Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

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local language, Vagdi. Before coming to the Mada centre they had little
opportunity to speak, or even listen to, Hindi.
The other trainees would laugh at them as soon as they said something in
Hindi (or for that matter when they said something in Vagdi). Even some of
the Master Trainers would ridicule them. Their language difficulties were
compounded by the fact that the Master Trainers, who came from other
parts of Rajasthan, spoke Hindi with an unfamiliar accent. This resulted in
misunderstandings and poor spelling during dictation exercises. As a result
of the oppressive and fearful atmosphere at the camp, the ridicule that they
were subjected to, and the intimidating presence of a large number of men,
after a couple of days the Mada women decided not to speak during the rest
of the training camp.
At the end of the 37-day training camp the Mada women were told that
they had failed and made to understand that they would not be employed
as Shiksha Karmis. They returned to their respective villages as ‘failures’ and
therefore faced a lot of problems: their in-laws were angry and threatening;
other villagers were scornful, several of the Mada trainees were abused and
beaten by their husbands and a couple of them admitted to us that they had
contemplated suicide.
The Director of the NGO responsible for the management of the Mada
centre pointed out to us that the expulsion of this first batch of graduates
from the centre would make it difficult to recruit new trainees. He also
suggested that the Board needed to restructure its 37-day training course. It
was designed for trainees who have at least eight years of formal schooling.
His own centre had to work on building up the self-confidence of the trainees
by exposing them to the surrounding world through frequent study
visits and contacts with government functionaries.
While we were in Mada investigating the case of the rejected trainees we
also met two experienced women Shiksha Karmis who claimed that they
had been dismissed by the Board for some unspecified ‘weaknesses’. This
seemed to us so exceptional that we decided to pursue the matter and
document it in our report.
In our report to the Joint Review we pointed out that these two cases,
the rejected trainees and the sacked women Shiksha Karmis, indicated a
remarkable lack of sensitivity to the plight of women in rural Rajasthan. In
our report the previous year we had already stated that “Staff at all levels of
the project... need to be sensitised to gender issues...” and reiterated our
recommendation “...to establish a special task force of five mobile, dynamic
and sensitive women. Their task would be to promote gender issues and
bring more women into all levels of the project with the ultimate aim of
increasing the enrolment and attendance of girls”.
Eventually the rejected trainees and the sacked women Shiksha Karmis
were given a second chance. But the basic problem – the lack of a gender
perspective among Shiksha Karmi functionaries – remained and was stated