Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

346 SHOBHITA RAJAGOPAL
In recent years, popular movements and struggles have highlighted
the manner in which citizenship is eroded in various contexts. These movements
have stressed that citizenship is not just a set of legal rights and
entitlements that individuals possess by virtue of their membership of a
state, but is also a set of practices through which individuals formulate or
claim new rights or struggle to expand or maintain existing rights. Feminists
have been demanding that the notions of citizenship be extended to
women, and reconceptualised accordingly in order to achieve greater gender
equality and address development goals such as poverty eradication,
discrimination and democratisation.
In India, despite constitutional guarantees of full citizenship rights,
women continue to face exclusion and marginalisation from the benefits
of citizenship. Given their social roles and responsibilities, women are
disadvantaged with regard to access to resources and power when compared
to men. Looking at citizenship entails understanding women and
men, and their activities in a social world. Consequently, development
planning and practice have to take into account the unequal gender relations,
as social roles and responsibilities are central to the experience of
citizenship.
This chapter focuses on exploring the linkage and relationship between
citizenship, livelihood security, and promoting gender equality in the context
of planned interventions for women’s development and poverty alleviation
in Rajasthan. It attempts to look at the lessons learnt and the
challenges for shaping development initiatives along the lines of gendered
citizenship. Section I discusses the emergence of planned interventions
in Rajasthan and how they have addressed issues of citizenship, livelihood
and gender equality. Section II focuses on the outcomes of these interventions
and the lessons learnt.
SECTION SECTION I
I
THE RAJASTHAN CONTEXT
Rajasthan, now the largest state in India, provides tremendous regional
variations in terms of ecology, agrarian structures, caste, class and ethnicity.
Various pressures on a fragile natural base and limited livelihood