I am often asked, “Which part of India are you from?” My nomadic, culturally complex upbringing makes it difficult to answer. My father served in the army, hence we made a different state our home every three years. From snow capped Himalayan ranges to the Thar Desert to tropical forests to beaches by the Arabian Sea – the language and culture varied, yet the core issues remained the same. Poverty and patriarchy seemed to be the common thread. As a sensitive child, I noticed disparities across realms: economic, ethnic, religious, caste-based and more personally, gender based. I asked elders for the perfect solution to these problems. While most of them laughed, many told me to join politics or the civil services or to become a doctor. None of the answers satisfied me. I refused to believe that young people with passion cannot make a difference in this world unless supported by a high official position.
I realized that education could be one of the tools to bridge the gap through my very first foray into public service. The class divide was blatantly evident: the rich studied in private schools while the poor attended government schools. The learning outcomes, infrastructure, access to opportunities including good teachers differed exponentially between the two. Hence, when my friends from a government school failed a class I decided to help them. I didn’t have a teaching degree nor was I associated with any NGO. A burning passion to make a difference in their lives and the tag of being the ‘bright student’ in class was all I had. Consequently, their grades improved and their academic engagement heightened. The greatest achievement for me was the smile on their faces and hope in their parents’ eyes who sought education as their only way out of poverty. Moved by this experience, I kept looking for more ways to make positive social impact through education.
During college, I started writing on social issues for online and print media outlets. I also associated with an NGO where I taught Cambridge-approved English language course to 20 girls in the age group of 11 to 17 at a shelter home in Delhi. Subsequently, I joined this NGO as its Public Relations Head and also taught 30 girls in the age group of 10 to 15 in an orphanage in Lucknow. As a core committee member for the NGO in Lucknow, I was responsible for the holistic development of my students and frequently conducted public speaking and personality development classes along with the regular language course. I also helped them with their school academics. I then joined a renowned teaching fellowship where I taught Science and Social Science to 38 girls in sixth standard in a government school in Delhi. The learning outcomes for all my classes exceeded expectations as assessed by regular and year end tests.
I volunteered regularly with NGOs in Delhi and Lucknow. As a volunteer for ‘Kat-Katha’ I taught sex workers’ children who were deprived of school education, while as a volunteer for ‘Project KHEL’ I taught sports based education in slum settlements, and as an intern psychologist at a rehabilitation centre I counselled victims of drug abuse and helped improve their self esteem and reduce addiction.
Throughout my different work profiles, the understanding that education can truly bring a change in people’s lives was reinstated and strengthened in my mind. Growing up in a patriarchal society, gender equality remained the social issue I felt most deeply and passionately about. I strove to work for it in everything I did. In my twenties, I realized that I am vehemently and whole-heartedly a feminist and if there is one thing I want my life to stand for, it is to bring gender equality to the world and end patriarchy.
The Young India Fellowship provided me with the opportunity to learn from leading feminists such as Urvashi Butalia and Geetanjali Chanda. The theories they discussed and the perspectives they shared in the classes made me develop a nuanced lens and in-depth knowledge on the subject matter. I wondered how many people had thought about gender from this perspective. I realised that gender education in India is restricted to elite intellectual groups, while the rest of the nation suffers from the dire consequences of toxic masculinity born out of a deeply imbibed generational and patriarchal mindset that is further encouraged by popular culture. The courses I attended during the fellowship provided me with the framework I needed to build a gender education module which I planned to teach to anyone and everyone. My plans were further fuelled by the onset of the Me Too movement in India. Consequently, in August 2018 my brainchild ‘Drishtikona – Changing Perspectives’ was born.
My research on gender based crimes in India led to some interesting discoveries. In June 2018, a survey conducted by the Thomas Reuters Foundation ranked India as the world’s most unsafe country for women, ahead of Syria, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. With an estimated overall population of 1.37 billion of which 48.4% are women, the statistics for crimes against women in India seem to ascertain the adage, “It’s a man’s world”. As per the National Crime Records Bureau, gender based crimes have more than doubled over the last decade. Over 2.24 million or 26 per hour or 2 per minute crimes against women were reported between 2005 and 2015. It is interesting to note that these are just the reported crimes and the number of unreported crimes tends to be far greater. Trial by social media and the recent Me Too movement stand testimony to the fortitude of victims. However, the chaotic environment leaves much to be desired in terms of social initiatives.
The challenges to gender based policy implementation in India are numerous and they are a direct result of patriarchal conditioning and heteronormativity. A few contributing factors are as follows:
- Strong preference for sons
- Female foeticide
- Child marriage
- Low access to education especially amongst the rural population
- Wage gap
- Lack of awareness and access to opportunities
- Financial non-inclusion
- Poor healthcare and sanitation facilities
- Glass ceiling
- Patriarchal and patrilineal family structure
- Caste-based discrimination and violence
- Sexual division of labour
- Dowry system
- Expectations from the bride
- Patrilineal virilocality
- Mob justice
- Honour killings
- Khap Panchayats
- Violent treatment for being a gender outlier
- Low acceptance and tolerance for gender fluidity and expression of female sexuality
- Deification of women
- Pop culture reinforcement of gender norms
Apart from central schemes and major policy changes by the government, some short-term policies run on an experimental basis by local governments have yielded interesting results. The mandate ensuring one-third representation of women in village-level governance led to a rise in education levels and career aspirations in women-led villages in spite of the initial backlash by men. The policy change towards equalising parental land inheritance between sons and daughters led to an increase in the age of marriage for women, while also increasing domestic violence. Initiatives on increasing awareness and educating women on their rights led to significant goal achievements where the move wasn’t boycotted by the local men.
Given the omnipresence of patriarchy, any form of affirmative action is a welcome step. However, the incidents of violence don’t stop in absence or presence of public policies. Gender based crimes aren’t committed by a set category of people. It does not depend on the education or economic level of the population. The common thread in all gender based crimes is patriarchy and heteronormativity and the best way to counter it is through gender education. This can be done in two ways:
- Include Gender Education and Sensitisation programs as mandatory courses in school and college education
- For the rest of the population these programs can be conducted in the form of workshops and training modules
If successful, the same model can be implemented globally to ensure maximisation of quality gender education – which starts from kindergarten and lasts well into college life – which would ensure a positive symbiotic relationship among countries for tackling patriarchy globally. With my social enterprise ‘Drishtikona – Changing Perspectives’, I aim to attain precisely this objective.
As the Founder of my social enterprise which is currently in its nascent stage, I work on developing a Gender Education and Sensitivity Module to be implemented through workshops in educational institutes, NGOs, teachers’ training, and public and private sector offices with the larger objective of eradicating gender inequity, patriarchy and heteronormativity in our society – which leads to gender-based crimes; thereby achieving one of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. I launched my social enterprise in August 2018. Since then, we have conducted 5 workshops of ten days each with three schools, one government office and one corporate organization. The workshops have received raving reviews and 100% positive feedback. The idea is to scale it up so that one day these gender education modules get incorporated into core classroom curriculum, where a gender sensitised teacher will conduct regular classes on the same. The same model can be implemented at a global scale upon success in India.
As I look at the challenges I face on a daily basis while working on this in Lucknow, and the possible challenges I might face in implementing my idea at a broader level, I realise that the biggest obstacle to eradicating patriarchy is patriarchy itself. While implementing my idea at a larger scale, the obvious challenge would be the possible rejection, ridicule and resistance it might face from patriarchs in power at myriad levels of bureaucracy. When systemic oppression seeps into the very core of human existence, it is tough to remove it at surface level. It requires critical intervention and sustained effort. Measures must be taken to ensure that the fate of gender education in India is not the same as that of compulsory environmental education which was highlighted when MC Mehta moved the court on the issue of lack of quality teachers for the subject.
The reason behind my optimism with this idea is the depth of individual impact that I have already been able to achieve. At the end of one of my workshops, a male participant in his 50s gave me a letter. I was very surprised since he was highly skeptical of the workshop and remained passive-aggressive throughout the course of the ten-day session. While handing me the letter he made eye contact with me but said nothing. I noticed he had tears in his eyes. In his letter he opened up to me about his encounters with sexual harassment and bullying, first as a young adult, when it was done to him, and later as an adult in his workplace where he saw it happening to others. He realized how toxic masculinity and patriarchy hurts everyone. He wrote, “I never expected to tell anyone about this. I had no idea that feminism is for all genders. I feel light today like I never have. Thank you.”
This, for me, is the greatest achievement.