Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Women’s Development under Patriarchy 373
took up sensitive issues like the prevention of child marriage, mrityubhoj
(a customary feast thrown after the death of a person by his/her kin)
or caste discrimination, the existing traditionally powerful sections of village
society reacted, often violently with threats and assault. To protect
the sathin and to send out a clear message that the sathin was not alone, the
WDP would hold a jajam or meeting in the village, where sathins from
all over the district and different parts of the state would rally around the
local sathin. There were cases of sathins who got hand pumps installed in
Harijan bastis in the face of stiff opposition from the upper castes, and of
sathins who got encroachments on village grazing lands vacated by
mobilising local people and with police back-up.
DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE WDP OVER
FORCED STERILISATION
The first signs of a difference in outlook between the higher functionaries
of the WDP on the one hand and village people and sathins/prachetas on
the other were manifested in 1986–88. There was a widespread need
among rural women in Rajasthan for safe contraception, which had been
suppressed by feudal and patriarchal values. Helping women meet this
need was one of the tasks of the sathin. But, as had been the practice since
the days of the Emergency, the government converted this into an exercise
to aggressively pursue targets. Each sathin was assigned sterilisation
targets, whereas District Collectors were promised rich incentives for exceeding
targets. In the severe drought years of the mid-1980s, villagers,
particularly women who came for famine relief work, were coerced into
undergoing sterilisation in return for the opportunity to work. Moreover,
negligence and unhygienic conditions in the sterilisation camps resulted
in infection and deaths. Sathins revolted against the targets set for them;
villagers entreated them to report the matter to higher authorities in the
government.
Higher-level functionaries in the IDARAs (NGOs) encouraged protests
and mobilisation outside of the WDP against this coercive policy, but
baulked at the prospect of confronting the government directly for fear
that the government would cut off the IDARAs from the WDP. Ultimately,
the government even withheld two months’ salary of the sathins for their