a political agitation could be weakened

simply by the prospect of arrest. But, ever since the Champaran agitation, when Gandhi had willingly chosen the option of being arrested to suspending his enquiries, people lost the fear of jail.25 Thereafter, going to jail and spending long years in prison, denying oneself the opportunity to get an early release by paying a fine or giving an apology, became habitual for Congressmen. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to his daughter in 1943 when both were in jail at different places: I have always believed that this jail-going, though troublesome enough and sometimes a difficult burden to carry, is good for one's education and mental development, provided one can lead the proper life…We begin to see life in a new perspective and new values take the place of old ones. For women, jail-going had many more dimensions. For one, it was a rather difficult step to take, but nevertheless one that many women took, almost unthinkingly. In fact, when they went picketing or for a public meeting, they would suddenly get arrested, and overnight the household would be thrown into disarray. There would be great anxiety about who would cook for the family, who would look after the children. Very young children, below the age of three, were allowed to accompany their mothers and grew up in the jail. Their presence was welcomed by the other inmates, who were only too eager to help in looking after the young one. “For three months we have had the most adorable baby aged 4-7 months. It was fascinating to watch her grow under our very eyes, making new moves, learning some new trick each day” wrote Indira Gandhi to her father from the Naini Central Jail on 23 March 1943. There was the case of a woman who had been arrested while attending a political meeting. Her husband, who was a clerk, was furious when he was told that his wife had gone to jail. He sent word that she need not return home when she was released. This greatly upset the woman and she wept continuously until she was reassured by others that they would speak to her husband and convince him that he should actually be proud of what she had done. When the well-known writer, Munshi Premchand's wife Shivrani Devi was arrested in Allahabad in November 1930 for picketing, he wrote thus to his nephew: I saw her yesterday in prison and found her cheerful as ever. She has left us all behind and I now appear smaller in my own eyes. She has gone up a hundred-fold in my esteem But until she comes and relieves me, I shall have to bear the burden of running the household.26 What was life like inside the prison walls? For many upper class women the dirt and the squalor were repulsive. Krishna Hutheesingh wrote: “Our cells had all sorts of insects crawling around and for several nights we could not sleep for fear that these beastly thing might get onto our beds.” Later, when Congress governments were formed, prison reform was an important item on the agenda.

There was also the experience of fraternizing with other women convicts who had been arrested on criminal charges. Unlike the men's prisons, where there were arrangements for keeping political prisoners separate from the criminals, the “female wards”, as they were called, were common. It was an interesting sociological experience: Aruna Asaf Ali called it a “humanizing and educative experience.” Often they found that the women who had been convicted for crimes like the murder of their husbands, “were actually far better specimens of humanity than many of the people we come across in our daily life.” Unable to bear the continuous torture and cruelty of their husbands they had in an impulsive act, committed murder. Their faces continued to haunt the others even when they came out of jail. Often, the other prisoners were envious of the political prisoners. To them it appeared that the latter had the freedom to come and go out of jail as they liked they had a choice which was denied to the former. For the women political prisoners, jail life could be a very fruitful period. Released from the daily grind of household chores, they now had the time to read, educate themselves politically and even undertake or resume their studies. Purnima Banerji, an Allahabad-based Congress Socialist leader, completed her BA while in jail. Those who could not read and write could learn to do so, and many used this opportunity to learn English. Political issues were discussed and banned books which were smuggled in were read and circulated widely. Aruna Asaf Ali wrote that “In prison we led a selfdisciplined life plying the charkha, singing patriotic songs in defiance of jail rules, conducting literacy classes for the non-literate inmates of the jail” etc. In fact a greater sense of camaraderie seems to have been built up among the women in jail than among their male counterparts. When they found that the jail food was unpalatable, they asked for rations and took turns to cook their own food. It is interesting that despite all the trials and tribulations, the disruptions in family life and the acute anguish on seeing signs of neglect on their children when they came out, these women did not hesitate to go back to jail when the occasion demanded it. After the Civil Disobedience Movement, the next one was Individual Satyagraha in 1940, where people could volunteer as satyagrahis and offer themselves for arrest. The very large number of women who came forward in this movement speaks for itself. In 1942, when the Quit India Movement was launched, a different logic was at work. Since the Government was determined to pre-emptively arrest as many as possible the effort was to evade arrest by going underground. Hence women like Sucheta Kripalani, who had been one of the first women in UP to offer Individual Satyagraha, successfully evaded arrest from August 1942 until mid-1944, keeping the underground movement going. So did Aruna Asaf Ali, Usha Mehta and others. 1942 also brought many other women, like Rameshwari Nehru, who until then had been on the fringes of the national movement, into the fray, rendering themselves liable for arrest. And the prison terms in 1942 were far more rigorous and punishing than in the Civil Disobedience Movement. No interviews were permitted. Correspondence was limited to receiving and writing one letter per month and even that would have to be limited to five hundred words and confined to domestic matters. Vijayalakshmi Pandit writes

in her autobiography that when she was arrested in 1942, she immediately realized that this prison term would be different from others: The fact that no food, cooked or otherwise, had been supplied to me for nearly twenty-four hours was one indication. My morale was low, but over the wall from the men's prison came shouts of “Inquilab Zindabad” “Long Live Revolution”. It was like a shot in the arm, and the slogan revived me more than food could have done. It seemed that a great many political prisoners were being brought in at short intervals, for again and again the exuberant shouts came to me. This was good news.27 But what really interests us here are the ways in which women's lives were transformed in the course of their participation in the movement for independence. Stepping out of their homes into the public sphere. Women came out of their homes to hear important leaders, to attend ladies' meetings and to address public meetings when their husbands and sons were arrested. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, separate ladies' meetings would be arranged in the afternoons, because that was the time the women could get away from their household chores and have some time to themselves. But as their participation became more regular and especially in the course of the Civil Disobedience Movement of the 1930-33 period, when they began to come out on the streets and sell salt as well as picket in front of liquor shops and others selling foreign cloth, they began attending general meetings which were usually held in the evenings. Women and education When we discuss women and the Indian national movement, the issue of education for women immediately appears. This is because, for women, education is a very important means of empowerment and even the most illiterate women realized this. As Margaret Cousins put it in her Indian Womanhood Today, published in 1941: “Education is a liberating influence of the greatest importance. ..Ignorance is weakness, knowledge is power.” Indian women were fortunate in that there were opportunities for educating themselves even while in jail. Many of the women who played an active role in the national movement, when interviewed later, spoke of their passion for being educated. It was almost as if, as their involvement with the movement grew, their thirst for learning also increased. Sometimes that eagerness to further their educational careers came in conflict with their commitment to nationalism and they had to make a choice. Mahadevi Varma, the well-known Hindi poetess of the Chayavad genre, made a choice in favour of education she felt that she could make a greater contribution to society as the Principal of the Prayag Mahila Vidyapith rather than by picketing or going to jail. Yet, she was deeply influenced by Gandhian ideals and was a habitual wearer of khadi. During the Quit India Movement, she allowed many underground leaflets to be printed in her campus and her students went and circulated them.

For women, nationalism and education reinforced each other. Often women were drawn into the nationalist movement because of influences at school or college, but for those who had had no education, nationalism itself became the means of educating oneself. Nationalism provided an opportunity to make one's own choices in life. This is beautifully illustrated in Premchand's story Patni se Pati (Wife into Husband), written in 1930. Godavari, the wife of a government official, was moved by the spirit of nationalism. She would stand in her balcony and look at the processions going past her house. In the processions were women dressed in khaddar, walking with their heads held high. She felt ashamed and deprived. Her husband, a loyalist, would not allow any swadeshi goods to enter his house, nor would he allow her to attend any Congress meetings. One day, she could contain herself no longer. She went for a meeting and made a large donation to the Congress. News of this reached the husband's office and the White Sahib scolded and abused him. Unable to take these insults, the husband struck the Sahib on his face and returned to his home. He was worried because he knew that he would lose his job. But Godavari was proud of him and told him not to worry. She was confident that she could make both ends meet. The story ended with the lines: “From today, I am your husband.” This story pointed to the reversal of gender roles that was taking place in the context of the nationalist movement. While it has been often argued that women came into the movement because of the participation of the husbands and sons, what is often overlooked is that there were several women who came in and participated because of their own convictions, often defying family pressures and disapproval in the process. Women and Marriage: Women now had the choice of remaining single and yet being respected for their political commitments and activities. As Madhu Kishwar has observed: “Gandhi encouraged those who wanted to live a socially useful life to stay unmarried…One strain in his thinking emphasizes that setting up one's own home and family narrows down one's interests and channelises one's attention towards a few select individuals rather than letting it flow freely to all humanity.” Among the prominent single women of this period were Sushila Nayar, Maniben Patel, Mridula Sarabhai, and Annie Mascarene. Other women could make their own choice of life partners Sucheta and J.B. Kripalani came from Bengal and Sindh respectively two extremities of the subcontinent. They met in the course of relief work in Bihar after the devastating earthquake of 1934. Their political trajectories were quite distinct and in the post-independence period, they were even in opposing political parties! Kamladevi Chattopadhyay was a child widow. Her mother, who had set up the first Mahila Sabha in Mangalore, encouraged her to resume her studies in Madras and there she met Harindranath Chattopadhyay, brother of Sarojini Naidu, and married him. Even traditional marriages could take very different forms Prabhavati and Jayaprakash Narayan led their own separate lives the former spent a great deal of her time at the Gandhian ashram while Jayaprakash pursued his Congress Socialist activities. Gandhi also advised some of his closest associates not to have children thereby releasing women from many household responsibilities.

By the 1940s women's participation in all spheres of political activity was substantial. Besides the large numbers of women in the Congress there were women Communists, women revolutionaries, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment in Subhas Bose's Indian National Army and women Muslim Leaguers. The All India Women's Conference, set up in 1927, played a significant role in bringing together women from diverse backgrounds on a common platform of educational and social progress. In the wake of the Japanese threat to India during the Second World War, the Bengal women, largely communist, came together to form the Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti(Women's Self-Defence Committees).29 After the death of Kasturba Gandhi in jail in 1944, a Kasturba Memorial Trust was formed, which began organizing training classes for rural women.30 The greater part of women's work was now among the people. They seemed to be comparatively less interested in the constitutional deliberations which were going on at New Delhi, to work out the modalities of partition and the transfer of power. In conclusion, it would be relevant to quote from Kamladevi Chattopadhyay : Women of those times who adhered to the concept of the totality of society showed tremendous self-confidence and inner strength even though they were suffering from many more disabilities and lacked many of the opportunities available to women today. They never sought reservations for women in any sphere. Nor nominations on any bodies as women, but because they qualified as citizens.31 Endnotes 1 The Freedom Movement and Feminist Consciousness in Bengal 1905-1929' in Bharati Ray (ed.) From the Seams of History: Essays on Indian Women, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, Paperback edition, 1997, p.177. 2 'The Role of Women in the Indian Struggle for Freedom' in B.R.Nanda (ed.) Indian Women: From Purdah to Modernity, New Delhi, 1976, pp.39-40. 3 A Great Way to Fly: Nationalism, the State and the Varieties of Third World Feminism' in M.Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (ed.) Feminist Geneologies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, Routledge, London and New York, 1997, p.31. 4 Kumari Jayawardene, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World, Delhi, 1999, p.99. 5 Gisela Kaplan, 'Feminism and Nationalism: The European Case' in Lois West (ed.) Feminist Nationalism, New York, 1997, p. 6 Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World, p.99, 7 The Presidents were Annie Besant, Sarojini Naidu and Nellie Sengupta respectively. 8 A.M.Zaidi, The Encyclopaedia of the Indian National Congress, Vol.4, p.23. 9 Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-1908, People's Publishing House, New Delhi, 1977, pp.287-8. 10 For more details see Radha Kumar, The History of Doing, Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1998 edition, p.39. 11 A Women's Indian Association was also formed for this purpose in 1917. For more details, see Geraldine Forbes, Women in Modern India, Cambridge University Press, South Asian Paperback Edition, 1999, pp.72-75. 12 Shan Muhammad, Freedom Movement in India (The Role of the Ali Brothers), New Delhi, 1979, pp.3-4. 13 Gail Minault, 'Purdah Politics: The Role of Muslim Women in Indian Nationalism: 19111924' in Gail Minault and Hanna Papanek (ed.) Separate Worlds: Studies of Purdah in

South Asia, Delhi, 1982, pp.249-250. Letter from Abadi Bano Begum to Uma Nehru, 13 December 1917, Stree Darpan, 1 January 1918, pp.5-8. See also Visalakshi Menon, Indian Women and Nationalism: The UP Story, New Delhi, 2003, for more details on Bi Amman and other women nationalists from UP. 15 This letter was drafted by O.B.Ghate, the legal adviser of the Ali brothers, but the ideas were clearly her own. From Mushirul Hasan (ed.) Mohamed Ali in Indian Politics: Select Writings, Vol.2, New Delhi, 1983, p.304. 16 Ibid, p.306. 17 See, for instance, Madhu Kishwar, 'Gandhi on Women', Economic and Political Weekly, 12 October 1985 18 M.K.Gandhi, Women and Social Injustice, Navjivan, Ahmedabad, 1954, pp.26-27 19 Krishna Hutheesingh, With No Regrets: An Autobiography, New York, 1945, p.35. 20 Abida Samiuddin, Bharat ke Swatantrata Sangram mein Muslim Mahilaon ka Yogdan, New Delhi, 1997, pp.101-104 21 Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi,( CWMG), Vol.22, p.22. 22 Ibid. 23 Kamladevi Chattopadhyay, Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces, p.153. 24 Sucheta Kripalani, 'Mahatma Gandhi: Leader and Teacher of Womenâ&#x20AC;? in Virender Grover and Ranjana Arora (ed.) Great Women of Modern India, Vol.6, Sucheta Kripalani, p.49. 25 For more details on this as on other Congress movements, see Bipan Chandra et.al., India's Struggle for Independence, New Delhi, 1987. 26 Amrit Rai, Premchand: A Life, Transalated from the Hindi by Harish Trivedi, New Delhi, 1982, p.261. 27 Vijayalakshmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness, New York, 1979, p.164. 28 This story was first published in Madhuri, a popular women's magazine in Hindi, in April 1930. 29 For more details on the Mahila Atmaraksha Samitis, refer Radha Kumar, History of Doing, p.93. 30 Women leaders like Sucheta Kripalani and Uma Nehru organized the activities of the Trust. For more details, see Visalakshi Menon, Indian Women and Nationalism: The UP Story, pp.55-56. 31 Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces, pp.123-4. 14

Gender and Women in Sri Lanka Sepali Kottegoda

his paper explores the changing relations of gender and in particular the construction of 'woman' in the process of economic development and social change in Sri Lanka.

The paper argues that an examination of the impact of State sponsored economic development policies, over the past several decades, have in fact changed the lines of demarcation of the primary roles of women and men, for example, as main income earner/decision maker, or, in terms of physical mobility and ensuing changes in women's ability to travel out of their homes and even the country for employment. These developments do in fact indicate that significant changes are taking place in the area of gendered social identities which warrant recognition and examination. I use the concept of 'gender' to clarify the ways in which patriarchal socialisation processes create socially 'acceptable' norms of behaviour and rights for women and for men. These socialisation processes in effect give more power to men over women and demarcate lines of conduct where women and men have differential and often unequal access to and control over resources, whether it is in terms of food, healthcare, skills training, credit, property, income or, in the arena of decisionmaking. Background: Socio-economic indicators In mid-2004, the population of Sri Lanka was estimated to be 19.4 million. The population is multi-ethnic and multi religious; 74% are Sinhalese, 18 % Tamil and 9% Moors/Malays. Of this, 50.59% were women. Life Expectancy for women was 75 years compared to 72 years for men.1 Between the period 1995 and 2004, the population above the age of 40 years increased from an estimated 5.5% 6.6%.2 In 2001, it was estimated that out of a total female population of 8.5 million, 47% were married (registered and customary) compared to 44.9% of marriages among a total male population of 8.4 million. In the same year, the number of widows far outweighed the number of widowers; 471,429 (5.5% of total female population) compared to 78,165 (0.9% of total male population).3 Health In 2003, the Crude Birth Rate (per thousand) was 16 the lowest in South Asia, the Crude Death Rate (per thousand) was 7, the second lowest in South Asia.4 The Total

Fertility Rate at 2.0 in 2003 and the Maternal Mortality Rate was 92 in 2000 remained the lowest among the indicators from other SAARC countries. The extensive health care service delivery and infrastructure provided free by the State for over 50 years, and the absence of extreme negative social practices that target women are likely to be key factors which have contributed to these health indicators in Sri Lanka. Education The major provider of education is the Government of Sri Lanka. Education is free of charge in government schools from primary to Grade 12. Government University Education for those who are selected to enter university is also provided free of charge. In 2002, the proportion of female pupils starting Grade 1 who reach Grade 5 was 96.5 while that of male pupils was 94.7. This same pattern is reflected in the female/male literacy rates of those between the ages 15-24 during this same period; the female rate was 96.0 while that of males was 95.1.5 Labour Force Participation The population aged over 10 years in 2005 was estimated to be 16.87 million of which 8.1 million were in the labour force. Excluding data from the Northern and Eastern provinces, data from the first quarter of 2006 indicates that the All Island female labour force participation rate was 35.5%, up from 31.5% in 2004. The corresponding data for men was 69.3 in 2006 compared to 66.7 in 2004. In 2006, of an estimated employed population of 7.0 million, 2.4 million were women. 39.9% of women were in the Agricultural sector, 26.1% in the Industrial sector and 34.0% in the Service sector.6 Over the past several years, there has been a shift in the unemployment rate of women from 17.7% in 1996 to 10.1% in 2006, a significant shift compared to that of men from 8.2 to 5.5 in the corresponding period.7 While women's unemployment rate remains twice that of men's, the two main national socio-economic data banks, the Central Bank and, the Department of Census and Statistics note that there has also been a shift of women from the category of 'Unpaid Family Worker' (where women have traditionally tended to be concentrated) to that of 'Employee'.8 This indicates that changes have taken place in spheres such as avenues for women's employment, resources available within the agricultural sector and, in the type, nature and amount of resources reaching households. It is also significant that most of these women find employment as semi-skilled or unskilled workers who are in the lower echelons of the labour market. As can be seen from the above, sex disaggregated national level data show little discrimination against women in terms of access to education or to mainstream health services. Gender based disparities emerge when the focus shifts to the distribution of women and men in the labour force and in the discriminatory

remuneration practices for women and men. The average salary of the male and female employees in the private sector (formal) shows that women who have passed the G.C.E. A/L examination and higher exams on average receive only 67% of the salary received by men of similar qualifications.9 The gender based wage discrepancy in the informal sector is also evident for example, in paddy transplanting where men are paid a daily wage of Rs. 138.96 compared to Rs. 105.97 for women. Similarly in rubber tapping men are paid a daily wage of Rs. 104.28 while women are paid Rs. 95.08.10

Women in the Mainstream Institutional Mechanisms Over the last century, several key institutional and legal mechanisms were put in place by the colonial administrators prior to independence and by the national governments after independence, which paved the way for creating a foundation for equality between women and men. The inclusion of women in the mainstream of the political arena was initiated in 1931 with the granting of universal adult franchise. Sri Lanka was one of the first British colonies to enable both women and men to exercise their right to vote at all political elections. However, today, women's representation in mainstream politics, whether at local government, provincial government or national government levels remain less than 5%. The country has seen several constitutions being put into place since independence, in 1948, 1972 and 1978; significantly, the 1978 constitution for the first time included gender equality as a fundamental right and made such rights justiciable.11 In 1978, the national machinery for women's affairs, the Women's Bureau, was established. In the following years, Sri Lanka ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1981, and set up the Ministry of Women's Affairs. In 1993 the Women's Charter was approved by Parliament and Sri Lanka endorsed the UN Declaration on Elimination of Violence Against Women in the same year (1993). A National Committee on Women was established in 1993 and a National Plan of Action on Women was formulated in 1996 to advice overall government policies on women. Sri Lanka had the world's first woman Prime Minister in 1960 and a woman President was elected in 1994 and remains in this position today. Clearly by the end of the 20th century, gender inequality had been recognized by the State in Sri Lanka as an important factor to be addressed. Economic Policy: Employment for Women Within the last three decades, there has been, in Sri Lanka, a diversification in employment opportunities following economic expansion policies adopted in the late 1970s. The impact of clearly a gendered labour absorption strategy has been highest for women whose participation in the labour force increased significantly within a period of two decades. Central Bank data and Department of Census and Statistics data notes that women's labour force participation increased, from 19.4% to 35.5%

over a 25 year period between 1981 and 2006. There has also been a shift of women from the demographic category of 'Unpaid Family Worker' (where women have traditionally tended to be concentrated) to that of 'Employee'. This shift indicates both women's awareness of the need for income as well as of the opportunities available to them. Primary among the employment opportunites that have been targeted for a female labour force has been the setting up of garment manufacturing enterprises in Free Trade Zones and elsewhere mainly for the export market, the expansion in the construction industry and, the expansion of expatriate employment opportunities primarily to West Asian countries. There are an estimated 1 million Sri Lankan migrant workers primarily in West Asian countries, the majority of whom are women. The majority of women migrants are from the age categories 20 to 39 years which is also the age groups showing the highest labour force participation of women in the country.12 When one relates such data with the educational status of women in the labour force, it becomes clear that there much of these employment opportunities are available to women with lower levels of education and correspondingly lower wages. Poverty Alleviation Programmes There is implicit recognition by policy makers that successful implementation of Poverty Alleviation programmes rests on the regular participation of women from the beneficiary households to ensure that state support is received by those designated to be 'poor'. Women are visibly providing crucial financial support to families. What remains unquestioned is the expectation that the within their gendered roles, women would take over the responsibility for pulling their families out of poverty while men are expected to be engaged in economic activities outside the home. In this scenario men's economic contributions remain outside the ambit of household welfare and advancement. Re-Construction of Gender Identities The discussion above briefly summarises the shift in the policy and institutional approach to the roles that women and men play in the political and economic arenas in the country. The institutional recognition of gender disparities and discrimination has resulted in specialized institutions being set up and policies being formulated. At the ground level, there is clearly a visible involvement of women in a range of economic activities, many of which are key to the sustenance of state institutions. But how have these structural changes been articulated in the realm of societal attitudes and images of the roles and responsibilities of women and men? In the arena of gender relations, the changes in the labour market, more specifically the very marked increase of women's participation in the labour force has been one of the most powerful factors to re-examine the construction of gender identities in both gender and ethnic terms in society. Women have formed the bulk of the employed in

the most successful income earning enterprises for the country. Women Migrant Workers Over 60% of an estimated one million Sri Lankans employed in West Asian countries are women the bulk of whom are employed as housemaids.13 Employment migration overseas has had a significant impact on the gender roles expected of women in Sri Lanka as a whole. It is estimated that women from conflict affected areas of the north and east of the country now constitute an estimated 10% of total female migrants to West Asian countries.14 The Colombo International Airport has become a transit point for thousands of women from all three ethnic groups departing to or arriving from employment overseas. Many of these women are married and have families for whose welfare the employment migration overseas is undertaken.15 While there are indeed reports of ill treatment or even death of Sri Lankan housemaids employed in these countries, there still appears to be little sign of a decrease in the numbers of women migrating for employment.16 Where overseas travel had been largely confined to the middle or upper middle class strata in the 1960s and 70s, the last two decades in Sri Lanka has seen women from low income households gaining in confidence through their experience of employment overseas. Young Women Workers There are an estimated 300,000 women, mostly in their 20s and 30s, employed in the garment industry spread across urban and semi-urban areas of the country. Almost 50% of these women are employed in factories situated within the 4 Free Trade Zones in the country while others are employed in factories of different facilities and employment conditions. Since the opening of the first Free Trade Zone factories in the early 1980s, young, primarily Sinhalese and to a lesser degree Tamil women have played the role of important, sometimes the sole, income providers to their family based households. Most live away from their own natal villages and towns and hence, were quickly noted for their eager embracement of independence as denoted by their control over their incomes, 'overt consumerism' and reported sexual 'indiscretions'. There has emerged, in popular newspapers and media programmes, a particular image of the Free Trade Zone woman worker or the 'garment factory girls' as an adventurous, independent woman with access to her own income and the liberty to disregard social norms of behaviour for unmarried young women. Women in Situations of Armed Conflict The armed conflict which dominated the economic, social and political spheres of the country almost two decades is at present in a state of 'peace negotiations' between the LTTE and the government of Sri Lanka. One of the more pressing repercussions of the armed struggle has been the destruction of homes and the death or displacement of thousands of civilians in the conflict affected areas. The department of Census and Statistics reported that approximately 21% of households are now headed by women, mostly from the Sinhala community living in the south of the country. Although no comprehensive census of population has been successfully carried out covering the whole country, it is now acknowledged that once a information regarding the situation

of households in the North and East of the country are included, the actual numbers of female headed households is most likely to be higher. In 2003, the Sri Lanka: Assessment of Needs in the Conflict Affected Areas Report of the UNDP noted that approximately 41,000 widows had been identified in the eastern districts of Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Vavuniya, Ampara and Mullaitivu.17 Most of these women are from the Tamils and Muslims communities living in these areas. The notion of the male headed family- based household is de facto challenged for the first time in recent history. The military confrontations between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelaam (LTTE) was suspended for approximately a period of 2-3 years from 2002-2004 during which time there was increased travel and a flow of some investment capital into these areas. During this period there was also a visible increase in migration overseas of women from the conflict affected areas. In the immediate aftermath of the Tsunami of December 2004, there was also an increase in interest to migrate overseas for employment among women from these areas. However, since mid 2006, there has been a serious resumption of armed conflict between the two parties and travel between the North and the East and the rest of the country has been more difficult. These demographic changes have impacted on the social identities, political rights and economic expectations of thousands of women living in conflict affected areas in the country thus pushing many of them to put on the mantle of head and chief provider for her household. These changes have been accompanied by an overwhelming portrayal of women as victims often pictured as lacking agency to make decisions about their lives or livelihoods. Reports from the conflict affected areas also indicate that as relocation takes place, there is a resurgence within these communities in male ideological control over women.18 Many of these households remain dependent on programmes of support by the Sri Lankan government and international agencies such as the UNHCR/UNICEF, where there is less focus on including women from these areas in the planning of relief and rehabilitation programmes and more on deciding for them their needs and what services are required.

Women as Voters Perhaps one indication of societal recognition of the changing roles of women is the focus that political parties have been giving to women, in recent times at General Elections in a country which follows the democratic principles of governance. In 1994, women's groups came together to draw up a women's manifesto which listed demands for action on critical areas of concern to women. This was the first time that such an intervention was made and to which a number of political parties responded by including some of these concerns in their respective main manifestos. The women's groups repeated its call and at the General Elections of 2001, the United National Party that came into power, drew up its own Women's Manifesto promising to ensure

institutional and policy interventions to fulfill its mandate. An outcome of this lobbying was the drafting of the Women's Rights Bill in 2003. However, even today, this Bill remains to be passed by Parliament. In the General Elections of 2004, a new political party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya, emerged claiming to espouse the rights of the Sinhala Buddhists in the country. They strongly and publicly criticized the current economic roles and expectations of women and argued instead that women should be primarily housewives and mothers; that it is men who should be earning the household income. In a pre-election television debate on the role of women in March 2004, the party representatives adamantly claimed that sexual harassment of women would not occur if they stayed at home instead of going out for employment; she also claimed that that is the Sinhala Buddhist notion of womanhood and the nation should rally against the exploitation of women by the current economic policies. This party won 9 (out of over 200 seats) in parliament which was considered significant for a party which had contested for the first time Similar arguments are reflected in the election manifesto of November 2005 of the Peoples Alliance candidate and current President of the country. The manifesto places emphasis on the maternal roles and functions of women and the importance of nutrition for women and children.19 In this discourse, there is little recognition of the rights of women to employment or the obligations of the state to protect these rights. The lack of public acknowledgement and policy emphasis on the role of men in the family and the household as carers, nurturers and parents thus remain in these debates around gender and employment overseas. While at some level, these can be dismissed as being mere manipulative attempts by those contesting parties, I would argue that these in fact reflect the undeniable impact of changing gender roles in the country and the ensuing debates and challenges which invariably accompany such changes. Gender based Violence Against Women Gender based social relationships often means unequal access to resources which can also result in those with less 'power' being subjected to violence and intimidation, which could take the form of acts of verbal, physical and sexual violations, whether in the privacy of their own homes or in the public sphere. In the context of economic and social changes within a society, the different emerging roles for women and men, first visible in the public sphere as in the case of women's labour force participation, for example, are often seen as challenges to the expected gender based distribution of labour and responsibilities. Reports on violence against women are found regularly in most mainstream newspapers of all three languages (Sinhala, Tamil and English). The reporting of such incidents has increased remarkably over the last decade or so, thus indicating that there is greater awareness among the media that there is a readership sensitised to these issues. There are a number of non-governmental organisations and community

based groups which include programmes on awareness raising, training, research and mobilising the public, most often women, or advice policy makers on taking measures against gender based violence. At the institutional level, Sexual Harassment in the public sphere (e.g. workplaces and public transport) was criminalised in 1995 with legislative amendments to the Penal Code. The National Committee on Women runs a special Gender Complaints unit designed to encourage victims of gender based violence to seek redress by reporting such incidents. Through a government directive, police women and children's desks were set up over a decade ago to ensure that such victims could report cases of violence. Despite the fact that few cases of such offences have reached the courts, research strongly indicates that these the public sphere is a principal site of sexual harassment.20 After almost 7 years of lobbying, the government of Sri Lanka passed legislation in 2005, on the Prevention of Domestic Violence. The State does not recognise marital rape except in the exceptional circumstances where the husband and wife are legally separated at the time the act of rape was carried out. These interventions, whether at the government or the non-government levels, indicate that gender based violence is also a reaction to the challenge of reconstruction of gendered identities. Changes to expected and 'accepted' gender relations cannot be expected to occur without some elements of resentment or even at times rejection as can be seen in the increased numbers of reports on gender based violence in all language media in the country. Concluding Remarks The construction and re-construction of gender identities has indeed resulted in the emergence of the image of women as (or potential) income earners not only for their families but also for the state. Consequently, the expectations of men's economic contributions seem to have lessened somewhat. However, socially, there remains a strong resistance to public acknowledgement of women's economic capabilities and initiatives and to the fact that such contributions are of equal or at times more important to household survival or the national coffers. In the early 20th century, the prospect of giving women the right to vote elicited deep concern and critical comment among the ruling males as noted by Alwis and Jayawardena (2001) referring to Sir P. Ramanathan's reactions to women's growing list of demands for the franchise in the 1920s: The view….exemplified by P. Ramanathan's orthodox beliefs was that “we must leave our women alone” since “all their life.. must be devoted to the home”.21 This negative reaction included other notable male politicians in Sri Lanka at the time who empathized with P. Ramanathan's observation that granting female suffrage was like “casting pearls before swine”.22 These strong sentiments stemmed from the firm conviction that it should be men who should be in decision-making positions in the

field of politics; it also exemplified the view that giving women the right to vote it would be a waste since women would not be capable of using it judiciously. Notwithstanding these strong sentiments, Sri Lanka was granted universal adult franchise in 1931. For our purposes, it is significant that 70 years later, through the NGO Women's Manifesto (1994, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005) and strong lobbying of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Electoral Reform (2003), women are once again pressing for special Parliamentary and legal measures to ensure increased women's representation in the political arena and the reactions from some politicians echo the sentiments expressed in the early 20th century.23 In 2002 the report of an international women's mission to assess the needs and concerns of women living in the conflict areas resulted in the formation of a Sub Committee on Gender as part of the several committees of the peace process.24 The subcommittee comprised women appointed both by the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE. However, there was/is been little effort to change the gender composition of the main peace negotiators nor to include the expertise of the Gender Subcommittee in formulating the peace process. The Parliamentary Select Committee on Electoral Reform acknowledged the call for special measures (such as quotas) to ensure better representation of women in politics; however, these sentiments are yet to be transformed into concrete policy measures. Sri Lanka it seems is widening the framework for including gender considerations through a number of institutional measures. The country still remains as yet uncomfortable with the emergence of women playing roles different and at times in contrast to their expected gendered involvement in society. As such these changes in gender roles and the process of re-constructing gender identities constitute a challenge both to women's organizations and the women's movement as well as to the state and civil society across the ethnic communities. Endnotes 1 Central Bank of Sri Lanka. (2005). Economic and Social Statistics of Sri Lanka. 2005. Colombo. p1. It should be noted that this does not include data from Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi in the North East of the country. 2 Ibid 3 Department of Census and Statistics (2005). Statistical Abstract 2005. Presidential Secretariat. Colombo. pp 87-88. 4 Ibid. 5 Department of Census and Statistics. (2006). Millenium Development Goals in Sri Lanka: A Statistical Review 2006. Colombo. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Central Bank (2003). Annual Report 2002, Colombo. p.161; Central Bank (1999). Report on Consumer Finance and Socio Economic Survey Sri Lanka 1996/97 (Part 1). p.51; Department of Census and Statistics (2003). 'Bulletin of Labour Force Statistics of Sri Lanka Issue No.34' (this computation excludes data from the Northern and Eastern Provinces). 9 Department of Census and Statistics. (2004). Quarterly Labour Force Survey. Colombo. 10 Central Bank (2005). Economic and Social Statistics of Sri Lanka. Colombo.

11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Jayaweera S. (2002). ibid. Department of Census and Statistics. (2006). Bulletin of Labour Force Statistics of Sri Lanka. Issue No.34. Colombo. Kottegoda, S. (2004). Negotiating Household Politics: Women's Strategies in Urban Sri Lanka. The Social Scientists Association. Colombo. Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (2003). Statistical Handbook on Migration 2002. Colombo. Gamburd, M. R. (2002). Transnationalism and Sri Lanka's Migrant Housemaids: The Kitchen Spoon's Handle. Vijith Yapa Publications. Colombo. Kottegoda, S. (2003). 'Bringing Home the Money: Migration and Poverty in Gender Politics in Sri Lanka'Paper presented at the International Conference on Women and Migration in Asia, Developing Countries Research Centre, Delhi, December 2003. (Forthcoming) UNDP. (2003). Sri Lanka: Assessment of Needs in the Conflict Affected Areas. UNDP Office. Colombo. De Mel, N. (2001). Women and the Nation's Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Sri Lanka. Social Scientists Association. Colombo Mahinda Chithanaya. Manifesto of the Peoples' Alliance. November 2005. Wickremesinghe, M. (2001). 'Gender based Violence in Workplaces'. In, Gender based Violence in Sri Lanka. Study funded by UNFPA. Cenwor. Colombo. De Alwis and Jayawardena (2001). Op.cit. p7 Ibid. p11 Women and Media Collective. (2002). Options. Colombo.; Representation made by the Women and Media Collective, The International Centre for Ethnic Studies and the Muslim Women's Research and Action Forum to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Electoral Reform. October 2003. The Women and Media Collective (2003). Report of the International Women's Peace Mission to Sri Lanka. Colombo.

Women's Empowerment and Local Self-Governance Dr. V.Gayathri

mpowering women is a challenge. It requires changes in the existing class and caste based structures and it needs a focused and active public delivery system to ensure that resources and opportunities earmarked for women reach them. This paper looks at whether women panchayat members from three panchayats in one of the developed districts of Karnataka, a southern state in India, are able to perform the roles envisaged for them and in the process become empowered. In the past two decades, a number of studies have been carried out in the area of women's political participation, particularly, their participation in the Panchayati Raj Institutions. These studies have problematised issues ranging from gender specific socialisation patterns resulting in unequal sharing of power between men and women, to the lower levels of participation of women members. The framework of these studies also shows a variety of disciplinary grounds, especially after the implementation of the 73rd Amendment. This ranges from the ideology of affirmative action to psychology-based theories that explain individual behavioural patterns. However, all these studies seem to share a common approach in analysing the differential performance of male and female members. Ignoring the inequalities in the wider socio-political institutions and processes, these studies seldom examine the subjective experiences of individual members' vis-Ă -vis these indicators. Further, individual characteristics are de-contextualised and identified as the primary reason for women's visible non-participation. Practices and methods or organising principles of social and political systems that are responsible for the creation of the asymmetries between men and women are overlooked. Consequently, too much attention is given to the causative chain of entitlements1 leading to performance and very little attention is paid to the socio-political contexts wherein these entitlements are derived. In other words, the lower performance levels of women Gram Panchayat members are explained by focussing on their 'single-life' perspective (motherhood) and their lack of identification models (Inbanathan 1992, Bhargava, 1994, Kaushik, 1992). Some of these analyses also bring out the link between women's 'position' or 'status' in society2 and political participation. Higher levels of education and involvement in economically productive activities are emphasised as predictors of women's ability to participate in decision-making processes, both within the household and in the Panchayat (Vidya 1998). The underlying premise of this approach can be traced back to what can be called 'modernisation' theory wherein development is envisaged

through women's empowerment, which, in turn, is understood as a natural outcome of a set of factors like higher levels of schooling, participation in workforce, ownership of property, etc. Although it is true that these indicators affect women's status, they bear a very weak relationship with the concept of status or position that they are indicative of.

i) How do we understand women's participation? ii) How do we explain the perpetration and reproduction of inequalities in spite of the presence of enabling factors such as education? iii) How do we explain the changes that we see amongst certain women with respect to their performance?

It has been established by many studies that women in India derive their primary identity from their family (Ganesh, 1999; Chowdry, 1994). Studies pertaining to women in the labour market also corroborate the point that when women enter into the labour market, due to poverty conditions, the identities play an important role in perpetuating the discriminations in the market (Bardhan, 1985). It has also been established that despite household expenditure being largely met by women, their income is relegated as supplementary and they are considered as secondary earners. The compromises that women are conditioned to make in terms of time, nature of work and wages basically derive from the institutionalised primacy of familial identity. This implicit identification of women in the familial and domestic sphere has been perpetuated by the state as well. This is evident from the various developmental programmes and policies.

This paper, while drawing on the strengths from the conventional parameters tries to look for organic links between various parameters.

The state has often put the onus of sustaining the family on women, first through welfarist programmes immediately after independence, and later through employment programmes in the 1970s and 80s. Though the state intervention since the 1970's has attempted to concern itself with traditions and practices that adversely affect women, it has attempted to do this by not disturbing the location of women in the domestic sphere. The states' willingness to concern itself with women's entry into the public sphere but reluctance to intervene in reforms pertaining to personal law is an example of this. As a result, therefore, it has had minimal impact on the existing linkages between the family and women. The 1980s and 1990s, however, have seen the visible inclusion of gender issues in the state's planning.3 The state has, however, in all its development intervention retained the basic premise that macro level rules structure the micro level practices. This is in cognisance with the larger economic philosophy the trickle down effect that prevailed in most of the countries. Through PRIs, the state has reserved space for women to enter the public sphere. At lower levels of governance, it is possible to posit that given the state's willingness to alter the existing structural imbalances, the newly created space can be used by women for articulating women's interests (Subha, 1997). However, as many recent studies have pointed out, such responses still remain limited in occurrence, reach as well as scope. Further, conventional enabling factors such as education and economic status, which in the previous decades were seen as empowering factors, have at best a peripheral influence on women's effective participation in the Gram Panchayats. Moving away from the conventional indicators that define and quantify participation, this paper takes up the central issue of factors that result in women's effective participation in the existing system of disadvantages. The important questions that arise in this context are:

Perpetuation and Constancy: Exploring the Explanatory Potential of Socialisation Theory To the recurring question of why women accept and reinforce oppression, answers tend to be unconvincing, the most acknowledged one being that they have been socialised into accepting discrimination through a process of internalisation of norms that discriminate them. To this effect, many studies have demonstrated that the prime agents for socialisation in the family-household-kinship networks and society in general are often senior women (Dube 1988). The family and patrilineal kinship is then identified as the primary sites in which women learn the norms, which later form the basis for their further interactions. It is then advocated that for any social change, effecting women's status and position in society, it is important that they undergo a process of de-learning. The particular appeal of the re-socialisation thesis in the context of Gram Panchayat members stems from three counts. First, it is argued that this proposition provides a way out of the vicious circle of oppression. Second, it provides a non-confrontationist view and implicitly assumes that social change is possible through a re-socialisation of individuals. Third, though most of the development interventions have already adopted the underpinning gender ideology of this framework in intervening to impact the society in favour of women, there is an implicit belief that major structural changes are unnecessary. And there is a level playing field in which policy makers can introduce these interventions that, in turn, will cause changes in the private sphere too. This is in cognisance with the larger economic philosophy wherein the multiplier effect of macro policies is emphasised. Re-socialisation theories raise apprehensions about the 'spin-off' effects of these interventions on the grounds that unless specifically addressed, gender stereotypes and patriarchal norms remain immutable. However, a careful examination of field data leads to the distinct opinion that the socialisation thesis does not have the explanatory potential to the specific problem of the study. The Panchayats in Kodagu seemed to have too many crosscurrents and hierarchical power relations to allow for a level playing field. Alternative gender ideologies continuously combat for space in various discourses that range from hegemonic and authorised to marginalised and disqualified. For instance, the gender ideology that regulates and monitors behaviour amongst 'social equals' differs from the one that directs the interaction between 'social un-equals'. This may be attributed to the multitude of social arrangements that characterise the larger Panchayat community. Though, in principle, all the Panchayat members are equal, in reality they

share different relationships with each other and with the Panchayat. Over the years, the larger Panchayat community has established a shared frame of reference based on certain power-laden arrangements. These power arrangements are in turn sustained through various processes of social exchange and interaction. These structures of power allocate roles and situations to the members. The structures of power also regulate the frame of reference, which in turn structures the relationships within the community. Panchayat: Dependency and Patronage in an Institutionalised Power Structure The state is attempting to change these structures of power through the Panchayati Raj Institutions, which allocate specific roles to specific members with the twin objectives of achieving social and economic development.4 The issues and dilemmas involved will be discussed at length taking a few illustrations from the Panchayats. These illustrations are extracted from the documentations of the Panchayat meetings and other informal interactions that happened within the Panchayat premises during the fieldwork. In all the three studied Panchayats, the Panchayat building is situated centrally or the Panchayat's location has become the geographical as well as social centre of the area under its jurisdiction. In Siddapur, a small town, the office is located on the main market area adjacent to police station and bus stand. In Maldare, a typical village, it is on the main road signifying the entrance into the village, with an anganwadi, bank and shops adjacent to it. In Chennayana Kote, a remote village, all the activities centre on the area where Panchayat office is located. In the later two Panchayats, the Panchayat office is the only government development machinery that is available. Access to the Panchayat is in a way historically negotiated through the existing social hegemony. Other than members, mostly men of importance, who are generally referred to as doddavaru, hereovaru, yajamanru and dore in local language, access the office. These terms denote influential people, elders or leaders, the lord or master and the planter respectively. However, over the years, access is shared by the various newly emerged interest groups, both political and economical. These groups cut across caste, class, religious and linguistic identities. A further negotiation happened with the 73rd Amendment. However, the access that the state has negotiated and institutionalised for the hitherto deprived sections is yet to alter the power equations that determined the access to Panchayats. This is evident from the field observations. Even the day-to-day functioning of the Panchayats subscribes to this negotiating power relationship. Not all Panchayats have secretaries, in which case his or her visiting days are of importance. Similar is the case with the village accountant. The bill collector, who usually performs the watchdog function in case of official matters, also does the same in case of the social relationships that the Panchayat as an institution maintains. Describing the Panchayat as an institution of power with negotiated social and political relationships, which in a way reflects the power relationships of the largest society, however, runs the risk of reductionism. To overcome this, we resort to various observations pertaining to the functioning of the Panchayat. This is done at two levels. One, by analysing access to and types of access to the Panchayats who accesses for what is central to this analysis; and two, decision-

making processes in the Panchayat this considers the Panchayat meeting as the focal point to analyse the decision-making processes. It was observed that other than members, politically and economically dominant persons also access the Panchayats. This can be for favours to be granted for their personal work or for favours to be granted for their loyal ones, the latter one being more common. Most of them talk to prominent members over the phone and fix an appointment with the secretary, so that immediate attention is paid to the problem. The less prominent residents often enter the Panchayat as beneficiaries of a scheme in one way or other. Mostly, they seek out the company of their ward member, who in turn will put forward their case. Even certificates that are given by the Panchayats, in case of death, birth and caste, also go through this proper channel of members. While this broadly describes the access of Panchayat during the working hours, there is access during the evenings and on official holidays. Most of the evenings, Panchayats witness the gathering of men of importance in the village, wherein public and private matters are discussed. The dominant political party in the Panchayat always takes lead in the initiation of such gatherings. The Panchayat is also accessed where members and men of importance gather the 'villagers' either as beneficiaries or to demonstrate the strength of participation of people in that occasion. These ostensibly insignificant observations about access to Panchayat do reveal that as an institution, it is not devoid of the hegemonic societal arrangements as in the case of other institutions. This can be further substantiated by the pattern of interaction in the Panchayat meetings, which is well defined in the 'socialscape' that they share with each other, even outside the Panchayat. A few instances of such revealing interactions are provided below: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Nandanna will tell us how to get the ration cards. If we do not acquire the ration cards, people scold us. People expect us to get them old age benefits, ration cards, etc. But we cannot do it alone. Nor do we know how to do so. Nandanna or George Saab will help us.â&#x20AC;? This is Saroja, a Backward Caste woman member. She has studied till class X and speaks Tamil at home. Her husband is a plantation worker and she lives in the labour lines of a company estate in Maldare Panchayat. Even prior to her being elected as a Panchayat member, Saroja shared a relationship with George and Nanda. Nanda alias C.A. Subbaih is also a Panchayat member, while George is a 'rich' contractor residing close to Saroja's house. Both Nanda and George have been leading an 'active' public and political life for more than two decades. Saroja comes from a second-generation Tamil migrant plantation labour family and married into a similar family. She has three children, who now are in their teens. She has been working as an anganwadi helper for the past three years, prior to which she worked as a casual plantation worker. Till 1994, Saroja led what can be referred to as a politically 'inactive' life prior to election.

Saroja, Nanda and George belong to a 'village' community in which they share a social arrangement. Every encounter that they have is encoded by an already dictated frame of reference, which is in turn sustained and regulated by a hierarchical power structure. In this schema, George and Nanda are the more 'knowledgeable' persons. The former possesses both the specific body of knowledge encoded in the institutional framework as well as the attitudinal and behavioural knowledge associated with everyday public life. Belonging to the 'employer' 'landlord' class and caste (more so in the case of Nanda) also automatically bestows them into the higher status category. Saroja occupies a lower status in the social hierarchy. She is the 'ignorant' one in this social arrangement. Neither does she possess the specific knowledge that her presence in the Panchayats requires, nor does she extend the 'knowledge' that she learnt during her years in school5 to her present institutional position. Therefore, any change as perceived and intended by the state through the Panchayati Raj Institutions requires a re-building of the already established frames of reference, using which people structure their exchanges during the process of interaction. In essence, the existing frames of reference need to be replaced by new ones. It is only then that Saroja can assume 'member-like' qualities. The tone of voice, the way of looking and the ability to look busy distinguishes an effective, good Panchayat member from an ineffective, inconsequential member. All the members identified as effective use a loud voice, varying in pitch depending on the importance of the utterances. The tone of voice, especially in the presence of other 'subordinate' members (general public from the constituency) and in meetings varies from being emotional to 'announcemental' in quality. Irrespective of the tone, there is always an authoritative feel about the voice. Even the few women members who are considered effective have acquired these qualities over time.6 See, for example, an exchange in a meeting: “Namaskara, welcome to this meeting” (Maadevi, adhyaksha, Maldare Panchayat) “Raise your voice, Maadevi. Nobody can hear you” (Secretary, Maldare Gram Panchayat). A little louder, but with her eyes looking down at the table: “The agenda of this meeting is…” The Secretary shrugs, as if to show that he tried his best to train her into the art of being a good speaker. The members take up the issue of group insurance scheme that the government has introduced and the issue of the condition of the streetlights and hand pumps in the Panchayat wards. Maadevi is silent all through. She sits uncomfortably behind a big table, fidgeting, always looking down. Though she is an adhyaksha, she obviously lacks the conviction or authority to function 'effectively'. At the conclusion of the meeting, when everybody is signing the attendance register book, another woman member, Josephine, addresses herself to a powerful, effective male member C.A. Subbaih (Nanda), using a cajoling tone:

“Nandanna, I have been asking for tube lights to be put on our road for over three months now, but nothing has happened” Nandanna, in a loud, authoritative voice to the Secretary, “Why has this not been done?” Turning back to Josephine, looking her in the eye, Nandanna reassures, “I will see what can be done.” Throughout this conversation, the adhyaksha remains at her table, not participating. Maadevi, the Maldare Panchayat's adhyaksha, is a middle-aged woman in her 40s. She has three children. Two of them are in their twenties while the third one is the late teens. Her husband is a temple priest. The Secretary is a Kodava from the neighbouring Taluk. He is a government functionary, exercising authority that the state has vested in him. Nanda is also a Kodava planter in his late 40s, and has been leading an active public life for many years now. Josephine, also in her 40s, belongs to a second-generation migrant family from Kerala. Her husband had deserted her 15 years ago and she now lives in her father's house with her two teenage daughters. Her household members work as marginal plantation workers and she, too, supplements the family income by working as a casual plantation worker. Though she has never led a public life, in comparison to Maadevi, she has had more interaction with the outside world (both due to her work as a plantation worker and due to her religion). It can be gathered from these illustrations that the pattern of interaction in the Panchayat meetings is defined according to the 'socialscape' that they share with each other even outside the Panchayat. On the one hand, there are the elected representatives and on the other, there is the Secretary, the State's representative. Institutionally, both have clearly defined sets of roles. These roles provide them with a frame of reference according to which the exchanges are structured. The frame of reference is in itself based on the premise that both groups the members and the secretary have special access to 'knowledge', power and authority. Though, the secretary occupies a very low status in the institutional hierarchy, he enjoys a high position in the system and in its operation because of his familiarity with the written body of state knowledge and his ability to interpret it. The authority of the secretary, thus, derives its sustenance from his relationship with a specific body of knowledge, which arises from the institutional arrangement. As elected representatives to the Gram Panchayat, the members occupy a low status in the institutional hierarchy, but are presumed to occupy a high status in the larger Panchayat community and in the Panchayat itself. Their familiarity with the constituency and the fact that they are democratically elected representatives of the constituency provide them a legalrational authority with which they can structure their interactions in the Panchayats. The interactions between Nanda, (a powerful member and a Kodava planter who has been active in politics for a little more than two decades) and the Secretary, exemplify the mutual acceptance of the legal authority bestowed upon them by the institution. The institutional norms 'allow' them to meet and interact as equals as it presumes that they each have a specialised set of knowledge. Though this institutional sanction extends to all members, other societal 'agreements' overflow and compete for supremacy. Very often, especially in the case of women members, the other frames of

reference effectively discount the legal-rational authority bestowed upon them by the institution. From the above account, it can be seen that the Secretary regulates the activities of the Panchayat members, thereby subjecting them to a net of power relations. The Panchayat members are also aware of the hierarchy operating in their relations, particularly with the Secretary. The Panchayat members do not belong to a homogenous social and economic background. They each enter the Panchayat from different social standpoints. Accordingly, caste and gender enters the system of Panchayat Raj Institutions with established frames of reference, structuring the exchanges between the different groups. For example, take the case of Nanda both as an individual and with his social background, he has the capacity to reinforce his position. By his talk and gestures, he seems to be re-enacting the previously existing perspectives that have constructed the reality for the other members of the Panchayat. Even though Maadevi and Josephine cannot meet the Secretary on an equal footing, Nanda, with the legal-rational authority entrusted upon him by the community and now by the state, not only meets the Secretary as an equal but, at times, also as a superior. He uses all the authoritative means at his disposal (voice, eye movement, posture, etc.) to reinforce the power relations in the community, where the members repeatedly become aware of themselves and of each other's roles and positions. The discourse on re-socialisation, thus, deflects attention from the question of structural discrimination. In other words, the overlap of the personal with the social and political spheres has consequences for women's socio-political role in the family and society. Apart from being situated in a patently stratified institutional milieu consisting of hierarchical power relations, they also have to battle against the hegemonic discourses of the dominant groups. In short, not only is there no level playing field for women representatives, the playing field is so stratified that movement from one level to the other can occur only if all the members agree on a new perspective for the construction of reality. Observing Maadevi and Josephine leads us to believe that such a process is far from occurring. III The Process of Socialisation The theme of women's participation in politics being weaker than that of men is one of the major issues that the scholarship on women and politics have focussed upon. Most scholars explored the barriers hindering women's equal participation and those unusual circumstances in which women have been effective. The different barriers have been analysed as stemming from their domestic responsibilities, the detailed and specific arrangements of social and political institutions and most importantly their socialisation (Walby, 1997). Most analyses conclude that the pattern of socialisation of girls as compared to that of boys makes the former passive and submissive. This is seen as the main reason for the lower participation of women in public life (Currell, 1974; Stacey and Price, 1981). Studies on socialisation focus mainly on the differential socialisation patterns for boys and girls. Recent studies have, however, drawn our attention to the patterns and

practices that construct gendered codes in everyday life (Bhattacharjee, 1999). They show primary socialisation to be a process involving active engagement of the 'socialising' individuals and the 'to be socialised' individuals. This engagement requires all social actors to accommodate slowly and steadily their responses to the established gender code in society. The process of accommodation is in itself an 'active' learning period for the participating actors. In Kodagu society too, gender socialisation is an active process in which both the adults and children are involved. Everyday rituals, traditions and occurrences/happenings help the formation of relationships. The content of these relationships, in turn, structure gendered practices. The child understands the existing gender rules by reading gender into the contexts of social interaction. In other words, a child perceives his/her gender identity by performing and being involved in routine everyday activities. “When I was a child, I was like a boy. I was not afraid of anything. I could climb trees much higher than the other girls could, and very often higher than the boys. When angry, my mother used to say that she had three sons, instead of two and a daughter. My parents did not really differentiate between us. They allowed all of us to study and never made me feel that I was different. However, as I grew older, I became 'wiser and stopped being naughty'. Slowly, on my own I started behaving like a girl.” (Muthamma: She belongs to Kodava community and is a member of Chennayana Kote Panchayat. She retired as a primary school headmistress.) “I was like a boy for a long time. My mother used to get exasperated and say 'who will marry you if you are like this?'” (Ayesha is a Siddapur Panchayat member and works as a casual plantation labour. She has studied till class IX.) Parents (primarily mothers), and subsequently the children, believe that over time girls need to develop 'girl-like' qualities. As in the case of Muthamma and Ayesha, most women members in their childhood resist, negotiate and finally establish gender encoded frames of reference. And this process is carried out through the everyday practices and interactions of adults and children. In other words, a girl's primary socialisation is a period in which the 'socialising' senior women actively engage with the 'to be socialised' young girls in the family and community and vice-versa. Though the young girls may sometimes put up a resistance as in the case of Muthamma and Ayesha, they soon accommodate and agree on a 'proper perspective' in order to be perceived as 'normal'. The protest or resistance is only short-lived. Parents too, who initially may not discriminate between a boy or girl child, soon begin to project a cumulative or eventual gendered stage to the 'to be socialised' child by teaching them to behave

'normally' by posing the question “who will marry you?” While recollecting, these 'gendered' and 'encoded' images replay themselves in a different role for these women. See Muthamma for instance: “I was like a boy and not afraid of anything”, meaning boys are not afraid of anything, only girls would, and should, be afraid. Or examine Ayesha, who says: “If a girl plays like a boy… no one will marry her”, indicating that for societal acceptability, girls are required to be gentle, submissive and well trained. The de-learning or re-socialisation thesis attempts to change these shared frames of reference, which shape the ideologies of appropriate feminine behaviour. Even though the 73rd Amendment has resulted in the entrance of a large number of women in the Panchayati Raj Institutions, empowering women to participate as effective members is a difficult task. As can be inferred from the process of primary socialisation, if women members need to be thus empowered, it requires a period of secondary socialisation: A period when women and men de-learn the agreed-upon patterns of practice, which construct femininity and masculinity. In other words, they need to relearn 'behaviours' that will make them 'competent' elected representatives. But, is this at all possible considering the fact that it is through everyday encounters and interactions that an ideology of 'appropriate' behaviour is constructed? As we have attempted to show, the Panchayat member's exchanges in social interactions preclude the members from perceiving his/her gender identity any differently in the present institutional setting. Transformation: The Explanatory Potential of the Agency Approach In recent years, many studies have posited that in spite of structural constraints, women manage to rise beyond it and perform as active agents. Increasingly, the view that women are not passive victims despite rigid structures is gaining ground. There is now a major set of writings, which focus on the specific ways in which 'women' exert agency within structural constraints (Raheja and Gold; 1996, Rao, 1997). Agarwal (1994) uses a number of ethnographic material that illustrate women's covert resistance involving both daily activities such as diversion of food and income resources from the control of the male household head to more symbolic contestations of male power through song, dance and parody (Kandiyoti, 1998). The appeal of the above 'everyday forms of resistance'7 framework lies in that it presents the oppressed women as rational actors who consciously adopt certain tactical positions and behavioural traits. This section examines the empirical evidence from this framework that posits women as active agents, continually looking for space to manipulate familial, kinship and institutional relationships to their advantage. “I cannot speak in the meetings. They all speak so loudly. There is too much shouting. I always wait for the meeting to finish and then meet the adhyaksha and the Secretary. At home, too, I wait for my husband to finish having his say. Very often, he too raises his voice and if I am not obedient, beats me. But, when I started collecting names for the insurance, he will slowly understand. First, he beat me for even suggesting it and said no woman of his would go out on the road. But, later he slowly came around and now he never talks about it. However, he

does not stop me or beat me.” (Safiya, Siddapur Panchayat member, belongs to a low-income household and has studied till class IX.) “There is no use in talking in the meeting. They will not listen to me, as they know more about these issues. When I want to get lights on the road or repair the road, I approach Venkateshanna. Sometimes, I wait after the meeting to talk to Yamuna” (Cauveryamma, Siddapur Panchayat member and belongs to a middle income household.) Safiya and Cauveryamma seem to be acting as rational beings who have sacrificed their short-term welfare in order to gain long-term benefits. Safiya is 'accustomed' to violent forms of exchanges in her household. Safiya is a woman in her late 30s married to a truck driver with three teenage sons. Safiya was born into a Hindu household in Kerala. She eloped with Mustaffa (her husband) while she was in high school. Though his family was unhappy to have a Hindu daughter-in-law, they reluctantly accommodated her. She underwent a rigorous training of the Quran for three months in Kerala and later was inducted into the 'ways' of a Muslim family by her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. During the phase of induction, she was often abused and beaten by her husband as well as mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. However, about six years ago, she managed to convince her husband that his mother and sisters were exploiting him. Soon they set up a separate home. According to her, since then the frequency as well as intensity of beating has reduced. The decision to become a licensed Life Insurance agent was also met with fierce resistance and violence, but her perseverance and convincing arguments was finally rewarded. Though the patrilineal system at the micro-level and patriarchal system at the macrolevel construct the dominant discourse, women like Safiya seem to create spaces of their own to challenge the dominant ideologies. Although, they do not use direct action to challenge the patterns and practices of the politically dominant, they attempt to change the status quo through negotiated and partial resistance. Seemingly powerless, Safiya exemplifies women who find strategies that mitigate the effects of the system that oppresses them. However, a closer reading of Safiya's life reveals that to a large extent, resistance is in itself framed by the terms of an already existing contract. The contract monitors the type, intensity and timing of 'revolt' and 'dissent'.8 All members in a social arrangement agree upon and establish a broad framework that will monitor the exchanges that occur in various social relationships for example, that of a husband and wife, a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Within this established framework, each individual member plays a specific role. For instance, it is within the contours of a husband-wife relationship that Safiya bargains and negotiates for space. On the one hand, her acts of resistance are well timed she puts up a resistance and sets up a

separate hearth after more than seven years of marriage; she attempts to exercise economic freedom only when the economic demands of the household cannot be met by the breadwinner alone. On the other hand, her 'revolts' are never overt. She always calls upon tradition and culture to support her demands. For instance, her husband is obligated to support the family and she plays upon this obligation to get him to agree to allow her to earn some extra income. In other words, women do not resist and dissent against the unfairness of the socio-cultural milieu in which they are living in the hope of a better future; instead, they continuously negotiate in the space provided for them in both the public and private arenas. Within the complex social relationships that structure a Panchayat too, we evidence practices that may be perceived as fallout of a woman's active engagement with the immediate and larger social structure. For example, most of the women members do not visibly participate in the meetings, but a substantially higher proportion of them put up a partial negotiation outside the precincts of the meeting. See for example one such instance in Chennayana Kote Panchayat: Meeting is yet to begin and the bill collector/peon comes to get the register signed from Baby (casual plantation worker), one of the members. She asks laughingly but loudly to gain everybody else's attention: “Why should I sign the register? Nobody will listen to me here.” The peon: “Sign it, we will see to it that you have your say in the meeting.” Baby: “I have given the list with the names for the Bhagyajyoti Scheme at least two times, but none of those recommended by me have got it” Ponappa (a Kodava big planter and Panchayat member): “What is the problem? We will look into it.” Baby: “Anna, I don't want to sign as my work does not get done. I have lost two days wages because I came to see the secretary to get this work done.” Ponappa: “OK, sign the register now and we will settle this matter later.” Baby signs the register and starts talking to her neighbour Jamila Begum, another Panchayat member. During the meeting, she as well as the other women members, with the exception Muthamma, a rich Kodava community Panchayat member, are silent. They do not participate in any of the discussions. Many women, like Baby do not participate in public meetings. In the course of her life, Baby has learnt that to be perceived as a 'normal' woman, it is necessary for her to adopt practices that are 'gender-appropriate'. The contours established by her social relationships do not allow her to express ire publicly in an institutional setting. The structures of power that she in her capacity as a member of the community agreed upon regulate the type and content of her interaction. It is for this reason that she puts up a partial resistance in the presence of Ponappa. Due to his position as the politically dominant large plantation owner, Ponappa is obligated to listen to Baby, a subordinate member belonging to a subordinate group. In other words, the success of the negotiation with the power holders is dependent on the normative constraints that

bind them to the subordinate groups. In this instance, in the existing socio-cultural milieu of patronage, the politically powerful male Panchayat members are obligated by tradition to honour certain commitment to both their 'area'/constituency and to the people who fall under their patronage. It is thus obvious that most women Panchayat members function within the framework provided to them in both their private as well as public spheres. Conclusion : Evolving a Relational Framework While the above discussion provides an account of the manifestations of members as subjects of an established gendered frame of reference in their personal and public life and we see that many a times, more so for women members, there is a continuity of their gendered behaviour across these realms. However, a range of behaviour can be noted amongst the women panchayat members. While all members bring to the panchayat meetings their past experiences, the divergence between women panchayat members' past life experiences and present expectations is rather wide. Thus, a deep fissure is to be expected or revealed between women panchayat members' personal and public behavioural pattern. Their active or passive interaction at the panchayat is often located in a common, pre-panchayat landscape. Moreover, given the cultural and ethnic symbolism associated with being in the public sphere, their typical response in the panchayats is to be expected and understood. However, the State is attempting through the PRI training policy to divorce or negate women's' past as no longer salient in the present context of development. This dislocated identity needs to be understood and accepted. The analytics of such a phenomenon prompts us to go beyond these for a framework that can capture the nuances of negotiations that are legitimised in the existing frame of reference. However, it has to be mentioned that developing a broad framework that will account for the commonplace processes of everyday life is a convoluted task (Ganesh, 1999; Kandiyoti, 1998). The field data from Kodagu are also intricate with a set of equally significant factors seminal to a single process or observation. Further, we have a set of observations allowing only for an examination of reasons for acceptance, while the others lead exclusively to reasons for resistance. Therefore, the need is for a framework that can explain the entire continuum of women's patterns of practice. The femininity and masculinity construct runs along the patterns of practice within the household and in the immediate community and extends to interaction in the Panchayat. These patterns establish rules and norms, which in turn regulate the appropriateness of behaviour. Each individual Panchayat member perceives, articulate and negotiate his/her gender identity from the standpoint of typical and common practices, routines and rituals of everyday life. Hence, a member's performance needs to be understood not merely in terms of a dichotomy of passive or active member, but in relational terms, wherein members participate in other significant relationships. By thus contextualizing actors, the relations between people gain centrality and so does the relatedness in which these relations are conceived and given shape (Ganesh, 1999).

An attempt thus needs to be made to understand the meanings given by women to the exchanges occurring in the context of everyday interactions that arise from various relationships. These interpretations will highlight the continuities between women's multiple identities derived from their various relationships within the family and household. Further, the factors emerging from the cultural (caste, class and regional) background of the members define the specificity of the relationships, which, in turn, structure the varied patterns of practice. In addition, each individual woman member's gendered social experience is constantly legitimised through established everyday practices. In spite of this, many of them have attempted in varying degrees and at different points of time to identify with voices that have been created by development interventions towards a more gender-equitable society. However, it is evident that when these voices are placed within the larger framework of gender relations reigning in Kodagu society, the voices of 'dissent' are also shaped by the accepted frames of reference. In other words, resistance is configured mainly by the existing gendered societal contracts. Besides, in the members' narratives, one can discern the overlapping of the personal with the social, and the cultural with the political. The underlying discourses in the various relationships between men and women are thus framed. Therefore, our understanding of the patterns of practice within the Panchayati Raj Institution needs to look at the complex ways in which gendered discourses mediate and construct a member's understanding of his/her position in society. Deviating from the issue of the contextual and relational aspect of relationships that shape an individual's worldview, we now need to recapitulate the ways in which an individual member's political performance has been understood. This recalling is necessary for two reasons: One, easily quantifiable indicators of women members' participation in Panchayats such as attendance reveal only the visible and obvious conflicts that exist in an institution. Two, the attempt by political scientists to use alternate indicators such as levels of awareness and women member's levels of involvement in issues concerning the Panchayat barely skim the surface of the complex and subtle ways in which power operates. Although the underpinning ideology behind these indicators are genuine in that they attempt to understand the methods and strategies used by society to restrict women's involvement in public sphere, they nevertheless suffer from what Lukes calls the one-dimensional and twodimensional views of power respectively. However, as we observed in the above sections, the manner in which power operates in the life of an individual member is often 'cordial', although there are strictures which regulate the interactions between sexes, whether in the personal or in the public sphere. Categorising women's political performance in Panchayats, however unwittingly through the use of simplistic indicators, at best can result in the identification of points of dis-juncture in women's lives. In other words, we are still left with a highly unsatisfactory tautological response that power operates in a stratified and hierarchical manner and for any change in the gender of power, it is necessary for us to act at the points of dis-junctures. In the preceding sections of this paper, the women members stressed the structured

and unequal distribution of resources in their social and institutional precincts. Although the encounters between men and women in formal settings (e.g. Panchayat meetings), in informal social interactions (e.g. in the market) and within households between different family members are structured by previously agreed upon frames of reference, seldom do we observe overt and authoritarian forms of control. In fact, quite surprisingly, interactions between the opposite sexes were often conducted in a benevolent fashion. For instance, in the household sphere, consider the interactions between the father-in-law and daughter-in-law, between the father and daughter and to some extent between husbands and wives; in the Panchayats, between individual men and women members. On the contrary, in the interactions between individual women (i.e. members of the same sex), we often discern authoritative behaviour. However, it is important to note that this authoritative behaviour gains its legitimacy from the patriarchal social mores. In other words, 'women' as a single category were not hapless and helpless individuals dancing to the tune set by the patriarch in the household or the powerful upper caste, upper class male member in the Panchayat. Though this has been said often, it was still alarming to see that some women were much more powerful than other women were. Not only do women Panchayat members as a group seldom exhibit overt authoritarian behaviour, they often give the impression of having received social skills training to 'perform civilly' in private and public life. Women's own accounts of their lives reinforce this opinion that the operation of power in social interactions is subtle and embedded in everyday patterns of practice. Given that power operates insidiously in social interactions, it is of little surprise that at different points of time we find the spectrum of acceptance, resistance and negotiation, all occurring in average and typical situations.9 For the purpose of illustration, let us consider the 'normal' commonplace interactions that occur between women and male Panchayat members. Although we witnessed the operation of the underlying male domination and forces of institutional authority amongst Panchayat members, it is equally true that women Panchayat members as a group were not passive and helpless. Feminist scholars have used various social and institutional contexts to specifically examine the relationship between men and women. The social interactions between sexes have been most extensively studied in schools and universities (Bhattacharjee, 1999), medical settings such as hospitals, between doctors and patients (Davis, 1991) and of course, in households (Ganesh, 1999). Though many studies have been conducted in the arena of political institutions such as parliament, legislature, trade union and panchayats, it is frustrating to note that they fail to locate women's performance in their multitude of social interactions. By using proxies for levels of performance, they have mostly detected that women and men do not have equal access to resources, which, in turn, enables them to perform as political beings. Such studies have also invariably resulted in gender being catapulted to the centre stage as a primary analytical concept. Although there is an underlying assumption that gender and power are inextricably inter-linked, these scholars have repeatedly failed to

explicitly unmask the patterns through which the evidently asymmetrical power relations between men and women are constructed and modified. A failure to do so has resulted in their overlooking the patterns of practice through which the asymmetrical power relations are formed in the first instance. Such neglect has meant that both academicians and policy makers have attempted to correct the existing iniquitous situation by intervening simultaneously at a multitude of points. In other words, the state hopes to make major changes in the prevailing repressive model of power and gender relations through development interventions that are aimed at through education, legislation and reservation. The problems associated with development interventions have been well documented, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to deal with the various problems associated with them or the manifold 'gender sensitive' development interventions. Instead, we have limited ourselves to such dimensions of the problem that are directly associated with the ideology underlying the development interventions, which hope to make inroads into the existing inequities between men and women. Our analysis pertains to women members' non-performance and male members' performance. The whole spectra of acceptance, resistance, rejection and negotiation that we see with women members in their everyday interactions with men in the household as well as in Panchayats is now easily understood. Further, in view of the fact that the underlying discourses in the various relationships between men and women are framed from a perspective of relationships, it is then relevant to ask to what extent a relationship is characterised by conflicting or mutual interests. Reflections of this can be seen in the contemporary Kodagu society, wherein at the micro-level, there are subtle shifts in the boundaries that delineate women's relationship with men. There are processes by which relations involving domination and subordination are produced, reproduced and transformed (Davis, 1991). This entails us to look out for methods and tools that women use to exercise control in spite of having limited access to resources and despite being unable to change the course of the unfolding events. However, at a point of time, the circumference of these boundaries is finite and it is within the confines of these boundaries that relations between men and women are established. For instance, external factors like education aim at causing gender transformation in traditional familial relationships by attempting to widen the existing boundaries, which shape men's relation with women. However, the process of transformation is subtle and complex and moves through the gamut of reinforcing traditional 'norms' and 'rules' to slowly mutating the rules into a new complex of norms and rules. Correspondingly, at the macro-level, development interventions such as the Panchayati Raj result in the emergence of forces that modify and redefine the space allotted by the traditional patrilineal system. It is thus evident that gender transformation cannot and will not occur abruptly. We have demonstrated, using both structural and individual approaches to explain power, that women are active subjects who are specifically located in situations and relations. Their involvement covers not only the ground of production and sustenance but also

of undermining and transforming existing relations. By incorporating notions of power, one is able to explain women's contribution without having to blame them for structured inequities. It is our contention that considering the complexity of social life, any solution that we look for either in the realms of theory or in practice through development intervention needs to be anchored in concrete social practices of the men and women we are studying. Further, since women are characterised by intra-group differences, it becomes imperative that these differences should form the basis of formulating public action. Our discussion so far also veers towards arguing against making snap judgements, either negative or positive, about the usefulness of development interventions such as Panchayati Raj in empowering women, since gender transformations essentially occur over a long period of time. The gestation period of the subtle changes has to constantly negotiate the pre-existing structures and their boundaries. The length of time involved for even the simplest of gender transformations to occur can be unravelled through women's experiences in various private arenas of family life. A constant in their life experiences is the duration of time taken for changes in gender relations to occur. Although the present Panchayat Raj Institution provided the space for women to participate in large numbers in the public sphere, it does not consider the time that is need for transformations in gender relations to occur. In other words, the short duration of their presence in public life, due to the practice of rotation of reserved seats, prevents women from nurturing, experimenting and eventually developing a public identity that can combat the dominant identity that they have cultivated and learnt from their experiences in private spheres. Consequently, women use the methods and strategies that the dominant identity endows them with to perform as Panchayat members. Thus, women's poor performance in the Panchayats can be traced to the failure of the state to acknowledge the discordant relationship between the identity women derive from their private sphere and the public identity that it is attempted to be thrust upon them. In conclusion, there is a need to understand the differential strategies used by men and women members to perform in Panchayats. The existing frames of analysis are unable to comprehend the reasons behind the modus operandi that women employ to participate as Panchayat members. As is evident from the field data, the tactics women members employ covers not only the ground of production and sustenance but also of undermining and transforming existing relations. The use of the relational analytical framework clearly places women's methods into the realm of the commonplace and ordinary. Following this, we can conclude that unlike in the case of their male counterparts, women Panchayat member's public identity is a mere extension of the identities that they derive from other specific cultural and socioeconomic contexts that dominate their lives. Further, the data reveals that though the state, through the Panchayati Raj Institutions, has provided women an opportunity to occupy public space, at the local level, the select group of women who are elected as Panchayat members owe it to their dominant caste-class-community identities. In

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Publications. l Lukes, Steven (1972), “Power: A Radical View; London, Macmillan. l Raheja, G G and A G Gold (1996), Listen to the Heron's World: Rethinking Gender and

Kinship in North India; New Delhi, Oxford University Press. l Rao, Nitya and Luise Rurup (eds) (1997), A Just Right: Women's Ownership of Natural

Resources and Livelihood Security; New Delhi, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. l Sharma, Kumud (1998), Power Versus Representation: Feminist Dilemmas, Ambivalent

State and the Debate on Reservation for Women in India; New Delhi, Centre For Women's Development Studies, Occasional Paper No. 28. l Stacey, Margaret and Marion Price (1981), Woman, Power and Politics; London, Tavistock. l Subha, K. (1997), Karnataka Panchayat Elections: Process, Issues and Membership Profile; New Delhi, Institute of Social Science. l Walby, Sylvia (1997), Gender Transformations; London, Routledge.

Endnotes 1 For a useful discussion of this concept, see Sen, 1985. 2 With the increasing interest in gender, the term 'status' has become value-laden. For the purpose of this paper, where only those aspects of women's status relevant to their behaviour in public life are focussed upon, it would be more prudent to understand it in terms of knowledge, attitudes and practices of women in public life. Though very important, such an understanding will ensure that we do not get embroiled into a discussion of what constitutes a woman's high or low status. 3 For an incisive discussion about the underpinnings that shape development intervention, see Kabeer, 1994. 4 Though the state has co-opted terminology's with emancipatory potential such as empowerment and de-learning, to feed into its development interventions, both the end results of the interventions as well as the difficulties in implementing the emancipatory notions remain unsolved. 5 Many studies have empirically demonstrated the process of gendered socialisation in rural schools. See, for instance, Bhattacharjee (1999) for a discussion of gendered teachinglearning processes in rural classrooms. 6 Kishwar, too, hypothesises in a similar vein about women parliamentarians. 7 James Scott (1985) coined the phrase 'everyday forms of resistance' with reference to the peasant-landlord relationship in Malaysia. Scott used examples of strategies used by Malaysian peasants to explain the ways in which even the powerless assert themselves. 8 For a detailed discussion on power and resistance, see Kandiyoti (1988, 1998). 9 Giddens recognises that power is an integral part and present in all social interactions, be they at the level of global cultures and ideologies … to the most mundane levels of everyday interactions.

tradition.

Girls' Madrasas in India Yoginder Sikand

ritings on madrasas in India have focused almost wholly on madrasas that cater to boys. An interesting development in recent years is the setting up of a small, yet growing, number of specifically girls' madrasas by Indian Muslim groups belonging to different schools of Islaic thought or maslaks. While the institution of Muslim girls schools dates back to colonial times, the concept of separate higher-level madrasas for girls is a relatively recent one. Traditionally, welloff Muslim families would arrange for lady teachers (ustanis) or elderly men to come to their homes to teach their daughters the Qur'an, Arabic and Urdu. Often, as is still the case in large parts of India, girls from poorer families would be sent to maktabs to study the Qur'an from male teachers, along with boys of their age. After learning to read and recite the Qur'an and acquiring basic Islamic education, they were generally withdrawn with the onset of puberty (balaghat) from the maktabs and kept in their homes till their parents arranged for them to be married off. In the past it appears that few girls, if any, actually went on to train to become religious specialists. They were provided with only a modicum of Islamic knowledge that was considered to be adequate for them to perform the basic Islamic rituals. Today, however, a number of girls madrasas in various parts of India are engaged in training girls as 'alimas, specialists in Islamic studies like their male 'ulama counterparts. The increasing awareness of the importance of girls' education, and a feeling that government schools, with their Hinduised ethos and syllabus and their coeducational system, are not suitable for their children, have combined to impress among growing numbers of Muslims the need for separate girls' madrasas. By combining Islamic education with modern subjects to varying degrees, these schools, this paper seeks to argue, are playing a major role in promoting literacy as well as Islamic awareness among Muslim girls, who are among the most educationally deprived sections of Indian society. Rationale for Girls' Madrasas In the writings of Muslim advocates of special madrasas for girls, girls' education is seen as an essential Islamic duty, for the Qur'an and the Hadith insist on the need for Muslims, men as well as women, to acquire knowledge. Girls' education is thus seen not as a novel development, but, instead, as a revival of a lost Prophetic tradition. An educated Muslim girl is said to be following in the footsteps of such role models as Hazrat Ayesha, the youngest wife of the Prophet, who is said to have been a great muhaddith, or scholar of Prophetic Traditions, relating a large number of hadith reports to several of the Prophet's male companions after his death.1 Educated Muslim girls are, therefore, seen as figures to be admired and respected, with their own important functions to play in the preservation and promotion of the Islamic

The new agency that is provided to girls through girls' madrasas is generally circumscribed within the limits of the family. These madrasas see the sort of education that they provide as training girls to perform their domestic tasks in what they regard as a genuinely 'Islamic' manner. This does not necessarily mean a diminution in girls' status on all fronts. The language of rights is often used in arguing the case for girls' madrasas. It is claimed that if girls are taught what rights Islam has granted them they will no longer be exploited by Muslim males. An educated Muslim woman who knows the various rights that Islam provides women, such as in matters of inheritance and divorce, would, it is often argued, be able to challenge her husband if he acts in violation of the shari'ah in these matters. As educated mothers and wives, Muslim women might be able to play new roles and earn added respect within the household. As the brochure of a Deobandi girls' madrasa claims, through 'proper' Islamic education a Muslim woman can become an 'ideal' mother and wife and thereby earn the admiration of her family. She can also help educate her own children.2 Education of girls is thus regarded as an essential Islamic duty not only because the Qur'an mandates it but also because it would help the community as a whole lead a more 'Islamic' life. Implications for Understanding Women's Roles The setting up of girls' madrasas has crucial implications for traditional understandings of gender relations and normative female behaviour. Arguments stressing the 'Islamicity' of girls' education that hark back to tradition and 'authenticity' might actually help pave the way for an inadvertent modernization, at least in some cases. Thus, a Deobandi 'alim who passionately advocates the cause of girls Islamic madrasas also suggests that these schools should include a basic minimum of modern subjects in their curriculum, such as mathematics and social sciences, in order to create an 'enlightened mentality' (roshan fikri) so that the students can 'get to know about the affairs of the world as well'.3 An educated Muslim girl is thus accorded with a new agency as an active subject with an important role to play in social reform and in improving the conditions of her family. Empowered with the written word and access to classical Islamic texts, girls educated in madrasas come to gain respect in a society where patriarchal biases are still often very acute. They can now function, at least in theory, as religious authorities in their own right. They might even be able to go on to contest patriarchal biases in the interpretation of the Islamic tradition, although this has not happened as yet on any significant scale. In actual fact, there seems to be no evidence of any major challenge emerging from these schools to patriarchal understandings of Islam, other than through highlighting some of the rights accorded to women in the Qur'an. Overall, the rationale for special girls' madrasas is generally presented in conservative terms. Pious Muslim girls and women are depicted as symbols of Muslim community identity and as guardians of the purity of the faith in a world that is seen as corrupt and licentious. In fact, it is often stressed by managers of these schools, most of whom happen to be men, that separate girls' madrasas are necessary in order to 'protect' Muslim women from the growing temptation to defy male authority, which they

present as integral to their vision of Islam. It is argued that in the absence of 'proper' Islamic education, Muslim girls might be swayed by demands for women's liberation, consumerism and 'un-Islamic' ways of life that would threaten the integrity of the community itself. As an activist associated with the Jama'at-i Islami writes, in order to ward off this threat Muslim girls should be trained to combat 'irreligiousness' (ilhad) and 'immorality' (be-hayayi). In this way they, he says, they would be able to protect the family, which he describes as the 'fort of sanctity' (haram ka qila).4 The ideal Muslim woman is thus regarded as one who has a deep knowledge of her faith and uses that knowledge to help raise a truly Muslim family. In the writings of 'ulama advocates of Muslim girls' education, the sphere of the educated Muslim woman is generally seen as restricted to her home. Only a very small minority among the 'ulama consider it permissible for Muslim women to work outside the domestic sphere. Girls Madrasas as a Diverse Phenomenon Girls' madrasas in India today, like those for boys, display considerable variety. Some provide only a few years of general Islamic education, and when girls reach the age of puberty they are expected to discontinue their studies and get married off. Others are more like regular schools that also make arrangement for Islamic studies. Most major Muslim maslaks in India today, including those popularly seen as grossly misogynist, have set up girls' madrasas in different parts of the country. Interestingly, despite their image as die-hard conservatives, the Deobandis have, in recent years, been among the more active in this regard. One of the largest girls' madrasas in India, the Jami'at us-Salihat at the town of Malegaon, in Maharashtra, is linked to the Deoband tradition. It was established in 1973 by a Deobandi graduate, Muhammad 'Usman Qasmi. It has a large hostel, where girls from various parts of India as well as abroad live together. Strict purdah is observed and the girls are generally not allowed out of the campus of the madrasa unless accompanied by a close male relative. The madrasa provides education till the fazila level. The syllabus is broadly similar to that employed in general Deobandi madrasas, with additional books on issues of fiqh that are related specifically to women. Over the years, the Jami'at has produced a large number of graduates, many of whom are now teaching in girls' madrasas in other parts of India as well as abroad. Several others have set up girls' madrasas of their own.5 Another example of a Deobandi girls' madrasa that has also incorporated a basic level of modern subjects in its curriculum is the Madrasa Jami'at ul-Banat in New Delhi. It is housed in an incomplete two-storeyed tenement on the periphery of a squalid slum in the Muslim-dominated Basti Nizamuddin, near the shrine of the renowned Chishti Sufi Hazrat Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya. The area is characterized by considerable poverty and a high rate of unemployment. Like most other such Muslim localities, it lacks many basic facilities, suffering from acute neglect by the state authorities. The few state-run schools in the area, as is the case with their counterparts elsewhere, leave much to be desired. Teachers appear at school only very occasionally, and the standard of education provided therein is dismal. Faced with such great odds, the Jami'at ul-Banat is bravely struggling to provide a modicum of education to Muslim girls, almost all of who come from poor or lower-middle class families from outside

Delhi, the vast majority from Bihar, Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. The madrasa was established as a registered society in 1996 by Maulana Ilyas Barabankvi, a graduate of the Deoband madrasa. It is said to be the only higher-level girls' madrasa in Delhi. Like many other madrasas, it is a family undertaking, being managed by the founder's son-in-law, Maulvi Muhammad Islam. The Maulvi is a graduate of the Madrasa Kashf ul-'Ulum, Delhi, which is located at the global headquarters of the Tablighi Jama'at, the world's largest Islamic revivalist movement.6 The madrasa sees the education that it imparts as helping to train a class of Muslim girls who are committed to its understanding of Islam, and who can later go on to play a key role in the reform of Muslim society on 'Islamic' lines and combat what are seen as 'un-Islamic' ways of life. Thus, its official brochure stresses that one of its major purposes is to impress upon its students the 'dangers' of 'Western' culture, which is seen as being 'in total opposition' to Islam. Western culture is said to be wholly decadent, and is seen as being in complete contrast to an idealised, indeed romanticised, understanding of the Islamic tradition, defending which the madrasa sees among its principal tasks. Students are taught, the brochure proudly announces, that the 'only reason for the rapid degeneration of the world' is because human beings have 'moved far from Islamic culture'. Thus, the only solution to the manifold problems of the world, the students must learn, is for people to strictly follow the path of the Prophet. The students of the madrasa are seen as 'practical models' for women in the rest of the world to emulate.7 The madrasa presently has 180 girls on its rolls, all of who live inside the madrasa, in the four small halls that also serve as classrooms. Admission is generally given to girls who have already studied till the seventh grade in a government or private school. Education is provided free, but a small sum is charged for food. For girls from very poor families even this amount is waived. The madrasa depends largely on public donations to cover its expenses.8 The madrasa's syllabus follows the basic structure of the syllabus used in most Indian boys' madrasas, the dars-i nizami, while reducing sections of books of fiqh related to matters specific to males and replacing them with books detailing fiqh rules pertaining to women. The course is of a six-year duration, after which the students receive the 'alima degree. Some modern subjects are also taught, although the standard of teaching is poor because the madrasa cannot afford the high salaries that qualified teachers of these subjects generally demand. Students are taught basic English, although their level of comprehension of the subject leaves much to be desired. They are also taught stitching, knitting and embroidery. Great stress is paid to regular observance of prayers, and students are expected to pray together five times a day. A major focus of the teaching imparted at the madrasa has to do with the internalisation of appropriate gender norms as defined in the Deobandi vision. Thus, strict purdah is rigidly enforced. Girls are not allowed to step outside the madrasa, not even for a walk or to make purchases in the local market. The only occasions when they can leave the madrasa are when their male guardians come to pick them up

before the annual holidays, or in case of a medical emergency, when they must be accompanied by a close male relative. All their teachers, with one exception, are females, most of them graduates of the madrasa itself. The only male teacher, the Hadith ustad, is not allowed to see the students. He delivers his lecture into a microphone while seated in a room on the ground floor, and the girls sit in rooms on the first floor and listen to his discourse. If they have any questions they relay them to him through a microphone. While recognizing that in the Prophet's time Muslim women could appear in public, the manager of the madrasa justifies the strict pardah that is followed in his school on the grounds that 'today circumstances have changed and people are no longer as pious as they were in the past'. Hence, he insists, women need to be 'protected' from the ever-present threat of fitna or 'strife'.9 While the Deobandi girls' madrasas reflect one form of Muslim girls' religious education, other, somewhat less conservative, forms of the girls' madrasa exist that have arrangements for Islamic as well as modern education. The most bold experiments in this regard have been made by girls' madrasas affiliated, either organizationally or ideologically, with the Jama'at-i Islami. A good example is the girls' wing of the Jami'at ul-Falah in Azamgarh, which now has some 2700 girls on its rolls. Students here train to become 'alimas and fazilas, religious authorities in their own right. Besides Islamic subjects, they also study various modern disciplines till the high school level. Their course of studies is largely similar to that of the boys, except in matters of fiqh, where greater attention is paid to matters particular to women. Home science is also taught as a regular discipline. While many female students of the madrasa marry soon after graduation, several have taken up independent occupations, such as teaching in girls' madrasas or setting up such madrasas on their own. Some have even gone on to enrol in courses to train as doctors of Unani medicine.

a form of education that is deemed more culturally appropriate. In the course of this, new understandings of gender relations and of the notion of the ideal Muslim woman are being articulated, which, in turn, can further galvanise the process of Muslim women's empowerment using Islamic arguments. Endnotes 1 Afzal Husain, Jama'at-i Islami Ki Ta'limi Kavishey, New Delhi: Markazi Maktaba-i Islami, 2002, p.35. 2 Jami'at ul-Banat al-Islamia Ka Mukhtasar Ta'aruf, New Delhi: Jami'at ul-Banat al-Islamia, n.d., pp.7-8. 3 Ibid., p.7. 4 Afzal Husain, Jama'at-i Islami Ki Ta'limi Kavishey, op.cit., , p.35. 5 Abdul Halim Siddiqui, Malegaon: Ek Shahr, Ek Jahan, Malegaon: Misbah Educational and Welfare Sports and Research Society, 2000, p.78. 6 For an analysis of the perception of the normative Muslim woman in Tablighi discourse, see Yoginder Sikand, 'Women and the Tablighi Jama'at', Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, vol.10, no.1, 1999 7 Jami'at ul-Banat al-Islamia ka Mukhtasar Ta'aruf, op.cit., pp.40-41 8 Jami'at ul-Banat al-Islamia ka Mukhtasar Ta'aruf, op.cit., pp.66-67 9 Interview with Maulana Muhammad Islam, Rector, Madrasa Jami'at ul-Banat, New Delhi, 28 October, 2002 10 S. 'Ubaidur Rahman, 'Jameatus Saliehat: Revolutionising Women's Education' (http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/01052001/Art04.htm).

Another similar experiment is the Jami'at us-Salihat in Rampur in northern Uttar Pradesh. Established by a group of Jama'at-i Islami workers and sympathizers in 1972, some 4000 girls, mostly from middle-class families, study in the school. Around a fourth of the students come from outside the town and live in hostels located in the campus. It provides religious education along with regular subjects, for which it follows the state-prescribed syllabus. All subjects are taught through the medium of Urdu, although English is a compulsory subject throughout. From the fifth grade onwards, students are taught to handle computers.10 Conclusion Contrary to stereotypical notions, Indian madrasas, as the above account has attempted to argue, are hardly immune to change. Considering the considerable challenges that the Indian Muslims as a community, as well as madrasas as a system of Islamic education, are presently faced with, their willingness to adapt and respond is noteworthy. Madrasas are often stigmatised in the media as hostile to women's 'empowerment', but, as the examples cited in the above account illustrate, a growing number of Indian Muslim educational institutions, including some headed by 'traditionalist' 'ulama, are increasingly responding to the need and demand for girls' education, including through setting up a diverse range of girls' madrasas, to provide

the tax base, secure property rights, deregulation, trade liberalization, privatization and elimination of barriers to foreign direct investment4.

Poverty Alleviation in South Asia Syed Mohammad Ali

his paper aims to take a look at a recently devised mechanism, that of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP), which is being used in the attempt to increase country ownership of international development processes and to make them more effective by better reflecting their concerns of the poor. Given the fact that the PRSP approach has been adopted by 70 low income countries worldwide, including all South Asian countries except India, this new approach merits close consideration. The following paper will aim to contextualize the PRSP process using a historical and an institutional perspective, as well as identify salient means whereby the effectiveness of the PRSP process can be assessed. An assessment of this sort has obvious significance to understand the progress and challenges facing a major attempt to alleviate poverty. Historical Overview of Development Lending After the end of the Second World War, many countries in South America, Africa and Asia began freeing themselves from colonial domination. Yet, the task of removing the prevailing deprivation from their midst has proven much harder. Economic mismanagement and corruption began to create burgeoning budget deficits and glaring disparities within these newly independent poor countries. Then the rising oil prices in the late 1970s, which had sparked a global economic recession, led to a seemingly insurmountable debt crisis across much of the developing world. It was at this stage that many developing countries were compelled to seek loans from international financial agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to World Bank records, 144 adjustment lending operations were undertaken in 53 poor countries between 1980 and 1993.1 These statistics implicitly reveal the influence that the World Bank and the IMF began to yield in developing countries, given that a set of prescribed conditionalities have also accompanying the loans. The World Bank justifies the need for conditionalities associated with lending by maintaining that reforms must be prescribed to help stabilize economies of developing countries, to reduce government expenditures, and put in place measures to increase their revenues.2 The World Bank views conditionality as a credible indicator of commitment by the World Bank and its partners to support a mutually agreed reform process, not an attempt to force externally designed policy changes on unwilling governments.3 The conditionalities prescribed by the World Bank and the IMF are widely known as the 'Washington Consensus', and the standard policies implied by the Washington Consensus have included fiscal discipline, tax reforms, including the broadening of

The adherence to the 'Washington Consensus' by both the World Bank and the IMF has led to a strong emphasis on the need to promote growth. Privatization, for example, is meant to remove industrial ownership by the state, with the goal of providing better management to privatised firms and of strengthening the market by removing unfair competition that is a financial burden for the state. Reform of the tax system aims to bolster the economy by creating or strengthening incentives for investment and marketisation and implies introduction of the market into the public sector; for example in education, health care and housing.5 Based on the assumption that both developed and developing countries would potentially benefit by focusing on production and export of goods in which they have an existing advantage, protectionist tendencies of the state have been strongly discouraged and liberalisation of the trade regime is considered a win-win situation for both exporting and importing countries.6 Yet the effects of these growth led policies on poverty itself have not been positive. According to Joseph Stiglitz, for example, a Nobel Prizing winning economist and former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at the World Bank, â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have seen how trade liberalization accompanied by high interest rates is an almost certain recipe for job destruction and unemployment creation - at the expense of the poor. Financial market liberalization unaccompanied by an appropriate regulatory structure is an almost certain recipe for economic instability - and may well lead to higher, not lower interest rates, making it harder for poor farmers to buy the seeds and fertilizer that can raise them above subsistence. Privatization, unaccompanied by competition policies and oversight to ensure that monopoly powers are not abused, can lead to higher, not lower, prices for consumers. Fiscal austerity, pursued blindly, in the wrong circumstances, can lead to high unemployment and a shredding of the social contract.â&#x20AC;?7 Stiglitz8 himself became a strong advocate of using IFI policy instruments to pursue the objectives of sustainable growth and poverty reduction through greater public management of economic processes. While advocating the interconnectedness of economic and social development goals, Stiglitz has stressed the need for greater transparency and accountability in both the corporate and government sectors, instead of relying entirely on the market mechanism to achieve optimal social outcomes. The formulation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) was meant to address many of the problems resulting from structural adjustment reforms initiated by the Washington Consensus. Introducing the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers The PRSP approach recognizes the need for greater country ownership and participation in policies meant to alleviate poverty. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are the most concrete and widespread manifestation of international development agency efforts to increase country ownership. PRSPs are particularly meant to incorporate participation into the IMF and World Bank lending framework

for poor countries. The PRSP approach was officially introduced by the IMF and the World Bank at their Annual Meeting in Washington in September 1999. The IMF and the Bank have also renamed their lending facilities for poorer countries. The World Bank has replaced the term 'adjustment lending' with 'development policy support lending' to signal the eventual shift of structural adjustment from a short-term macroeconomic focus to a longer-term developmental and institutional focus.12 Means to Assess the PRSP Approach Assessing the effectiveness of the PRSP process is not easy. The difficulty in measuring success of a given strategy on the global poverty profile within the span of a few years is almost next to impossible. However, the fact that PRSP documents are now widely available, it is easier to take a closer look at these documents and to assess if the measures contained within them reflect the twin aims of enhancing 'country ownership' and 'participation' within policy making, since it was these very objectives which were used to justify introduction of the PRSP approach in the first place. Issue of Country Ownership in the PRSP Process Country ownership of the PRSP process is supposed to be multidimensional, so it can accommodate a number of possible definitions. The PRSP is supposed to be based on the needs and priorities of an individual country rather than those of external partners. Therefore, a good PRSP is primarily meant to bring about a broad agreement within the country's executive on country priorities, to maximize poverty alleviation. Ideally, the sense of ownership is supposed to generate support for the PRSP amongst the country's national institutions including the parliament and local governments, and internal partners such as civil society organizations. A growing body of literature on the definition of country ownership emerging from the World Bank itself, implicitly or explicitly, recognizes these dimensions of ownership. The IMF has defined ownership as a willing assumption of responsibility for an agreed program of policies by officials in a borrowing country who have the responsibility to formulate and carry out those policies, based on the understanding that the program is achievable and is in the country's own interest.13 Thus, ownership should reflect the extent to which a country is committed to the reform process, independent of any incentives that development assistance agencies might provide. Ownership materializes when a majority of the population or their representatives participate in the formulation of a national development strategy, identify its goals and elements, and will participate in implementation and ongoing strategy development.14 However, there are conceptual questions concerning what national ownership is meant to imply. For example, is ownership a matter of governments' increased contributions to policy design and consequently changed perceptions, or that of civil society, or some combination? From the point of view of the democratic legitimacy of the process, it is vital that a democratically elected government must be involved in this process. Civil society, on the other hand, has an important role in helping form

and check on government policy, but it does not necessarily have an independent right to determine policy. But in places where democracy is limited, or non-existent, there is a special need to involve civil society to ensure popular participation in the process. In general, including civil society in the process is likely to be important, in both democracies and non-democracies, if perceptions of national ownership are to be enforced, and if implementation is to be improved. 15 Nonetheless, the precision of definitions poses less of a problem than their practicality: it is much more difficult find a definition of country ownership that is operational and empirically verifiable. As more and more countries prepare and implement PRSP, there is an evident lack of clarity about what the milestones are that ownership is expected to achieve. Because identifying tangible milestones in this regard remains subjective, and the results of ownership implied by them difficult to assess, participation itself has often been used as a proxy for country ownership. Thus, participation itself is another concept which deserves closer attention within the specific context of formulating PRSPs. Issue of Participation in the PRSP In effect, participation is the process by which stakeholders influence and share control over priority setting, policymaking, resource allocations, and/or program implementation. There is no obvious framework for participation because it plays a role in many different contexts and for different purposes. The World Bank17 has classified participation according to four levels of intensities: (1) information-sharing (2) consultation (3) joint decision-making and (4) initiation and control by stakeholders. At one end lies information sharing that involves limited decision making powers but potentially important knowledge transfer and generation. At the other lies initiation and control with a high degree of citizen control over decisionmaking. Consultation only enables participants to express opinions, but they are not guaranteed that their perspectives will be incorporated into the final product. Joint decision-making allows participants the shared right to negotiate the content of strategy. Governments and development assistance agencies are now giving more attention to institutionalizing participation, and particularly to establishing permanent mechanisms for government-stakeholder dialogue through measure like the PRSP process. It is important to realize that the PRSPs are meant to be different from other approaches to participation, as they are centrally concerned with policy. The selection of groups, how representatives are chosen and how capable they are constitute important factors influencing the legitimacy as well as the effectiveness of the process. In its Source Book for Poverty Reduction Strategies19 indicate that the World Bank envisages participation in PRSPs to be a process where participants should be able to influence policymaking and set agendas, as well as determine budgets and oversee implementation. The World Bank's vision of the participation also seems to favour a widely inclusive process involving extremely broad sectors of domestic society, not only marginalized individuals, but also relevant representative institutions and umbrella groups. The extent of national ownership and empowerment is greatly

affected by such considerations, as the World Bank itself recognizes, but securing this level of participation in practice has remained a big challenge. Assessing Ownership and Participation in PRSP Processes Countries have themselves employed a variety of strategies for consultation and information dissemination. These have included national and regional conferences to discuss PRSP drafts and proposals, where representative groups from civil society, sometimes identified by the government or CSOs at the government's behest, were invited to contribute inputs for the analysis of poverty and prioritizing public actions. In some cases national consultations have been general in scope, and in others organised along thematic or sectoral lines. Other methods have included local surveys asking villagers for inputs into prioritising public action and resource allocation, as well as media campaigns ranging from TV, radio and newspaper announcements. Participatory Poverty Assessments have taken place in some countries to inform the poverty analysis that underpins the PRSP, and have included problem or solution ranking designed to inform policy prioritisation and budget allocations. 20 Still, there have been several problems with the design and implementation of participatory processes, including the timeframe, information sharing and level of consultations. According to the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University, most countries have equated it with consultations that have often been poorly conceived, exclusive, and badly organized leading to a lack of clarity on what level of engagement they expect from civil society.21 Civil society engagement with the government is theoretically expected to allow them latter to enhance its credibility and bargaining power vis-Ă -vis the donors, who are now supposed to act as brokers of participation, not overt dictators of policy options. While a closer linkage between governments and civil society places greater transparency and accountability of the former, it can also lend credibility to policies that differ from standard IFI prescriptions. To check this phenomenon, civil society participation has not been sought in technical debates in almost all countries. Furthermore, national ownership can be made untenable due toconditionalities on economic policy'.22 Power imbalance between the IFIs and the governments, and between the governments and their poor people, has hindered genuine participation and ownership. The common practice seems to have brought 'representatives' of CSOs to participate in PRSPs, but these representatives have often been identified by the government or an actor mandated by it. Formal solicitation of participation seems to have has ignored non-traditional NGOs, and CBOs located outside the metropolis or those engaged in niche issues. The private sector too has generally been under-involved.23 Involvement has been confined to national level NGOs genuine engagement of grassroots communities has almost been non-existent. Urban-based CSOs that do not reach out to solicit the opinion of their constituencies, especially the poor, being dominant participants raises questions of representativeness. Participatory methodologies that directly engage the poor in policy dialogues have by and large not been explored.24 Participatory processes that build on local traditions and cultural norms have also not been adopted, given the preference to external, donor prescribed templates.25 Even the Asian Development Bank, which itself adopts a very similar

approach to development lending as the World Bank, has questioned why there is no consistency between small and big countries in accepting their five-year development plans with specific poverty reduction chapters as a PRSP.26 Intra-government participation also does not seem as comprehensive as it should be with the line ministries and locally elected bodies. Offering a specific case in point, WHO complaints that 'health ministries have had little opportunity to contribute to the development of overall PRSP or to the development of the health content.'27 Multigovernmental bodies such as the EU seem to urge a more central involvement of parliaments including the monitoring and implementation phase.28 UNDP suggests individual parliamentarians could at least be involved when consultations take place at the sub-national, constituency levels.29 Because debt relief is conditional on producing PRSPs, there has been a strong incentive for countries to complete their PRSP processes as soon as possible in order to secure debt relief. Considerable evidence suggests this link has compromised the quality of participation. There is an evidently broad concurrence that in countries where participation was considered superficial, that the PRSP documents were being written mostly by national officials with occasional inputs from consultants and donors. This change is however interpreted as more symbolic than substantive, for despite national authorship, policy analyses are uniform across countries' PRSPs. UNDP also remarks that in some cases the PRSP documents do show a syndrome of 'hotel-room manufacture' by external experts.30 Some countries only called for the involvement of CSOs in the actual drafting stage of the documents, not only in discussing prepared texts. The following section will illustrate the real life problems which have occurred in this context by using the specific example of managing the PRSP process in the case of Pakistan. PRSP Process in Pakistan: Current Status The Government of Pakistan has drafted an Interim and two subsequent versions of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper to gain access to international funds at concessional rates. When the first phase of the PSP process came to an end, the Ministry of Finance began the process of revising the PRSP for another three years, the revised version of the PRSP document became effective in June 2006. It is important to realize at the onset, that the PRSP is not a standalone policy document for alleviating poverty in Pakistan. While the Ministry of Finance had assumed the overall responsibility for formulating and implementing the PRSP, the Federal Planning Commission unveiled a Mid-Term Development Framework (MTDF) in mid-2005 - not unlike prior five-year plans with the aspiration of subsuming the PRSP in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The decision to subsume the PRSP into the MTDF could be seen as an attempt by the Planning Commission to take back charge of development planning. The parallel existence of seemingly unsynchronized policy documents is confusing and the inconsistencies resulting from the formulation of the MTDF have been astutely described in a background paper commissioned by the Like Minded Donors Group.31

The optimistic finings of the Pakistan Social Living Standards Measurement Survey 2004-05 are being quoted within Pakistan lent more legitimacy to the PRSP process. This Survey indicates that overall poverty in the country has declined from 32.1 per cent in 2001 to 25.4 per cent in 2005. Yet these findings regarding the incidence of poverty are disputed within the country. Instead of aiming to ascertain the prevalence of poverty itself, this paper will instead focus on whether the PRSP approach formulated for Pakistan has been able to enhance country ownership and participation in the poverty alleviation process itself. Contentions Concerning the PRSP Process in Pakistan It is hard to find consensus regarding the PRSP itself within civil society in Pakistan. Many prominent civil society actors invited to participate in the PRSP process still maintain that they were called in when the policies had already been decided and that there is no binding obligation on the IFIs or the GoP to listen to their recommendations. This is despite the fact that the PRSP itself had highlighted a need to forge 'a broad-based alliance' to reach out to the poor.32 The PRSP document itself suggests that extensive public consultation took place during its preparation stages33. But there is not much independent evidence confirming this claim. No cumulative details concerning this participatory process have been made public either. The GoP did commission Participatory Poverty Assessments prescribed by the World Bank, and also sought feedback from over 120 community dialogues held across the country34 prior to formulation of the first PRSP for Pakistan. Yet, many prominent civil society organizations either disagreed with the scope of these participatory initiatives, or else did not consider their findings to be adequately reflected in the finalized PRSP. Provincial governments also formulated separate PRSP documents, but these were written by consultants and there is no evidence of supplemental participatory processes linked specifically to these provincespecific documents. The content of the provincial PRSPs is also not unique and borrows heavily from the national documents. Government officials and public representatives at lower tiers of government are still unaware that a cohesive poverty reduction strategy for the entire country, what to talk of being involved in implementing it. Since the views of many relevant stakeholders were not sought prior to finalization of the PRSP document for Pakistan, this has led to serious concerns about the legitimacy of the finalized PRSP. A letter sent to IFIs, and to the PRSP Secretariat at the Ministry of Finance, by a coalition of civil society organizations spearheaded by the Islamabad based think-tank, Sustainable Development Policy Institute,35 took up issue with the content of the PRSP, to firmly reject 'the essentially neo-liberal stance' of the document. It is important to concede that misconceptions concerning participation and ownership have not only arisen in Pakistan, but in many other countries where this approach is being implemented. In the case of Bolivia for example, dialogues for the PRSP are being viewed by some as a way to bypass a dysfunctional central government captured by elites, instead of trying to strengthen the government to

carry out its mandate.35 Therefore, the PRSP approach does not appear as popular and uncontested as euphemistic slogans like 'increased interaction' and 'partnerships' and 'shared vision' for alleviating poverty might indicate. Lessons for South Asia Given its sizable population, South Asia itself is home to the largest number of poor people in the world. Therefore any new approach to poverty reduction is of obvious significance for the entire region. Yet, we have seen using the criteria of ownership and participation, there are still many problems which hinder the effectiveness of the PRSP approach. Moreover, the case of Pakistan has been examined in detail in the preceding section to illustrate some of these challenges. Another important issue to keep in mind while assessing the relevance of the PRSP approach is the fact that many of the poor people in South Asia are found in India and India is also the only South Asian country that has not adopted the PRSP approach. Given this situation, there is need to identify a supplemental effort of relevance to poverty alleviation across the entire South Asian region. There is evidence of such a regional attempt. In 1998, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Secretariat agreed to the need for a common charter that goes beyond national plans of action to bring a regional dimension to the uplift of the most populous poor region in the world. The first meeting of an inter-governmental group concerning SAARC's social charter thus took place in 2001. It is interesting to note the similarity of rhetoric surrounding the PRSP and SAARC's Social Charter. The SAARC Social Charter admits that it can only be effective if it was developed through an inclusive process, bringing together not only government agencies, but also research and academic institutions and civil society in the region to highlight major issues for their states. Despite this rhetorical admission however, the process of devising SAARC's Social Charter remained exclusive and controlled mostly by bureaucrats. The resulting charter thus refers to standard government policy prescriptions and reiterates measures devised to placate international financial institutions (including the regional PRSPs), rather than placing emphasis on integrative efforts to improve the lives of South Asians. Discontent with this situation, civil society actors across South Asia began a parallel process of civic action to devise what became known as a 'citizens' social charter'. The South Asia Centre for Policy Studies, a Bangladesh-based organisation, took the responsibility for coordinating this effort with the help of national civil society actors. In the case of Pakistan, Shirkatgah, initiated countrywide consultations for a citizens' charter by involving members of the Pakistan NGO Forum. A more demand-based document was thus finalised in consultation with civil society organisations across South Asia, and put to print in 2005. This activism among regional civil society organisations also strengthened their resolve to track progress of the official social charter across the seven countries. Community based monitoring of government initiatives is still a wishful concept for most South Asian countries. But here is at least evidence of increased scrutiny and regional pressure on states for fulfilling mandated responsibilities towards their

citizens. There is also an ideal window of opportunity at present to create more synergy between the PRSP and the SAARC Social Charter, which would in turn enable the South Asian region to dilute the influence of international financial institutions on their policy making, while at the same time be able to refer to an internationally acknowledged framework (i.e. PRSP) to infuse more participation and achieve greater regional cohesion to their ongoing poverty alleviation attempts. This research paper is an attempt to take a preliminary step in this direction by trying to trace the rationale for infusing participation and country ownership in poverty alleviation attempts, the real life challenges surrounding this attempt with reference to the PRSP approach and the need for overcoming these challenges through a regional perspective. Concluding Remarks The PRSP process is still evolving. The limited experience with PRSPs so far would suggest that PRSPs have achieved little in the way of increasing ownership over programme design by national governments or civil society. This is not to say that there have been no changes in the balance of power among stakeholders. In some limited respects, civil society participants have been empowered compared to their earlier position by being formally included in the policy making process. Still this involvement is not as broad or deep as desired. While national governments appear to be playing a more prominent role in policy formation, by formally taking charge of the development policy making agenda, how far this has been empowering is doubtful. The similarity of the PRSP programmes to those that form part of the normal international agenda suggests this role is more cosmetic than genuinely empowering. A cynical reading would see the PRSP exercise as weakening the legitimacy of national governments by engaging with groups other than governments in designing policy. This suspicion could be neutralized by creating regional synergies, as is suggested in the case of South Asia. What is most important is the fact that the PRSP process has not yet been able to reflect aspirations of the marginalized in a more effective manner than previous international development programmes. The PRSP process was meant to articulate a comprehensive country-based strategy aiming to create a vital link between national governments, donors and civil society actors. Yet, this ideal balance has so far proven quite difficult to achieve. Creating greater synergy between the PRSP and regional mechanisms could provide a potential means to achieve this required balance. Endnotes 1 World Bank, 2000, Social Dimensions of Adjustment Programs: A Submission to the World Summit for Social Development Five-Year Review, Washington: World Bank 2 Grasso P, Wasty S and Weaving R (eds.), 2003, World Bank: The First 50 Years, Washington: The World Bank 3 World Bank, 2001, Adjustment Lending: Lessons of Experience, Washington: World Bank 4 Williamson J (ed.), 1994, The Political Economy of Policy Reform, Washington: Institute for International Economics 5 Sturm L, 1998, Similarities and Differences between Neo-structuralism and Neo-liberalism, Tubingen: Eberhard-Karls 6 Colclough C, 1991, “Structuralism Versus Neo-Liberalism: An Introduction”, Colclough C and Manor J (eds.), States or Markets? Neo-Liberalism and Development Policy Debate, Oxford: Clarendon Press

7 8 9

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

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26 27 28 29 30 31

Stiglitz J, 2002, Globalization and Its Discontents, New York: Norton & Company Ltd., page 84 Stiglit J, 2002, “Participation and Development: Perspectives from the Comprehensive Development Paradigm”, Review of Development Economics 6 (2) 163-82 Institute for Development Studies, “Assessing participation in poverty reduction strategy papers: a desk-based synthesis of experience in sub-Saharan Africa,” by McGee, Rosemary, Josh Levene, and Alexandra Hughes, Research Report 52. IDS. February 2002. Cornwall, A. (2000). Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen: Perspectives on Participation for Poverty Reduction. Sida Studies no. 2. Stockholm, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. ibid. World Bank, 2002, From Adjustment Lending to Development Policy Support Lending: Key Issues in the Update of World Bank Policy, Washington: World Bank. International Monetary Fund (2001), Strengthening Country Ownership of FundSupported Programs. Washington DC: IMF. Drazen, A., and Isard, P. (2004), 'Can Public Discussion Enhance Program “Ownership”?' IMF Working Paper 163. International Monetary Fund (2001), Strengthening Country Ownership of FundSupported Programs. Washington DC: IMF. Nelson, N. and S. Wright (1995) 'Participation and Power' in Nelson and Wright (eds.) Power and Participatory Development. London, ITDG Publishing, pp. 1-18. World Bank (1996). The World Bank Participation Sourcebook. Washington D.C., World Bank. See PRSP Sourcebook: Participation, available at http://poverty.worldbank.org/files/ 13839_chap7.pdf World Bank (2002). Source Book for Poverty Reduction Strategies. Washington D.C., World Bank. World Bank, 2002, Participation in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A Retrospective Study Washington: World Bank McGee, R., Levene, J., and A. Hughes (2001), “Assessing Participation in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A Desk-Based Synthesis of Experiences in Sub-Saharan Africa”, Draft, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. McGee, R., Levene, J., and A. Hughes (2001), “Assessing Participation in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A Desk-Based Synthesis of Experiences in Sub-Saharan Africa”, Draft, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. Whaites, A (2000), “PRSPs: Good News for the Poor? Social Conditionality, Participation and Poverty Reduction”, World Vision International GTZ (2000), “Contributions for the global PRSP Review, based on GTZ experience in Africa”, Germany. McGee, R., Levene, J., and A. Hughes (2001), “Assessing Participation in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A Desk-Based Synthesis of Experiences in Sub-Saharan Africa”, Draft, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. Asian Development Bank (2001), “Poverty Reduction Strategy Program”, Contribution to the World Bank and the IMF PRSP Review. World Health Organization (2001), “Health in PRSPs. WHO Submission to World Bank/IMF Review of PRSPs”, World Health Organization, Geneva. European Commission (2001), “PRSP Review: Key Issues”, Contribution to the World Bank and IMF PRSP Review. UNDP (2001), “UNDP Review of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)”, New York. UNDP (2001), “UNDP Review of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)”, New York. Khan, Shanza, 2005, In Pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals: An Assessment of the MTDF and its Alignment with the PRSP. A background paper commissioned by the Like Minded Donors Group (Canada, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland)

32 GoP, 2003, Draft Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, Islamabad: Government of Pakistan 33 GoP, 2003, Draft Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, Islamabad: Government of Pakistan 34 SDPI, 2003, "PRSP rejection by Pakistani NGOs", Copy of a letter written to the GoP by Pakistani NGOs. Available from: http://www.eurodad.org/articles/ default.aspx?id=430 35 Entwistle J, Bajuk N, Cavassini F and Steinberg F, 2005, Operational Approach for Assessing Country Ownership of Poverty Reduction Strategies, Volume II: Country Case Studies, Washington: World Bank

The Right to Transparent Governance Nikhil Dey, Jean Drèze and Aruna Roy

he right to transparent governance can be summed up in two basic principles: the state's obligation to disclose, and people's right to make informed choices. This right is partly a matter of legal instruments, such as the Right to Information Act, but it involves much more: empowering people to make effective use of these laws, so that democratic institutions are more participatory. While this seems to place this discourse in the context of the rights of the citizen, and the obligation of the government, transparent governance ultimately requires building a culture of transparency in public life, where the obligation is generic. As we shall argue, this process must be led and defined by poor and marginalised communities, not only to expose the inequities thrust upon them, but also to open up so-called democratic institutions that have facilitated the arbitrary use of power by ruling elites. This point becomes clearer if we look at the nature of prescriptions for “good governance” used by rulers in national governments and international institutions. A whole new regime of laws designed and crafted by international capital is being pushed through national legislatures without even consulting the citizens of the countries themselves. In the name of economic freedom, communities are in fact being forced to give up control over natural resources, the right to take decisions about their own environment, economies, and eventually even their own lives. Once these laws are in place, “good governance” is prescribed as a means to efficiently implement these laws that do great injustice to poor and marginalised people. In a limited sense, “transparency” is also an important component of this model of “good governance”, where transparency is used as a tool of management to more effectively implement the objectives of the rulers. Democracy and its institutions need to be rescued from these manipulations in order to reflect more accurately the will of the people. Transparency, and the people's right to information, can and must be used to expose and dismantle unjust laws and put in place modes of decision-making that give people “the right to make informed choices”. Thus, it is important to link transparency and the right to information with a conception of democratic governance that is truly participatory. There are at least four reasons why the right to transparent governance is of fundamental importance at this time. First, transparency is a means of eradicating corruption. Indeed, corruption thrives on secrecy and confidentiality. When transactions are open books, the private appropriation of public resources is that much harder. The power of the right to information in curbing corruption has already been well demonstrated in various contexts, and this is an achievement of major importance given the wide-ranging economic and social costs of corruption. Here

again, it is important to distance oneself from elitist perspectives on the eradication of corruption, and to keep people's basic concerns centre-stage. In India, for instance, corruption has become an issue for all sections of society, and the right to information campaign has a very wide reach. The right to information, public hearings, social audits, exemplary action taken in certain cases and other tools of transparent governance have eroded the social acceptability of corruption and made significant dent in the prevalent modes of brazen embezzlement. Nevertheless, unless such campaigns are led and defined by people's movements, anti-corruption efforts could restrict themselves to the concerns of the affluent (such as the corporate sector's concern to avoid the “transaction costs” associated with corruption). The right to transparent governance should therefore allow people to link their struggles against corruption to their wider struggles against injustice. Second, transparent governance is essential to restore accountability in the public sector. This is particularly important against the background of growing state abdication from its social responsibilities, evident for instance in the privatization of public services and development programmes. This abdication often takes place under the cover of “liberalization”, but what is really taking place is a shift in the orientation of state support, from broad-based development to narrow corporate interests. Shortcomings in the functioning of public institutions are being used as an excuse to wind up these institutions, and even the basic responsibilities of the state in the sectors they serve. Countering this trend, and expanding the social role of the state, depends on the possibility of radical change in the quality of public services. Transparent governance would allow people an opportunity to force upon the state their obligation to deliver in an efficient manner the most basic services that every citizen expects to be provided with. It would increase the efficiency of public sector institutions, and reflect popular will to have a stronger and more accountable state that takes responsibility for meeting the basic needs of its citizens. For instance, reversing the privatization of health and education services requires functional government schools and health centres. Similarly, the case for halting the privatization of public sector enterprises is much stronger when these enterprises are run in an effective and equitable manner. This is not just a matter of eradicating corruption, but also of ensuring that these facilities and enterprises are accountable to the public. Transparent governance is a tool of public accountability. Third, affirming the right to transparent governance is an aspect of the larger struggle for participatory democracy. Our future depends a great deal on the consolidation of democracy in the country. This specifically applies to settings where the formal institutions of democracy are in place, yet the ability of these institutions to bring about “government of the people, for the people and by the people” has been undermined by gross social inequalities and the concentration of power. In some respects, these anti-democratic tendencies are growing, due for instance to rising economic inequalities and the growing influence of international capital on domestic public policies. However, there is also a positive trend of increasing participation of marginalized people in democratic processes, and of creative thinking and action towards participatory democracy. This movement for participatory democracy needs to go beyond attractive labels towards defining the modes of participatory decision-

making and building the institutions of direct democracy. Participatory budgetmaking, statutory social audits, mandatory public hearings before implementing large development projects are some recent examples of participatory institutions of this kind. Transparent governance is an important aspect of this concern for participatory democracy, even though much more is involved. Finally, the right to transparent governance is closely linked with other ongoing struggles for economic and social rights, such as the right to education, the right to food and the right to work. For instance, just as transparent governance is essential to realise the right to education (in so far as the latter requires an accountable schooling system), the right to transparent governance would be seriously incomplete without the right to education, since “informed choice” requires not only information but also critical understanding. Similarly, there is a strong complementarity between the right to transparent governance and the right to food: transparency is vital for the success of food security programmes, and the eradication of hunger, in turn, is essential to enable people to participate in the democratic process. The right to transparent governance has recently made a leap forward with the enactment of the Right to Information Act 2005, and the movements that have preceded and followed this breakthrough. In this note, we share some of the insights we have gained from our involvement in this process. The right to transparent governance, of course, goes beyond the right to information. Indeed, governance is an act, while information is just a resource, which or may not be well used. For instance, while “participatory budgeting” is an act of transparent governance, it requires much more than transparent accounts. A “social audit” is another institution of transparent governance that makes use of, but goes much beyond, the right to information. Nevertheless, effective exercise of the right to information is one of the cornerstones of transparent governance, and given the significance of recent developments related to the right to information, this issue receives a fair amount of attention in this note. Also, the evolution of the right to information campaign in India illustrates many of the points raised in this introduction, especially the role of people's learning and understanding, gained in the course of a long struggle, in changing the discourse of the issue itself. The main focus therefore is on India, not because India is a model of transparent governance (far from it), but simply because that is where we live and work. Insights from the Right to Information Struggle Today, transparency and accountability are terms in vogue, used liberally by people on both sides of the fence. In this debate, it must be recognised that the one who frames the questions determines the parameters of the answers. When the language of people on all sides of the spectrum is the same, then only action can determine true intent. That is why the struggle for transparent governance must remain grounded in public action by the poor and the marginalised, so that their basic questions of survival are not brushed under the carpet in a sham debate on transparency and accountability. In this section, we illustrate the importance of transparency issues being defined by people themselves with reference to a campaign for the right to information (RTI) that began over a decade ago in rural Rajasthan. Among other

powerful expressions of the collective thinking associated with this campaign are the slogans coined by the participants some of them are highlighted below. Awakening: Whose Money is Government Money? All over India, people at the “grassroots” tend to see the government as an entity over which they can exercise no control. When Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) was in its formative stages in the late 1980s in Central Rajasthan, this was a familiar story. People were fed up with years of mal-administration and the callousness of government functionaries, and had been overcome by a sense of indifference and helplessness about the responsibilities of the State. So much so that even the corruption and inefficiency of public works carried out in their own village was shrugged off with the retort “Sarkari paisa hai - balba do” (“It is government money let it burn”). This perception of government work as alien, people's indifference to corruption and inefficiency, and the deliberate policy of exclusion from decisionmaking by the ruling elite led to a peculiar impasse. The challenge was to transform this sense of helplessness. The First Breakthrough: Information (“Hamara Paisa, Hamara Hisaab” - Our money, our accounts!) In the many meetings in which these issues were debated, working men and women in one of the more economically backward parts of Central Rajasthan pondered about how to meet this challenge. The answers did not come from university-trained social activists or urban intellectuals. It was Mohanji, Narayan, Lal Singh, Sushila, Chunni Singh and many others who steadfastly maintained that if the records did not see the light of day, no position we took could be vindicated by “objective data”. The poor were willing to fight for their rights, but in this unequal battle, they were always told that their “version of the truth” was contrary to official records. They realised in the course of this battle that they would have to get access to those records and place them in the public domain in order to prove the injustice and exploitation they were undergoing. The struggle for the right to information therefore became a part of establishing the right and the means to earn a daily wage, to live with dignity, indeed the right to survive. It used people's democratic rights to link issues of economic survival with wider ethical issues. From the Individual to the Collective Initially, informed access was sought to records of development expenditure in selected villages. A decision was taken by MKSS to demystify these records and place them before the people of the concerned Panchayats (village councils). When the records became public, the first major shift in perception took place. Earlier battles, say for the payment of minimum wages, typically centred on an individual entitlement. It was a demand for “my money”. As soon as the records became public, the battle became collective. The records made it clear that there was exploitation not just of the people who had been denied a wage, but of the whole village, where development had been a casualty. The shift in perception from “my money” to “our money” was quick and dramatic, and an important alliance was formed for the first time between the poor in the village fighting exploitation, and the middle class fighting corruption.

Government functionaries were quick to perceive the threat posed by the demand for disclosure of records. They promptly closed ranks to deny access to the information being demanded. But the pressure point had already been identified, and the new perspective of the people was encapsulated in a simple but powerful slogan: “Hamara Paisa, Hamara Hisaab!” (Our money, our accounts!). This slogan was an indication of the theoretical distance people had travelled and the redefinitions that had taken place as a result of their struggles. The Right to Know is the Right to Live The right to access records of local public expenditure began with livelihood issues. Lack of access to work, wages, education, health care and related opportunities are the biggest concerns of the poor. After years of fighting the government as the “other”, the right to information movement finally reversed the perception. People now perceived that all institutions of governance which should rightfully be theirs were being hijacked. This helped them to overcome the biggest adversary of collective struggle: apathy and hopelessness. Another slogan emerged that linked democratic rights with economic rights: “Hum Janenge - Hum Jiyenge” (The right to know - the right to live). This also helped to change the discourse on the right to information across the world. The Second Breakthrough: Towards Accountability (“Yeh Paise Hamare Aapke, Nahin Kisi Ke Baap Ke” - This money is yours and mine…) In December 1994, when the records accessed were first placed before the people in a jan sunwai (public hearing), the response was electric. Not that this was the first time people learnt or thought about corruption. But suddenly the details of whom, where, when and how had been revealed, and the documents had sifted the crooks from the honest. What struck everyone was the absolute disregard for any kind of propriety. Dead people's names on “muster rolls” (labour registers), transport bills from people who did not even have a bullock cart, unregistered companies delivering mythical materials there was no end to the thieves' creativity. The individual grievance got converted into a larger issue of gross mismanagement of money entrusted to the Panchayat. The perceptional shift from “my money” to “our development” carried the struggle forward into a much larger paradigm of political participation, demanding accountability and genuine self-governance. The school, the road, the pond, the checkdam, social forestry - issues people did not identify with earlier - suddenly became the focus of interest. The linkages between the embezzlement of wages and the breakdown of local infrastructural development bonded the poor and the rural middle class with a common interest in the way public money was spent. The debates on development were now relatively more interesting and meaningful, and those who lived on the fringes of development planning began to realise the significance of issues they had chosen to ignore. These connections stimulated the interest of the common person in the processes of self-governance.

The Third Breakthrough: Right to Self Governance (“Yeh Sarkar Hamare Aap Ki, Nahin Kisi ke Baap Ki” - This government is yours and mine, not anyone's private fiefdom) The modes of a public audit, and the concept of exercising government accountability to the people, became clearer in the course of this campaign. Another significant shift in public perception also took place. As people began to demand the right to audit the deeds and misdeeds of government, and faced opposition from elected representatives and civil servants, a question arose as to who actually had proprietary rights over the government. The legitimacy of MKSS conducting audits of public works could perhaps be questioned. But who could question the right of the people to take decisions instead of others ruling on their behalf? The slogan: “Sarkar Hamare Aap Ki Nahin Kisi Ke Baap Ki!” (The government is no one's ancestral property - it belongs to you and me!) indicated this shift in the idea of ownership of governance itself. The campaign used democratic promises to demand accountability. An off-the-cuff response of the then Chief Minister of Rajasthan, stating that he would give people the “right to information” to enable them to scrutinise the bills and vouchers of the Panchayats, was taken very seriously - especially as this was said in the Assembly and prominently reported in Dainik Navjyoti, a leading Rajasthan daily. Repeated visits to government offices, with requests for copies of documents, proved futile and exposed this statement as an empty promise. In the end the “right to know” was interlinked with the right to accountability of all political promises in the mind of the ordinary citizen. This remained a focus during the long dharna (sit-in) in Beawar in 1996, and in Jaipur in 1997. By this time it was clear that a new discourse on the right to information was emerging, linking information with the right to life. The slogan “Hum Janenge, Hum Jiyenge” (The right to know, the right to live) not only expressed the involvement of the poor with this issue but also activated a large constituency that was willing to campaign for the right to information through struggle and political mobilisation. The more intellectual understanding of it being a freedom of expression issue was strengthened by this new alliance. The great power of this issue, and its strong theoretical foundations as articulated by ordinary people, established the potential for a people's campaign to energise the process of legislation on the right to information. Information as a Legal Entitlement The need for strong RTI legislation became apparent, not only because of the Official Secrets Act (1923) - a colonial legacy most British colonies in Asia and Africa have inherited - but also because we needed an overriding law to force the sharing of information in a pro-active way by the bureaucracy. The demand for a Right to Information Act in Rajasthan became the platform for making this a national issue in 1996 after the Beawar dharna, when a large cross section of people responded to the issue, and the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) was born. Senior members of the press got particularly interested and the Press Council of India, under the Chairmanship of Justice P.B. Sawant, took responsibility for drawing up the first legislation in consultation with a large section of civil society - members of the bench, bar, social activists, politicians, civil servants, editors of mainstream

newspapers, and others. This draft, known as the “Press Council Draft”, served as the base draft for all subsequent legislations and was widely circulated to all the States and to Members of Parliament in 1996. A number of States drafted their own legislation, and beginning with Tamil Nadu which passed its Right to Information Act law in 1996, a series of State laws were enacted. The culmination of this campaign was the enactment of the national Right to Information Act 2005. Right to Information and Systemic Change While the right to information helps many individuals to sort out personal grievances, its larger potential lies in bringing about systemic change. That kind of change is only possible when a particular question establishes its links with a collective and becomes part of a larger democratic process. With the coming into effect of the national law, we can expect to see more of this new kind of democratic activism. One example relates to water privatization in Delhi. In 2006, the resettlement colony based citizens' organisation Parivartan applied for information on the water reforms being undertaken by the Delhi Jal Board. One initial question led to accessing copies of 4000 pages of documents which exposed the role of the World Bank in blatantly pressurizing the Delhi Government to go down the path of privatizing the management of drinking water distribution. Eventually, under intense pressure from citizens' groups, the Delhi Government and the World Bank had to withdraw their plan. The government was forced to acknowledge that a process of public consultation had not taken place, and that in fact the citizens of Delhi were opposed to the water privatisation being brought in for them. People demanded the use of the RTI to make the government-run Delhi Jal Board more efficient and accountable, instead of handing over control to multinational managers and companies. As this example illustrates, the right to information cannot exist in a vacuum. By definition it has to link with an issue or a campaign. This cross-cutting alliance also establishes the nature of the right: it is a democratic and constitutional right for all struggles against injustice and inequality. This recognition has been its strength and explains its integral relationship with other campaigns and movements, providing creativity and strength. The women's movement in Rajasthan, for instance, used it to track the progress on cases of atrocities against women, demanding that the women concerned be informed of the progress on their cases and the contents of various important medico-legal and forensic reports. Civil liberties and human rights groups are using principles of the right to information to ensure transparency and accountability of the police and custodial institutions. People displaced by dams and factories; those denied their rights by the ration shop dealer; communities suffering from the effects of a polluting industrial unit; forest dwellers being evicted from their fields and homes; are some examples (among many) of various people's movements that are using the right to information to bring out the truth in their battles for survival. As collective issues are being placed in the public domain, more citizens are seeing the right to information as a means of building public opinion to influencing decisionmaking, and thereby make democratic structures more accountable. It is therefore not

just in fighting against arbitrary governance and corruption that the right to information has proved its worth. The principles of transparent governance have also helped campaigns with a pro-active agenda of social change and alternative development. Right to Information and Right to Work The complementarity between the right to information and other campaigns is well illustrated by the recent struggle for a National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in India. As it happens, NREGA was enacted around the same time as the Right to Information Act, in mid-2005, and the campaigns that led to this breakthrough reinforced each other in many ways. From the beginning of the NREGA campaign, the right to information and the right to work were seen no just as means of fighting corruption or unemployment, but as complementary steps towards people's empowerment and participatory democracy. Active use of the right to information was also seen as an essential condition for the success of NREGA, since corruption is one of the chief enemies of effective public works programmes and was constantly invoked as an argument against NREGA. The Context: Hunger Amidst Plenty “Bhuke Pet Bhare Godaam!” (Hungry Stomachs and Overflowing Godowns!) Employment guarantee is a long-standing demand of the labour movement in India. The state of Maharashtra has had an Employment Guarantee Act (EGA) since the late 1970s, though Maharashtra's “Employment Guarantee Scheme” was substantially rolled back in the 1990s along with the general reorientation of public priorities and economic policies that took place in India at that time. However, the demand has made little headway in other states, not to speak of the national level (though sporadic attempts were made to table a national EGA in Parliament, notably in 1990). From 2001 onwards, the demand was revived and consolidated, first in Rajasthan and later at the national level. In Rajasthan, the demand for EGA became a major political issue in the context of widespread drought and unemployment, especially in 2001 and 2003. Rajasthan has a long tradition of drought relief through rural public works, but drought relief policy falls short of a legal entitlement to work. As discussed earlier, the roots of the right to information movement in Rajasthan go back to the drought of 1987-8, as a struggle against the embezzlement of wages in public works programmes. This was also a major issue in 2001. By that time, however, much had been learnt and significant linkages had been made between the right to information, the right to live, transparent governance and participatory democracy. Also, the focus of the movement had gone beyond implementation issues and included a concern with employment policies themselves. The exciting new preoccupation with the nature of government spending had led people to question the basis of policy. And since the people had seen the links between corruption and its impact on livelihood, they did not have to make an effort to understand that allocations of money also had to be questioned. This was particularly so in regard to the absence or failure of entitlement programmes such as public works, social security and the public distribution system.

These issues gained enhanced visibility and salience as massive stocks of foodgrains piled up around the country, in the midst of widespread hunger. Even as drought decimated crops and livelihoods in 2001, more than 50 million tonnes of grain were lying idle in public godowns. The demand for a massive food-for-work programme, and beyond that, for an Employment Guarantee Act, acquired a new resonance. It also became one of the core demands of the “right to food campaign” that emerged from this unprecedented situation of hunger amidst plenty.1 From then on the right to food, the right to work and the right to information were inextricably linked with each other. Each issue had its own “campaign”, but these campaigns constantly informed and strengthened each other. Employment Guarantee and Working Class Solidarity “Trishul Nahin , Talwar Nahin, Har Haath Ko Kaam Do” (Work, not swords) The movement for an Employment Guarantee Act also encompassed a larger politics. In particular, it was presented as a counter to the divisive politics of the right wing, which was attempting to mobilise chauvinist Hindu sentiment, for instance (in Rajasthan) through the aggressive distribution of tridents. The presenting of an alternative socio-political worldview, along with the economic case for employment guarantee, was important in building a people-centre perspective in democratic debates. It pitted a positive demand against a negative campaign, and attempted to bring the focus on people's issues. Towards the Right to Work “Har Haath Ko Kaam Do, Kaam Ka Pura Daam Do” (Employment for all at a living wage) The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was passed in August 2005, after a relatively brief but intense campaign involving a wide range of organisations committed to the right to work, including the Left political parties.2 Opposition came chiefly from sections of the corporate sector and its offshoots in the Finance Ministry and elsewhere. One of the main arguments against NREGA was that it would be a waste of public money, due to pervasive corruption in public works programmes. This argument took corruption as an immutable feature of these programmes and denied the possibility of transparent implementation. In refuting this argument, Rajasthan's experience played an important role, particularly the successful abolition of mass fudging in “muster rolls”. It has been widely noted that this practice, common in 1987-8, was largely prevented in 2001-3, when large-scale relief works had to be organised once again. This achievement showed that public vigilance is the most effective way of tackling corruption in employment programmes, and was also the key to the possibility of a successful Employment Guarantee Act. India's NREGA is one of the most daring and important initiatives of collective responsibility in the world today. The argument that India could not afford this kind of expenditure was fought politically. But the act is not just a small economic entitlement. The campaign's main slogan (“Har Haath Ko Kaam Do, Kaam Ka Pura Daam Do” - Employment for all at a living wage) linked the demand for work with a

wage entitlement that would give people a measure of dignity and create space for their political mobilisation. The NREGA, linked with the right to information, provides a unique opportunity for mobilization of vast numbers of the rural poor. It is also an opportunity for political parties and social movements to build campaigns for people's empowerment and rural reconstruction based on a positive agenda. It will give the rural poor a chance to bring into play some of their creative energies. Those who threaten to derail the Act by indulging in corrupt practices can be identified and isolated by using the right to information as well as the wide-ranging transparency safeguards that have been included in the NREGA. NREGA as an Opportunity to Build a Culture of Transparency One of the ironies of anti-corruption efforts by poor people is that their own exposes have been used to argue against the entitlement itself. It is important to continue to expose the double standards involved in using corruption as an argument against creating entitlements like those offered by the NREGA. Those who invoke corruption to argue against NREGA are unlikely to accept the same argument to discontinue, say, defence contracts or oil deals. Potential corruption must be fought and controlled, and recent experience has demonstrated that this can be done. Mass social audits conducted in Dungarpur District (Rajasthan) and Anantapur District (Andhra Pradesh) have proved that it is possible to build alliances of people's organizations, NGOs, political representatives, civil servants and workers to jointly audit works and prevent mass corruption. Even then, of course, corruption is likely to remain a continuous challenge. But just as in other essential spheres of governance we do not abdicate responsibility because of potential corruption, our commitment to NREGA should not be shaken by this challenge. In fact, this challenge can be turned into an opportunity. In an inclusive programme like the NREGA, every expose will become a means of eroding the culture of secrecy, subterfuge, and corruption that plagues our entire system of governance. This process can help to build a culture of transparency and public vigilance that will benefit the whole system. It will also give birth to stronger citizens' movements to fight corruption. The campaign for an effective Employment Guarantee Act has already begun to do so. Social Audit as a Tool of Transparent Governance The potential of NREGA as a means of fostering transparent governance can be seen in some of the mass social audits that have taken place in Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh in recent months. Armed with copies of official records, hundreds of people walked from one worksite and one village to the next to inspect the works, verify the records, conduct surveys, hold public meetings and create an environment where people are able to claim their entitlements under the Act whether it is work on demand, minimum wages, timely payments, participatory planning, or corruptionfree implementation. The NREGA requires a statutory social audit where relevant official documents are pro-actively shared with the people. These documents must be presented in a demystified and comprehensible manner. Platforms must be created to

present the documents and record people's views. Last but not least, action must be taken on the resolutions of the people. The social audits in Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan (with responsive cooperation of the state government in both cases) have gone a long way towards setting this process in motion and creating a vested interest in it amongst the people. This social audit process was put to test in a more â&#x20AC;&#x153;difficultâ&#x20AC;? region in early December 2006, when the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) and Asha Parivar carried out a successful mass social audit of NREGA works in Hardoi District of Uttar Pradesh. In spite of stiff opposition from many village Pradhans (who were often armed), and despite encountering large amounts of fraud, the social audit in Hardoi succeeded in putting the implementation of NREGA on a new footing in this troubled area. The experience so far indicates that this form of political mobilization can force the administration to respond, awaken oppressed people to demand their rights, and strengthen democratic processes. Concluding Remarks As we write this note, a large number of Indians face displacement and other infringements of economic and social rights due to corporate-driven public policies. They also face draconian laws passed in Parliament in comparative opaqueness, without public debate, which deprive them of basic resources. The provisions of mandatory disclosure under the RTI Act must be used to resist these anti-democratic tendencies, and to ensure that people are informed and consulted before undertaking policies that displace or affect them. Affirming the right to work is also a part of this democratic battle against elitist economic and social policies. In the search for a political alternative, it is clear now that ideological battles are not being fought between one party and another. Electoral politics has been largely reduced to questions of who will occupy positions of power. Meaningful political battles will now be found in the varied issue-based struggles for people's real participation and direct control over governance. In the application of the right to know, a whole gamut of situations of injustice, undemocratic behaviour and arbitrary state action has been contested. Whether it is in relation to the appropriation of natural resources, or the misuse of development funds, or state support for private grabbing of land, the right to information places an activist burden on those who use it, which prevents the setting in of cynicism and apathy. Further, this is not a one-sided process. The first reaction to expect from asking a question is to be questioned oneself, and the process of action and reaction itself leads to an environment of transparency. The campaign for transparent governance in India has consciously forced the structures of government to respond or react. By law now, records have to be shown. If they are not, reasons have to be stated, and decisions have to be explained. Even the intention to keep certain information confidential and secret has to be stated. This has forced the government to accept that information has to be shared. But going beyond this, the collective responsibilities of citizen and ruler alike are being fundamentally

altered. Indeed, public debate and the right to question cut at the roots of bureaucratic and feudal power. Forcing information sharing begins the process of shared decision making, and consequently the sharing of power on a perpetual basis. (Draft paper prepared for the South Asian Human Rights Forum, held in Delhi and Lahore 2007) Endnotes 1 On India's right to food campaign, see www.righttofoodindia.org the Right To Information Campaign see righttoinformation.info 2 For further details, see e.g. Ian McAuslan (2006), “The Politics of Pro-Poor Policy Change in India: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act”, mimeo, University of Sussex; also Jason Lakin and Nirmala Ravishankar (2006), “Working for Votes: The Politics of Employment Guarantee in India”, mimeo, Department of Government, Harvard University.

Economic Cooperation Between the Two Punjabs Dr. Ranjit Singh Ghuman

conomic interdependence and cooperation between India and Pakistan, and for that matter, between the two Punjabs is a natural phenomenon as, prior to the Partition in 1947, they were part of one large country albeit a subcontinent. Independence and partition came side by side. The people of both the countries had a long common historical past and socio-cultural and political affinity. They jointly participated in their struggle for independence from the British rulers. People of both the countries (prior to partition both the regions) had lived together for centuries, sometimes at peace and sometimes at enmity. Nevertheless they had lived together. The transfer of power from the Britishers culminated into large scale massacre and mass exodus of people. Punjab and Bengal, inter-alia, were the worst sufferers as the division was mainly of these two provinces of the erstwhile British colony. Punjab was divided into East Punjab (India) and West Punjab (Pakistan) and Bengal was divided into East Bengal (Pakistan) and West Bengal (India). The division was so rigid that newly demarcated national boundary-lines cut asunder the rivers, canals, mountains, transport net-work, the entire economic system, the residential houses and so much so the families. Independence and partition witnessed a strange combination of joy and sorrow as, along with the celebrations of independence, lakhs of people were killed and still millions were being forced to leave their age old relations and places of residence. In the process, nearly one million (some estimates keep it up to half a million) were killed and about 14 million people were uprooted in Punjab only. The population of both East and West Punjab, prior to independence, was less than 30 million (out of which nearly 9 million was that of East Punjab). This means nearly 50 per cent people of Punjab were uprooted in 1947, unparallel in the world history. Pakistan emerged in 1947 with scarcely any manufacturing capacity except an oil refinery in the western region, a few cotton textile plants and some units of sugar/refining, tea processing and cement production. Most of the manufactured goods were initially being imported by Pakistan from India. The region which, after independence, came to be known as Pakistan had been mainly developed as a source of industrial raw material and agricultural commodities. The industrial development of British India took place mainly in the territory which later constituted India. In fact, India possessed a little more than 90 per cent of total number of factories (Zafar

Altaf, 1983). As regards major establishments, more than 96 per cent were in Indian territory; the share of workers employed in industry was even larger. Thus, in terms of industrial units, commercial establishments and natural resources, India was more favourably situated than Pakistan at the time of partition. As a result of partition, India lost its food granary and source of raw materials while Pakistan lost its source of processed/manufactured goods, whatever little bit were there. The economies of both the countries were mainly agrarian at the time of partition. Pakistan's agricultural sector contributed about 54.50 per cent towards its gross domestic product during 1949-50. The share of manufacturing output in gross domestic product of Pakistan was 7.9 per cent during 1949-50. In the case of India the share of primary, secondary and tertiary sectors in its net domestic product was 61.3, 14.5 and 24.2 per cent, respectively, during 1950-51 (Keith and Khan, 1972). The respective share of agriculture in the GDP of India and Pakistan was 23 per cent in 2002. The corresponding share of industry was 27 per cent and 23 per cent and that of services was 51 per cent and 53 per cent. (World Bank, 2004). The role of Punjabis in the independence struggle was par excellence but independence cost them very dearly. They had to struggle hard, on both sides of the border, to settle down again in life. Some of them migrated to places other than Punjab. Though a large number of Punjabis have immigrated to foreign countries, yet, the maximum concentration of Punjabi population is still in Pakistan and Indian Punjabs. The Punjabi diaspora in foreign countries has its alma mater in both the Punjabs and have strong socio-economic and cultural roots both the Punjabs. The population of both the Punjabs, at present, expected to be around 105 million, 85 million in Pakistan Punjab and 25 million in Indian Punjab. The Population of Pakistan Punjab was 73.6 million as per 1998 census and that of Indian Punjab was 24.3 million as per 2001 census. Pakistan Punjab accounts for 55.63 per cent of population and 25.8 per cent of geographical area of Pakistan (Govt. of Pakistan, 2005). Compared to it, Indian Punjab accounts for 2.36 per cent of population and 1.53 per cent of geographical area of India. Both the Punjabs have been contributing significantly towards the agricultural production, especially towards the food grains. Prior to partition, the Punjab state used to be known as granary of India and even after partition, they enjoyed the status of food bowls of their respective countries. The paper has been organized in six parts. Part I, the preceding one, gives a brief introduction. Parts II, III and IV discuss potentialities and rationale of cooperation among two Punjabs in agriculture, industry & technology and trade, respectively. The cost of acrimonious relations between India and Pakistan, and for that matter between two Punjabs, has been discussed in Part V. Part VI gives summary and suggestions. Agriculture Agriculture has been the mainstay of both the Punjabs and because of this they occupy a pride place in their respective countries. Out of the total cropped area in Pakistan,

Punjab accounts for 76.38 per cent (16.10 million hectares). Nearly 63 per cent of rural work force of Pakistan Punjab is employed in agriculture. Approximately 40 per cent of rural income in both the Punjabs is generated from crop and livestock sector (Govt. of Pakistan, 2005). Compared to it, Indian Punjab accounts for 2.52 per cent of total cropped area. Out of the rural workers in Indian Punjab, 53.5 per cent workers are engaged in agriculture (Govt. of Punjab, 2005). The distribution of land holdings is more uneven in Pakistan Punjab than the Indian Punjab. Nearly 45 per cent of holdings are up to two hectares in Indian Punjab whereas in Pakistan Punjab, 53 per cent holdings are up to 2 hectares. The average area owned by large holdings in Pakistan Punjab is much higher than the average area owned by the large holdings in Indian Punjab. The area owned by large holdings in Pakistan Punjab was 36.86 per cent of the total cropped area in 1990-91 whereas the area owned by the large holdings in Indian Punjab was 28.74 per cent in 1995-96. Both the Punjabs adopted new agricultural technology (popularly known as green revolution) since the mid 1960s and experienced a spectacular increase both in production and per hectare yield. The two Punjabs, however, experienced different levels of mechanization and attained different levels of yield per hectare. The total farm area with Pakistan Punjab is 11.24 million hectares (55 per cent of Pakistan) whereas in Indian Punjab it is only 4.27 million hectares. Clearly Pakistan Punjab's farm area is 2.63 times larger than that of Indian Punjab. Nevertheless, the cropping intensity in Indian Punjab is nearly 186 whereas the cropping intensity in Pakistan Punjab is about 154. Though the high cropping intensity increases the total cropped area, yet, the cropped area of Pakistan Punjab is higher by 2.18 times than that of Indian Punjab. Agricultural operations in Indian Punjab are highly mechanized compared to Pakistan Punjab. In fact, agriculture is highly capitalistic agriculture in Indian Punjab (Gill and Ghuman, 2001). Indian Punjab has roughly four times higher tractorization per hectare than Pakistan Punjab. Similarly, Indian Punjab has 4.51 times more tubewells (per hectare) than Pakistan Punjab. The use of chemical fertilizer is also much higher in Indian Punjab than that in Pakistan Punjab. The major crops of Pakistan Punjab are wheat, rice, cotton, sugarcane, oil seeds and pulses. The percentage shares of cropped area under these main crops are 41, 11, 15, 3, 2, and 7, respectively (Govt. of Pakistan, 2005). The major crops of Indian Punjab are wheat, paddy, cotton, sugarcane and oil seeds. The green revolution has drastically displaced the production of pulses in Indian Punjab. The share of these crops in the cropped area of Indian Punjab is 42.4, 32.5, 7.3, 1.3 and 2.1, respectively. Clearly, wheat and paddy accounted for nearly 75 per cent of total cropped area in Indian Punjab, whereas it accounted for 55 per cent of cropped area in Pakistan Punjab. The cropping pattern in Indian Punjab is highly concentrated around wheat and paddy.

The per hectare yield of wheat, paddy, sugarcane and cotton is, however, much higher in Indian Punjab than that of Pakistan Punjab. The per hectare yield of wheat in Indian Punjab is 4696 kgs. as compared to 2518 kgs. in Pakistan Punjab. Similarly, the per hectare yield of rice is nearly 3545 kgs. as compared to 1706 kgs. in Pakistan Punjab. The per hectare yield of sugarcane is 6500 kgs. in Indian Punjab as compared to 4500 kgs. in Pakistan Punjab. The per hectare yield of cotton is, however, much higher (643 kgs.) in Pakistan Punjab compared to 437 kgs. in Indian Punjab. In fact Indian Punjab experienced worst cotton yield for many years together during 1990s. The per hectare yield of potato is also higher in Indian Punjab than that of Pakistan Punjab. The per hectare yield of pulses in Pakistan Punjab is, however, much higher than in Indian Punjab ( Govt. of Punjab, 2005;Govt. of Pakistan, 2005). The colour of green revolution has started fading in both the Punjabs (more so in Indian Punjab) as per hectare yield is almost stagnated and the per hectare return has started declining. The trend growth rate of per hectare return of wheat, over variable costs, in Indian Punjab has been negative (-0.35 per cent per annum) during 1990s. The trend growth rate of per hectare return in paddy, over variable costs, has also been negative (-2.83 per cent per annum) during 1990s. The combined trend growth rate of per hectare return of wheat and paddy, over variable costs, thus, has been negative (-2.18 per cent per annum) during 1990s. The trend growth rate of per hectare return, over variable costs, of cotton has been highly negative (-14.24 per cent per annum) during 1990s. The trend growth rate of per hectare return, over variable cost, both in wheat and paddy has also been negative in Pakistan Punjab during the same period (Ghuman, 2002). Clearly, the agricultural production of major crops in Indian Punjab is taking place under highly diminishing returns. The situation may not be very different in Pakistan Punjab. There is, however, a significant difference in the yield growth rates of various crops in two Punjabs. During 1991-92 and 2001-02, the per annum yield growth rate of wheat in Indian Punjab was 2.04 per cent compared to 2.75 per cent in Pakistan Punjab. Pakistan Punjab registered a very high yield growth rate in rice (3.13 per cent) compared to just 0.34 per cent in India (Sidhu and Bhullar, 2006). It shows that Indian Punjab's yield of rice was already high and stagnating and Pakistan Punjab is trying to catch the Indian Punjab in this respect. It is very interesting to note that both the Punjabs suffered from a negative yield growth rate (-6.77 per cent in Indian Punjab and -1.18 per cent in Pakistan Punjab). Similarly, Indian Punjab experienced a negative yield growth rate (-0.17 per cent) compared to Pakistan Punjab's 1.09 per cent, during the same period. The yield growth rate of maize in Indian Punjab was, however, quite higher (3.67 per cent) than that of Pakistan Punjab (1.73 per cent) during the same period (Sidhu and Bhullar, 2006). Clearly Pakistan Punjab's growth rate of yield in many crops was quite higher than that of Pakistan Punjab, yet Pakistan Punjab is much behind the Indian Punjab, in the absolute yield of these crops. Another very serious, but related, problem in both the Punjabs has been very high absorption of work force in agriculture. In the face of declining employment in various crops and very low growth rate of employment in other sectors, a sizeable

proportion of work force, seemingly employed, is disguisedly employed in agriculture. At the same time, the share of agriculture in the net state domestic product has almost come down to a half over the past 50 years. The share of labour force in agriculture in India and Pakistan declined from 75 and 66 per cent, respectively, in 1960 to 60 and 47 per cent, respectively, in 2001. Compared to it, the share of agriculture in their respective GDP declined from 50 and 46 per cent, respectively, to 25 per cent during the same period (World Bank, 1980 and FAO, 2005). Clearly, the development in both the Punjabs have not witnessed Kaldor-Kuznets (Kaldor, 1967; Kuznets 1965) pattern of long term development dynamics according to which both the share of agriculture in state's income and employment should decline over the long period. The development pattern in both the Punjabs, however, witnessed a substantial decline in the share of agricultural income but a marginal decline in agricultural employment. Thus, the immediate need is to shift rural work force from farm to non-farm employment in both the Punjabs. In fact, one of the most important limitations of the development models in two Punjabs has been a very high proportion of labour force in agriculture. At the same time the labour absorption capacity the crop sector has suffered a serious decline (Gill, 2002; and Bhalla, 1987 and 1989). The employment elasticity in Indian agriculture declined from 0.54 during 1983-94 to zero during 1994-2000 (Sharma, 2005). A study of Indian Punjab shows that per hectare employment of labour in agriculture declined by 20.31 per cent during 1983-84 and 1996-97 (Gill, 2002). It is significant to note that the annual growth rate of employment in agriculture in India dwindled to just -0.34 per cent during 1994-2000 from 1.51 per cent during 1983-84 (Sharma, 2005). It is in this context that development of rural non-farm sector (RNFS) is of paramount significance to attain occupational and income diversification in the predominantly rural and agrarian economies of the two Punjabs. Hymer and Resnick (1969) were the pioneer to argue for the development of rural non-agricultural economy. However, they did not refute the notion that the rural non-farm economy has a weak employment potential because of the production of inferior goods and services which are non-tradable, called “Z-goods”. But there are a good number of economists, starting with Mellor (1976), who argue that rural non-farm sector (RNFS) play an important role in generating and sustaining growth and employment in the rural economy (Timmer, 1988; Rosegrant and Hazell, 2000; Ranis and Stewart, 1993). In a recent study of RNFE in some of the villages (in the Punjab province of India) Ghuman (2005) has concluded that the RNFE is of low-quality-low income in nature. The annual per capita mean earnings of majority (55.5 pr cent) of the non-farm workers engaged in rural non-farm informal sector (both wage- and self-employment) were lower than the gross annual earnings of a farmer with one hectare of arable land. Besides, the shift of the agricultural workers to RNFS was largely due to the “pusheffect” and not due to the “pull-effect”. It is evident from the foregoing discussion that agriculture in Indian Punjab is more

developed than that of Pakistan Punjab. The Pakistan Punjab can, thus, learn from the experience of Indian Punjab. At the same time, the development experience in agriculture in Indian Punjab has many limitations from which Pakistan's Punjab agriculture can be avoided. Similarly, there are crops (cotton and pulses) in the yield of which Pakistan Punjab has an edge. Indian Punjab can learn from Pakistan Punjab's experience. Both the Punjabs can exchange their development experiences in agriculture sector. Both can learn from their research and extension services in the agriculture sector. This requires an attitude of give and take. The interaction among the agricultural scientists, economists and farmers of both the Punjabs is thus very important to learn from each other. Such in interaction would also help growth of allied agricultural activities. In fact, both the Punjabs should undertake joint R&D in agriculture, marketing and extension. This way they would be able to make R&D more cost effective. As nearly two-third population in both the Punjabs is still living in rural area and the mainstay of rural population is still agriculture, the cooperation in agriculture is of great significance. Out of the 34 districts of Pakistan Punjab, the proportion of rural population in 29 districts has been higher than 70 per cent (Govt. of Pakistan, 2005). Similarly, out of the 17 districts of Indian Punjab, 10 districts have more than 70 per cent rural population. To improve the living standards of rural population in both the Punjabs, the development and diversification of agricultural sector in particular and that of rural economy in general is of paramount importance. The experience of farmers' cooperatives of Taiwan in organizing all the economic activities, from credit to production, processing and marketing can be very useful for diversifying the rural economies of both the Punjabs. The cooperative network, especially marketing (as MARKFED, Asia's largest cooperative), can also be helpful to Pakistan Punjab. Cooperation among Punjabis in two Punjabs in particular, and the global Punjabi diaspora in general, would certainly help in ameliorating the lot of rural people in both the Punjabs.

the development of any economy. Continuous improvement in technology can help postponing the diminishing returns to scale. In fact, agriculture may not be able to help any economy to grow beyond certain limits. But the industrial development, with continuous research and development, may help in reaping higher levels of productivity and growth. As regards cooperation in industry and technology, it can be better done at the level of two countries, viz., India and Pakistan. Nevertheless, both the Punjabs can also take an initiative in this direction, given the rules and regulations of their respective countries. Pakistan Punjab, given its size and influence, can play a formidable role in persuading its Federal Government to initiate steps for normalizing the relations with India. For the purpose of cooperation between two Punjabs, the Indian Punjab may be taken as a larger geographic region including the neighbouring states in India. Yet, having proximity to each other and a long common border, a strong technical and skilled manpower, both the Punjabs can explore the possibilities for industrial and technical cooperation. The Punjabis settled in the developed countries and working in industry and in R&D can also help in the industrial and technological development of both the Punjabs. This may be true in a good number of industrial production lines. The need of the hour is to explore such possibilities and use that potential for the development of two Punjabs in particular and the two countries in general. Such a cooperation would go a long way in raising the living standard and in generating employment in both the Punjabs.

In the face of challenges from the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) under WTO regime the cooperation between two countries (India and Pakistan) is rather more important as their agricultural economies and the rural livelihood are going to be influenced in a big way. Both the countries must join hands with other developing economies (having a sizeable stake on agriculture) to assert their position in the negotiations on AOA. The cooperation of two Punjabs can certainly play an important role in persuading their respective national leadership to join hands at the WTO forum.

There are many priority areas pertaining to industry and technology in both the countries where cooperation may be undertaken. However, for cooperation among two Punjabs, we would have to identify their resource base (both men and material), infrastructure and the demand for the products and services. Both the Punjabs, being predominantly agrarian states, may start with the cooperation in the food and agribusiness industries. Engineering industry, pharmaceuticals, bicycles, textiles, harvest combines, tractors, etc. can be some of the other areas where both the Punjabs can do a beginning. Collaboration in post-harvest technologies including an exchange of information and exports on the development of processing units/scientific research marketing and exports in the agricultural sector can be another very important area of cooperation. Information technology, especially IT enabled services, IT education and manpower training can be other areas of cooperation. There can be another remote possibility of laying a pipeline from Jalandhar to Lahore to export a substantial quantity of diesel to Pakistan Punjab which it currently imports it from Kuwait and Middle East countries through Karachi port. The gas pipe line from Iran, through Pakistan if materializes, would give boost to cooperation between two countries in general and between two Punjabs in particular. It would also take care of increasing energy requirement of the region.

Industry and Technology Industry and technology are not only highly interrelated but also play a pivotal role in

Both the Indian Punjab and Pakistan Punjab have achieved a reasonable level of industrial development after independence. On both sides of the border there are a

It is thus necessary to learn about the rural development experiences, identify the strengths and weaknesses of agriculture and rural development in both the Punjabs, create regional network to develop agriculture and rural economy, establish joint technical committees on agriculture and rural development.

good number of industrial towns which are not far-off from each other. Out of the total 23 major industrial establishments of Pakistan, 11 are located in Punjab. About 30-50 per cent of the total gross manufacturing output in Pakistan is being contributed by Punjab. Out of the seven major industries of Pakistan, firms related to all the seven industries are located in Punjab. Agro-based industrialization is one of the priorities of both Pakistan and Indian Punjab. Both the Punjabs can benefit a lot from cooperation in this area. The main forms of cooperation can be joint ventures, joint marketing, joint research and development, development of transport network, investment in the development of infrastructure, etc. The Punjabi diaspora, settled abroad, can also help in a big way in providing investment/technology and market network. The pre-requisite of joint investment in industry and R&D is peaceful and friendly relations between both India and Pakistan. The continuous acrimonious relations would have to be substituted with friendly and normal relations based on mutual trust and commitment. The fear-psychosis would have to be done away with. In the absence of all this, no entrepreneur would like to take risk. The entrepreneur cannot plan investment in the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. Already, the Indian Punjab has suffered a lot in its industrial sector because of ever lurking fear of uncertainty. Being a border state, many industrial units from Batala and Amritsar have already shifted to other neighbouring states in India. The industry and business needs a commensurate economic and political environment. The cooperation in industry, technology and business would be much more beneficial to Indian Punjab as compared to Pakistan Punjab. In fact, Pakistan Punjab is a large and dominant state and can afford to establish industries and attract investment (both domestic and foreign) away from the international border. Thus, the normal and friendly relations between India and Pakistan would not only help promote industrial and technological cooperation between two Punjabs but would also promote business environment conducive to domestic and foreign investment. Both the Punjabs are in dire need of such a cooperation. Another very important pre-requisite for investment, joint-ventures trade and joint marketing is the sound banking system and market institutions. Both the Punjabs have attained a considerable level of development in these areas. However, the presence of Indian Banks in Pakistan and that of Pakistan in India is not there. The absence of such a facility not only makes transactions difficult but it results in a considerable delay in transactions. At present, transactions between the two countries take place through international banks. Transport network (land, sea and air) is equally important for industrial and technological cooperation. The Indian Punjab, being a land locked state, has no sea-port. Thus, the land and rail routes between two Punjabs need to be revived and strengthened. Incidentally, prior to partition both the Punjabs had good transport links. The Punjab, Haryana and

Delhi Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry would have to play an important role in persuading and pressurizing the governments of both the Punjabs and the political leadership in both the countries for normalizing the relations with each other and thus create an atmosphere commensurate for cooperation in the field of industry and technology. Trade Relations As both the Punjabs are provinces of two independent and sovereign countries, their trade relations may be viewed in the broader framework of trade relations between India and Pakistan. Data and information about a country's international trade is recorded by each country's central agency under the Ministry of Commerce/Trade. As such, the state level data about the volume and direction of exports and imports is hardly available. This is more so about the Indian and Pakistan Punjabs. At present, trade between India and Pakistan is taking place through sea-routes (mainly via Bombay-Karachi ports). Nevertheless, the trade relations between the two Punjabs assume a special importance as they share a common border and a common past. There is around 2400 km long delineated international border between India and Pakistan. Besides, there is about 750 km long line of control (LoC), which mainly divides the Indian Kashmir and the Pakistan occupied Kashmir. On the eve of independence, there was a sizeable inter-regional trade between the two regions. India's share in Pakistan's total imports and exports was 50.6 per cent and 23.6 per cent, respectively, during 1948-49. The corresponding shares in 1964-65 dwindled to 1.1 per cent and 5.9 per cent, respectively. Pakistan's share in India's imports and exports during 1951-52 was 1.06 per cent and 2.21 per cent, respectively. These shares went down to 0.17 per cent and 0.61 per cent in 1960-61 (Ghuman, 1986). However, a short bout of Indo-Pak war in 1965 led to a trade embargo which lasted for about nine years. It is unparallel in world history. As a result, there were no trade relations between the two neighbouring countries during 1966-74. Even there was no diplomatic relations between them from 6 December 1971 to 24 July 1976. It speaks volumes of political immaturity and irrationality. In fact, hatred, fearpsychosis, political immaturity and irrationality have been governing the trade and other relations between India and Pakistan. Trade was again resumed between the two countries in January 1975. India's share in Pakistan's exports and imports during 2000-01 was 0.60 per cent and 2.22 per cent, respectively. Pakistan's share in India's exports and imports during 2000-01 was 0.41 per cent and 1.2 per cent, respectively (Ghuman, 2001). The full potential of their mutual trade has never been realized, mainly because of the fact that political irrationalities/compulsions have always overshadowed economic rationalities. The bilateral trade between the two countries during 2002-03 was worth US $ 262 million whereas their global exports were more than US $ 52853 million. Their bilateral trade accounted for just 0.4 per cent of their global exports. The volume of trade between the two countries is given in table 1. Trade between the two countries has been far below their mutual trade potential which is being

estimated around US $ 7000 million. The implementation of SAFTA since January 2006 may give a big push to their mutual trade. An unofficial trade, via third countries, worth US $ 1000 million and a contraband trade between US $ 1000-2000 million, is taking place between India and Pakistan. If the unofficial trade is officially canalized both the countries can earn a lot in terms of customs duty, etc. Ever weakening trade ties and non-exploitation of trade potential between India and Pakistan have caused immeasurable financial loss to them. Both the countries would have gained somewhere between Indian Rs. 15,0000-20,0000 millions during the last five decades, had they fully exploited their mutual trade potential (Ghuman 1986 and 2001). The gains were mainly in terms of lower prices, compared to the global prices, and much lower transport and transshipment costs due to proximity with each other. It is something strange that trade between two neighbouring countries has been mostly through Bombay-Karachi routes whereas on the eve of partition most of the trade used to be through land route via Wagah-Attari border and other land routes. The distance between Amritsar and Lahore is just about 50 kms. Similarly, trade can take place through Hussainwala (Ferozpur) border. It is irrationality of the highest order that goods are first transported to Bombay, then to Karachi and then to Lahore and other surrounding regions and vice versa. It, interalia, involves huge transport and transshipment costs. More so opening up the Wagah-Attari border and Hussainiwala border for trade, inter alia, can give a boost to border trade also. In that event, both the Punjabs and neighboring states in India would gain a lot in terms of economic growth, and a massive generation of employment. Had there been strong trade ties between the two neighbouring countries, they would have also gained from their trade with Middle East and Central Asian countries and from intra-SAARC trade. Pakistan, too, would have also gained a lot from the transit fee on Indian trade to third countries via Pakistan territory and vice-versa. Pakistan can also trade through land routes, through Indian territory, to Bangladesh. There can be a long list of items which the two countries can exchange with each other apart from the items being traded at present. Tables 2 and 3 present the composition of trade between the two countries. The realization of latent trade potentialities would, however, take place only when both countries normalize their relations with each other and adhere to the economic rationality and optimality. The logic of trade theory should also be observed while trading with each other. Both the countries should create proper trade environment if they want to reap the benefits of full trade potentials. As regards trade cooperation between two Punjabs, there is a need to undertake a detailed study about the surplus for trade and demand for each other's commodities. Origin of trade and destination of trade on both sides of the border would have to be studied. The trade originating from Indian Punjab and neighbouring North-West Indian states having destination in Pakistan Punjab and neighbouring regions in Pakistan, and vice-versa, can take place via land routes through Wagah and

Hussainiwala check posts if these routes are opened for trade. This would result in enormous savings in terms of time, transport and transshipment costs. At the Commerce Secretary level talks between India and Pakistan on August 11-12, 2004 in Islamabad, India proposed to open the Attari-Wagah land route for trade. It is important to note that transportation of goods from certain locations from India via Bombay-Karachi route takes much longer time than via land routes of Wagah and Hussainiwala borders. Mr. S.K. Aggarwal, Director Vimal Organics Ghaziabad (U.P., India), while sharing his experience told the participants (from industry and business both from India and Pakistan) in the "FICCI Conference on India Pakistan Relations" on 2 March 2004 (New Delhi) that it takes 28 days for the consignment from Ghaziabad to reach Lahore via Bombay-Karachi route. There is thus a need to open land-route for trade and even start container cargo through these routes. Besides, many bulk commodities, presently being imported from the far-off places, if imported from each other will result in the saving of lot of transport and transshipment cost. Though proper and reliable data are not yet available for trade originating from both the Punjabs, having destinations to both the Punjabs, yet, some crude indicators are there which highlight their mutual trade interests and potentialities. The list of participating firms/companies in the Exhibition "Made in Pakistan" organized by FICCI in New Delhi during the first week of March 2004 can help in identifying the trade interests originating from Pakistan Punjab. As many as 74 firms from Pakistan participated in the exhibition, out of which nearly 24 were from Pakistan Punjab. There is a need to promote such country/region specific exhibitions in both the Punjabs. As many as 65 business delegates from Lahore (Pakistan Punjab) participated in the FICCI Conference mentioned above. Normalization of relations, and opening up of land routes for trade and tourism, along with business friendly visa regime, would certainly enhance trade cooperation between the two Punjabs in particular and between the two countries in general. Common language and culture would be an additional factor in exploiting mutual trade potentials between the two Punjabs. The visa-regime should be made liberal in order to give a boost to trade. Cost of Acrimonious Relations The not-so-good relations, political immaturity, fundamentalist approach to solve the problems and fear psychosis on both the sides resulted in a huge loss of men and material during all these years. Both the countries are still continuing with hatred and enmity towards each other. As a result they have suffered huge losses for not developing economic cooperation with each other apart from spending huge amount on defence. The per capita annual expenditure on defence in Pakistan comes out to be US$ 27. Contrary to it, Pakistan's public expenditure on health was 0.9 per cent of its GNP during 1990-99. During the same period its public expenditure on education has been around 2.7 per cent of its GNP. The per capita annual expenditure on defence in India was US $ 12.5 in 1999. Compared to it, India's public expenditure on health and education during 1990-98 was 0.6 per cent and 3.2 per cent of its GNP, respectively. It is clear from the above facts that Pakistan's military expenditure is 1.67 times more than its combined public expenditure on health and education, so vital for human

development. During the decade of 1980s, Pakistan has been spending more than 6.5 per cent of its GDP on defence and it was more than 5 per cent during 1990s. The corresponding percentage in the case of India was more than 3 per cent and more than 2 per cent, respectively. As the percentage of central government expenditure, it was ranging between 32 per cent and 38.67 per cent in Pakistan during 1986-87 to 1996-97. In the case of India, it ranged from 14.68 per cent to 18.39 per cent during the same period. Evidently both the neighbouring, but poor, countries have been spending very heavily on defence. A major proportion of that may be attributed to the threat perception from each other and the fear-psychosis. The poor economies like them can ill-afford such a â&#x20AC;&#x153;luxuryâ&#x20AC;?. Both should understand that the real might and security of a country lies in its economic strength and stability and not merely in its military strength. It is worth mentioning that both India and Pakistan have already fought three and a half low intensity wars with each other besides numerous skirmishes. They could not solve any longstanding problem between them through wars and violence. The complexities of problems have gone from bad to worse. The defence expenditure is not the only measure of cost. The cost of acrimonious relations has many other dimensions. It leads to breach of peace and stability which adversely affects the growth and development and leads to negative transformation of institutions. Human cost, which is the most important, cannot be quantified in money terms. According to certain estimates, the human cost of the wars between India and Pakistan was a death toll of 22600 persons and another 50000 were maimed or wounded on both sides. As per a report (Ilmas and Bhatt, 2004), the Siachen conflict alone would cost India Rs. 72000 millions and Pakistan Rs. 18000 millions, during 2004-08. Kashmir's gross terror product (GTP) is estimated to be Rs. 3.5 billion. During 1989-2002, Kashmir suffered a loss of Rs. 16,5000 millions because of losing 27 million tourists. Summary and Conclusions Economic cooperation between two Punjabs is a dependent variable on the relations between the two countries India and Pakistan. As such, relations between two Punjabs may be analyzed and discussed in the framework of the wider spectrum of relations between their respective countries. Nevertheless, Indo-Pak relations can be influenced by the people of two Punjabs in particular and the Punjabi diaspora settled elsewhere in general. It is these people who have very high stakes on the future scenario of relations between India and Pakistan. If Indo-Pak relations are normal and friendly, Punjabis in particular and the whole of India and Pakistan in general would benefit. On the contrary, Punjabis in particular and the whole of India and Pakistan in general would be sufferer. Thus, rationality demands normal relations between the two neighbouring countries. The first step towards normalization of their relations would be to shed mistrust, hatred, fear-psychosis, etc. and then approach the issue with an open mind and a positive approach. Let us now translate the "traditional enmity" into "traditional

friendship and cooperation". By having friendly relations with each other, both the countries would be able to reap the enormous benefits of economic cooperation and reduce their defence expenditure. This would save them from incalculable loss of men and material they have been suffering for the last about 59 years. It is high time that both the countries should come out of the old syndrome and unitedly face the challenges emanating from the changing scenario of globalization. Instead of wasting their energy and resources on nurturing and perpetuating conflict, they should rather focus on peace, stability, growth and development. This is the only solution for the solution of their pressing problems of poverty, unemployment, inequality, illiteracy and poor health status. Both India and Pakistan have been paying an extraordinary heavy price for their procrastination on Kashmir and other core issues. As such, Pakistan's singular preoccupation with Kashmir and India's rhetoric for 'no talks without stoppage of crossborder-terrorism' would not solve any problem between them. They should rather engage themselves in continuous dialogue as the eventual solution would emerge out of dialogue and an attitude of give and take rather than out of 'war' and 'violence'. Increased economic inter-dependence would certainly generate a pressure for having friendly relations with each other. Promotion of trade relations, joint-ventures, joint marketing, joint study groups on agriculture, industry, trade and technology and other issues, permanent trade counsellors in each other's High Commission, strengthening of SAARC, joint patrolling of the LOC, end to propaganda war and hatred, frequent meetings of civil and political bureaucracy and political leadership, track-II diplomacy and liberal people to people contact, etc., could be some formidable steps towards confidence building exercise before the eventual solution to the core issues. In order to enhance economic cooperation between two Punjabs, the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Punjab, Haryana and Delhi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in particular and FICCI and CII in general, would have to play a more meaningful and effective role. The durable peace in the sub-continent would take place only after the satisfactory solution to the Kashmir problem. Nevertheless, it will require a considerable amount of political maturity, will, sincerity and statesmanship of the highest order. India, being a bigger country, has much more responsibility than Pakistan. Economic cooperation between two Punjabs would, thus, be governed by the nature of relations between their respective countries. Nevertheless, it is in the larger interest of Punjabis in particular and peoples of Indian and Pakistan in general that they must strive hard to attain and maintain friendly relations with each other. The saner political leadership and people in both the countries must prevail upon the fundamentalists on both sides of the border. Both Indian and Pakistan leadership must transcend the past syndrome and march jointly towards the betterment of their people, including the Kashmiris, (earlier the better); otherwise posterity would not forgive them for their acts of commission and omission.

100

101 26 -25 26

1976-77 10 2 8 12

1977-78 49 28 21 77

1978-79 23 16 7 38

1979-80 11 31 -20 42

1980-81 1 95 -94 97

1981-82 6 61 -55 67

1982-83 7 39 -32 47

1983-84 12 27 -15 39

1984-85 11 13 -2 24

1985-86 12 22 -10 34

1986-87 12 21 -9 33

1987-88 15 22 -7 36

1988-89 25 50 -25 75

1989-90 31 32 -1 63

1990-91 41 47 -6 88

1991-92 40 87 -46 127

1992--93 48 123 -75 171

1993-94 64 44 20 108

1994-95 57 53 4 110

1995-96 77 45 32 122

1996-97 157 36 121 193

1997-98 143 44 99 188

1998-99 106 214 -108 321

1999-2000 93 68 25 161

2000-01 187 64 123 251

2001-02 144 65 79 209

2002-03 206 45 161 251

2003-04 287 58 229 345

2004-05 509 93 416 602

2005-06(Apr-Sept) 274 74 200 349

Total (1975-2005) 2386 1569 817 3955

Average(1975-2005) 80 52 28 132

Source: Statistics of the Foreign Trade of India (various issues), DGCI&S. 0.00 9.02

Cutch extracts & colouring matter Chilly, powder/cassia torea Ayurvedic & unani herbs Printed books Vegetable seeds, anardana/tomato Ayurvedic and unani medicines Phthalic anhydride Soya Beans W/N Broken Acid coloured Aluminium ingots not-alloyed Pigment coloured Disperse colour mixture Synthetic organic colouring matter Acid, amino-G/gamma/J/H Tamarind fresh Tea black in packets Rice Onions fresh/chilled Wheat Total of 32 items

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

30.18

0.00

0.12

0.00

0.03

0.05

0.19

0.01

0.13

0.22

0.00

0.95

0.52

2.02

0.00

1.15

0.27

2.35

0.18

1.05

6.38

0.00

7.74

0.00

6.59

1990-91

Source: Statistics of Foreign Trade of India (various issues), D.G.C.I.& S, Kolkata.

0.00

0.14

0.08

0.00

0.09

0.10

0.00

0.03

0.16

1.78

0.33

0.89

0.00

1.76

Leaves, Bidi wrapper/betal

0.00

Ginger, fresh/bleached/powder

New pnmtc tyres for buses/lorries

0.00

Norfloxacin and other salts

0.00

Cardamoms, large/small

Polypropylene

0.00

Cane Sugar, raw jaggery

0.00

Tea black, leaf/dust in bulk

Cane Sugar, candy/refind

3.66

Iron ores, non agglomerated

0.00

Reactive coloured

P-xylene mixed isomers

1985-86

Soyabean, deoiled cake/meal

ITEM

S. No.

61.23

0.00

0.19

1.15

0.42

1.10

1.11

0.35

0.28

0.37

0.00

1.48

0.34

2.36

1.25

1.05

2.23

2.24

2.95

2.35

0.04

5.60

3.79

0.00

0.02

0.00

5.90

0.00

24.66

129.34

0.00

0.24

0.42

0.67

0.21

0.43

0.79

0.61

0.72

0.26

0.86

0.00

0.21

1.61

0.81

0.86

1.65

2.42

2.26

0.65

3.77

6.51

2.57

1.86

5.21

5.74

10.05

43.32

12.64

3.72

0.00

18.26

104.11

0.00

0.10

0.00

2.06

0.04

0.67

0.49

0.34

0.74

0.76

0.96

0.00

2.21

1.81

0.73

0.36

1.37

1.07

1.41

0.02

1.56

0.95

2.08

1.96

6.71

4.96

18.87

18.24

24.50

4.72

0.00

4.41

2001-02

105.00

1.54

0.94

0.44

0.36

0.07

0.99

0.37

0.44

0.67

1.73

1.29

0.00

1.77

1.97

1.75

1.10

1.31

0.43

1.33

0.02

2.48

3.83

2.93

1.82

11.11

5.83

19.61

0.82

5.55

16.34

8.86

7.29

2002-03

157.79

0.02

0.01

1.59

0.47

0.18

0.97

0.22

0.37

0.71

3.33

1.54

10.70

3.34

2.47

1.04

1.96

1.57

0.01

1.42

0.07

1.58

6.10

3.88

1.97

12.11

8.35

3.13

1.46

2.41

8.39

50.41

26.01

40.63

292.04

0.00

0.61

2.33

0.06

0.00

0.65

0.16

0.48

0.80

3.76

1.82

0.02

1.92

1.68

1.77

2.51

2.04

0.86

1.79

3.24

1.70

5.36

4.36

2.34

19.89

40.21

26.28

0.00

0.53

20.24

103.98

1487.05

1.89

4.29

4.85

6.08

6.37

6.58

7.64

8.41

9.97

12.30

12.35

10.71

14.67

17.89

18.46

18.78

26.04

26.16

28.90

31.68

35.73

36.29

58.65

64.97

73.99

75.87

80.96

112.07

120.02

132.61

163.26

258.62

65.95

0.08

0.19

0.21

0.27

0.28

0.29

0.34

0.37

0.44

0.55

0.48

0.65

0.79

0.82

0.83

1.15

1.16

1.28

1.40

1.58

1.61

2.60

2.88

3.28

3.36

3.59

4.97

5.32

5.88

7.24

11.47

% Share in Total Value

1975-76

Total Value 1985-2005

Turnover

2004-05

Total Trade

of Trade

2003-04

Balance

Pakistan

(Value in million US $)

Imports from

Pakistan

2000-01

Exports to

1995-96

Year

(April-March)

Table 2: Composition of India's Major Exports to Pakistan during 1985-86 to 2004-05

Table 1: Volume of India's Trade With Pakistan During 1975-2005 (Value in million US $)

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Dates, fresh/soft/hard

0.00

10.27

3.96

0.00

15.98

0.00

1.53

0.00

11.79

2.66

1.32

0.39

16.87

0.00

2.03

0.00

23.71

0.00

0.51

3.56

2.42

0.00

3.48

6.77

0.00

22.34

0.53

0.00

1.56

0.80

2.07

1.50

0.00

8.30

0.00

7.13

0.00

0.46

0.00

12.52

2.19

1.44

0.47

0.00

0.05

0.00

0.05

0.00

11.50

0.00

0.19

0.00

0.82

0.00

3.63

0.88

1.11

0.07

22.96

1.66

0.00

1.98

22.83

8.22

8.56

9.11

11.25

11.96

13.94

17.71

20.05

20.73

29.17

29.28

37.28

44.36

83.86

88.14

94.08

0.67

0.70

0.74

0.91

0.97

1.13

1.44

1.63

1.68

2.37

2.38

3.03

3.60

6.81

7.16

7.64

Table 3: Composition of India's Major Imports from Pakistan during 1985-86 to 2004-05

Foreign cotton

0.00

3.55

0.02

0.21

0.00

8.21

(Value in million US $)

Petroleum and bitumen oils crude

0.00

1.07

0.00

0.95

6.31

0.06

%Share in

Cane sugar

0.00

0.93

1.99

0.10

0.00

0.16

Total Value

Cane sugar refined incl centrifugal

0.00

0.18

0.00

0.40

0.00

0.09

0.64

2004-05

Naptha, solvent crude

0.09

0.31

1.41

0.00

0.48

2003-04

Cane molses of sugar

0.04

0.00

0.50

2.81

0.37

7.90

0.44

2002-03

Raisins and Sultanas

0.00

1.25

0.85

0.00

5.89

2001-02

Balsam and oleoresins/gums

0.00

0.78

0.00

0.20

1.02

5.39

2000-01

Degresd wool

0.18

1.29

0.00

1995-96

Beans of vigna mungo, hepper

0.90

0.00

0.71

0.23

0.29

1990-91

Almonds, fresh/dried in shell

0.00

1985-86

Rock salt

0.00

0.94

0.14

0.31

ITEM

Poppy seeds

0.00

1.19

0.00

Napthalene

0.00

0.45

0.79

23.06

Peas/chickpeas,dried and shelled

0.21

0.00

Total Value

Bovine leather, tanned/finished

0.15

0.83

283.79

0.51

0.00

1985-2005

Ayurvedic & uniani herbs

0.18

No.

0.00

67.49

0.27

830.67

0.00

57.44

0.15

37.51

0.00

29.36

0.01

42.62

Woven fabrics mixed

51.14

Cumin, black & other 23.87

21.97

20 15.97

Source: Statistics of Foreign Trade of India (various issues), D.G.C.I.& S, Kolkata.

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References l Bhalla, Shiela (1987), “Trends in Employment in Indian Agriculture, Land and Asset Distribution”, IJAE, Vol. 42, No. 4. l Bhalla, Shiela (1989), “Employment in Indian Agriculture: Retrospect and Prospect” Social Scientist, Vol. 17, Nos. 5-6. l FAO (2005), http://faostat.faco.org. l Ghuman, Ranjit Singh (1986), Indo-Pakistan Trade Relations, Deep and Deep Publications, New Delhi. l Ghuman, Ranjit Singh, (2001), Indo-Pakistan Trade Relations : A Revisit (A UGC Project submitted to Punjabi University, Patiala). l Ghuman (2002), “World Trade Organization and Indian Agriculture with Special Reference to Punjab : Crisis and Challenges” in S.S. Johl and S.K. Ray (eds.), Future of Punjab Agriculture, CRRID, Chandigarh. l Ghuman (2005), “Rural Non-Farm Employment Scenario: Reflection from Recent Data in Punjab, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XL, No. 41. l Gill, Sucha Singh and Ranjit Singh Ghuman (2001), “Changing Agrarian Relations in India: Some Reflections from Recent Data”, IJLE, Vol. 44, No. 4. l Gill, Sucha Singh (2002), “Agriculture, Crop Technology and Employment Generation in Punjab, in S.S. Johl and S.K. Ray (op. cit.). l Government of Pakistan (2005), Pakistan Statistical Year Book. l Government of Punjab (2005), Statistical Abstract of Punjab (India). l Hymer, S., and S. Resnick (1969), “A Model of an Agrarian Economy with Non-agricultural Activities”, American Economic Review, Vol. 59, No. 4. l Ilmas, Futehally and Semu Bhatt (2004), Cost of Conflict Between India and Pakistan, Strategic Foresight Group, Mumbai. l Keith, Griffin and Azizur Rahman Khan (eds.) (1972), Growth and Inequality in Pakistan, Macmillan Press, Ltd.. l Kaldor, Nicholas (1967), Strategic Factors in Economic Development, Carnell University Press, New York. l Kuznets, Simon (1965), Economic Growth and Structure, Oxford Press, New Delhi. l Ranis, G., and F. Stewart (1993), “Rural Non-agricultural Activities in Development: Theory and Applications”, Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 40. l Rosegrant, M., and P. Hazell (2000), Transforming the Rural Asian Economy: the Unfinished Revolution, Oxford University Press, New York. l Sharma, Alakh N. (2005), “Recent Trends in Indian Labour Market and Emerging Issues of Employment and Income Security”, a paper presented at the International Conference on Employment and Income Security in India, organized by Institute for Human Development, New Delhi, April 6-8. l Sidhu, R.S. and A.S. Bhullar (2006), “Patterns and Determinants of Agricultural Growth in the Two Punjabs”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 50, No. 53. l Timmer, C. (1988), “The Agricultural Transformation”, in Hollis Chenery and T.N. Srinivasan (eds.), Handbook of Development Economics, Elsevier North Holland, Amsterdam. l World Bank (1980), Trends in Developing Economics. l World Bank (2004), World Development Indicators. l Zafar Altaf (1983), Pakistani Enterprises, Croom Helm, London.

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years. However, the ASEAN wants the tariff cuts from an earlier date. India is expected to bring into this list some 490 items that include rubber and coconut. This was major stumbling block to the proposed FTA agreement that has got resolved with the ASEAN accepting India’s suggestion for maintaining a negative list.2

India's Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

an East Asia and South Asia become a unified economic zone similar to the European Union? Can India and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) succeed in creating a free trade area (FTA) agreement in the near future? It is difficult to categorically answer these questions or to predict precise time frames on possible economic arrangements. Anticipating the future is always hazardous. Yet certain trends have become apparent. The international economic power balance is surely shifting eastwards. The countries of Asia have been, and still remain, deeply divided by historical legacies as well as sharp social, religious, cultural and political differences. At the same time, there are inexorable imperatives on the governments of nation-states in this part of the world to come closer to one another in economic terms. How these rapidly shifting – and sometimes contradictory -- forces play out in the years to come remains to be seen, but what was considered impossible earlier is currently very much in the realm of reality. Even as differences continue and competition among countries intensifies, the virtues of economic collaboration would simultaneously become evident. The fifth India-ASEAN summit that was held on January 14, 2007 and the second East Asian summit that took place a day later at Cebu, Philippines, provided India with an opportunity to push for a pan-Asian economic arrangement that could one day perhaps rival the European Union. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, before leaving for Cebu on January 13, said that India and the ASEAN would consider “new initiatives” to accelerate the process of economic engagement in the region. He also expressed a desire to explore steps to hasten the conclusion of the India-ASEAN FTA agreement. “Our participation in both these summits is a reflection of the increasing significance of the eastern orientation of India’s foreign policy and our quest for closer engagement with countries of East Asia,” he said. The Prime Minister said that the India-ASEAN free trade agreement was an “important initiative” to promote greater economic synergy in the Asian region.1 Singh was evidently successful in working out the modalities of the India-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (IAFTA) in goods. It was decided that all related discussions on the agreement would be completed by July 2007. Both sides also agreed to prepare a list of products segregating ‘sensitive’ and ‘highly sensitive’ items, with the least cuts in customs duties on four items in the latter category – crude palm oil, refined palm oil, pepper and tea. The duties on these would be brought down to 50 per cent by 2022. On these goods, India has stated that duty reductions would commence only after five

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The products on the ‘sensitive list’ would not be exempt from tariff cuts till 2022. The traded value of these duty-exempt products would not exceed 5 per cent of the total tradable goods on which duties would be eliminated or reduced. The sensitive list would have another 700 items, including many engineering and chemical products. The duties would fall to between zero and 5 per cent by 2018. On all the other goods, import duties would be reduced from the date the agreement is signed. India would bring these down to zero by 2011 for less developed countries in the ASEAN and by 2015 for the other countries.3 The agenda of the second East Asia summit included energy security, stability of the regional financial systems, mitigating national disasters, environment and other subjects of common interest that could only be tackled effectively within a broad inclusive framework. India also reportedly pushed for a ‘larger vision’ of an overarching Asia-wide scheme of economic integration to fully exploit the synergies in the region, as in Europe. The Indian Prime Minister has been campaigning for a Pan Asian Free Trade Agreement (PAFTA) which he contends could “be the future of Asia.” The idea was first mooted at the first East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur in 2005. If such an agreement materializes, PAFTA would be the centerpiece of India’s evolving “Look East” policy. The ASEAN, which comprises 14 of the fastest growing economies, has been hailed by some experts as the “potential third pole of the world.” Half the world’s population (or around three billion) reside in these countries and in terms of purchasing power parity, the East Asian group of nations has a gross national income of over $16 trillion (or Rs 7,05,20,000 crore) – much larger than either the European Union or the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) group.4 At Cebu, Singh also held discussions with his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao and asked their special representatives to act with “greater vigour and innovativeness” to resolve the boundary dispute between Asia’s two giant neighbours, together accounting for close to 40 per cent of the world’s population. Although the issue of civilian nuclear cooperation was not discussed at the talks, India expressed hope that China “would not be an obstacle” to New Delhi’s quest for global civilian nuclear cooperation in the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group. (In July 2005, a nuclear agreement was signed between the governments of the United States and India). Singh is likely to visit China later in 2007.5 India’s position on global civilian nuclear cooperation received a boost as the 16 leaders of ASEAN and its dialogue partners signed what was described as a ‘landmark’ declaration on energy security at the second East Asia summit. The Cebu Declaration on Energy Security was signed by leaders of the East Asia Summit — an evolving

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regional forum that includes the ASEAN (comprising ten countries at present, namely, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) and six dialogue partners (China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand). The declaration calls for reducing dependence on hydrocarbons and fossil fuel in the context of surging global crude oil prices and seeks to intensify the search for new and renewable energy resources and technologies with the focus on civil nuclear power and bio-fuels. Prime Minister Singh also made an eloquent case for closer regional synergy in promoting alternative sources of energy like civil nuclear power. The US Senate passed legislation in 2005 allowing civil nuclear cooperation with India and as the governments of the two countries negotiate a bilateral agreement to define the precise terms of the proposed civil nuclear commerce between them, New Delhi is focusing its diplomatic energies on winning support of the powerful Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) of which China and Japan are key members. Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who hosted the Cebu summit, had underlined the need to adopt a strategic approach to strengthen and promote energy cooperation, particularly in key infrastructure projects including the ASEAN power grid and the Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline. This strategic approach will entail improved energy efficiency and the diversification of energy supply by developing alternative sources such as biofuels and civilian nuclear power, Arroyo said.6 The path to IAFTA agreement has not been smooth. The issue of the “negative list” or the list of items that would be excluded from the proposed FTA agreement had at one stage brought negotiations to a standstill. The items on the list would have limited or no tariff concessions. A section of India’s policy makers were apprehensive about cheap imports flooding the market and its effect on vulnerable sections of the population: farmers and workers in labour-intensive industries such as textiles. In the ASEAN, some were arguing that India is highly unlikely to fully open its economy to duty-free imports, thereby diluting the potential effectiveness of the FTA. Matters came to a head on July 25, 2006, when Rafidah Aziz, Malaysia’s Trade and Industries Minister announced in Kuala Lumpur that the ASEAN had suspended talks on a FTA agreement with India on account of the country’s reluctance to open up its markets. She pointed out that the “negative list” of 850-odd items comprised roughly 30 per cent of the exports of the ASEAN members to India. Rao Inderjit Singh, India’s Deputy Minister for Defence, who happened to be in Kuala Lumpur attending a regional security meeting, immediately went into damage control mode. Seeking to counter Aziz’s criticism, he told the Associated Press (AP) on July 27 the fact that India had reduced the number of items to be placed on a “negative list” from 1,414 to around 850 actually indicated India’s commitment to make the agreement work. He hinted that the list could be further reduced and added that the talks were definitely alive. He also added that Aziz’s views were not representative of the entire ASEAN. Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo, during a meeting with Indian negotiator Rajiv Sikri, had even offered to draft a statement to the effect that Rafidah Aziz “was not speaking on behalf of ASEAN”.

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In August 2006, India offered further concessions by slashing the number of products on its “negative list” from 850 to 560 items. India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry special secretary (now secretary), Gopal K. Pillai, added that India was willing to offer tariff concessions for 94 per cent of ASEAN exports – reducing tariff in refined palm oil from 90 per cent to 60 per cent, crude palm oil from 80 per cent to 50 per cent, black tea from 100 per cent to 50 per cent and pepper from 70 per cent to 50 per cent. However, India refused to give agricultural concessions due to the dependence on the sector by millions of subsistence farmers. The concessions kick started the free trade talks, although Malaysia’s Rafidah Aziz felt that India’s timetable for reducing tariffs was too slow. She was also critical about the inclusion of items such as ceramics, wooden furniture and agricultural products in India’s “negative list.” Also, India’s proposal to reduce tariffs on palm oil products over 16 years came under fire. For decades, India did not pursue a trade agreement with ASEAN very vigorously. While China, Japan and South Korea made deep inroads in trade with ASEAN, India took more steps backward than forward. It was not until 1991, when the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao enunciated India’s new “Look East” policy, that a greater degree of clarity, coherence and progress was achieved in India’s relations with South East Asian nations. As the then finance minister, Manmohan Singh had acknowledged that ASEAN was not just a gateway to trade for the region but “a strategic shift in India’s vision of the world.” That policy proved to be huge success as India-ASEAN trade burgeoned from $2.4 billion (Rs 10,575 crore) in 1990 to $23 billion (Rs 1,01,370 crore) in 2005. This year the figure is expected to cross the $30 billion (Rs 1,32,225 crore) target set in 2004.7 The impetus for wooing the South East Asian ‘tigers’ came from repeated failure of multilateral talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations in Seattle (1999), Cancun (2003), Hong Kong (2005) and most recently, Geneva (June 2006). It spurred many countries, including India, to look towards regional co-operation and bilateral agreements as a viable substitute for time-consuming negotiations at the WTO. For India, an added impetus to forge closer economic ties with South East Asia came from the stiff competition posed by China. That has not stopped both countries from making efforts to engage each other as trading partners. Thus, regionalism as a reaction to the failure of the multilateral process to put in place a rule-based international trading system has gained ground. In pursuance of a policy of encouraging regional co-operation, India participated in the launch of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation and the Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) grouping that was earlier known as the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical Cooperation when it was set up in June 1997. During the 39th meeting of the Board of Governors of the Asian Development Bank in May 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that India had concluded free trade agreements with SAARC and was currently working on similar arrangements with the ASEAN, Japan, China

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and South Korea. Singh said: “This web of engagements may herald an eventual free trade area in Asia covering all major Asian economies and possibly extending to Australia and New Zealand…India is determined to carry forward the Indian-ASEAN partnership to an enlarged domain for making the 21st century a truly Asian century.”

product” exporting countries like Malaysia (which mainly exports palm oil to India) or Thailand (a major exporter of rice) will not meet the criterion of substantial trade coverage for an FTA to be agreed upon. India’s agriculture ministry contends that the commodities mentioned are in a list of “special products” in the WTO and should hence not have zero tariffs on them under any FTA.

India’s engagement with the ASEAN came into being with its “Look East” policy in 1991. India became a Sectoral Dialogue Partner of the ASEAN in 1992 and a Full Dialogue Partner in 1996. In November 2001, the ASEAN-India relationship was upgraded to the summit level.8 Part of the reason why ASEAN members were willing to engage with India was the concern that they would become an adjunct to the Chinese economy. India was seen as a balancing force or as Singapore puts it, “the second wing” for the ASEAN jumbo jet.9 The first India-ASEAN Economic Ministers meet was held in 2002. The idea of a broad Asian Economic Community that would include the ASEAN-10 and China, Japan, Korea and India was first articulated by A.B. Vajpayee in October 2003. The then foreign secretary, Kanwal Sibal said that this would give “greater context and depth” to the “Look East” policy that was first initiated by Narasimha Rao.

The issues at stake do not pertain only to trade but to the livelihood of a large number of people. For instance, import of palm oil and pepper under the Indo-Sri Lanka FTA has adversely impacted farmers in south Indian states like Kerala. In fact, the crucial stumbling block in completing the Doha round of talks at the WTO was on account of developed nations not willing to reduce farm subsidies. Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Commerce has gone on record stating, “We cannot have a FTA just for the sake of having a FTA, especially at the interest of our farmers.” Hence, the proposed FTA may result in macro-economic benefits to the country but it would grievously hurt sections of farmers as well as local industry. At least 1,00,000 farmers have committed suicide in different parts of India between 1993 and 2003 or an average of 10,000 a year, the Indian government has officially acknowledged.

Subsequently, a Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Co-operation was signed, which provided for a FTA arrangement among the countries, which would be implemented in a phased manner -- by 2011 for old ASEAN countries and by 2016, for all ASEAN countries (including new members such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam). The Framework Agreement also included the Early Harvest Programme (EHP) of immediate deliverables and unilateral trade preferences by India in favour of the least developed countries (LDCs) of ASEAN i.e. Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. The EHP provided for tariff eliminations by October 31, 2007, for the ASEAN-6 (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines and Brunei) and by October 31, 2010 for the new ASEAN member states. The Vision 2020 paper of the ASEAN-India Partnership, adopted at the 2004 summit held at Vientiane, reinforced the intentions of both parties to deepen their commercial links. At present, India has bilateral agreements with Singapore and Thailand.

Tariff reduction, especially of customs duties on imports of agricultural commodities, is an extremely sensitive issue in India. Till India initiated economic reforms in 1991, the peak customs duty rate used to be as high as 150 per cent. Since the United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi is dependent on the “outside” support of 61 MPs from the Left parties for a majority in the Lok Sabha – and these parties led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) are opposed to the government’s agenda of economic liberalization -- political compulsions could have impinged on the IndoASEAN talks. Congress President Sonia Gandhi warned the Prime Minister and the Minister of Commerce about the consequences of hurting the interests of those cultivating groundnut, pepper, rubber, tea and coffee. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram too pointed out to the PM’s Trade and Economic Relations Committee that if customs duties on palm oil were halved, the government’s revenue loss would be in the region of Rs 1,400 crore a year on this head alone.

In 2005, it became evident that the proposed India-ASEAN FTA agreement would encounter major hurdles because over half the exports to India of at least five members of ASEAN, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, was limited to a single commodity, that too invariably from the agricultural sector. The Indian Ministry of Agriculture raised strong objections to the inclusion of farm products like pepper, rubber, palm oil, coffee and tea in the tariff liberalization programme. It suggested that these commodities be included in a “sensitive” or “negative” list. ASEAN members, including the “single product” exporting countries, opposed this measure and wanted the tariff on all goods to be reduced to zero at one go.

Some Indian industrialists have opposed the FTAs leading the Ministry of Commerce to announce that it would re-evaluate certain bilateral commitments made in the India-Thailand FTA. The agreement was signed in 2003 during the regime of the previous National Democratic Alliance government and envisaged a process by which the two countries progressively reduced taxes on 82 items over three years and completed the creation of a tax-free zone for trade in 5,000 items by 2010. There is considerable evidence to indicate that exporters in Thailand have benefited disproportionately from the FTA in comparison to Indian exporters. In 2004-05, Thai exports to India grew by 36.87 per cent whereas India’s exports to Thailand grew by a meagre 5.76 per cent. A report of the Department of Foreign Trade in Thailand on the first three months of the Indo-Thailand FTA agreement said Thailand’s trade surplus ratio with India was 400:1.

Free trade agreements generally work on the principle that at least 80 per cent of the trade of a country is covered under the agreement. ASEAN maintains that if items such as pepper, rubber, palm oil, coffee and tea are part of a sensitive list, “single

109

Under pressure from the business community, India wants one-fifth of the 5,000

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items to be placed under a “negative list” on which there would be no tariff cuts. Indian industrialists claim that the current agreement is working against the interests of local industries. Power cable manufacturers claim that this agreement would ruin their businesses in India as it is not possible for them to compete with Thai companies unless internal fiscal, labour and infrastructure reforms are implemented that would allow firms here to manufacture products at internationally competitive prices. According to a recent survey by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the inverted duty structure that industries such as colour picture tubes, electric fans and transmission assemblies, are facing may lead to Indian companies outsourcing products from Thailand or setting up manufacturing bases in Thailand. The survey reveals that internal cost disabilities are eroding the competitiveness of the aforementioned industries vis-à-vis their Thai counterparts. In addition, some observers feel New Delhi has compromised on the issue of Rules of Origin (ROO) with ASEAN members. ROO means that goods exported from a certain destination must have a minimum value addition in the country of origin of the proportion specified. India has reportedly agreed to have 35 per cent value addition and changes in tariffs at the level of sub-headings whereas in the case of bilateral arrangements with individual countries like Thailand and Singapore, the rules specify 40 per cent value addition and tariff changes at the level of headings. ROOs are a major reason why negotiations between India and Thailand over expansion of items in the FTA list are stalled. New Delhi fears that further relaxation of the ROO could lead to imports from third countries via Thailand that would, in turn, antagonize Indian industry. The doubts expressed over the ROOs are not without basis. According to a report by the Associated Chambers for Commerce and Industry in India, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and even Taiwan were using Thailand as a preferred destination to route to India a wide variety of products such as textiles, engineering items, processed food products and electronic products. Experts believe that the Indian farm and industry sectors desperately need infrastructural reforms in order to reap benefits from the FTAs. T.S. Vishwanath, Senior Adviser, Confederation of Indian Industry, has pointed out that Indian industry has proved that it can be globally competitive and is, therefore, not asking for protectionist measures: “All that we are saying is that lowering tariffs under FTAs should be accompanied with labour, fiscal and infrastructure reforms,” Vishwanath said. Indian companies are “handicapped” not only by acute infrastructural constraints, such as shortages of power and high tax rates, but also lack the “flexibility” enjoyed by some of their counterparts in South East Asia and China in terms of labour laws that make it easier for them to “hire and fire” workers. In the medium term, there needs to be a fine balance between genuinely-required protection and economic liberalization. This, in turn, requires a high level of preparedness on the part of India’s bureaucracy and also calls on the country’s political leadership to build an internal consensus on contentious issues. In the final analysis, when there is competition among unequal participants, there has to exist considerable political sagacity and a willingness to compromise on all sides to work

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out trading arrangements that create a “win-win” situation for all. The IAFTA is the culmination of a strategic shift in India’s “Look East” policy which also includes intensification of political dialogue and the enlarging of people-topeople contact encompassing all countries of the region. Buoyed by the success of its negotiations, India is pushing for a pan-Asian economic arrangement. Briefing reporters on the conclusion of the summit, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said, “We are looking at a collective FTA with ASEAN nations. However, we will continue talks with (member) countries for (bilateral) trade pacts”. Implicit in this statement is India’s strategic stance on deepening economic integration with the East either through an FTA or comprehensive economic partnership agreements. In effect, while India works on an FTA with ASEAN, it will continue pursuing individual treaties with China, Malaysia and Indonesia. India has already arrived at such pacts with Thailand and Singapore. “The report of the Indo-China joint study group (on the trade pact) will come by October this year,” Nath said, adding that a similar study with Malaysia had been concluded and the report was expected shortly. “Thereafter, we intend to begin negotiations on this. A study group is also being set up with Indonesia to examine a similar pact,” he said.10 From the Indian point of view, a FTA agreement with the ASEAN appears to be a better bet than a similar agreement with the disjointed and conflict-ridden SAARC. The question is whether all sections of the Indian government will be able to not only endorse but actively support the stand taken by Commerce Minister Nath and Prime Minister Singh with regard to the expeditious implementation of the India-ASEAN FTA. The next (13th) ASEAN summit will be held at Singapore in November 2007. If, by then, the FTA agreement is implementation, it could spur a bigger and broader effort to forge closer economic links among all Asian countries. (Research assistance for this article was provided by Kaushiki Sanyal.) Endnotes 1 http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1898305,001302620000.htm 2 India Today, January 29, 2007 and http://www.domain-b.com/economy/trade /20070115_pact.html http://www.domain-b.com/economy/trade/ 20070115_pact.html 3 India Today, January 29, 2007 4 www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1899475,001302620000.htm 5 http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection= India&month=January2007&file=World_News200701162640.xml 6 India Today, January 29, 2007) 7 http://www.indiainbusiness.nic.in/trade-india/fta-rta.htm 8 India Today, January 29, 2007 9 http://www.businessstandard.com/common/storypage_c.php?leftnm=10&autono=271406 10 http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers22%5Cpaper2101.html

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Interview: Dr Muhammad Yunus

angladeshi banker and economist Dr. Muhammad Yunus is famous for his successful application of the concept of microcredit: the extension of small loans to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. Yunus is also the founder of Grameen Bank. In 2006, Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below." Yunus himself has received several other international honors, including the ITU World Information Society Award, Ramon Magsaysay Award, the World Food Prize and the Sydney Peace Prize. He is the author of Banker to the Poor and a founding board member of the Grameen Foundation. Yunus has recently launched a political party in Bangladesh, Nagorik Shakti (Citizen Power), and is rumored to be standing for political office. Zia-ul-Karim recently interviewed Dr. Muhammad Yunus on poverty in the context of peace and how it should be tackled at the local, national and regional levels. Here are some excerpts from his interview held in Dhaka, Bangladesh. By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 to an Economist the Nobel Committee has broadened the concept of peace and taken the award beyond the boundaries of conflict resolutions and mere peace negotiations. How do you look at this new turn in the Nobel Committee's perspective? This time the Nobel Prize Committee has done something that is important for us. They have basically established two specific links and made a very bold statement about it by giving this prize. One is that poverty and peace cannot co-exist and poverty is a threat to peace. Anything that reduces poverty basically enhances the chance of peace. That link has clearly been stated through this award. And second, micro-credit helps reduce poverty. So, in a way, for the first time these links have been established. Micro-credit reduces poverty and reduction of poverty enhances peace. Poverty has always been considered either as a humanitarian issue or a political issue or even an economic issue, but has never been seen as a peace issue. I myself have been talking about the link for a long time now. This award is the recognition of the premise that poverty and peace are intimately interconnected. This is no doubt a significant move by the Nobel Peace Committee. This is not the first time that I have been awarded a peace prize for the kind of work we do. But the Nobel Prize makes all the difference. The other peace prizes that I have won include the first Sydney Peace Prize, the Seoul Peace Prize and the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize. These awards point to the fact that the peace prize and micro-credit are

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closely linked. But the recognition of our work by the Nobel Committee means our efforts will get greater attention. I hope this will come to the purview of policy makers and will enable them to see the peace issue from the perspective of poverty alleviation. I also believe that poverty breeds terrorism. Right after 9/11 I wrote an Op-Ed in a Japanese daily stating that terrorism cannot be addressed by military means. It has to be dealt at its roots. And one of the roots of terrorism is abject poverty. Placing poverty in the context of peace is in a way giving recognition to Grameen's long struggle to hold the rein on poverty and pave the path for a lasting peace. By giving this award the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has not only broadened their perspective on peace but has also accepted your view that without eliminating poverty we can not have lasting peace in the world. What I would like to know from you next is that when in your autobiography Banker to the Poor you wrote, 'I always feel that eliminating poverty from the world is a matter of will rather of finding ways and means', what actually did you mean? In the book I also wrote that you can't do something that you can't imagine. If you imagine, you achieve. The first condition for a world free from poverty is we have to imagine one where there is no poverty. Once you start thinking of a world free from poverty you will act accordingly. Until now people have kind of resigned themselves to the idea that poverty will always be with us and that it is part and parcel of our life. And there is nothing we can do about it. You can help the poor a little, but the poverty monster will be there. So, we have poverty. We have accepted that it will be with us. But if we don't accept it it will not be with us since then we will find ways and means to humble the poverty monster. I gave an example of this in my book when I pointed out that because we wanted to go to the moon we went to the moon. If we had kept saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;how could we go to the moon?â&#x20AC;? we would have never gone to the moon. Is it then a question of perspective? It is not only a question of perspective; it is a question of what we want. It you do not want something you won't get it. So, we have to desire it first. And we must desire it intensely to get it done quickly. The more intense we get about it the more quickly it will happen. If you do not want it nobody will give it to you just like that. It doesn't come free. The second issue I made in the book is poverty is not natural to human beings. Human beings are endowed with unlimited capacities. Not that some people are not more capable than others; rather, each human being is endowed with unlimited potential. Everyone has enormous capacity but only some of us explore or get the chance to develop our abilities fully. We do not at all get the chance to explore our capacities. This is why we feel that if we do not have it in us it is because we never look for it. We never have had the occasion to look for it. This is the distinction between the have and the have-nots. If this is the line that separates them why are the majority poor? It is because they never got a chance. Now who is supposed to give them that chance? It is society that should give them the chance to explore and develop the capacity that the poor ssection of society possesses. Going back to my original argument, poverty is not natural to human beings. Yes, some people are handicapped or mentally retarded from birth. But being poor is not natural to human beings. It is not something inside a person; it is imposed on a person. So, something

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that is imposed on a person can be removed from the person. But given the social and economic structure of Bangladesh, and by extension of the world, do you think a poverty- free world is possible? That is where I would like to arrive at. Poverty has been created by the system not by the person. So, we have to deal with the system that has initiated poverty. We now have to go back to the drawing board and redesign the drawing from which poverty has stemmed. The seeds of poverty lie within the system. You have to identify those seeds and kind of sanitize the system by removing the bad seeds. The seed of poverty is in the concept. You have accepted this and are using it all the time. And the concept is reflected in our behavior as well. The concept of micro-credit goes against traditional banking. It is taking banking to the people rather than making the people go to the bank. What was that moment of inspiration from where the idea of micro-credit stemmed? There was no inspiration or a moment of discovery of sorts. It was just circumstances; for example, if you have a hole in front of you or a big crack on the road you jump. This is a natural reflex. I was basically trying to jump. It all started with my encounter with the problem and my effort to solve it. It was in the early '70s and I was teaching at Chittagong University. There was a famine going on and people in the village next door to the university called Jobra were traumatized. Your books give you no comfort in such a situation. So, I thought I should go around the village and meet people to see if there is something that I can do. Then I came across a woman who was making a bamboo stool. This was an extremely poor lady engrossed in her craft. What a moment of contact for me: she was making a beautiful piece of stool sitting in her dilapidated shack. I asked her why if she made all these beautiful things she was still so poor. I started a conversation with her and after some time she started to narrate her stories of misery. She said she made only 10 annas a day which is equivalent to two pennies. She made such beautiful things but earned only two pennies! She then explained her situation and to my utter shock I came to know that she had to borrow five to six takas to pay for the bamboo from the trader who then imposed the condition that she would have to sell the stool to him at a price decided by him. I asked her how much she had to pay for the bamboo. It seemed a pity that for so little money she had to accept the inhuman conditions imposed on her. She had been reduced literally to a slave labour. Then I found out whether there were other people like her who were labouring under such oppressive conditions. And I ended up with a list of 42 people and found out that the total amount of money they had borrowed was only 856 takas or 27 dollars. I gave them the money from my own pocket and told them to pay back the debts they owed the traders. My immediate intention was to set them free from the shackles of slave labour. I had no other ambition but to see that people got back their freedom. I had no idea what excitement my action would create in those families. They looked at me as if I was someone sent by god. I thought if it is so easy to get these people out of their misery why not link

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them up with a bank. So I approached the local bank. The bank said that these people were not eligible to get bank loans. That was the first hurdle I faced. But I argued with them: why couldn't this be done? It was only a small amount of money that these people needed. However small an amount though they needed collateral for that. Banks cannot give money to someone just like that. I then decided to take up the matter with the higher-ups of the bank. My negotiations with them went on and on. Finally, after seven months of haggling and pursuing the case with it, I proposed that the bank should accept me as a guarantor and they did so. So this is how it all began. There was no conscious attempt to go against the grain or take up a mission to challenge the traditional banking system. But the fact was I was going against the grain of conventional banking. I was basically trying to open the door for these poor people and I had succeeded to open one for them in their terms. What exactly convinced you that you could adopt this as your banking model? Till then at no point of time had I thought about applying the winning formula of Jobra village elsewhere. The manager of the bank remarked that just because it worked in that village did not mean it would work in other villages as well. I said to him: look, it worked; everyone came back to pay their debts. He advised me not to take the freak success of Jobra too seriously and opined that if I tried this formula in other villages it would not work. Then I decided to try it in another village and it worked again! The manager was still not convinced and said if I could do it in at least five more villages he would have faith in the new system. It went on from five villages to 10 to 20. The manager was basically throwing challenges at you and you were bent on proving him wrong. In a way, yes. The more I did with the villagers, the more I was convinced of the effectiveness of my scheme, and the more irritated he got. He was shocked by its success and was quite sure something was wrong somewhere and that it had to collapse at one point. Every time I met him I saw that he was basically waiting for the programme to collapse. On the other hand, the bigger it got the greater was my confidence that this concept was working. Around 1981-2 a new idea dawned on me: why am I having to convince the banker again and again, I told myself; why don't I have my own bank and operate with my own set of rules? I thus embarked on my adventure of setting up a bank using the concept of micro-credit and started meeting high-ups in the government. In a year's time, that is to say, in 1983 we got the permission to have our own bank. The whole idea has thus evolved over time through trial and error as I tackled the challenge thrown at me. The whole process of Grameen Bank's coming into being was in that way an accident rather than a result of a welllaid out theory. We were basically solving problems as and when they appeared to us. Every time a new problem arose we solved it only to move forward to tackle a new one. We did not have a blue print or the ambition to achieve any thing great. In the beginning I was only trying to convince the Manager of the bank of the effectiveness of the idea of micro-credit. Had he accepted my idea there and then there would not have been any Grameen Bank!

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You have been talking about 'social business' lately in different forums. What exactly do you mean by social business? The message I am trying to get across through the phrase 'social business' is that in the capitalist economy the concepts of business circulating now are wrong or at best half- right. The only concept that we have about business till date is that it exists to make money. In a capitalist economy the only ambition of an investor is to maximize profit. The prevailing system teaches you that if you want to be an entrepreneur your ambition should be to get maximum profit out of your investment. As humans what we do should is try to put ourselves into that role of a profit monger since that is what is wanted from us in this system. And if you are a business executive you are groomed to maximize profit. Your mindset is to twist or squeeze things to make profits. But I think that this is too narrow a view to have of human beings. I am not saying that this is inhuman and people should not make profits or think about making profits. You should continue to do that but that should not be the only thing human beings should be excited about. Making money is no doubt exciting but there are many other things that are equally or more exciting about human beings. If you consider a human being only as a money-making machine you are narrowing down the definition of a human being. What I am trying to say is why don't we broaden this definition and come closer to the real human being. We have in fact made an artificial human being; we have turned him into a robot acting as a money-making machine. A human being is much broader than the way capitalism has portrayed him. He has love for humanity, sympathy, altruistic ideas. People want to do lots of different things. While you have narrowed him down in economics you have allowed him everything in politicsin politics he will give his life for the nation, go to prison and endure torture. The person who emerges victorious after going through all these travails becomes a hero. And when the same hero goes into business he is only seen as a money-making machine. I believe that this is a shame. Making people smaller than what they are is wrong. Then I started to think: why we can't we have a business concept so that we can help people and do something where making money will be immaterial. I have started a business which will touch people's lives. And I would like to call it social business. In social business we will have a non-loss and non-dividend company. I will not get any profit from it, but whatever money I invested I will get it back. If we can do that we can solve many of the problems of the worldpoverty can be addressed, healthcare can be addressed, environment issues can be tackled; children's nutrition can be looked into. Anything that you see as a problem can be designed as a business, as a social business to be precise. Social business will help solve many of our problems rather than dumping them on the government. The onus is always on the government. I would like to look at it from another angle. What about me, the citizen? I am capable of doing things. If you are in business you have to make money and that is the norm. But I say: I don't want to make money. And that is my desire. Has the Palli bank concept of Rabindranath Tagore inspired you at any point? Or to put it another way, if we have to trace the genesis of micro-credit could we go back to Tagore's idea of a Palli bank? I have not read about Tagore's Palli bank concept, but have heard about it. As I said

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my concept came as an accident and I am just pursuing that concept. The whole concept of micro-credit that I have nurtured did not spring from any book. Was it something that you practiced first and then theorized? We haven't theorized anything. You definitely need a philosophy to guide you. Don't you? We believe that money helps it leads to self-employment. You are looking for income generation, you are based on wage-employment, i.e. you must have factories so that people can work, and get out of poverty. That is the only theory: you have to fight poverty. We said: why do things have to be like that? Human beings are capable enough of creating jobs for themselves. Just give them the money and they will create opportunities by themselves. They don't need anybody's help to do that. Let's move from your areas of micro-credit and social business to something else. South Asia has a huge growth potential and though SAARC was conceived to materialize dreams South Asians have in common it did not work as we had expected it to do. What, in your opinion, can SAARC do to change the lot of the billions of people living in this region? Or do you thing SAARC will work at all? I firmly believe that SAARC is our future. The march of history is about unification. Unification and merger are the catchphrases in global business and politics. My first argument for SAARC is that it is a natural unit for unifying the nations of the region. Second, technology is coming to the world at such a fast speed that it is making many things irrelevant. Take for example the last twenty years of development in technology. The world has changed so much and if you can develop another 20 years at the same speed you can not imagine what the world will be after that. If you have to write about the year 2025 you will have to write science fiction. But the rate of progress is getting faster and faster. What has happened in the last 20 years might happen in 10 years or may be even faster than that. Now come to information technology. What is happening there? Information technology is making distance irrelevant. You pick up the phone and call up anybody anywhere instantaneously. You do not wait for days or even hours any longer to get connected. You send an email and it just goes in a flash. Think about online chatting: you do not even have to wait for the other person to answer. You can do conferencing with a large group of people all at a different time zone at the same time. Distance gone, borders gone. So the concept of country and the concept of nation are going to change soon. They will be there as historical facts and not as practical facts. As a practical fact there will be some milestones or border posts that will tell people that the Bangladesh border is here. People will go there to take a snap and then walk past it. There will be a border but it will have no significance. Look at what has happened to Germany and France: people no longer care where the border was. The EU is now made up of 25 countries. It is growing bigger and bigger rendering borders meaningless. Things like passport and visa are now irrelevant. One ID and that's it. You can settle down anywhere you want to; you can do business anywhere you want to. That's the future of the worldborderless, distance-less.

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SAARC is question of time and not a question of yes or no. You may take a long time to realize it but if you are smart you would do it quicker. SAARC is a question of whether we are stupid enough to delay it or smart enough to make it fast. You have recently said that if you have to launch a party it would be called 'Joggya Parthy' or 'the right candidate' movement. How exactly would you like to go about it? The definition of a politician is also changing. Politicians as we understand today are one kind of people who specialize in politics. But unfortunately the distance between the people and politicians is becoming wider and wider. We needed ministers, politicians and a government in the past because they had all the information so they could make good judgments. Their power lay in their access to information. They were seen as wise since they had all the information. Now think of the changed scenario when every detail of the Gulf War was televised on CNN. The President of the USA watches the same CNN as does millions of others. When it comes to information about the war he knows as much as any other common viewer of CNN. If that is the nature of information the advantage of being wiser is not there anymore. You can pass a judgment as well as the president. And if you are smart enough you can even pass a better judgment than him. So, the advantages the politicians had as a group and the advantages they had have lessened. And because of the nature of the politics they have been holding on to, their distance from the people is becoming wider and wider. Young people are ahead of everybody else because technology is in their command. Our generation, on the contrary, has been very slow in adopting the new information technology. Even a seven-year old child now can solve all our computer problems. You may not know how to manipulate your ipod but a kid does it with grace. In his mind the information and technology are synchronized. So, you need a new kind of leadership to sustain the hopes and aspiration of the new generation. Apart from micro-credit what are some other ways of poverty reduction? Also, tell us what will be the next phase of micro-credit? Micro-credit is certainly not the only instrument of poverty reduction available. But it is an important way of reducing poverty. A human being is a totality of many thingsthe economy is one part of his/her life. There are other things about their liveshuman rights, health education, security and law and order, among other things. So whatever you need, the people on the streets are also in need of these things. The poor and have-nots need banking services as much as we the fortunate people do. Most of the poor have no access to banking. And half of them are women. They never enjoyed any banking service till we said they are capable of handling it. They have handled it now and handled it very well indeed. This has now become part of our life. What will happen to the fortunate people who enjoy the banking facilities; what if suddenly all banks stop functioning? What if a malicious virus wipes off all the banking data? What will happen to the world if a disaster of this proportion strikes? This would no doubt be a good subject of a Hollywood movie. Or consider suddenly

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what will happen if a Godzilla comes and destroys the banking system. For two-third of the world's population Godzilla never left them. These people have never been under any banking system, have had no access to banking. For them a bank does not exist. So that was our challenge to brink banks to the people for whom banks never exited. We have never claimed that micro-credit is the only means to fight poverty. What we are now trying to emphasize is that micro-credit and information technology may work together very well. That people will be in the driver's seat of their lives. They are capable of changing their lives. It is not the government who changes your life. It is you who change your life. The basic thing is we should allow people to unleash their energy with whatever that is needed to do somicro-credit, education, and information. Micro-credit is available at a very high interest rate compared to the mainstream bank interest rates. Do you have any plan to reduce the interest rates? The interest rates can be brought down. We have talked about it a lot among ourselves. The Grameen Bank is owned by its borrowers. So, they sit on the board and decide on everything about its banking. We have asked them whether they are interested in reducing the interest rates. They said â&#x20AC;&#x153;yesâ&#x20AC;?. But we said we have to reduce interest rates all the way meaning that we have to reduce interest rates on our borrowers' deposits too. We said if we do not give any interest to their deposits then the interest on their borrowing will be eight and half per cent. If you put money in Grameen Bank it doubles itself in seven years. But if you reduce that deposit rates from 12 percent to nine or eight and a half then instead of seven years you will need 13 to 15 years to double your money. All this we have said to our clients and if they agree to it we will be happy to reduce the interests rates on the borrowings. Interest rate is a kind of artificial issue. Whatever you get on top of it you have to add eight and a half per cent. Then how come commercial banks give loans at lower rates? How higher? Our highest interest rate is 20 per cent. And that is at best two to four per cent more than the commercial banks. But we have housing loan, which is eight per cent. Our minimum deposit rate is eight and a half per cent. So, if we buy money at eight and a half per cent and if we sell at eight per cent that does not make business sense. Because the trust subsides 20 per cent into this scheme. Then we have education loan which is five per cent. During the education period we do not charge any interest. After your education pay the five per cent interest. So, there also we go all the way down and charge much lower than the price we are buying the money. Then again for beggars the interest is zero per cent. We have four interest rates of which only one is above the deposit rates. We have to cross-subsidize from that higher interest rates. Is that so bad? What is exactly your plan for the beggars? The beggars go on begging from house to house in the villages and with the rice they collect from their rounds they cook their meal to feed their families. That is the standard begging in our villages. We are telling them as they go house to house why not carry some goodies like cookies, candies, toys for the kids or something that housewives need. We are not saying the beggars to stop begging forthwith, but while

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they can also try to sell goodies or trinkets or any small household objects to the houses they go to. By doing so they will be able create alternative source of earning. If a beggar finds it a lucrative business soon he/she will stop begging. We have at the moment eighty-five thousand beggars under this programme. Of which five thousand beggars have already given up begging.

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Document: Statement presented at the South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR) meeting in Lahore on 16-18 March 2007. Deepening Democracy Deepening democracy and strengthening HR [human rights] are synonymous and complement each other. The common problem facing the countries of our region is the non-recognition of the marginalized and the minorities. Democracy and social justice must therefore go together. Our discussions over the last days highlighted that a vibrant democracy is one that respects differences, tolerates dissent, is responsive to the public voice, in short, inclusive. But this inclusiveness has to count on a healthy political system that respects rule of law, allows HR and other state institutions to function independently, and allows citizen's participation. Efforts should be made to guarantee equal rights to vote and contest elections to all citizens regardless of gender, belief or social status. Democracy will be deepened by guaranteeing supremacy of parliament. Human Rights In terms of human rights, several issues were highlighted in the country reports that were presented including right to education, right to life, to health, employment and social security, RTI [right to information], need to internalize international human rights standards and provide legal protection to these standards, mobilize public support and participation to ensure political transformation that could create conducive political environment to recognize, promote and strengthen human rights principles. Coordination between grassroots movements and regional level initiatives need to be strengthened. Celebrating Diversity It was emphasized that celebrating diversity means not merely tolerating but appreciating and understanding the unifying characteristics of each other's culture, art, literature, political aspirations and way of life. For this, it is necessary that people of the region be exposed to cultural and art forms including the performing arts, through the accommodation of diversity in school and other educational curricula, and student exchange and institutional links between educational establishments in the region. State responsibility in promoting diversity should also not be overlooked. We have seen the travel difficulties encountered by members both in terms of flights and visas. Economic diversity was another aspect that was discussed. There is the need to bring in the private sector, whose activities impact so much on the lives of each and every

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one of us, is crucial. While celebrating diversity it is also important that we as South Asians forge a regional identity, and most of all, be proud to be South Asians. TG [Transparent Governance] All countries affirmed the importance of RTI as an important tool in achieving transparent governance. TG was discussed as manifesting itself in 3 spheres: political, economic and social. Issues raised included the accountability of politicians - calls for them to declare their assets, separation of state and religion, the question of religion and ethics in the context of emerging fundamentalisms. Economic sector - transparency of international corporations, of civil society organizations, and political society - was stressed and civil society organizations were called upon to have better internal accountability mechanisms. The issue of state interference in civil society and the need to strike a balance with the need for accountability was also flagged as a serious problem. The importance of public interest litigation in maintaining TG was stressed. Finally the call was that transparent governance must come through people's movements and not through institutions at the top. Minority Rights The issue of minorities (based on religion, caste or ethnicity) should be rooted in the overall struggle of democracy and human rights. Delegates pointed out that despite all promises minorities remain discriminated and excluded from the political, social and economic life of the countries of South Asia. Inadequate state attention and slack protection of minority rights leads to violence against them. It is the responsibility of the state to check the tyranny of the majority against minority groups by empowering them economically and legally. It is also important that civil society should act to make these 'invisible' groups more visible. The groups meeting on legal protection, political participation and social inclusion discussed the various issues faced by minorities. Discrimination at state level includes discriminatory laws, discrimination in education and employment, disenfranchisement in elections. At social level, issues highlighted included forced conversions, untouchability, forced labour, lack of rights to natural resources, lack of access to basic public services, and general marginalization. Separation of religion from state was another aspect that was discussed, as well as the importance of highlighting this separation at all forums. Also [discussed was] the importance of making a distinction between religious and ethnic minorities because often ethnic identity is subsumed within religious identity.

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General Recommendations Measures to be taken to acquire space in the media, both print and electronic, to highlight the issues and the problems of minority groups. In general, society should accept the right to equality of minorities including opportunities in employment and education. The state should bring about the legal amendments, and implement them, to ensure protection against religious extremism. School syllabuses should be revised in order to shape the minds of the youth. Secularism' should not be used as an instrument just to appease the minorities but to create a just, political culture": Members of minority groups must take initiatives to get assimilated with all in society. Prisoners' Rights The group on prisoners' rights noted that national organizations have made important contributions towards prisoners' rights. Their expertise and experience are not widely shared in the region. A large number of foreign prisoners belonging to countries of South Asia are incarcerated mostly because of offences related to travel restrictions. Others not do have counselor access or legal aid. There are also reports of isolation of foreign prisoners and their inability to contact family members, engage lawyers or receive support from their missions. SAHR members therefore suggest that (a) SAHR Secretariat build a databank of the national organizations engaged in legal aid and advocacy for prisoners' rights (b) Take up as a priority the issue of foreign prisoners. (c) Organize a workshop of experts in the region to make a tight-knit workplan to address the issue of foreign prisoners through advocacy, legal aid and intervention at SAARC level. And Finally, how should we Play the Game? Whether it is deepening of democracy, strengthening of HR or celebration of diversity, one of the main tasks is to empower people. One aspect that was highlighted in the journey of the campaign for the RTI in India was that perseverance is required, that the struggle should continue. As citizens, and as civil society, we have relinquished the political sphere and vested them with the politicians. It is imperative that we as civil society reclaim the notion of being political. But civil society organizations and NGOs are under threat. Increased protection of civil society and of rights defenders is required. What can Sahr do in this Context? A number of recommendations have been made at various sessions during this three day event.

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I would like to highlight a few of these, in keeping with the regional nature of the organisation: SAHR should promote a uniform-standard for fair, free and democratic elections. SAHR should also encourage the evolution of independent election mechanisms, including election commissions. SAHR makes representation at government and inter-government levels for instance with SAARC and the UN through the establishment of links - consultative status or otherwise -- with these institutions. SAHR can target SAARC in particular in 3 areas: o Urging it to provide access to regional civil society o Make interventions in the commitments already made in SAARC o Broaden its agenda so that its effectiveness and capacity is enhanced. In the case of minorities, raise awareness of citizenship as a basic right and as an identifier, to make citizenship the instrument of social cohesion as opposed to religious or ethnic affiliation [and] mobilise society to combat religious discrimination at the regional level by studying the mechanisms of religious discrimination across South Asia and lobbying for eradication. Also since countries in the region are suspicious of international human rights standards, SAHR should advocate regionally for the domestic incorporation of international human rights norms. In relation to public interest litigation, SAHR could form a group of lawyers from the region who could support national public interest litigation efforts. In the case of caste minorities/dalits) promote interaction among their movements and link them with other human rights groups and networks. In Nepal, while the new constitution is drafted, SAHR should push for inclusion of CM/Dalits rights as fundamental guarantees in the new constitution. Establish a commission on civil society to document attacks and challenges of civil society and be involved in denunciations.

New Delhi Declaration SAARC Journalists Summit-III 'Journalists' Above Divides' New Delhi, April 2, 2007 We the media persons from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to the SAARC Journalists' Summit-III, 'Journalists Above Borders', organized by South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA), having met in New Delhi on April 1-2, 2007, to evaluate the current media situation of the countries of the region, and review the efforts being made by SAFMA to improve connectivity, communication, access to and free flow of information and free movement of journalists in and across the countries of South Asian region. Reaffirming the principles inspiring the 'Joint (Founding) Statement', issued by the First South Asian Free Media Conference, 'Towards free, fair and vibrant media', at Islamabad, on July 1-2, 2000, 'Declaration of Intent' of the Second South Asian Free Media Conference on 'Media and Peace', at Kathmandu, on January 1-2, 2002, 'Dhaka Declaration' of the Third South Asian Free Media Conference on 'Media and Democracy', at Dhaka, on May 25-26, 2003, Lahore Declaration of South Asian Free Media Conference-IV, held in Lahore on 19 November 2004, the Hyderabad Declaration of Fifth South Asian Free Media Conference on 'Peace and Languages Media', held in Hyderabad, India, on February, 2006, Declarations of SAARC Journalists Summit-I, held at Rawalpindi on January 03, 2004, and SAARC Journalists' Summit-II, held at Dhaka on November 11, 2005 ; Reiterating our commitment to the right to information and freedom of expression, as recognized by the UN, being a "fundamental human right and the touchstone of all freedoms", Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as a basis for informed and authentic civil society and a pluralist democracy; Emphasizing the imperatives of information revolution and the need to overcome information deficit among the member countries of SAARC, which is essential to create understanding, build confidence, promote cooperation and facilitate conflict resolution, and adoption of SAFMA's Proposed Protocol on 'Free Movement of Mediapersons and Media-products Across the South Asian Region', proposed by the Second Free Media Conference, before the 11th SAARC Summit at Kathmandu, and its 'Proposed Protocol on Freedom of Information', proposed by SAARC Journalists Summit-I, before the 12th SAARC Summit, by SAARC and its member countries; Grieved over the deaths and destruction caused by the terrorists acts throughout the region, in general, and terrorist attacks on trains in Mumbai and Samjhota Express that killed hundreds of innocent people; and appreciating the resolve shown by the

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governments of India and Pakistan to resume the dialogue, after brief interruption, and not to let peace process hijacked by the terrorists outfits; Concerned over the continuing attacks on journalists and media organizations, in general, and in the areas of conflict, in particular, and killing and kidnapping of journalists in various parts of South Asia and elsewhere; Perturbed over delay by SAARC in considering SAFMA's Protocol on 'Free Movement of Media-persons and Media-products Across the South Asian Region', its 'Proposed Protocol on Freedom of Information'; and awaiting upgrading of SAFMA as an Apex Body of SAARC; Condemning the hurdles being created in the way of peace initiatives and denial of visas to the participants of SAFMA's and other civil society moots by some governments at various occasions and efforts at prohibiting SAFMA from playing its full role; Appreciating the continuing struggle of journalists, various media bodies and civil society organizations for press freedom, greater access to information, freedom of expression that are inseparable from democratic rights, rule of law and pluralist democracy;

Welcoming the extension of SAFMA to Afghanistan, Bhutan and Maldives and pledging full support to the media community in these countries; Noting the creation of South Asia Media Commission (SAMC) in all countries of the region and at the South Asian level, SAFMA extends its full support to SAMC in achieving its twin-goals of defending press freedom and journalists under-attack and audit media content and provide guidelines to enhance professionals standards;

Realizing our duties as citizens and opinion-makers in rising above national, ethnic, religious and gender divides in the countries of South Asia to promote peace in the region and understanding among our people, defend freedom, democracy and human rights in our countries;

Have agreed to adopt the following SAARC Journalists Summit-III Declaration on the eve of 14th SAARC Summit: 1.

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That we call upon the member states and the 14th SAARC Summit to adopt SAFMA's Proposed Protocol on ''Free Movement of Media-persons and Mediaproducts Across the South Asian Region"; and appeal to the heads of government and state, participating in the 14th SAARC Summit, to include the following paragraph in the Declaration of New Delhi Summit: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Realising the need to respond to the imperatives of information revolution; Recognising the urgency to overcome information deficit among the member countries about each other and; Appreciating the initiative taken by the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA) to promote understanding, access to and free flow of information in the region.

We the heads of government and state of the member countries of SAARC agree that: a) Leading media-practitioners with at least 10 years of experience, to start with, shall be allowed free movement across our frontiers to perform their professional duties without a visa, as being practiced by certain other categories of our citizens, and a liberalized, countrywide, multiple-entry, five-year visa regime, without police reporting and bureaucratic delays, shall be instituted for media-persons, with three years of credible experience or accreditation; b) Media products, whether print or electronic, shall be allowed free flow across our borders under a zero-duty regime and without restrictions with an objective to promote harmony, free flow of information and better understanding among the member countries; c) Facilitate by all possible means the citizens right to know and access to and free flow of information; d) Form a Special Committee on Media consisting of foreign/external, information and interior/home secretaries of the member countries, that shall, in consultation with media bodies, especially SAFMA, find a suitable mechanism to facilitate free movement of media practitioners and media products across frontiers by developing a consensus on a Protocol; e) Will review the implementation of these guidelines on this issue at our 15th SAARC Summit". That, for the interim period, we demand that SAFMA National Executive Committees' members and 50 journalists from the mainstream media from each member country of SAARC be granted SAARC sticker for free travel. Also cumbersome procedures of intelligence clearance for the grant of visa in some countries of the region be immediately waived to grant countrywide visa to journalists with three years experience with a credible media organization, and six journalists each from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh be allowed to regularly report from each country; That, given the absence of an effective freedom of or access to information law in the countries of SAARC, and the need to ensure the people's right to know, we demand from all governments in South Asia to adopt SAFMA's 'Proposed Protocol on Freedom of Information' not only at the SAARC level, but also its adoption as a law by their legislatures. That, as a mainstream media body of the countries of South Asia, fulfilling all the prerequisites of becoming a SAARC Apex Regional Body, SAFMA legitimately deserves to be associated as a SAARC Apex Regional Media Body immediately to play its due role in strengthening the SAARC process and achieving its noble objectives, besides observing 2008 as SAARC Media Year in collaboration with the SAARC Secretariat and respective ministries of information of member countries; That raising of the issues of human rights and press freedom in our countries by civil society organizations and professional bodies, such as SAFMA, should not become a reason to penalize an associate or Apex Body of and by the SAARC and its member countries; the efforts to protect human rights and press freedom by non-official organizations should, rather, be complemented by members states and the Saarc; That, as the peoples of South Asia want to strengthen their historical bonds and as imperatives of globalization and regional cooperation so demand, all hindrances to free travel across borders, connectivity through land, sea and air

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among the countries of the region should be abolished and SAARC undertakes rehabilitating and constructing communication networks, info-highways highways, railways, ports and airports to facilitate greater travel, expeditious flow of information and goods across our borders; 7. That we demand greater participation of people in the affairs of governance, strengthening and deepening of democracy, independence of judiciary, free and fair elections, enhanced press freedom, acceptance of fundamental rights, press freedom, right to know and freedom of expression in all countries of the region, in general, and where these noble ideals are under suspension or yet to be realized; 8. That all those journalists who are either under the custody of the states or nonstate actors must be released and all media bodies should join hands in getting them released. 9. That, welcoming the holding of 14th SAARC Summit at New Delhi, we hope, and demand, that it should resolve to expeditiously remove all impediments in way of full implementation of the Islamabad agreement on framework for South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) while urgently resolving the remaining differences and take steps to make SAARC a dynamic regional economic union to the mutual benefit of all member counties; That, we the participants of this SAARC Journalists Summit-III call upon the people, intelligentsia, elected representatives, organizations of civil society and our own media fraternity to work together in bringing closer the dream of a South Asian Economic Union, to divert resources from arms race and other non-productive heads to the eradication of poverty and development of human and physical infrastructure.

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