The curse of the farmer’s wife

The weekend before women’s day was spend in the company of female friends. A complete girls bash-- alcohol, gossip and talk on how all the good men have gone. These were all middle class late 20-something women who had made a living for themselves, no ring around their fingers, but could pay for the apartments they lived in and more. Thirty years back you had to be a rebel or a very fortunate one to be one of those women, but not today, today the country is filled with these independent women.

One of my friends had just got a pedicure done and was flaunting her feet, when she teased another by pointing at her feet and saying, “look at my pretty feet and your feet .Like a farmer’s wife’s feet.” My friend unknowingly was stating the sad truth of reality. That the illiterate lady in the village who toils all day in the field, grazes her cattle, takes her produce to the market, bargains for a fair price is still seen as the farmer’s wife and never the farmer. She does not get the benefits of a farmer, she is not entitled to the same subsidies. All because the Indian government refuses to recognize her. So what happens if her husband passes away, does she cease to exist?

Today over half of the cultivated land in India is managed by women. But, in the largely patriarchal Indian society it is the man who has ownership of land. The Indian land reforms have not changed much to support the women on the field, thus reducing them from farmers to farmers wives. Despite central and state government laws which allow equality of ownership single ownership or joint ownership of land by women is still unheard of in India’s remotest villages that depend on agriculture for their livelihood.

In many households that depend on farming it is seen that the man in the house is an alcoholic or a loafer and the woman has no choice to take to the fields and bring the food on the table. In Indian social perception, the `farmer' is a landed male with a patta, a patta is a document evidencing lawful possession of the person concerned. But, both Indian land rights and hereditary land ownership culture does not encourage women owning land as property

So women who work on the field and raise families with it are not recognized as farmers and in case she commits suicide her family does not receive the compensation that the government gives for farmer suicides. In fact her death is not even recorded as a farmer suicide.

With more men moving to cities to find jobs it is the women who toil in the sun to bring the grains in the market and food on our plates. But when will the government help her graduate from being the farmer’s wife to the farmer itself? When will it come naturally for us middle and upper class Indians to picture a woman ploughing her field with her two buffalos when we think of a farmer?

Someone asked me if we needed to celebrate women’s day anymore. If all that bra burning and verbal male bashing was necessary since the lady’s presence in the work place was very much felt today and most people were equally glad to have a female child as a male one. I would say yes and we still have a long way to go to reach equality. One reason we need to remember and fight on women’s day would be to break free from the curse of the farmer’s wife.