Indian Women Seeking Jobs Confront Taboos and Threats

They were engaging his services because they wanted to work. They lived 10 miles away, in a small settlement where, for generations, begging had been the main source of income. A few weeks earlier, the male elders of their caste had decreed that village women working at nearby meat-processing factories should leave their jobs. The reason they gave was that women at home would be better protected from the sexual advances of outside men. A bigger issue lay beneath the surface: The women’s earnings had begun to undermine the old order.

.. In the tradition of their caste, the Nats, a person challenging a community punishment could offer a defense at trial by picking up a red-hot piece of iron and walking five steps toward the temple. If her hands burned, she was guilty, and would be placed in a hole in the ground until she confessed.

.. She tended to alienate women — maybe it was the way she called them fat buffaloes — but Premwati calmly allowed Geeta’s insults to bubble over her. Geeta repaid this kindness by stomping over and intervening whenever Premwati’s husband beat her.

.. The women of their community live by rules: If an older man approaches, they cannot sit on any surface above the ground, so it is not unusual to see them suddenly slither down off cots and chairs. They are forbidden to have physical contact with men from outside the community, with the exception of physicians or bangle sellers.

.. A hollow-eyed woman named Pooja announced, with some surprise, that her husband and mother-in-law had stopped beating her. “When you earn money,” she said, “you are of some use to them.” As for Geeta, it became clear to her that the men swarming around the factory grounds were not making sexual advances.

“When you start working, your heart opens up,” she said. “Then you’re not scared anymore.”

.. He forbade the women in his own family to work at the factories, but watched with distaste as his neighbors left in the morning. He looked back with nostalgia at the time when the Nats supported themselves by begging.

“Life was much better 20 years back,” he said. “It was a nice society. Now women are going out and meeting strange men.”

.. Their work, he said, had a whiff of immorality.

“They have everything: Clothes to wear. Enough to eat,” he said. “Why would they need to work? They still have husbands. It’s not just insulting to them, it’s insulting to the whole village.”

.. The old, patriarchal order was dying in rural India, dying slowly, and releasing toxic bursts as it did.

“That may be the cause of this whole trouble, that they are losing control,” he shrugged. “These old practices are going away.”

.. The women, too, were in uncharted territory. Every two weeks, they made a trip to the magistrate’s court in Meerut to renew a restraining order that the police had recommended, which would impose a 50,000-rupee fine on anyone who resorted to violence.

.. “They know nothing about court procedure,” he said. “They never ask me questions. They just say one thing: ‘We are not wrong. We are not wrong. We are not wrong.’”

.. Roshan had followed the sequence of events with satisfaction. These women, he said, were trying to show that they could exist without the community. When he heard that the girl was gone, he smiled.

“Slowly, slowly, they will understand our power,” he said.

.. Mr. Mewati assembled the villagers and informed them that the Indian Constitution guaranteed equality under the law. Women could not be prevented from working, and Geeta and her friends should be forgiven. Then he withdrew 3,000 rupees in folded bills from his pocket, enough to cover the fine for Geeta’s disobedience, and handed it to Roshan.

“Take care of this mess,” he said.

The machinery of compromise cranked into motion.

.. Mr. Siddiqui, their defense lawyer, saw no need to report the incident to the magistrate who had issued the restraining order.

.. “Anyone who has beaten you in the night can do it again,” he said.

Geeta, too, had lost her swagger. When people asked about Sanjay, she told them that he had fallen off the roof. She denied that she had been trapped in the house with the other women.

.. All told, it had been an expensive night, Roshan said. To avoid criminal charges, he had had to pay 3,000 rupees for Sanjay’s medical care and an additional 4,000 to ensure there would be no investigation. But it was worth it, they all agreed.

India’s Move Against the Poor

The Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act disqualifies from local political office citizens who have been formally charged with serious crimes, citizens who are behind on loan payments to rural cooperative banks, citizens who haven’t paid their electricity bills, citizens who don’t have a functional lavatory at home and citizens who lack certain educational qualifications.

.. The stipulation that men running for local office should have high school diplomas and that women and Dalit candidates should have completed middle school was the most controversial part of the amendment, because it would disqualify about one half of Haryana’s rural voters. For that reason, the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the law, “Rajbala and Others vs. the State of Haryana and Others,” is a landmark in conservative jurisprudence and a dangerous departure from the ideal of a participatory democracy.

.. The second problem is that the law, in effect, punishes the poorer half of Haryana’s population for the failure of both state and national authorities to provide free education to all Indians.

.. Populist in idiom rather than intent, the B.J.P. appears to be using these two states as laboratories in which to test the chances of a broader conservative move to limit the political participation of the poor.

In India, Many Voters May See Corruption as the Lesser Evil

Indian voters view all political parties as corrupt, but only the B.J.P. as communal. One reason is that the party has traditionally been the beloved of the upper castes, and the prejudices of the strong, historically, have done more harm than those of the weak. This perception of the B.J.P. influences not only Muslims, but every community and caste that feels vulnerable to physical violence by a dominant political or cultural force. And they tend to grow fonder of their own political organizations.

.. In a Facebook post on Saturday, Yogendra Yadav, a political activist, wrote that polls usually overestimate the B.J.P. because of a sampling bias.

“The voters who agree to be interviewed tend to be more from powerful social groups,” he said. “The voters from weaker communities are less likely to speak the truth in public.”