Shame on Shameful Violence

Violence has been depicted and described in many colors and formats. However, discussion on violence is important for making nonviolence more relevant and significant. I also believe that democracy flourishes not because of majority rules or majority dominates, but minority extends faith and confidence on representative system and redefine dominance being responsible and accountable!

·     Religion Based Violence:

The religion based violence is one of the worse forms of violence and also a violence of identity and politics. Historically, the culture components are designed and structured in such a manner that the religious values are attached with every component. In fact, religion based violence has been prevalent in almost every part of the world. The interesting point to understand that, this is not merely based on that one religious group is fighting against other. Even in the homogenous religious society, such as Pakistan, England, certain part of Middle Eastern countries, the different sects within the same religion fight to each other. In Pakistan, the dominant Sunni community fights against the minority Shiites community. In the same manner, the majority Hindu community fights against the Christian and Muslim in India.

The ethnic conflict in Africa and ongoing clash between the Tibetan and China is also a part of cultural aspect of religious violence. Huntington’s theory of Clash of Civilization significantly addressed the clash and conflict in the format of economic and cultural interest. According to Huntington that, ‘the global manifestation of the fundamental change in local and regional identities is the division of world into civilization’. However, he defines the religion based violence in the political context.

This is not fair to deny the political dimension in understanding the religion based violence in the society. There are many countries, where state is directly in confrontation on the basis of religious identities. For instance, ‘Lebanon (Christianity versus Islam), Israel (Judaism versus Islam), Sudan (Islam versus Christianity and African traditional religions), Sri Lanka (Buddhism versus Hinduism), Iran/Iraq (Shia Islam versus Sunni Islam), Afganistan (Islamic civil war), Yugoslavia (Christianity versus Islam), Cyprus (Christianity versus Islam), Ulster (Roman Catholic versus Protestant Christianity) and south-eastern Russia (Christianity versus Islam). This list could be extended further by including conflicts in which Christianity fights Communism, as well as in Kashmir, India and Pakistan (secular Hinduism versus Islam) where there have been three wars and continuing tensions’.

In the recent much talked about ‘war against terror’ is also being debated in the media and academic world, weather the involvement of the religion is the prime motivator or the terrorism is not at all religiously inspired? The religion based violence is one of the challenges for the world and also for the advocate of human rights.

·     Identity based Violence:

The violence against the tribal population and their exploitation also highlights the cultural pattern in violence mechanism. The Indigenous people in almost everywhere are not actively involved in decision making process. Resultantly, a group of legitimate citizens in the country have been systematically away from the development process. Again, the culture of industrialization and urbanization started with a promise to share the economic development with everyone. But, in many cases, the tribal and indigenous people of the country not only lost their land and identity but were forced to integrate with the new culture, which belong to the people of economically and socially dominant in the country.

Here, I would like to mention that there are many reports and documents, which shared shared and published by government and non-government organizations provide enough evidences, which show that the violation of indigenous and tribal people in India is widespread. In many states, the tribal people are either taking up arms or provides logistic and moral support for the arm struggle. The report mentions that ‘the increased armed conflicts as the Naxalites - the ultra left wing armed opposition groups - spread their activities.

  

As it considers that 21 out of 28 states of India are afflicted by armed conflicts. The seven North-Eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura have been afflicted by armed conflicts over demands for self-determination and autonomy. At least 13 other states - Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and West Bengal in mainland India were afflicted by the Naxalite conflict. With the exception of Jammu and Kashmir, conflicts in all other states involve indigenous peoples irrespective of whether the armed groups are led by indigenous peoples or non indigenous peoples like the Maoists’ leaders. There have been reports of serious human rights violations by the security forces and the armed opposition groups.

The conspicuous absence of women, tribal groups, marginalized section of society and other subordinated sections in the decision making process in many countries, this is not because these groups or sections are not interested but, the dominant groups are not either creating or providing space to them. The culture of fear and silence in the prevailing situation becomes the part of socialization process in such society.

Despite of these cultural barriers and stumbling blocks, there are many efforts and endeavors are going on to address the issues of violence and steps being taken in many countries to make the culture of preserving human rights to shun the violence against women, tribal communities and marginalized section of society. In last, the situation can be improved and transformed when a culture sensitive approach to development can itself become deterministic if policymakers do not integrate culture with other factors that influence identities, such as class, occupation, gender, location and politics (Sen 2004).

Un-Cultured Brightness in Violence Against Women and Castes

There are many examples of violence, which are based on the culture of dominance. I would like to share few, which I consider most heinous and most important for discussion and questioning its nature!

Violence against Women

The violence against women and girls is recognized as an epidemic in almost every countries in the world. The horrifying situation about the violence against women not merely affecting women physically, but the social and health consequences of violence against women is equally horrifying in the world. In 1994, the World Bank’s study based on ten risk factors facing women in this age group, rape and domestic violence rated higher than cancer, motor vehicle accidents, war and malaria. Moreover, several studies have revealed increasing links between violence against women and HIV/AIDS. Women who have experienced violence are at a higher risk of HIV infection: a survey among 1,366 South African women showed that women who were beaten by their partners were 48 percent more likely to be infected with HIV than those who were not. The violence against women is also a profound health problem, sapping women energy; injure women self confidence and self esteem.

The violence against women has been seen as the problem of sheer violation of human rights and also being considered as legal matter. But, the tentacle of culture, such as patriarchy, masculinity, gender, the idea about womanhood is significant in increasing the incidence of violence against women globally.  In fact, the magnitude of this problem is cultural and socialization. A man are born and brought up in a society, where man controls almost everything and the essence of ownership also replicated in the community and in the relationship. The violence against women does not confine in the marital relationship only. A report shows that at global level, there are ‘10% to over 50% of women report being hit or otherwise physically harmed by an intimate male partner at some point in their lives’.

The Violence against women and gender based violence is not simply a phenomenon of region, religion, least economically developed countries. This is prevalent in everywhere in the world. According to state statistics, about 18% of women are being sexually abused in the U.S. According to the UN Report on violence against women, ‘the condition in other developed countries such as Denmark, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom etc. is no better. In the U.S., the Department of Justice reported that, every year; 3-4 million women are battered by their husbands or partners.

Even in Sweden, which ranks high in the gender-related index, 66% of the 18650 reported cases of violence on women in 1996 were of domestic assault. Further 45% of 681 offences of homicide recorded in England and Wales in 1996 involved women killed by their spouses or lovers. On the other hand, the statistical data from the developing countries like Antigua, Barbados, Columbia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Sri Lanka and others reveals widespread prevalence of physical and sexual abuse on women.

In a study of 796 women from Japan carried out by Domestic Violence Group shows that 59% reported physical abuse, 66% emotional abuse and 60% reported sexual abuse. Studies from African countries, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania reveal that 42% women are subjected to physical abuse at their homes. In China, a conclusive evidence of wife battering has been reported among 57% women. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) do enforce certain special rights and privileges for women. But it is amazing that only 44 countries have laws against domestic violence. Only 17 countries have made marital rape a criminal offence & only 27 countries have passed laws on sexual harassment’.

Caste Based Violence:

This is another kind of violence, which is combined with culture, religion and demeans the humanity in India. This is not misleading to equate the violence based on caste is of the similar kind, which propagates violence against race. In both kind of violence is based on treating the human being in the concept of the purity and pollution.

India is highly stratified society and the caste system is based on three principles, such as ‘predetermined social, cultural and economic rights of each caste based on birth, the unequal and hierarchical division of these rights among the castes and provision of strong social ostracism supported by social and religious ideology to maintain the Hindu social order and the third prescribed the social mechanism’ (Caste Violence and Dalit Derivation in India- A Capability Approach, Venkatesh S).

The caste based violence is a normal cultural phenomenon in India. Despite of numerous legal measures to discourage this nature of violence, but the social norms and rules dominates in encouraging violent behavior towards the lower caste in India. The conflict between the lower and higher caste is not a new phenomenon. The massacre and killing of lower castes is regularly reported but the humiliation, social ostracism, social penalties, inhuman treatment are another dimension of violence which is based on the century old religious and culture aspect of the society.

Statistically, the magnitude of the caste based violence in India is presence in such a manner, which shows its presence in every aspect of social, economic, cultural spectrum of Indian society. There are almost half of the total number of lower castes (Dalits) do not have access the drinking water, around 33% government health official refuse to visit lower caste home for providing health services, 38% of lower caste children sit separately in the government school. Even in market based social development indicators, the lower castes are allowed to take the taste of fruit of development because widespread denial in the market places and not buying and selling product to them.

Despite of the constitutional provision to abolishing untouchability and discrimination against lower castes, around 64% of lower caste are not allowed to enter Hindu temple for performing the religious rites and in almost 50% Indian villages, the lower castes are prevented to access cremation ground. The crime against the lower castes is continuously taking place in India. According to the official crime statistics, According to official Indian crime statistics, averaged over the period 2001-2005, this has been recorded that, ‘27 atrocities against Dalits every day, 13 Dalits murdered every week, 5 Dalits’ homes or possessions burnt every week, 6 Dalits kidnapped or abducted every week, 3 Dalit women raped every day, 11 Dalits beaten every day, a crime committed against a Dalit every 18 minutes’ 

The culture of dominance and competition are manifested in the form of violation as well violation of human rights. In a survey conducted by BBC Pulse of Africa Survey in 2004, this shows that there is strong desire to preserve ethnic tradition with 78% in Kenya to 95% in Malawi. In this context, this neither pragmatic nor sensible to ignore the cultural views of the people, when the development polices and implementation is evolved in these countries and regions. Amartya Sen openly shares that ‘cultural influence can make a major difference of human behavior, which can be critical to economic successes’.

From Power Within to Inside the POWER !

I believe that power and dominance is also vital factor in defining and presenting culture in different perspective. The dichotomy between the defining culture and observing culture is political and modern concept. David Apter in his book, “Politics of Modernization” argues that the modernization was born in the West when the commercialization and industrialization was legitimately connected with the agenda of economic growth. The role allocation and role differentiation was considered the first step, which brought the concept close to the traditional institution and consciously started widening the gap between the individual and social organization.

Although, the theory of modernization does not recognized the importance of traditional institution but its adaptive qualities were seen as a force of modernity during the initial period of time. David Apter further argues that the success of modernization project depends upon the role of marginality, accessibility of innovative role and medium of mass communication.

In short, modernization needs people who are living in the social structure where order means to obey the customary laws. The marginalization is the potential ground to generate the support for modernization easily. The survival of the colonialism was hidden in its consciously directing process, which enabled the colonial power to redefine the capacity of ‘marginal man’ and allocation of new role within the traditional institution created new avenue for this process.

Denying the political agenda with economic pursuit would tantamount to reject the idea of power and dominance in cultural milieu in the human society. The most illustrated title “Black Man Burden”, in which the author, Basil Davidson critically develops his argument on the colonial efforts in building nation state and reshaping the cultural identity in Africa and outlines the unintended consequences of colonial interference in Africa.

Basil Davidson further blames the colonial powers are responsible for the present crisis of Africa and analogically describes the process of transition from Asante nation state to the Asante Empire State. He argues that the “party political” compartment of parliamentary structure encourages the politics of clientelism, which attempt to maximize accessibility to resource.  He also finds that the culture of clientelism and the legacy of the nation state are adequately responsible for the series of dictatorships and socio economic disorder in Africa. The colonial power evolved many institutions to serve their goal and economic objective. The limited involvement of African in the political and economic institution excluded them to experience the transition within them and also at society level. Despite of being independent states, many are still not able to address the issue of development, governance, democracy.

The presence of Europe rather colonial power, in Africa not merely disturbed the basic social structure but also developed new class in the society. This class was not limited in resource but limited in understanding the politics of development of the colonial power. Basil Davidson concludes in his book that “Kinship Corporation cannot produce a democratic state, whether or not they are disguised as political parties”. The collapse of social economic structure and mutual understanding between the ruling kinship corporations is consistently addressing the need of colonial powers. The nature of the nation state and absence of mass participation in Africa are seen as a major reason behind its backwardness. Justifying the reason of backwardness is almost rejecting the idea of nation state. The Black Man Burden is not an Africa’s problem but a state of mind, which promotes the universal clash between the given identity and acquired identity.

Conflict and violence is inevitably visible part of human society. When we examine the above exemplary explanation of Africa’s plight in Basil Davidson’s argument, we can easily fix up the culprit- the European Nations. This is one way to see the reason behind nourishment of conflict. There are many reasons, many permutation and combination work behind both popularizing the reasons and also explaining the truths. Conflict and its escalation demands and commands our attention, therefore, the Iceberg Model truly represent the idea of conflict and also it’s underneath causes. The underneath causes are clearly highlights the ways to understand the conflict in holistic manners and also broaden our understanding to perceive the relationship of power and dominance in the context of culture. The conflict and violence is also not free from the culture, because the human relationship is largely embedded in the culture. The question arises that is culture always a factor in every conflict? In a broader extent, the culture plays a significant role in both escalating and diminishing role in conflict and conflict like situation.

Culture is also potential source of power and exploitation, oppression and privilege, hierarchy and collectivism. The legacy of cultural dominance is visible in today how perception of individual and group is constructed, with different groups’ stands between the dominant and subjugated arena. Culture is also important component of human communication and interaction, which is also seen as a source of domination. Language shapes our understanding and also helps in maintaining and establishing social hierarchy.

The French Scholar, Pierre Bourdieu boldly claims that ‘all cultural symbols and practices, from artistic tastes, style in dress, eating habit to religion, science and philosophy, even language itself- embody interests and function to enhance social distinction. The struggle for social distinction, whatever is symbolic form, is a fundamental dimension of all social life’ (David Swartz; Culture and Power- The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu). The relationship between culture and violence is positively correlated but this does not mean that every culture promotes violence.

The presence of dominance and power breeds the causes of conflict and violence in any society. To understanding the nature of violence and conflict, we need to have cultural lens, but we also need to understand the spectrum of violence in the broader manner. Generally, the culture centric approach fuels the tendency of narrowness and makes the individual and group not to think beyond their own perceived idea of violence and conflict. Even the concept of violence means that there is physical hurt or physically molested. A different expression ranges from emotional and verbal abuse, racial discrimination, sexual discrimination.

There are many valid reasons behind the occurrence of violence and the culture of dominance play vital role in the reasons. The violence and violent like situation occurs in many ways, such as,

·         When the dominant groups take the advantage of legal or extra legal institutions to create boundaries of subjugation for the “other groups”

·         Prevalence of separate and unequal treatment, e.g., slavery, castes, sex, and age based segregation

·         When the dominant group try to erase other’s cultural or identity related boundaries and integrate subordinated group

·         Elimination of subordinate group erupts violence

In one of the paper (Culture, Violence, and Inequality; Yasmin Jiwani, Ph.D), “Culture Violence and Equality” this has been acknowledged that ‘Violence is about power-the power to control, subjugate and dominate others, and to violate their dignity, integrity, and sovereignty. It is the power to deny a people or a group the right to exist as they wish and to oppress them. This is the same violence that we see enacted within the context of gender relations, intra-nation relations (between groups within a nation), and international relations between countries. What signifies violence in these contexts is the power of one party over another. That power can take a discursive form (through the use of verbal threats, sanctions) or it can manifest in armed conflict and war. Those who are most vulnerable to violence are groups, individuals, and countries which have less power, low status, and limited access to resources or recourse’ 

The Novgorod Model, Crafting Democracy and Supporting Social Capital

Do government agencies play significant role in building social capital? Or how social capital helps in sustaining the effort of community based organizations?

I have chosen this to share my views for two reasons. Firstly, in governance paradigm, the role of community based institutions or NGOs are significant, in which denying the social capital would be fatal at local level.  Secondly, the state tries to ensure its hegemony by establishing its institutions at local level, to promote democracy and economic prosperity. Even the decentralized process of decision making is significantly based on centralized structure of the state.

However, these articles have examined and discussed many aspects of social capital differently, which shows that a well established functional institution, both at government and local level is important for active social capital.

Nicolai clearly argues that social capital can be constructed by the state intervention and role of the state is indispensable in creating the social capital by ensuring the active involvement of government agencies or by coordinating with local organization. According to his terminology, this is a ‘statists’ approach of defining social capital. He criticizes ‘non statists’ approach, where ‘social capital can only be generated outside of government sphere’. In fact, the Novgorod Model is interesting case to recognize the importance of government in building social capital. The article shows that Novgorod of Russian region has improved a lot in comparison to many neighboring regions and even Novgorod has surpassed the national average in many economic growth indicators. In the period of 1995-98, Russian’s GDP declined by 2.1%, while the annual growth of Novgorod was 3.8% during the same period. Other indicators such as, employment rate, regional salary before taxes, inflation, industrial production, Novgorod has shown the impressive result.

How this has possible in Novgorod? In 1990, the regional administration of Novgorod reached on three point’s agreement, “promoting small scale and medium sized businesses, attracting foreign investment, and reforming the housing market” to generate alternative source of revenue after the collapse of federal government subsidies. The local administration was agreed that small and medium scale businesses to be promoted more for generating long term impact and job creation at local level. Administration adopted market friendly policy, but an administrative system was evolved to ensure the check and balance on the market reform.

The regional government established a cordial link with the local self government and facilitated them to increase their administrative capacity. Novgorod was the first region, which conducted the election regularly and timely.  The political stability in the region provided ample ground to take corrective measures to promote economic development equally among everyone. A regional stabilization fund was established, which ensured that the rich region would transfer fund to poorer region. This mechanism of financial cooperation at local level motivated the local administration to implement government policies effectively and involved other actors and institutions in decision making. The Social Chamber was one of the associational connections to share the legislative decisions and to involve civil organizations. The Social Chamber was an important institution which brought administration closer to the community leaders and helped in establishing the network between the government and different organizations, such as trade unions, political parties etc.

This is important to recognize that Novgorod region was able to generate social capital by government efforts because the local government recognized many social rules, which was later accepted as agreements and this helped the local government to identify various actors and mediating agencies at local level for effective implementation of government policies. The author strives to equate the instrumental value of social capital with the economic development and growth of Novgorod. According to him, the involvement of local economic and political elite with the government efforts and they also wanted to break the status quo. In sum up, we can say that the author has supported that the role of government is essential and indispensable in creating, generating and maintaining social capital at regional and local level.

In the Novgorod Model, the author has supported that the government agencies can build the social capital. The economic development of Novgorod region proves that the effective local government agency enable the community to strengthen the social capital and enable them to participate in decision making. But, this argument is very much similar, which has been repeated several times and commonly known as trickle down approach of social development. The regional economic development helps elite and powerful and they act collectively when they need to pressurize decision making process in their favor.

However, Nicolai N. Petro not able to recognize the civil society and informal organization, which have been promoting civicness among the general masses, who are unable to participate in government sponsored structure such as Social Chambers. The positive aspect of the Novgorod Model is that the model shows that the government can create effective implementing mechanism and mediating agencies to promote prosperity in the regional basis, by developing local level institutions and agencies. The political transparency and accountability of these agencies and institutions is important ingredient to build positive social capital at local level.  

Culture a modern phenomenon or encourages manifestation of Power and dominance?

The most misunderstood and most discussed topic in the human society is culture. The simplistic definition of culture is significantly synonymous with the idea of goodness and valued aspect of collective lifestyle or collective behavior of the group of people. The word culture is a conglomeration of many aspects of human society and its behavior. 

Despite of its omnipotent presence, the defining culture in one sentence is a million dollar question. In fact, there is no need to define the culture in uniformed way, because the basic difference between culture and civilization is that the propensity of culture is dynamic, while the civilization is static. This also seems challenging to define the culture without civilization and vice versa. Even in various theories of modernization (Parson, Huntington 1971, Inglehart 2000, Apter, Hegopian 2000) the definitional aspect of culture is not seen as independent paradigm. The question remains unanswered, is culture really a complex issue in the human society? Culture matters and culture also defines and redefines the social structure on the basis of the influence from inside and outside actors and actions.

When we conceptualize about the culture as multidimensional, shared, often unspoken in nature, an underground river of meaning making, a series of lenses that shape what we see and what we don’t see, shapes our idea and attitude and above all, culture operates below the surface and shifting propensity enhances the cultural domain beyond the definitional aspect. The dynamic nature of culture orients the human being in a particular ways, which consolidates the concept of ‘we’ and keep away from ‘others’.

Here, this shows that the human society does not belong to single culture but a multicultural. Therefore, the human being is experienced about cultural assimilation, cultural adaptation, cultural realism, and cultural centralism from the early age.

There is no comprehensive understanding about the culture exist, since the culture never works in isolation. The contextual realities shape and manifest the cultural resilience and its essence in the society. This is also a fact that there is nothing called culture free perspective. When we start visualizing the ideas and values, the cultural influence works in shaping the perspective on the basis of our inbuilt cultural intermingling and socialization. Here, one thing important to understand that  despite of seeing culture as potent weapons, the awareness about the different perspective make the culture more tolerant and more dynamic than the civilization.

Modernization and industrialization has affected the human lives significantly in both positive as well as negative ways. One the one hand, the concept of individual recognize as building the culture of human rights and peace in addressing the culture of violence, while on the other hand, the state has become a hegemonic creature, where violence as seen as the problem of law and order.

The Grand theory of Modernization encourages the essence of ‘Rite to Passage’, and also recognizes the challenge in the formation of nation state. Apart from this, modernization is still being used as the potential tools to serve the vested interest of economic agenda and political development in the world as it was used during the spread of colonialism. Historically, the human society is a multicultural society consisting of many nations, identities, differing abilities, languages, gender, sexual orientation, political and religious affiliation and list goes on further.

During the 18^th Century, the phase of clonialisation started with the grand concept of modernization, when the dominance was the politically inspired but the hierarchy and its significance was institutionalized in the social structure. However, colonialism was not solely responsible for building hierarchical social structure.

There are many evidences show that the hierarchical structure of society was visible even before the concept of colonialism. The most oft repeated example is the caste system in India, which is religiously defined but there is no ontological separation of religion from the political sphere of influence. Religious institution and activities were part and parcel of political system in India. This is rightly observed here that “Kings derive much of their power from worship, and bestow their emblems and privileges in a cultural atmosphere that is permeated by the language and attitudes of worship. Further, temples are key institutions in the formation of social communities”.

Generally, this is believed that the concept of social structure in India is based on ‘purity and pollution’ (Louis Dumont; Homo Hierarchicus, 1970) and ‘sacred and profane’ (Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Form of Religious Life 1912), a central characteristic of religion. But in case of India’s social structure and power structure has worked together and brought together the religion and kinship.

This has been correctly described that ‘Religion does not encompass kingship any more than kingship encompasses religion. There are not two distinct forms of power, secular power had by kings and sacred power had by Brahmans. Kings and Brahmans are both privileged but different forms of divinity in a world in which all beings were, however distantly, generated from the same ontological source. And power—whether defined as a constellation of cultural conceits or as an analytic concern--cannot be restricted to a single domain of Indian social life’.

Participation in the workforce can be empowering for women in a number of ways, providing them independent earning, new skills and exposure to the outside world and also structure of the authority. However, men reports higher work participation than women in India.

According to Indian National Sample Survey, man labor force participation stood at 85 percent while female’s at 35 percent in India. This is also true that in most part of the world, the women have secondary position and the responsibility of bread earning is on the man. However, the most of the Indian women are working belong to lower strata of the society.

The male labor force in agriculture has declined; this has increased the house hold as well as agriculture burden on the rural Indian women. A large number of women are occupied as in the domestic help and household production, but to calculate their contribution as in the tangible income source is a complex issue. According the Human Development Report, 1995, there is hardly any difference between the women in developing countries and developed countries in term of number of hour and total number of work. In developing countries, this share is 53% and in developed or industrialized countries their share is 51%. Although, this comparison is just to show the situation of women at global stage.

Currently, the women have a large participation in sectors of the economy not officially labeled as ‘work’ such as participation in the non monetized sector and assisting with family based or house hold based economic activity; this nature of work is not reflected in the national accounting scheme.

Furthermore, a number of factors impede women’s entry into the workforce, such as social security for women workers, including maternity benefits, Medicare, accident compensation and occupational safety measures are virtually nonexistent. The most of the employment related benefits go to workers in the organized sectors, generally, educated urban male and female get these benefit. The job opportunity in the organized sector limits the involvement of even the functional literate women in the workforce.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), a innovative employment scheme in the rural India, which strengthen the equity and inclusiveness in workforce in India. In recently held international conference on NREGS, a paper presented by Jayati Ghosh shows that the women’s share in total rural workforce in India is 36.2 percent, while in women’s share in total workforce under NREGS is 48.9 percent.

The involvement of marginalized women belonging to scheduled caste and tribe is spectacular in NREGS. But, in the social spectrum, the women’s outside work are also constructed on the basis of gender role. In many poverty ridden rural household, this has been observed that as soon her son or husband start earning, he discourages his mother or wife to work outside. The high level of involvement of women from marginalized castes and group is also providing substantial support that the poverty among this section of social group is quite acute and worse in form.

The NREGS has been critically evaluated on the basis of productive utility and creative utilization of program. The implementation of this program is quite challenging, this is not because of the faulty nature but the lack of institutional effectiveness and also of the effective mechanism. The nature of the program is going to make its base in addressing many social economic issues in the rural areas.

The productive utility is creating at least the 100 days exposure to the rural women and they are able to meet the other women of the same villages. In the normal day to day life, this kind of exposure possibility is highly rare. While working in this program would enable them to interact with many policy issues and also with their political representative. Although, this is little ambitious to discuss this possibility but the NREGS creates opportunity of this nature for the rural women. As far as creative utilization of the resource is amazing suggestion, but the creativity and innovation comes quite lately or never comes in the life of rural women. The sole objective of the rural women with this program to get some cash and kind benefit, while working within their own village.

The 73^rd and 74^th Constitutional Amendments, passed in 1993, decentralized state government and allotted power to local Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). The same amendment reserved one third of seats for women in local government bodies, as well as made additional reservation for other marginalized groups. There remain a number of challenges in ensuring that women in PRIs have equal voices and representation in political institutions. Elected bodies continue to be largely male-dominated structures, with male members taking leadership roles and controlling decision making. In many instances, this has been seen that men have tried to take advantage of their wife’s elected role or infringe on her position of influence. Additionally, reservations in municipals bodies and PRIs have not been accompanied by reservations in the Parliament or State Assemblies. 

Maternal Health and Reproductive Rights: Road Less Traveled

Maternal health is integrally connected with women’s overall socioeconomic well being. Young women, who are neglected and under-nourished as children, as well as those with an early age of first pregnancy, are more vulnerable to maternal complication.In roughly estimation that India accounts for nearly 20 percent of maternal death worldwide. There are number of factors that contribute to poor maternal health, such as Anemia, which may contribute to maternal and prenatal mortality and increase the risk of premature delivery and low birth rates, not receiving an antenatal check up, family prohibiting the check up and its cost as contributing factors.

The maternal mortality and morbidity are two significant health concerns because this is related to high level of fertility. Both the WHO and UNICEF has estimated that India’s mortality ratio is lower in comparison with the ratio of Bangladesh and Nepal, while this ration is higher than Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The variation in this ration is also prevalent within the country also, as Kerala having the lowest ratio (87) and MP and Orissa having 700. This variation of ratio clearly shows that the health services in Kerala is better and effective than in MP and Orissa, and women in Kerala enjoy better socio economic status than the tow states in India. In many women health related study and research, this has been identified that majority of these death could be prevented if women had adequate health services, either proper prenatal care or referral to appropriate health care facility. The level of education and place of residence are also significant factor in availing health related services during the pregnancies.

In a survey conducted by the International Institute of Populations Science shows that the information regarding the prenatal health care among the women is also quite low and almost half of the illiterate women in India also not receive proper health care in India.The availability of health care services is also important than awareness about the health care. Generally, this is acknowledged that the urban women are able to utilize the health care services during their prenatal and post pregnancies period.This possibly happens because the health services and health professional in the urban areas are available, even the presence of private health services are advantageous, while in the rural areas, the distance of the health center is quite far and the unavailability of health professionals make this services useless for the rural women.

The NFHS-3 suggests that improving health requires combating traditional attitude, raising awareness about the benefits of ante and postnatal checkups, lowering the cost, increasing the availability of ante and postnatal services and raising women’s nutritional status. Increasing a women’s nutritional status, along with proper health care during pregnancy can substantially increase her child birth weight as well as decrease maternal complication.

According to the World Health Organization’s Regional Health Report, the reproductive health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing…in all matter relating to reproductive system and its functions and purposes”.

In the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) in India, there are almost 4 out 10 ever married women in India report having had at least one reproductive health problem, while around 78 percent did not seek treatment or advice. The women from the medium and poor household report more about the reproductive health problem than the women from higher class (high standard of living). Additionally, the prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in India also poses a daunting reproductive health challenge in the coming decade. The level of awareness and assertiveness to say no for sex among the women is quite low in India.

 The Reproductive and sexual health is not a personal decision making area in India. The socio cultural paradigm of Indian society, where the body of women are a sign of dignity and respect for the family and for the community. The control of the reproductive and sexual health decision largely depends upon the husband’s or husbands elder family member’s consent.

This is also matter of serious concern that the reproductive and sexual health of the Indian man seems better in certain extent, but the growing cases of HIV/AIDS shows the another aspect of deterioration in male sexual behavior in India.  Even ‘If women have little societal space to deal with the software of reproductive health - love, romance, relationships - neither do they have any power to wrestle with the hardware; everything from abortions to gynecological check-ups remain family decisions. If reproductive health is about the rights of individuals, particularly women, to make decisions about these issues, then women's empowerment is clearly the order of the day. 

Empowerment, however, is also a much-mangled term. We understand empowerment to be a process that enables women to analyze their own situation, decide their priorities, develop solutions to their problems, and take collective action to improve various aspects of their lives’ (Advocacy for Sexual and Reproductive Health: The Challenge in India; Bishakha Datta and Geetanjali Misra Source: Reproductive Health Matters, Vol. 8, No. 16).

This is a complex socio cultural issues and breaking this or transforming this cultural idea is time consuming exercise with the consistent efforts. The role of civil society organization, women’s group and other peer groups has been recognized as a pivotal factor in addressing the issue of the reproductive and sexual health.

The most basis biological transition in women is menstrual period. In rural India, the situation is worse in the context of menstrual hygiene, while in the urban area, where a large number of women are working in the informal sector and their needs and aspiration about the health is concerned is almost negligible. The vulnerability in the reproductive and sexual health is quite high because it is interrelated with the heavy duties, housework and other household formalities, which is generally a responsibility of women. The question here is not who is responsible for this situation or how can government make the policy to resolve this, unless the community or socio cultural aspects are transformed?  

The main argument is over the issue of addressing the issue of reproductive and sexual health in enhancing the women status in India. On the one hand, women education is seen the ultimate objective enabling women to take their reproductive and sexual decision. This idea holds water in certain extent and functional in urban women. On the other hand, according to 2001 census, there were 300,000 married girls who become mother before the age of 15. The complexity of the reproductive and sexual health is related to individual and groups (family, community), where girl’s marriage is seen as priority in the social structure.

This is also sheer violation of women’s reproductive rights. Combating AIDS and other reproductive health problems requires fighting the social taboos and norms, which prevent women to make their own reproductive health choices and increasing her easy accessibility of reproductive health services.