Survivor Women of some of the worst Kandhamal violence. Photo Credit: Saumya Uma 4 UNEQUAL CITIZENS: Women’s Narratives of Resistance, Militarisation, Corruption and Security
SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION <strong>India</strong> officially has no ‘armed conflicts’ 1 , yet a third of <strong>India</strong>’s landmass and a sixth of its population lives in armed conflict affected situations. The changing and complex character of armed conflicts in <strong>India</strong> span internal and international conflicts, ranging from cross border confrontations (proxy wars), separatist identity based insurgencies, communal and sectarian strife, revolutionary struggles, ‘extremist’ violence and marginalised groups struggling for a more equitable distribution of resources. Across the region contending groups are jostling for power and control over resources, demanding justice and challenging the deficits in democracy and unyielding authoritarian structures. Globalisation has led to growth but its downside has been further dispossession and impoverishment of tribals, Dalits, minorities and women. With the state increasingly positioning itself as the ‘protector’ of globalised capital and in defence of development paradigms that are resisted as predatory, peoples’ democratic struggles are facing greater levels of state’s coercion power. The orientation of the <strong>India</strong>n state as a national security state has further routinised values and attitudes of militarism, and the practices of exception, i.e. suspension of the rule of law and fundamental rights for millions of <strong>India</strong>n citizens. Impunity inbuilt into laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) 2 has entrenched a culture of non-accountability. Active militancy may abate, but the army’s massive entrenchment remains, seemingly becoming permanent as seen in Tripura and Jammu & Kashmir. The political economy of insurgency and counter insurgency has spawned patronage networks, flooded ‘wild money’ and deepened corruption and distrortion in these development deficit areas. The army’s expanding incursions in the civilian sphere of development as part of its counter insurgency strategy has undermined civilian democratic authority and opened new avenues for corruption. In the Northeast numerous small armed groups thrive by maintaining ties with mainstream actors in politics and business, and engaging in violence and producing what scholar Sanjib Baruah calls ‘durable disorder’ (Baruah: 2005:5). Increasingly, many militant movements have lost their political moorings and morphed into violent extremism and criminal extortion. While all sections of society have been affected, the impact on women and their lives has been disproportionately severe, especially given the entrenched structural gender inequalities in <strong>India</strong> and South Asian societies. Globally, of the five countries where women/ girls are most at risk for being female, three are in South Asia. The Thompson-Reuter’s 2011 poll of 213 gender experts ranked Afghanistan, Pakistan and <strong>India</strong> as well as DRC and Somalia, as the worst places in the world to be a woman ranked based on six key risk areas — sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors; discrimination and lack of access to resources and trafficking. Further, the rise of fundamentalist extremist beliefs in the wake of militarisation severely threatens women’s mobility and undermines their economic and physical security. Rampant corruption also differentially impacts women, in view of their poor access to resources and power and deprives them from accessing their rights and UNEQUAL CITIZENS: Women’s Narratives of Resistance, Militarisation, Corruption and Security 5
Change language