Women, Labour and the Economy in India: From Migrant Menservants to Uprooted Girl Children Maids 0415844703, 9780415844703

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Women, Labour and the Economy in India

The last available census estimated around 10 per cent of total urban working women in India are concentrated in the low-paid domestic services such as cleaning, cooking and taking care of the children and the elderly. This is found to be much higher in certain parts of India, emerging as the single most important avenue for urban females, surpassing males in the service since the 1980s. By applying an imaginative and refreshing mix of disciplinary approaches ranging from economic models of the household, empirical analysis and literary conventions, this book analyses the changing labour economy in post-Partition West Bengal. It explains how and why women and girl children have replaced this traditionally male bias in the gender segregated domestic service industry since the late 1940s, and addresses the question of whether this increase in vulnerable individuals working in domestic service, the growth of the urban professional middle class in the post liberalization period, and the increasing incidences of reported abuses of domestics, in urban middleclass homes in the recent years, are related. Covering five decades of the history of gender and labour in India, this book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of gender and labour relations, development studies, economics, history, and women and gender studies. Deepita Chakravarty is Associate Professor and Chairperson at the Centre for Women’s Studies, Visva-Bharati University, West Bengal, India. Ishita Chakravarty is Associate Professor of History at Vidyasagar College, University of Calcutta, India.

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Women, Labour and the Economy in India

From migrant menservants to uprooted girl children maids Deepita Chakravarty and Ishita Chakravarty

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Deepita Chakravarty and Ishita Chakravarty The right of Deepita Chakravarty and Ishita Chakravarty to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chakravarty, Deepita.   Women, labour and the economy in India : from migrant menservants to uprooted girl children maids / Deepita Chakravarty and Ishita Chakravarty.    pages cm. — (Routledge studies in the growth economies of Asia ; 127)   Includes bibliographical references and index.  1. Women—Employment—India—West Bengal.  2. Women household employees—India—West Bengal.  3.  Labor market— India—West Bengal.  4.  West Bengal (India)—Emigration and immigration—Economic aspects.  5.  West Bengal (India)—Economic conditions. I. Chakravarty, Ishita. II.  Title.   HD6190.W47C43 2016  331.40954—dc23  2015022406 ISBN: 978-0-415-84470-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-66899-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figures xiv List of tables xv Acknowledgements xvii 1 Introduction

1

2 The backdrop: Partition, land reforms and the new industrial policy

15

3 Domesticity vs. paid work: domestic service in urban West Bengal

35

4 For bed and board only: the refugee maids

61

5 When daughters migrate and mothers stay back

83

6 From family members to invisible essentials: masters, mistresses and their domestic workers

104

7 The case of Bangladesh

129

Index 139

Figures

3.1 Percentage of domestic workers in total urban working women in different states of India, 2001 3.2 Percentage share of different age groups in urban female domestics in West Bengal in 1991 3.3 Urban women’s work participation rates (usual status, per 1000) in different age groups: West Bengal (WB), Tamil Nadu (TN) and India 5.1 Female and male migration for employment from different parts of West Bengal to Kolkata City in 1991 for different age groups 5.2 Female and male migration for employment to Kolkata city from different parts of West Bengal as a percentage of total workers in the metropolis in 1991 for different age groups 5.3 Migration for work from the rural areas of the state to the urban areas, 2001 5.4 Percentage of age-groupwise migration for employment by women from rural and urban areas of the state to the urban areas within the state of enumeration in 2001

47 53 54 87 87 88 89

Tables

2.1 Education specific work participation rates (per 1,000 population) for urban females (15 years and above) in West Bengal 3.1 Female and male work participation (usual status) rates (per 1,000 population) by 15 major states (2009–2010) in India 3.2 Land-holding patterns in India 3.3 A comparison of female–male (usual status, per 1000) workforce participation rates in different industries in urban West Bengal 3.4 Percentage distribution of urban women workers (all ages) in different divisions of work in the 15 major states of India, 1991 3.5 Women’s major work categories in urban West Bengal: 2001 3.6 Work participation rates of urban females (all) and girl children (5 to 14 years) in 15 major states of India in 1991 and 2001 (percentage) 3.7 Work participation rates (in per cent) of women and girl children and the percentage of girl children in total female workforce over 40 years in urban West Bengal 3.8 Female and male work participation rates (usual status, per 1000 population) for different age groups in urban West Bengal 3.9 Percentage distribution of urban girl children (5–14) workers in different divisions of work in 15 major states of India, 1991 4.1 Migrant domestics in Calcutta in 1921 by their place of birth 4.2 Percentage share of women in domestic service among all workers in the group in Calcutta Industrial Region in 1951 4.3 Percentage share of women in domestic service among all workers in the group in Calcutta City and Calcutta Industrial Region in 1961 4.4 Percentage share of women and girl children (0–14) years in domestic service in urban West Bengal in 1971 and 1981 4.5 Employment behaviour of the displaced and the host women in Calcutta Industrial Region in 1951 4.6 Distribution of domestic servants per 100 households according to different expenditure classes in Calcutta City, 1953 4.7 Migrants in other services: Calcutta, 1961 4.8 Domestics (housekeepers, cooks, maids and related workers): Calcutta City, 1961 5.1 Different categories of domestic workers 5.2 Average earnings of different categories of domestics

31 40 42 44 46 47 49 49 50 51 64 66 66 66 68 72 75 75 90 92

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Acknowledgements

We have been working on this project for quite some time now, and on the way, we have incurred many debts of various kinds, difficult to acknowledge with due respect. We are primarily grateful to our teacher N. Krishnaji. We kept falling back on him at almost every difficult juncture of this journey. We have discussed many aspects of this project with Kunal Sen, Samita Sen and Tirthankar Roy. Their advices and encouragements turned out to be invaluable. We are also indebted to Nirmala Banerjee, Padmini Swaminathan, Mukul Mukherjee, Achin Chakraborty, the late Anjan Ghosh, Somnath Roy, Dasarathi Sengupta, the late Arun Dasgupta, Mushtaq Khan, Krishna Bandopadhyay, Upal Dattagupta, Kingshuk Dasgupta, Paramita Sikder, U. Vindhya, G. Vijay Kumar, Kalpana Wilson, Peni Vera Desanso, Sohini Ghosh, Sarju Kaul, Jayanta Das and Bhaswati Chatterjee for discussions and comments at several stages of this work. We gratefully acknowledge the insightful comments of two anonymous referees Routledge had arranged for us. Also a special thanks to Dorothea Schaefter, Jillian Morrison and Sophie Iddamalgoda of Routledge for being supportive in the process of preparation of this manuscript. But for the help of Nemai Gayen, Chandana Sikdar, Jagadish Mondol and Krishna Roy in conducting primary surveys in different places in and around Kolkata it would not have been possible to write this book. Somsukla Saha dug out data from piles of old and brittle newspapers preserved in the National Library in Kolkata. We are grateful to various libraries and their staff inside and outside India. These include Indian Statistical Institute, National Sample Survey Organization, National Library, School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, West Bengal State Archives, Bongiyo Sahitya Porishat Library in Kolkata, Census of India, Kolkata and Hyderabad, Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Kozhikode, British Library, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Library and London School of Economics (LSE) in London. Sarmistha De and Madhurima Sen from West Bengal State Archives, Asok Upadhyay from Bongiyo Sahitya Porishot, Nimai Chand Saha from Visva Bharati University Library and Hardikbrata Biswas from School of Women’s studies, Jadavpur University, extended unstinted help.

xviii Acknowledgements A very special thanks to Bijoya Bhattacharya for her encouragement and support. We gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance for parts of this study from the University Grants Commission, India, Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Chapter Four of this book has been published as a research paper in Modern Asian Studies. We are grateful to them for giving the necessary permission for publishing a revised version of this paper. Some parts of the discussion in this book came in Economic and Political Weekly first and have been referred with due citation. Finally, we wish to thank the domestic workers and their employers for agreeing to share their time and experiences with us. This is the first time when we are going to publish something that our father Bikash Chakravarty, to whom we owe the passion for research, will not read or comment on. Our mother Bani has supported us in more ways than we could possibly acknowledge. We dedicate this book to our parents and to our teacher N. Krishnaji with love and gratitude. Apart from being with us through a difficult time, Arindam collected many useful books, other materials and commented on series of drafts whenever called for. If we ever write another book, we will surely dedicate that to him!

1 Introduction

A migrant boy child domestic worker living with his employers in a middle class family in Kolkata, sleeps on the kitchen floor. One fine morning, the employer couple finds the child lying dead. It was winter, and the child chose to sleep in the locked kitchen near a burning coal oven to keep warm. Post-mortem report confirms death by carbon monoxide poisoning. The employers immediately feel a prick of conscience, but are much relieved when the case is declared to be closed. This, in brief, is the story line of a popular film Kharij [The Case is Closed ] (1982) by Mrinal Sen, based on an earlier novel of the same title by Ramapada Choudhury (1974). Kharij, an example of experiment with realism after the 1940s, chose to focus on a typical theme in Bangla literature, that is, middle class duplicity in its treatment of the subaltern. The social question which the film deals with is still very much relevant. However, both the novelist and the filmmaker portrayed the child as a boy and not as a girl, while in reality girl children domestic workers, mostly migrant, had started frequenting the city already in the 1970s, and they were vulnerable in their isolated workplaces of employers’ homes in many more ways than boys in the same age group. In fact, the urban areas of the eastern state of West Bengal surpass all other major Indian states in the rate of its girl children working out. Most of them are engaged in paid domestic work (Chakravarty and Chakravarty 2008). This is remarkable in a state which historically has a low work participation rate (WPR) of adult women. However, women started dominating some labour market activities in urban Bengal during the closing years of colonial rule. Domestic service emerged as the single most important avenue for urban females in the state. They finally outnumbered males in the service from the 1980s onwards. This feminization of domestic service, traditionally a male domain, was most prominent in the youngest age group. The continued and increasing importance of domestic service in women’s work in urban West Bengal during the post-Independence period, and the frequent entry of girl children into it, need exploration. Moreover, there is no dearth of report in contemporary newspapers on abuse of girl children whole-time domestic workers (living with the employer’s family) in city homes, ranging from keeping in starvation and physical assaults to rape and murder. For example, a 12-year-old girl working as a domestic maid in

2 Introduction a middle class family was found hanged in her employer’s residence (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 10 July  2009). The dead body of another girl child domestic worker (aged 11 years) was reported to have been dropped on the street by her employers (Pratidin, 29 July 2008). Others, more fortunate, managed to flee from their employer’s places with severe injuries caused by burns or beating (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 4 September 2013; 11 October; 11 May 2012; 25 February 2008). These cases are reported from Kolkata, the capital city of West Bengal. Among these tortured whole-time domestic workers, two were even below 9 years old.1 According to the last available census estimates, around 10 per cent of total urban working women in India are concentrated in the low-paid domestic services such as cleaning, cooking, taking care of the children, and the elderly, and so on. In West Bengal, the estimate is around 23 per cent. For a single work category, the concentration is indeed very high. Among these women, a considerable number are girl children below 14 years of age. This observation suggests the remarkable importance of paid domestic service for India’s employment scenario in general and for the employment status of women and girl children wage workers in West Bengal in particular. Domestic service slowly emerged as an important arena of women’s work in all urban centres of India, especially in the better performing states of Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and former Andhra Pradesh. Though the concentration of urban women in domestic service is not as high in these states, as it is in West Bengal, according to recent data, it is more feminized in some of the above-mentioned states. Many of these women and girl children domestic workers in West Bengal are commuters and migrants from the rural interiors to the urban areas of the state, as well as to that of other states of the country. All cases of abused girl child domestic workers mentioned above migrated to the city from the rural interiors. Unfortunately, some stray efforts apart, we do not find significant research on this emerging labour market in India, which is segregated both by gender and age and is also dominated by migrants. The relationship between women, work and migration is, in any case, problematic. Scholars have suggested that the gender dimension of population movements has not been enough focused as a consequence of an overemphasis on labour migration (Grieco and Boyd 1998). Men have dominated discourses on population movements. It is usually taken for granted that migrants are men, and if women migrate at all, they do so only as dependents. Women therefore found a place in migration literature only in the context of family and marriage (Weiner 2004). However, as figures suggest, women have migrated in almost the same numbers as men. According to Zlotnik as quoted in Jolly et al. (2003: 6), in 2000, 85 million women migrated as compared to 90 million men. Women constituted 46 per cent of the overall transnational migration from the developing countries. They surely migrate as part of a family or in connection with marriage in a large number. Studies point out that a sizable number of women also migrate for work, and there is a clear increase in such kind of migration with the primary purpose of employment in the recent years (Phizacklea 1983). In 2000, there were 6.1 million temporary migrants in Asia; about one-third, almost two million, of this migrant

Introduction  3 workforce are women (Yamanaka and Piper 2003). The most important point to note about these 2 million women who migrated for work is that they were concentrated in some particular occupations in a gender-segregated labour market. These occupations include the entertainment industry, health services and especially domestic service which predominantly consists of occupations such as washing, cleaning, cooking and also care giving, that are extensions of women’s traditional roles in most societies. Thus domestic work has become one major occupational category, which migrant women from across the world and especially from the developing Asian countries tend to crowd (Agrawal 2006). Although literature on women, work and migration focuses more on cross-border movement, women have formed a substantial component of internal migration flows in Asia as well. Such internal migration takes place especially from the poor rural hinterlands to the richer urban centres of developing countries in Asia. These internally moving women from the rural areas to the urban centres are also found to be concentrated in some specific areas of work predominantly in the informal sector characterized by a gender division of labour. For instance, unlike the Srilankan or the Philipina poor women who migrate across the border, Indian women mostly migrate internally, in search of employment, and a significant percentage of them are engaged as urban domestic workers (Neetha 2004; Roy 2008). They are not among the top foreign currency earners like their Srilankan counterparts (Gamburd 2000). Neither are they equipped with educational degrees and other associational skills like the migrating Philipina domestic workers (Ogaya 2006). In India, they are mostly the poorest of the poor, illiterate or semi-literate, migrating from the less developed rural areas to the rich urban centres of the same state or other metropolises of the country, for a pittance. Moreover, as already mentioned, a considerable proportion among these internally migrating poor women for employment, in India and particularly in West Bengal are small girls below 14 years. Census data provide information on migrant girl children from the rural areas of West Bengal seeking employment in Kolkata, the capital city of the state. Primary data reported by Save the Children from Kolkata and some neighbouring districts during the middle of the 2000s suggest a significant number of migrant girl children (many of them between 5 and 9 years of age) come alone, and not as part of a migrating family, to work as whole-time domestic staff in middleclass homes in Kolkata. Ananya Roy (2008) around the same time, in her survey finds the same trend. The large number of newspaper reports on the abuse of migrant girl children domestics in the recent years as well as the abovementioned reports published by Save the Children corroborates this finding. Chakravarty and Chakravarty (2012) note that many girl children from rural Bengal often also migrate outside the state as whole-time domestic workers. Most victims of the ‘Nithari case’ (2006)2 near Delhi turned out to be migrants from rural Bengal. Children are migrating as domestic workers to big cities like Delhi from the neighbouring Jharkhand as well (Wadhawan 2013). We try to locate in this book the factors which pushed and pulled increasingly large number of migrant women and girl children in domestic service in post-Partition West Bengal. The changing society and cultural practices recreated

4 Introduction and sustained both a labour market option (domestic service) and the home as gendered spaces. In what way has this increasing participation of women in domestic service changed their lives? The question is a complicated one. Any work option possibly leads to the formation of some sort of decision-making power. At the same time the facts of being women, underage, single migrants and working in isolated places invisible from public gaze can seriously challenge the notion of agency. Finally, we would also like to see whether the growth of the urban professional middle class in the post liberalization period, the incidence of increasing participation of the most vulnerable section of the society (poor women and particularly girl children) in domestic service and the continuing incidence of reported abuses of domestic workers in urban middle class homes in the recent years are in anyway related. Increasing demand for domestic service has played an important role in determining the outcome. We have touched upon the issue in almost all the chapters. However, our focus is to unravel the complexities of the supply side. While domestic service was historically more prevalent in Kolkata compared with other important urban centres of the country, it has primarily been a male domain, like most other paid work outside the home.3 Studies have pointed out how domestic service became increasingly feminized in late colonial Bengal as a result of women’s withdrawal from modern and traditional industries (Banerjee 2006; Mukherjee 1995). The development of the idea of separate spheres for men and women among the Bengali bhadralok (gentleman) at about the same time affected the poorer section of the society as well (Bandyopadhyay 1990). Many women were forcibly withdrawn from paid outside work and those who were not, found domestic service to be their only option as it was considered to be an extension of women’s ‘primary’ duties at home (Banerjee 2004). Waves of migration from across the border further feminized domestic service in post-Partition West Bengal. Domestic service was also segregated by age with the frequent entry of girl children into it in the state during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Urban middle class employers who had earlier started replacing male servants by cheaper refugee maids (female domestic workers), now probably preferred girls to boys as girls were expected to be ‘naturally’ more obedient and more caring than boys of the same age. Parents of such children, who decided to send their young daughters to work at city homes as part of their survival strategy, were also guided by the prevailing concept and practice of domesticity. Two more findings on the basis of the census data are to be noted in this context. First, the work participation rate of girl children was increasing in West Bengal during the closing years of the twentieth century, and it was also the highest among the 15 major states of India in 2001. In addition, the National Sample Survey (NSS) round of 2004–2005 reports that among the 15 major states of India, the maximum number of girl children in the youngest age group (5–9 years) work outside the home in West Bengal. In no other major state children are reported to work for wage at this tender age. Second, among the working girl children in urban West Bengal, almost 57 per cent were engaged in domestic service in 1991 (Chakravarty and Chakravarty 2008). Girl children outnumbered boys in the same

Introduction  5 age group and also became a major constituent of the adult women, in domestic service, in urban West Bengal, for the first time in 1981. Before that year, their presence in the urban work force, though on the rise since 1961, was negligible. The above figures also suggest that the migrating girls from the rural parts of the state constitute a considerable portion of the whole-time girl children city domestic workers in the state today. Moreover, especially in the context of the dwindling economic scenario, chances are very high that rural–urban migration of girl children for domestic service is responsible, at least to a significant extent, for the dramatic rise in the WPR of very young girls. Unfortunately even in the scanty literature on internal migration of poor women for work, barring a few exceptions, such girl children remain almost absent.4 This happens probably because a similar mental framework that refuses to see women as more than dependent migrants is also at work here. Studies on women’s migration which mostly focus on transnational movements and sometimes attempt to argue that poor women’s agency is thereby enhanced, probably find it difficult to incorporate in their paradigm the 7to 8-year-olds who are forced to leave their homes to earn a living. The period under consideration in this study is between 1951 (the first year of census after Independence) and 2009–2010 (the last round of NSS on employment and unemployment). As domestic service is primarily an urban affair in India and also in West Bengal, we focus on the urban areas of the state. The main secondary data sources used include the Census of India, the National Sample Survey and National Family Health Survey (NFHS). But from the objectives, it is clear that only large scale data on broad indicators such as incidence of work, number of people engaged in different categories of work segregated by gender and age and similar such figures would not be sufficient to capture the sociocultural aspects of the present study. It is true that the above-mentioned macro indicators along with a few others reveal the status of women’s work over a period of time. But these figures are not able to unravel the complex process of interaction between various factors that led to the specific state of affairs we are talking about. Especially when we are not looking for straight-forward relations between two variables such as fall in government expenditure in social sector and girl children’s school enrolment figures and the like. We therefore have to look at various other sources. Reports of primary surveys conducted by others, at different points of time, have also been used. Apart from these usual secondary sources, in order to capture the social and cultural aspects of the problem the study has heavily drawn on contemporary newspaper advertisements and reports and also on contemporary autobiographies and memoirs. Fictional writings of the period under consideration have also helped enrich our understanding of the society and the psyche of the period and the people concerned. As the study is not mainly focused on the status of domestic workers, we did not consider of a large scale primary survey among such respondents. We did conduct primary surveys of selected households who have sent women and girl children for paid domestic work as well as the middle class homes that have been the employers. The households are chosen mainly on the basis of a purposive sampling as the present study does not attempt at making any quantitative generalization. In fact, the very nature of the problem this study

6 Introduction probes into does not permit any generalization as such. Our aim in these surveys was to verify a set of conjectures we could make from our reading of secondary data. This study uses a descriptive analytic method using quantitative information as and when required. The analysis draws on theoretical approaches of more than one social science disciplines.

Plan of the book Recent research on domestic workers focuses on global migration of labour. As poor women usually do not migrate outside (except from Kerala) India to seek employment as domestic workers like their Srilankan or Philipina counterparts, they remain absent in the international discourse on paid domestic service. Also there is no full scale study on the historical evolution of paid domestic service either in India as a whole or in West Bengal in particular. The not so significant volume of work that has been done on the subject focuses on short-term micro developments such as the status of domestic workers. We instead take a wider perspective both in scope and time frame. Existing literature recognizes the increasing importance of domestic service in poor urban women’s work in India, but in most cases, girl children domestic workers are absent in these academic discourses. To understand the full implications of the increasing importance of domestic service in poor urban women’s and girl children’s work in the state, the question has to be contextualized against the backdrop of changes at the macro level. Chapter Two introduces the problem in the wider context of broad trends in political and economic changes during the post-Partition period. We focus on the Partition of India, the birth of a new state called West Bengal and the consequent demographic changes. During this period, the nascent West Bengal economy was going through several crises handling the impact of Partition on the one hand and policy induced challenges on the other. During the 60-year period (1951–2009/2010) under discussion irrespective of the political regime changes, there is continuous decline in the large scale industry in the state leading to an increasing informalization of the urban economy. Large number of the host population who lost jobs in the formal sector as well as the immigrants crowded the urban informal sector lowering the wage rates significantly. This is coupled with the migration from the rural hinterlands in search of work to the already overcrowded urban areas as the rural economy was also undergoing severe long-term deprivation which reached an all-time high in the 1943 Bengal Famine. As a result, there was a continuous decline in the viable economic alternatives for the poor. In order to solve some of these problems, the Left Front Government, after coming to power in 1977, started implementing the land redistribution policies already adopted by the previous ruling coalition. There were some initial positive distributional outcomes of the land reform policies; however, Operation Barga (a name by which the reforms were known) failed to solve the basic problems, and the good results started tapering off by the early 1990s. As a result, the importance of domestic service as a job option for women in urban West Bengal not only continued, but also increased in the recent years. Demand for paid domestic labour has simultaneously increased in the urban areas of the state.

Introduction  7 The importance of domestic service is, however, increasing in the urban areas almost all over the world. Gregson and Lowe (2005) focus on the growing demand for immigrant female care workers in urban middle class homes of present-day England. Bridget Anderson (2000) has focused on why third world women are most preferred as whole-time domestic workers in middle class households of the European Union. Pei-Chia-Lan (2006) notes that the destinations of migration are no longer exclusively toward core countries in the North. The demand for migrant labour, both in the productive and reproductive spheres, has emerged in newly rich countries in the South, including the oil-rich Gulf countries and the ‘newly industrialized countries’ (NICS) of Asia. The expansion of the service-based middle class in ‘lower-order’ global cities in Asia such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Taipei has given rise to a new demand for transnational care providers. In contrast, the considerably large number of the affluent urban middle class in India absorbs migrant female labour from within the country in this part of the world. Only very recently female domestic workers from Kerala have started migrating outside the country as well (Kodoth and Varghese 2012). We have dealt with the relationship between the growth of the urban middle class, increasing participation of urban middle class women in paid work outside the home and demand for female domestic workers in Chapters Two, Three and Four. In the third chapter, we try to see how the broad politico-economic changes led to an increasingly gender segregated labour market in post-Partition West Bengal where poor urban women found themselves at the lowest rungs of the urban informal economy such as domestic service. The growth of a middle class and the increasing demand for domestic workers in general and for female help in particular also helped to feminize the domestic labour market. That domestic service emerged as one of the major employment options of the poor urban immigrant women in post-1947 West Bengal had also much to do with social and cultural changes during the late colonial period. Thus a part of this chapter will be devoted to a review of works on social and cultural history of late 19th and early twentieth century Bengal. The rest of the chapter has taken up the statistical documentation of gender segregation of the urban labour market in the state with respect to the country as a whole in the post-Partition period. How perennial gender segregation in the rural labour market has influenced the urban outcome has also been discussed. The new entrants, the globally migrant care givers have been substituting much of the ‘wifely’ and ‘motherly’ duties in today’s world. Shellee Colen (1995: 78) in her study on the experiences of West Indian childcare workers in New York and their white US born employers reveals ‘the operation of a transnational, highly stratified system of reproduction’. The globalization of care work, according to Colen while relieving the white employers of many of the reproductive works such as parenting and childcare, also gave birth to a highly stratified process based on class, race, gender, migration status etc. Globalization has triggered the formation of what scholars call ‘the global nanny chain’ (Hochschild 2000) or ‘the international division of reproductive labour’ (Parreñas 2001). Cross-border migration of domestic workers, in any significant number, was however first seen in India after 1947 in two Partition-torn states of Bengal and the Punjab. The

8 Introduction downward trend in industrial job opportunities in post-Independence West Bengal accompanied by large scale immigration of women, men and children from the bordering East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, led to a decline in the wage rate. In such a situation, poor refugee women in their frantic search for means of survival gradually drove out the males of the host population engaged in domestic service in urban West Bengal by offering to work in return for a very low and often for no wage at all. As poor males from the neighbouring states of Bihar, Orissa and the United Provinces constituted historically a substantial section of the Calcutta domestics, it was they who were mainly replaced by the refugee women. The maid emerged in the new social role of housekeeper and caregiver in those middle class households from which women joined paid work outside. This gendering of a particular labour market, that is, domestic service, traditionally a male domain, in post-Partition West Bengal and mainly in its capital city Kolkata has been analyzed in Chapter Four. The second stage in the changing profile of domestic service in urban West Bengal was arguably set by the migrating girl children from different parts of the state to Kolkata city in search for employment since the 1970s. This probably has led West Bengal to the highest position in girl children’s work participation rate in urban India in 2001.The frequent participation of girl children in paid work outside the home mainly as whole-time domestic workers in the urban areas of West Bengal is the outcome of a complex interplay of a number of economic, social and cultural factors operating at both sides of demand and supply. The feminization of domestic service and the entry of girl children into it during the 1980s onwards are to some extent determined by the increasing preference for such domestic workers by a large section of employers, the urban middle classes. To what extent does the family of the domestic worker determine the final outcome? What factors determine the decisions of the families of the domestic workers to cater to such preferences? As many of the discriminatory practices against girl children and women primarily take place within the household, the family seems to have a crucial role in deciding who will go for outside work. However, it needs to be remembered that the decisions taken by the household or for that matter the head of the household (often male) are informed by the broader socioeconomic and cultural practices. Chapter Five tries to explore and understand the possible role of the workers’ families in determining the country’s highest work participation rate of the urban girl children in West Bengal with a historical bias against women’s participation in paid outside work. In this context, the chapter also explores the possible outcomes in the character of gender relations within the household with the changes in the relative decision-making powers of the different adult members of the family. In this context, let us note that some Asian women, single migrants as they are, have been found to be primarily responsible for the sustenance of the family and the community in some parts of the world. Transnational migration of Srilankan and Philipina women domestics is a good case in point (Gamburd 2000; Ogaya 2006). A good deal of work on the historical evolution of domestic service has been done in the context of the developed world. Most focus on the incidence of

Introduction  9 life-cycle servants and maids in early modern Europe who were connected with their employers through ties of kinship and patron client relations. For instance, Sheila M. Cooper (2004) has shown how with the withdrawal of upper and middle class children from domestic service during the course of the nineteenth century the ties of family, friendship and patronage which offered protection to the servant gradually disappeared. Similarly, the entry of shelterless refugee women and then girl children into the hitherto male-dominated urban labour market in West Bengal possibly increased their vulnerability. Theorists on migration often explain employer–employee interactions in domestic service as just another market relationship, created by the so-called supply-and-demand balance. Thus population movements for a very long time have been explained as a result of push and pull factors. Helma Lutz (2012: 1) however argues that domestic work is not just another labour market, and it is characterized by the following aspects: [T]he intimate character of the social sphere where the work is performed; the social construction of this work as a female gendered area; and the special relationship between employer and employee which is highly emotional and personalized and characterized by mutual dependency; and the logic of care work which is clearly different from that of other employment areas. Moreover, domestic service is not only isolated, poorly paid and associated with low status. Scholars (Anderson 2000; Colen 1995; Enloe 2000; Rollins 1987) point out that the peculiar nature of the service gives birth to ‘affective’, ‘quasi-familial’, and ‘asymmetrical’ or ‘stratified’ relations between employers and (especially whole-time) employees. Private household work is thus distinguishable from other service sector work and waged work in capitalist economies. The personalized relations and bonds of attachment that grow between employers and employees beyond the requirements of work are a feature of paid domestic service. The intimacy that prevails in this relationship is encapsulated in the way employers often describe their relationship with their domestic workers. Employers often claim that domestic worker or nanny is treated as ‘one of the family’, or ‘just like a daughter’ (Childress 1986; Enloe 2000). Scholars have noted that because of the isolated and personalized nature of domestic work the workers are vulnerable to different kinds of abuse especially when they are from a different country and different culture often without proper immigration documents. They point out that abuse and extreme exploitation of ‘domestic helpers’ is not confined to any one country. In 1995 alone, Migrante, an international alliance of Filipino migrant workers reported a total of 40,971 cases of physical, sexual and labour abuse involving Filipino migrant workers (Bakan and Stasiulis 1997). Such incidents were reported from various countries across the world, particularly from Asia and the Middle East. Many of these abused were domestic workers. A very high incidence of virtual or actual enslavement of Asian maids has been repeatedly focused by human rights organizations such as Gancayco (1995), Angeles (1993) and Middle East Watch Women’s Rights

10 Introduction Project 1992 (Bakan and Stasiulis 1997). The forms of abuse include severe cases of physical, sexual, verbal and psychological torture ranging from rape; confinement in the employer’s home; offering substandard food and accommodation to non-payment, delay or under payment of wages; excessive work hours and other contract violations. Abigail Bess Bakan and Daiva K. Stasiulis (1997) argue that the social and political status of migrant household workers in a liberal democracy like Canada, is not significantly different than that of the status of such workers in non-democratic, less democratic or illiberal societies. According to the authors, similar to the politically more authoritarian regimes, Canada expresses ‘a glaring willingness and indeed determination to exploit female domestic migrant workers from developing countries’. The chapters by Sedef Arat-Koc and Patricia and Daenzer in the above-mentioned volume edited by Bakan and Stasiulis reveal how more and more restrictions were placed on the rights and freedoms of the immigrant domestic workers as women of color from the third world started replacing white women from Europe in the service. Pothiti Hantzaroula (2004) has given instances of abuse of young women and children domestic workers on the basis of interviews with 20 such workers in Athens. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (2004) also attracts our attention to the emergence of gender inequalities in the new global world. Shiela Mcisaac Cooper in her work on England (2004) argues that domestic staff who are at greater risk include workers with ‘little or no qualification’, ‘school leavers’, ‘non-English speakers’ and ‘undocumented workers’. For them domestic service can be virtual enslavement especially if they are whole-time resident workers in their employers’ homes. Anderson (1997) depicts the plights of such enslaved migrant domestic workers in Europe. Chapter Six attempts to explore whether the incidence of increasing participation of the new entrants, the most vulnerable section of the society (single migrant women and particularly girl children) in domestic service and the increasing incidence of reported abuses of domestic workers in urban middle class homes in the Indian state of West Bengal in the recent years are in anyway related. We have, however, not considered the caste factor as a possible explanation of abuse in the present study. While it is well documented that the Scheduled Tribes and the Scheduled Castes constitute one of the lowest income groups of the Indian society (and West Bengal is no exception in this regard) caste-based choice of workers, and incidences of abuse are not usual in the state. Anecdotal evidence suggests that employers do not put much emphasis on caste when advertizing for preferred domestic workers. In such newspaper advertisements caste preferences are hardly ever mentioned, though when seeking marriage partners, caste still plays a crucial role. Neither has caste been an important factor in politics in post-Independence West Bengal as it is in most of the northern and southern states of the country. Moreover, in the case of the choice of preferred domestic staff, even religion does not seem to be a determining factor in the state. Our primary surveys conducted in some areas of Kolkata city and its outskirts revealed that resident Hindu domestic workers have started facing a stiff competition, in the recent years, from immigrant Muslim women who are entering into the domestic service labour market by applying wage cut. Some of the women interviewed, however, pointed out

Introduction  11 that such Muslim women are usually hired by Hindu employers for cleaning and washing, and not for cooking. Again, strikingly, religion is a very important factor in choosing a marriage partner in West Bengal. Chapter Six also tries to look at the nature of change in the representation of relationship between the employers and their household domestic workers in West Bengal during the last hundred years. There is an increasing number of reports of abuse of domestic workers (especially of whole-time girl children domestics) and also of the involvement of domestic workers in various kinds of crimes against employers, in the recent years. Before the 1990s, such reports were quite scarce. The ‘servant question’ or how to ideally deal with servants and maids was a recurrent concern of the middle class Bengali intelligentsia writing during the first half of the last century. This concern gradually started losing importance and can hardly be found in Bangla literature produced during the last two or three decades. This is exactly the period when the urban Indian/Bengali middle class has been growing in size, in affluence, and been employing more servants. These increasingly affluent families often prefer a whole-time girl child domestic for she is likely to be cheaper, more amenable to obey instructions and safer also. Again, this is also the period when the profile of the domestic workers in the state has been changing with more women and girls below the age of 14 years entering into the expanding care economy. Gone were the days of lifetime servants who used to serve generations of the employer’s family. The Ramukaka (uncle Ramu) celebrated in popular Bollywood cinema was being gradually replaced by the mostly anonymous kajer masi (serving aunties) or kajer meye (serving girl), the domestic maids. The final chapter in this book is not on West Bengal, but on Bangladesh. West Bengal and Bangladesh, the two integrated parts of the Indian subcontinent torn apart in 1947, pursued different careers since then. Chapter Seven concentrates on post-Partition Bangladesh and explores how poor labouring women in that country constrained by the same historic forces of domesticity and the consequent low work participation, behaved differently from those in this side of the border. The present study has attempted to analyze the how and why of a problem which has strong policy implications such as the intervention of the government to ensure that the existing laws to protect the domestic workers are implemented and new laws are enacted. It would have been instructive to study why a number of state governments have to some extent succeeded to implement the 2006 Act5 to prohibit child labour in domestic service, while others have not. Even in 1991, girl children’s work participation in West Bengal was much lower compared to the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and former Andhra Pradesh. But we know that in 10 years time, West Bengal surpassed each of these states in this regard. All the above-mentioned southern Indian states were able to significantly reduce child labour. State intervention such as implementing midday meal scheme in schools and non-governmental organization intervention such as locating and rehabilitating child labour surely played an important role. As this study primarily does not locate itself in the realm of policy literature, we did not have the opportunity to pay much attention to these aspects in the case of West Bengal. Moreover, while

12 Introduction the above-mentioned southern states along with some others have already passed the minimum wage act for domestic workers, West Bengal has not. But we have not looked into the details of the enactment and implementation of laws related to the adult domestic workers. However, some central- and state-level legislations only partially cover the interests of the domestic workers. In spite of the fact that the services provided by the domestic workers are seen to be indispensable for our society, their right to development and self-determination is heavily compromised upon. While the rights of even some of those workers who belong to other sectors of the informal economy, are somewhat secured, those of the domestic workers are not, and they thus continue to face exploitations and discriminations of various types. The most recent central legislation that also covers domestic workers is the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal Act, 2013). Earlier the Unorganized Workers Social Security Act (2008) had also included domestic workers. A comprehensive law for domestic workers covering all aspects of their working conditions is yet to be enacted. The most important point that has emerged from the recent nationwide debates on the issue is whether to extend the scope of existing labour laws to include domestic workers, or alternatively, to formulate a new, single sector-specific, national-level legislation addressing the working conditions, social security, wage rates, and employment relations of domestic workers. As West Bengal lags behind many other states in organizing domestic workers one can hardly expect any reflection of their voice from the state in the above-mentioned debate.

Notes 1 An 8- or 9-year-old girl in a cheap frock and worn out sandals, carrying the school bag of her employer’s child (possibly of her own age) is quite a common sight in the post-2000 Kolkata, despite the ban on employing children below 14 years in domestic service enacted in 2006. 2 This refers to a serial killing of children in Nithari near Delhi in 2006. Indian Express, 30 December 2006; 4 January 2007. 3 The Census of India 1911 reported that the percentage of workers engaged in domestic service in Calcutta city in 1911 was considerably higher than those in Delhi and Madras. 4 See for instance, Hamid Areeba. ‘Harsh, Everyday Realities’. Economic and Political Weekly (2006): 1235–1237. 5 Child Labour Abolition and Rehabilitation Act (2006).

References Anderson, B. (1997), ‘Servants and slaves: Europe’s domestic workers’, Race & Class, 39 (1): 37–49. Anderson, B. (2000), Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Anderson, B. (2001), ‘Why Madam Has So Many Bathrobes? Demand for Migrant Workers in the EU’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 92 (1): 18–26. Agrawal, A. (2006), ‘Women, Work and Migration in Asia’, in A. Agarwal (ed.), Migrant Women and Work (pp. 21–45), New Delhi: Sage.

Introduction  13 Arat-Koc, S. (1997), ‘From “Mothers of the Nation” to Migrant Workers’, in A. B. Bakan and D. K. Stasiulis (eds.), Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Areeba, H. (2006), ‘Harsh, Everyday Realities’, Economic and Political Weekly 41 (13): 1235–1237. Bakan, A. B. and Stasiulis, D. K. (eds.) (1997), Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bandyopadhyay, S. (1990), ‘Caste and Social Mobility’, in Caste, Politics and the Raj Bengal 1872–1937 (pp. 95–141), Kolkata: K. P. Bagchi and Co. Banerjee, N. (2006), ‘Working Women in Colonial Bengal: Modernization and Marginalization’, reprinted in K. Sangari and S. Vaid (eds.), Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History (pp. 274–276), New Delhi: Zubaan. Banerjee, S. M. (2004), Men, Women, and Domestics: Articulating Middle-Class Identity in Colonial Bengal, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chakravarty, D. and Chakravarty, I. (2008), ‘Girl children in the care economy: Domestics in WB’, Economic and Political Weekly, 43 (48): 93–100. Chakravarty, D. and Chakravarty, I. (2012, July), ‘When Daughters Migrate and Mothers Do Not: Girl Children’s Paid Outside Work in West Bengal, India’, Department of Economics, SOAS Working Paper No: 175. Childress, A. (1986), Like One of the Family, Boston: Becan. Choudhury, R. (1974), Kharij, Kolkata: Ananda Publishers. Colen, S. (1995) ‘ “Like a Mother to Them”: Stratified Reproduction and West Indian Childcare Workers and Employers in New York’, in F. D. Ginsburg and R. Rapp (eds.), Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction (pp. 78–102), University of California Press. Cooper, S. M. (2004), ‘From Family Member to Employee: Aspects of Continuity and Discontinuity in English Domestic Service, 1600–2000’, in A. F. Chamoux (ed.), Domestic Service and the Formation of European Identity: Understanding the Globalization of Domestic Work, 16th–21st Centuries (pp. 278–297), Frankfurt: Peter Lang AG. Enloe, C. H. (2000), Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, London: Pandora. Gamburd, M. R. (2000), The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids, New Delhi: Vistaar Publications. Gregson, N. and Lowe, M. (2005), Servicing the Middle Classes: Class, Gender and Waged Domestic Work in Contemporary Britain, London and New York: Routledge. Grieco, E. M. and Boyd, M. (1998), ‘Women and Migration: Incorporating Gender in to International Migration Theory’, Center for the Study of Population, Florida State University, Working Paper, pp. 98–139. Hochschild, A. R. (2000), ‘Global care chains and emotional surplus value’. American Prospect, 11 (4): 32–36. Jolly, Susie, J. Bell, E. and Narayanswami, L. (2003), Gender and Migration in Asia: Overview and Annotated Bibliography (13), UK: Bridge Institute of Development Studies. Kodoth, P. and Varghese, V. J. (2012), ‘Protecting women or endangering the emigration process’, Economic & Political Weekly, 47 (43): 56–66. Lan, P. C. (2006), Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lutz, H. (2012), ‘Introduction: Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe’, in H. Lutz (ed.), Migration and Domestic Work: A European Perspective on a Global Theme (pp. 1–10), England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

14 Introduction Mukherjee, M. (1995), ‘Women’s Work in Bengal, 1880–1930: A Historical Analysis’, in B. Ray (ed.), From the Seams of History: Essays on Indian Women, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Neetha, N. (2004), ‘Making of Female Breadwinners: Migration and Social Networking of Women Domestics in Delhi’, Economic and Political Weekly, 1681–1688. Ogaya, C. (2006), ‘Towards an Analysis of Social Mobility of Transnational Migrant Women: The Case of Philipina Domestic Workers’, in A. Agarwal (ed.), Migrant Women and Work (pp. 116–135), New Delhi: Sage. Parreñas, R. S. (ed.) (2001), Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work, Stanford University Press. Parreñas, R. S. (2004), ‘Gender Inequalities in the New Global Economy’, in A. F. Chamoux (ed.), Domestic Service and the Formation of European Identity: Understanding the Globalization of Domestic Work, 16th–21st Centuries, Peter Lang AG. Patricia, M. and Daenzer, P. M. (1997), ‘An Affair between Nations: International Relations and the Movement of Household Service Workers’, in A. B. Bakan and D. K. Stasiulis (eds.), Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada, University of Toronto Press. Phizacklea, A. (ed.) (1983), One Way Ticket: Migration and Female Labour, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pothiti Hantzaroula, P. (2004), ‘The Dynamics of Mistress-Servant Relationship’, in A. F. Chamoux (ed.), Domestic Service and the Formation of European Identity: Understanding the Globalization of Domestic Work, 16th–21st Centuries, Peter Lang AG. Rollins, J. (1987), Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Roy, A. (2008), Kolkata Requiem: Gender and the Politics of Poverty, Kolkata: Pearson Education India. Sen, M. (1982), Kharij [The Case is Closed ]. Wadhawan, N. (2013), ‘Living in Domesti-City’, Economic & Political Weekly, 48 (43): 47–54. Weiner, M. (2004), ‘Migration’, in V. Das (ed.), Handbook of Sociology in India (pp. 156–171). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Yamanaka, K. and Piper, N. (2003), ‘An introductory overview’, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 12 (1–2): 1–20.

2 The backdrop Partition, land reforms and the new industrial policy

The current state of affairs in urban West Bengal in general and more so in and around the capital city of Kolkata have a lot to do with a significant distress migration and a prolonged decline in the gainful economic activities in the state over the past 100 years or so. The land reforms of the 1970s, however, brought a stint of fresh air by bringing down rural poverty in the state in a significant way though it failed to arrest the overall declining trend effectively. In this chapter, we discuss the background to the emergence of an increasingly informalized labour market in urban West Bengal and a gendered segregation of at least a part of it. We focus on two major politico-economic changes: land reforms and the industrial policy reforms in post-independent West Bengal. The new industrial policy could not make any dent into the declining trend of the manufacturing sector for various reasons. The social indicators have not really improved much over the Left regime of 34 years from 1977 to 2011. Some indicators related to gender are indeed worrisome. Unfortunately, things seemed to be worsening since the demise of the Left in 2011. This chapter will be based on secondary literature only. Our story begins in the waning years of colonial rule. Omkar Goswami (1995) notes that no other metropolis with expanding economic activities had such poor neighbourhoods as Kolkata did during the early twentieth century. Apart from rural Bengal, Bihar, the then eastern United Provinces (UP) and Orissa, the three neighbouring states are among the most impoverished regions in India even today. Thus, an overwhelming majority of workers, mainly, single male migrants from these states used to literally crowd in the Kolkata jute mills in its hay-day. By 1931, Kolkata had 390,000 migrants constituting 31 per cent of the city’s population as a whole and 38 per cent of the male population. Of these migrants around 60 per cent came from the impoverished districts of Bihar and Orissa and another 27 per cent from the United Provinces. In the mill areas, the proportion of the migrants was much higher, as high as 90 per cent in Titagarh. These migrants, mainly male, either worked in factories or as poorly paid mazdoors on the streets or even as domestic servants in large numbers. In the fourth chapter, we have occasions to talk about the up-country migrant servants in some detail. From the late 1920s and early 1930s, Kolkata and its suburbs started experiencing another type of migration by poor agricultural labourers from rural Bengal as a result of agricultural non-performance. These migrants either worked as

16  The backdrop domestic servants or as some lowly workers or beggars. This latter type of migration was closely related to the agrarian decay Bengal was experiencing during the period. Between 1921 and 1941, the population of eastern India grew at the rate of 1.4 per cent per annum. The agrarian decay coupled with the population growth made things difficult in the area. Moreover, prices of raw jute and paddy fell rapidly due to the Depression during the 1930s which culminated in a severe agrarian crisis. Distress migration from the rural hinterlands was serious enough even before the Famine of 1943 to affect the daily lives of the city. Goswami (1995) notes, according to a municipal Councillor, before the 1930s, begging was confined to the ‘Black Town’ of north Kolkata. By the 1930s, beggars started entering into the posh European localities in the city. These two types of migration led to significant changes in the population composition of the city even before Partition. Migrants constituted around 31 per cent of the population in 1931 and their percentage rose to 36 in 1941. Consequently, we find a rapid proliferation of slums all over Kolkata. Then came the Partition. “Between August and December 1947, 15 million people crossed the western borders between India and Pakistan in both directions and in roughly equal numbers. Many million Hindus crossed India’s eastern borders with Pakistan into the new state of West Bengal and into Assam and Tripura. In the two decades after Partition, a lesser number of about a million and a half Muslims left West Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Tripura to go to East Bengal” (Chatterji 2007: 105, 106). Despite the astounding scale of migrations, research efforts to understand the fuller implications of this for the economy, polity and the society of the receiving countries have started only recently (Chakravartty 2005; Chatterji 2007). For our present purpose, we will concentrate only on postPartition West Bengal, the destination of the Hindu refugees from East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The majority in the first wave of Hindu refugees to cross over into West Bengal were from the very well to do and educated middle classes, who had assets and skills with which they could easily resettle in the Indian state of West Bengal, mainly in and around Kolkata. Apart from being the capital city and having the surrounding industrial areas, Kolkata also had educational institutes where the educated middle classes were hoping to get their way through. Different types of artisans, with skills and crafts associated with their castes also thought that they would have better chances in the newly formed Hindu dominated West Bengal, particularly after majority of their patrons left the East. Naturally, they found Kolkata city, its outskirts and other urban areas to be the most preferred places to settle. However, the majority of the Hindus in the East were peasant cultivators with small plots of land. These people had only land to survive on and therefore their dilemma whether to move to the West was the maximum, and proportionately fewer poor Hindu peasants chose to leave compared to the other groups. Between 1947 and 1949, as conditions in East Bengal were relatively peaceful, very few peasants left in the first waves of Partition. When low-caste peasants migrated in large numbers, they did so under circumstances rather different from those which caused the better off to leave. Generally, they abandoned whatever they possessed in the East

The backdrop  17 only when they were driven out by extreme violence or by intolerable hardship during late 1949–1950. The level of migration by the poor continued to rise with every bout of violence. These people, fleeing for their lives, taking nothing with them, were naturally the most difficult to be rehabilitated. The refugee peasants first tried to settle down wherever there was a chance to get some land, often with the help of relatives living in the western part of Bengal. But much of the western side being less fertile, and the fertile part being already highly populated, the small migrant peasants in most of the cases could not succeed to find a plot of land to carry on livelihood in the other side of the border. As a result, we find another significant exodus by the refugee peasants, this time from the rural to the urban or semi urban areas of the newly formed state of West Bengal over the 1950s (Chatterji 2007:125, 126). As a result, the population density not only in and around Kolkata but also in other urban centres started increasing very significantly and consequently, the pressure on livelihood options. The poorest families, the agricultural labourers, were the last group who migrated in fear of their lives. These people had absolutely nowhere to go and ended up in the government camps for years. These mostly illiterate men, women and children, who survived the hardships of life, naturally made their ways in the informal labour market of the state economy. However, it seems, neither the centre nor the state government anticipated this huge exodus of Hindus from East Bengal. For several years, the government of India at the centre refused to accept that West Bengal faced a crisis compatible in scale, if not in timing, to the Punjab disaster. Scholars note that Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, never believed that conditions in East Bengal were grave enough to cause a permanent threat for its Hindu community. On the contrary, from the start, the central government accepted in principle that Partition would create a huge transfer of population across the western borders with Pakistan, and it readily took the policy decision that refugees from the west would have to be rehabilitated in India. The government quickly decided that property in the East Punjab abandoned by Muslims who fled to Pakistan, would be given to the refugees, and this became the cornerstone of the refugee rehabilitation programmes (Guha 2007). In case of West Bengal on the contrary, the main thrust of the rehabilitation policy was to ‘disperse’ refugees from the areas where they had chosen to concentrate and drive them away mainly to the empty infertile tracts outside West Bengal. But the government failed to achieve rehabilitation of refugees, and instead succeeded in creating resentment and hostility, not only among the refugees themselves, but also among the public increasingly sympathetic to their plight. It was this combination of pressures which encouraged many refugees simply to grab any free land they could find and to occupy it. From 1946 onwards, groups of refugees poured on to unoccupied plots in around Kolkata and built their shacks on it. A vividly telling description of this process can be found in a well-known novel Arjun by Sunil Gangopadhyay (1988). Without entering into the details of the misery and the hardship involved in this process, it can be easily imagined how difficult it was for the refugees to survive in another land with active hindrances from the government, the private land owners

18  The backdrop and so on. They, however, did get the support of the undivided Communist Party which thereby succeeded in making a strong base among the population who came from the other side of the border. According to government surveys in the 1950s and 1960s, the rates of employment were significantly high among those refugees who had settled through their own efforts in the inhospitable conditions mentioned above.1 They struggled to acquire new educational qualifications and skills which would improve their chances of getting paid work. Refugees became literate at a much faster rate than did the host community. Particularly significant was the rapid growth of literacy among refugee women. Refugees lived as has been seen near towns and cities where employment was scarce and wages were historically low, driven down by the decades-long glut in the supply of single male migrants in the labour market. With usually large families, it was impossible to manage with single income for the impoverished refugee families, and they thus couldn’t afford to keep their women inside the home like the settled host population. In Chapter Four of this book, we have described this hardship and increasing work participation by the refugee women during the 1950s and1960s. The immigrant population achieved a higher rate of employment than the host population enjoying a much more advantageous position: one in three of all refugees were fully employed, according to statistical surveys. However, most of the refugee population were slum or pavement dwellers, who did find some work but usually they all were very lowly paid, not even the basic minimum. Only the fortunate few among the refugee women were able to get so-called respectable jobs as teachers or clerks. Most were engaged as domestic servants in city homes as shown in Chakravarty et al. (2013). Still others became ‘piece workers’ in the notorious informal sector of the clothing industry, sewing cheap garments for a pittance, and working long hours in crowded sweat shops or poorly lit homes. This huge increase in West Bengal’s urban population after Partition intensified the pressure in the informal labour market and pushed the wages even lower. This ever increasing labour force on the one hand and increasingly shrinking economically viable livelihoods, on the other, helped perpetuate certain tendencies in the labour market marked by an increasing segmentation by categories of work in the urban areas of the state.

1.  The land reforms of the 1970s After Independence, the agrarian scenario rapidly worsened. In 1950–1951, nearly 66 per cent of the entire land area of West Bengal was used for cultivation while the cultivated area was only around 45 per cent in the entire country. Incidence of share croppers as well as the agricultural labourers was more in West Bengal when compared to the country as a whole (Sengupta 1981). Sengupta (1981) argues that in pre-reform West Bengal, population pressure on land was much higher compared to the rest of the country. Land was also significantly more fragmented with a large number of small and marginal holdings. Similar to other parts of eastern and north-eastern India agro-climatic conditions were generally favourable in West Bengal. In spite of this, agricultural performance in the state was notably poor for many years prior to the 1980s. The rate

The backdrop  19 of growth of agricultural production in the state used to perpetually lag behind the national average (Bhalla and Tyagi 1989; Rawal and Swaminathan 1998). James Boyce in 1987 showed that the rate of growth of output of the agricultural sector in West Bengal was as low as 1.74 per cent per annum between 1949 and 1980 when rural population and total population grew at the rate of 2.31 per cent and 2.42 per cent per annum respectively. Boyce (1987) followed by Vaidyanathan (1988) also argued that the agrarian impasse in Bengal had much to do with the severe lack of expansion of ground water irrigation especially during the dry season. Vaidyanathan (1988) emphasized that in a state like West Bengal with plenty of rivers, ground water irrigation during the dry season should not have been difficult to ensure. The reasons behind the lack of ground water irrigation in this area according to him are likely to be the relatively low returns in irrigation under the particular agro-climatic conditions of the region. Moreover, as mentioned before, majority of the cultivators in eastern India are small and marginal farmers operating on fragmented land holdings. In 1980–1981, 70 per cent of the land holdings in West Bengal were less than one hectare each. This highly fragmented nature of land holdings was likely to be a major hindrance for adoption of modern technology involving large capital investments. According to Rawal and Swaminathan (1998), on top of this, the absence of institutional mechanisms to ensure cooperation among the peasantry, operating within a highly fragmented and unequal agrarian structure, posed serious obstacles to the development of irrigation. The widespread prevalence of concealed tenancy typically characterised by the insecurity of tenure is also likely to be a major constraint against any private initiatives in ground water irrigation (Rawal and Swaminathan 1998; Vaidyanathan 1988). In this context of agrarian stagnation and a perpetual decline in the industrial sector that set in even before Independence (discussed in the next section) and continued during the 1960s and the 1970s began the democratically elected 34-year-long Left regime in 1977. As we have already seen, the Communist Party started organizing people in the state from the 1920s. The apparent indifference, sometimes to the extent of antagonism against the refugees shown by the ruling Congress, both in the state as well as at the Centre, made it even easier for the Left to organize the poor in general and the refugees in particular. In the late 1960s, the Left parties managed to get hold of a considerable footing in the rural areas. They could organize intense movements for the redistribution of land ownership and the more effective implementation of existing agrarian-reform legislation in the state. The peasant organizations particularly encouraged their members and supporters to identify the ceiling surplus land in their area which had been concealed with the help of various administrative and legal loopholes (Sengupta and Gazdar 1996). These movements intensified when the United Front (UF) Government came to power in 1967 with different shades of the left parties as its major partners. The UF government was a short-lived one and gave way to the Communist party of India Marxist (CPIM) led Left coalition government in 1977. The left had their main support base in rural Bengal, and the new government, quite expectedly, took up the already initiated land reform programmes

20  The backdrop by its predecessor, with renewed vigour, as its most important political agenda. This agenda had two major components: tenancy reform and the redistribution of land. Leiten (1992) argues that with the help of peasant organizations, under the Tenancy Reform programme, popularly known as ‘Operation Barga’, the government could register 1.4 million share croppers in the land records by 1991. This registration process not only ensured security of tenure, but also prevented the eviction of tenants by non-cultivating landlords and made tenureal contracts more transparent. Ramachandran (1997) argues that these tenureal reforms created new rights for the tenants facilitating rent payments as well as improving access to formal credit. Rawal and Swaminathan (1998) inform that under the West Bengal Land Reform Act of 1955 (amended in 1977), the state could acquire about 12, 62,000 acres of land. By 1993 the estimated beneficiaries of land redistribution were 2.15 million households (Sengupta and Gazdar 1996). The second major change in rural West Bengal was the reorganization of local government, aiming at a new system of democratic and decentralized planning and administration in 1977. The first decision-making unit was a group of villages called panchayats. Lieten 1996 and Ramchandran 1997 note that the remarkable feature of the Panchayats in West Bengal was the large scale participation of the poor and the socially backward communities. As a related measure, minimum wages for agricultural workers were fixed and implemented. Consequently, there had been substantial increase in agricultural wages in West Bengal in the 1980s (Rawal and Swaminathan 1998). Sengupta and Gazdar in their 1996 study, however, pointed out that the breakthrough in terms of land area vested and redistributed actually occurred under the short spell of the UF government. By 1977, some 625,000 acres of land had been redistributed, and West Bengal was already far ahead of other Indian states in implementation of ceiling laws. During the LF period another 287,000 acres of total area was redistributed. But the number of beneficiaries more than doubled during this period. The average area of land distributed under the Left regime thus was much smaller compared to the exercise done before 1977. In contrast to the direct approach to land redistribution through the ‘land grab movement’ of the late 1960s and early 1970s, land reform programmes under the Left regime, though backed by the political and peasant organizations, was carried out with the help of institutions such as the Panchayats. Sengupta and Gazdar agree with Ramachandran and the official view that most of the beneficiaries were the poorest and the socially downtrodden, the initial target groups (Bandyopadhyay 1988; Sengupta and Gazdar 1996: 145). Sengupta and Gazdar (1996) also note that in spite of the administrative success, this redistribution did not resolve class contradictions, neither did it significantly alter class relations, between the land-rich and the land-poor. Wage labour still remained, by far, the most important source of earning for landless beneficiaries in all villages. At the same time, it needs to be noted that income from the allotted land turned out to be substantial for a poor family at least in some parts of the state. Finally, though implementation seemed to be fair in all villages, the impact of redistribution on the livelihood of the needy varied significantly on the basis of

The backdrop  21 initial distribution of land holdings (availability of ceiling surplus land), agroeconomic conditions and cropping intensity. Thus, intra-village inequality reduced, but not necessarily the inter-village inequality. Harriss (1993) reiterates that the Left Front’s agrarian reforms no doubt benefitted the poor, but did not in any way change the structure of agrarian power and the ability of rich peasants to appropriate surplus. The tenancy reform programme, Operation Barga, was initiated with the objective of recording tenancy leases in 1978. We have earlier mentioned that to this end, the programme was notably successful as claimed by the official sources. But it is important to understand how far it had befitted the poor. Village-level surveys indicate mixed evidence in relation to the question of crop share. It has been noted by many scholars that Operation Barga, by enforcing tenancy security laws, did succeed to enhance security of tenure. Some have also argued that this increased security of tenure is in fact one of the reasons behind increased productivity in agriculture in the state during this period (Banerjee et al. 2002). Emphasis on class conflict instead of class alliances was a major strategy of the left to win an election. However, when the time came for consolidating electoral gains they adopted a conciliatory role. Consequently, mediation between conflicting claims in matters of lease and agricultural wages has turned out to be an essential role played by the PRIs. The alliance between the ‘middle peasantry’ and the landless and the small-holder poor was instrumental in successfully challenging the domination of the rich landlords. Hence, demands which could create situations of conflict between the middle and the poor peasants became insignificant in this process. This alliance, between the middle peasantry and the poor, incidentally, has not been an equal one. The landless and the poor followed what the ‘middle peasants’ decided. Moreover, it was the large holders who mainly bore the brunt of redistribution leaving the middle peasants more or less untouched. Many of the middle peasantry had, in fact, acquired political power due to their association with Left Front parties (Sengupta and Gazdar 1996: 161–162). In Chapter Six, we have discussed the long-term implications of this dominance of the middle class in party politics of the left and also in the communist-led government in the state. The prolonged agrarian stagnation was finally overcome in the 1980s and West Bengal achieved significant agricultural growth. According to Rawal and Swaminathan (1998), between 1981 and 1991, the state had achieved the highest rates of growth of agriculture in the country. Abhijit Sen and Sengupta (1995) on the basis of cost of cultivation data, in fact, notice a trend break in the growth of rice yield in West Bengal. While the rate of growth of food grain production was less than 1 per cent during the early years after Independence, and the overall growth rate was as small as 2.5 per cent per annum over the years spanning 1950 to 1980, it shot up to 5.8 per cent per annum between 1980 and 1995 (Rawal and Swaminathan 1998). It is the productivity change that has led to such impressive growth achievements: food grain production especially Boro rice production increased manyfold due to the expansion of ground water irrigation facilities during the second half of the 1980s. CHH Hanumantha Rao shows that West Bengal’s performance in growth of food grains output was as good as that of Punjab’s and better than that of any other state

22  The backdrop apart from Uttar Pradesh (UP) during 1977–1978 and 1988–1989 (Rao 1992). The question to be asked was how and why this historic change came about. The government of West Bengal claimed that the persistent improvement in agriculture production and the all-round development of the rural sector in recent years as reflected in the rising income from the rural sector in general and more specifically from agriculture sector, indicate that fundamental and structural changes have taken place in the rural sector of the state which has unleashed the latent productive forces which hitherto could not be harnessed into the productive process in the rural areas. These fundamental and structural changes are related to the development strategy followed in the state . . . (Economic Survey 1989–1990: 13, quoted in Harriss 1993) Authors like Lieten, Rawal and Swaminathan and Ramachandran are strongly of the opinion that this improvement in productivity growth has a lot to do with the institutional changes initiated by the LF government in the context of easy availability of green revolution technology along with the notable increase in private ground water irrigation. John Harriss, on the basis of his own survey and the findings of the WIDER project argues that the significant increase in irrigation and the availability of the high yielding variety (HYV) seeds are the two important factors behind this dramatic change. He further argues that investment in ground water irrigation is mainly done by the large farmers with a basic profit motive who regularly rent water to the poor cultivators or lease in their land to get the effect of economies of scale. According to him the panchayats have nothing much to do in mobilizing the small peasants to invest in irrigation as such. He maintains that this spurt in investment in ground water irrigation was due to the availability and consequent subsidization of electricity by the state government. According to him, the improvement in the living standard of the small peasants and landless agricultural labourers actually was due to the hike in wages successfully bargained by the left peasant organizations as mentioned above. Sengupta and Gazdar (1996: 168) find the explanations based on market versus non-market innovations problematic: private agents, after all, operate within an overall economic context that is conditioned to a great extent by the distribution of assets as well as political power. It is true that the development of ground water irrigation has been largely down to farmers investing in tube wells for their own land and for selling water to neighbouring farmers, while programme for public tube wells has been largely unsuccessful. Highlighting a significant discrepancy between the agricultural census data and the NSS, Dasgupta (2004: 24) claims that the gains of land reform gradually tapered off by the start of the current decade: the effect of tenancy reforms had been limited as the incidence of share cropping declined consistently. This is an indication that tenancy legislations and their implementation have failed to make

The backdrop  23 share cropping viable in West Bengal. It has been already mentioned that the land redistribution program also has not been successful in creating a class of independent peasant producers. Chakrabarti (2003) notes that the average size of the redistributed land during the Left regime was as small as 0.11 ha. mainly because of the very little availability of ceiling surplus land. Consequently, it is not surprising that land reform beneficiaries have not been successful in living off their land in the post-reform period: more than 90 per cent of the new land recipients do not find year-long employment in their own land. The corresponding figure for Bargadars is 83.5 per cent. These people end up joining the ranks of agricultural labourers. The 2001 Census thus shows an unprecedented increase in the number of agricultural labourers outnumbering the cultivators, in the rural population of West Bengal. On the basis of the agricultural census data and the population censuses, Ghosh in 1998 already pointed to a process of marginalization of the peasantry in rural Bengal during the closing decades of the last century. The average size of land holding declined from 1.2 hectares in 1970–1971 to 0.9 hectares in 1990–1991 as a result of increase in population pressure and no significant diversification of employment outside agriculture. These marginal and small farmers turned out to be economically non-viable to a large extent as found by the Agro Economic Research Centre (AERC) in 1992. As a consequence a large number of small and marginal cultivators were forced to work as agricultural labourers. Chances of getting employment as agricultural labourers were also not as high as it was during the early years of green revolution technology for obvious reasons. Prolonged industrial non-performance that we will discuss in the next section added to the misery of the rural poor. This might have been one of the major reasons behind the increase in the plight of the poor since the early 1990s in rural Bengal. West Bengal Human Development Report notes a substantial amount of distress migration from agriculture and industries to services as late as in 2004. The 2004–2005 NSS data revealed that parts of rural West Bengal suffered from maximum food inadequacy in the country (Bandopadhyay 2007).2 West Bengal District Human Development Reports document adult male migration from rural Bengal to the happening cities of the country as construction workers, plumbers and so on. This is also the time when we see that the work participation rates (WPR) of both women and girl children in the urban areas are increasing notably, most of whom are migrants from the rural hinterlands of Bengal. We discuss these issues in Chapter Five in more detail. Let us now turn to the industrial performance of West Bengal that has along with others played an important role in the increasing informalization of the state economy: escalating importance of domestic service is a part of this story. The distributional implications of the remarkable growth performance of rural West Bengal was also quite positive as there was a very significant decline in the head count ratios of absolute poverty in Bengal villages over the 1980s and the 1990s. During the 1970s, Bengal along with Bihar and Orissa used to be the poorest part of India. Over the 1980s, the whole area, however, experienced a significant decline in the poverty ratio with of course West Bengal showing the best results.

24  The backdrop Pabitra Giri (1998) mentions that there was a decline in rural – urban distress migration during this period. It is, however, interesting to note two things in this context of overall decline in poverty. First, we will notice in Chapter Four that 1980s was also the time when women and children in urban Bengal were entering into domestic service outperforming men and boys for the first time. And many of these women and girls were migrants of different sorts. The first report on the status of women, ‘Towards Equality’ (1974) does mention married women who, sometimes accompanied by their very young daughters migrated to the city to work as domestic maids leaving their share cropper husbands back home. This story goes quite well with the severe agrarian crisis the state was going through till the 1970s as mentioned above. Why did such women continue to migrate and especially why had girl children start coming alone to the city in search of work in the 1980s, a comparatively much prosperous time, are questions we deal with in the later chapters. Thus, one of the major problems we address is the strength of the poverty argument behind this continued migration of girl children and women domestic workers to far off cities often leaving the family behind. Moreover, several commentators have shown that while the state achieved significant reduction in rural poverty during the 1980s and the early 1990s, it is curious to note that the development indicators of education and health did not show much improvement over these years (for example, Dreze and Sen 2002; Sengupta and Gazdar 1996; Kohli 2012: 208 among others). We will take up the issue of the relationship between girl children’s rates of drop out from schools and the increasing number of very young female domestic workers in the urban areas in the last few decades in the next chapter. There were no openings in the industry on the one hand and no specific skill development to enable the work force ready for industrialization in the state on the other.

2. Industrialization in West Bengal in the context of a more liberal economic regime of the 1990s3 At the time of Independence, West Bengal, industrially advanced at that time, inherited mainly export-oriented old processing industries most of which had been controlled by the British before the Second World War. In the 1930s, most of these industries had gone through a recession, and net investment by the firms controlling them had slowed down or disappeared altogether. After the war, along with Independence came the dislocations of Partition that severely affected the trade links between East and West Bengal. As a result, the most important industries in this region, jute and tea, were badly hit. Another important difficulty that cropped up for Bengal industry during this period was associated with the transfer of ownership from British hands to not-so-competent native entrepreneurs. This was not the case in the other important industrial belt of Bombay during this time (Bagchi 1972). In Bombay, textile industry was mainly inward-looking and managed mostly under indigenous entrepreneurship, which was conspicuous by its absence in Bengal. In Bengal, the regional social and political elite, far removed from productive activities in both agricultural and urban sectors, were transplanted into the urban

The backdrop  25 radicalized milieu of Bengal after acquiring Western education, access to governmental professions and middle class status (Sinha 2005). These elite remained at the forefront of a nineteenth century cultural movement, the so-called renaissance, and the nationalist fervour in Bengal and the seeds of leftism also found in them their most fertile soil. The enlightened ideas of these people contributed towards shaping particular political institutions like trade unions in a certain way that turned out to be significant for the development of industry in the state. After Independence, problems of Bengal’s large-scale industry were aggravated by two sets of central government policies: freight equalization for coal and steel, and the overwhelming emphasis on import substitution which completely overlooked the problems faced by the jute industry, a highly labour-intensive one in Bengal (Bagchi 1998). Apart from these direct consequences of the policy changes on the manufacturing sector of West Bengal which resulted in industrial decline in the state, there were a few strategic lapses also on part of the state leadership. A strained relation between the state and the centre is noticeable from the beginning. Kohli (2009) observes that the traditional ambivalence of the Bengali bhadrolok towards Gandhi manifested itself as a belief that Congress and Delhi did not have Bengal’s interest at heart, a belief that was reinforced by a sense of regional nationalism. This ethos of distrust and suspicion towards the centre led to a confrontationist strategy on part of the state and prevented it from lobbying pragmatically to obtain licenses and industrial investment. Although spurred by a different ideology and routed differently, this confrontationist strategy continued with the LF government contributing to the drastic decline in the number of new licenses for big business (Sinha 2005). Along with these, a radical trade unionism backed by leftist intellectual support, mentioned earlier, brought in a militant frictional atmosphere in the industrial arena of Bengal which scared away new private investment to a significant extent. Moreover, by the mid-1960s consequent to central government disinvestment4 in the infrastructure sector, West Bengal engineering industry, which had developed an increasing dependence on the railways, was also badly hit. This created large-scale unemployment in the organized manufacturing in the state (Raychoudhuri and Basu 2007). In this context, West Bengal manufacturing firms tended to get locked in a low productivity – low wage segment of the spectrum of products dominated by the small firms largely in the unorganized sector. Largescale entrepreneurs started farming out production to the small scale units in general and unorganized sector in particular. Thus, they could avoid facing militant trade unionism while simultaneously grabbing the incentives enjoyed by the small firms (Bagchi 1982, 1998; Banerjee and Nihila 1999). Consequently unorganized manufacturing in the state emerged as an important sector. The question of policy during the LF regime Against this backdrop of industrial decline, the LF comes to power in 1977. As we have already discussed in the last section, the new government took up the important agrarian reforms programme initiated by the Congress. Backed

26  The backdrop by the Panchayat Raj Act of 1973, it introduced significant decentralization measures in the rural areas. These programmes did improve rural income and helped generate effective demand for non-agricultural goods produced mainly in the village manufacturing units in the unorganized sector, reinforcing the increasing importance of unorganized manufacturing in the state. While all this was happening, large-scale organized manufacturing was reaching near stagnation. To boost industrialization, the LF government claimed to have given top priority to electricity generation and infrastructure development. State initiatives regarding power generation and petrochemicals did not meet with the cooperation desired from the Centre. In fact, the LF alleged that it took the central government seven years to sanction the thermal power station at Bakreswar. Given the requirement of Central endorsement in setting up large and medium-scale industries, the government had no option but to look up to the Centre (Tathya O Sanskriti Bibhag [TOSB] 2006). But it is interesting to note that states with ruling political parties other than Congress could lobby successfully to get things done more easily than West Bengal (Sinha 2005). Moreover, ideologically it was difficult for the CPIMled government to show much inclination towards big industry, especially private capital. As a result of prolonged neglect of basic infrastructure, large units gradually decelerated, and the skilled workers employed therein opened shops in the neighborhood, carrying on businesses either subcontracted – from medium and some large industries – or independently (Datta Chaudhuri 1995). According to veteran trade unionists from Howrah and Durgapur – two industrial regions among a few others in the state, a large number of these small units were operating from the unorganized sector. This resulted in poor quality, bad after sales service and untimely delivery, thwarting the competitiveness of local industry and its growth. Between 1984 and 2001, industrial capital investment in West Bengal increased only fourfold, while it grew more than seven times for the rest of India (TOSB 2006). During the end of the 1980s, as a result of the decline in traditional industries such as jute, cotton and engineering in the state, workers in large numbers were losing jobs. Alternative job prospects were bleak as no new industrial initiatives were coming up in the organized sector for reasons mentioned above. It has been argued that consequently, the working class became vulnerable in the hands of the industrialists; trade unions agreed to terms of settlements in the 1980s which in the past would have been unthinkable (Dasgupta 1998). The significant decline in the number of strikes since the Left government assumed office and the spectacular rise in the number of lockouts, when all the states show a decline in both, do give support to the vulnerability hypothesis. There was another serious implication of this decline in industry in the state. The LF was getting increasingly alienated from the urban population. The continuous defeat in the urban areas especially in Kolkata made it clear that the government was getting alienated from the urban middle class, particularly the unemployed educated youth aspiring for industrial jobs (Chakroborty 2008). In this context, the already liberalizing Indian economy took a more specific turn towards an altered macro-economic regime involving dismantling of the license Raj and opening up of the Indian economy to the world market in a significant

The backdrop  27 way. Initially, these more market-oriented changes were viewed sceptically by the LF as being largely dictated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (TOSB 2006). But soon the liberal section of the ruling party and the state could see the positive implications of the abolition of licenses on the one hand and removal of the Freight Equalization policy on the other for industrial development in the state. This line of thinking was reinforced by the LF government’s realization of its increasing alienation from the urban voters. The Chambers of Commerce also played a very important role in this process. The salient features of the Industrial Policy of 1994–1995 suggest the altered role envisaged by the state government: (a) welcoming foreign technology and investment, as may be appropriate or mutually advantageous; (b) while not undermining the roles of the Government and the Public Sector in ensuring social justice and balanced growth, it highlights the key role of the private sector in providing accelerated growth. In the context of the changes in the policies of the Government of India, the need for meeting the increased demand for power and the constraints on the budgetary resources, the State Government would also welcome private sector investment in power generation; (c) along with the Public and Private sectors, the State Government looks upon the joint and assisted sectors as effective instruments for mobilizing necessary resources and expertise in important areas of economic activity; (d) improvement and upgrading of industrial infrastructure is indispensable for accelerated growth of industries; (e) other areas are improvement in roads, communications and development of Growth Centres. These programmes would require massive investments in projects for the development of industrial infrastructure through the Government or through the private and joint sectors, wherever feasible. Consequently, West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (West Bengal IDC) to look after business interests in the state was established with new vigour. Certain sectors were particularly highlighted: infrastructure, petrochemicals, ancillary industries and agro-based industries. Further, to attract and facilitate investment, simplification of procedures, reduction of regulations and red-tape were also contemplated: the single-window system was envisaged as a necessary first step. West Bengal by virtue of its strategic location was suitably poised to complement the Central Government’s ‘Look East’ policy for boosting trade with East Asian countries and effectively function as India’s gateway to the Asia-Pacific region. The construction of various industrial parks were envisaged and some are already under way: ‘rubber park’ at Domjur, a park for ‘tannery and leather industries’ at Bantala, an ‘apparel park’ for textiles and hosiery at Howrah, and others. While in case of other states the change is almost a continuation of earlier policies with added emphasis, the case of West Bengal represents a complete turnaround. In order to understand the implications of this, we divide the period spanning last three decades into pre– and post–new-industrial-policy regimes in the state: late 1970s to 1994–1995 and 1995–1996 till date, respectively. It is important to note here that, while the LFG was devising this pro-industrial policy, a few dissenting voices within the ruling coalition were audible, which dissensions were absent during the implementation of the other major policies under the LFG earlier.

28  The backdrop

The question of performance A vulnerable workforce, as was claimed in the case of West Bengal, generally creates favourable conditions in the economy for renewed investment prospects. Moreover, with the changes in the policy regime at the centre since the early 1990s followed by changes proposed in the new industrial policy of the state, it was expected that there would be a boost in the investment scenario of the state. But a few changes apart, the trend of predominance of the unorganized sector continues over the years. Since the mid-1990s, unorganized manufacturing, in fact, has been contributing almost as much as the organized sector and lately even more. Moreover, the rate of growth of organized manufacturing is consistently lower than that of unorganized manufacturing both in the post– as well as in the pre–new-­industrialpolicy regimes of the state. However, the magnitude of the growth rate in the organized manufacturing has increased in the second period. The relative decline of the organized sector in the case of West Bengal becomes striking when we see how the state’s position deteriorates with respect to the country as a whole during the last three decades when only the organized factory sector is considered. In the year 2004–2005, West Bengal stands at the seventh position in terms of manufacturing output considering all states in India. This position remains the same if we look at the organized manufacturing as well. However, the position of the state improves significantly to the third if we consider unorganized manufacturing alone. In the employment front, the importance of the unorganized sector also accentuates over the last three decades. In 2001, only around 13 per cent of the workforce was engaged in organized manufacturing. The significant decline in the absolute number of employment over the last few decades, particularly in the post–newindustrial-policy era in the factory sector of manufacturing can surely be taken as one of the sources from where employees enter the unorganized domain as casuals.5 The increasing predominance of unorganized manufacturing in employment is not unique to West Bengal. What is unique is the domination of unorganized over the organized sector in relation to output. This is surprising, given the notable changes in the attitudes of the state towards large industry since the early 1990s as manifested in policies for curtailing regulations and developing infrastructure. Data on Industrial Entrepreneur’s Memoranda (IEM) suggest that the number of industrialists showing interest in the state is significantly low not only compared to some of the industrially advanced states but also a few relatively new ones. Disturbingly, the proposed investments are also notably smaller in dimension. Is this attributable to poor policy implementation? Or is it a deeper problem like lack of political will? However, it needs to be noted here that a number of institutional changes were initiated in order to facilitate new investment, such as the single window facility called ‘Shilpa Bandhu’. Some new large investments also did flow in from the Mitsubishi, Jai Balaji and Jindal Groups. This probably explains the increase, though marginal, in the rate of growth of organized manufacturing in the state in the post-1994–1995 period. A study by Roychoudhuri and Basu in 2007, argues that the main reason for West Bengal’s failure to attract large investment is poor infrastructure and related

The backdrop  29 inability of the state to improve it over time. The physical infrastructure development index calculated by Ghosh and De in 2004 indicates a sharp decline in the comparative ranking of West Bengal in India – from ninth in 1981–1982 to seventieth in 1991–1992. This index considered transport facility, gross irrigated area and per capita consumption of electricity and telephone main line. In this respect the northern states of the Punjab, Haryana and all the southern states except Kerala show a much better prospect compared to West Bengal. This information matches well with the entrepreneur’s persistent willingness to prefer some states over others as revealed by IEM data. This is aggravated by the inadequacy of social infrastructure such as poor quality of labour arising out of lack of education, particularly technical education. The dismal plight of West Bengal’s social infrastructure is widely known today. The level of labour productivity remained the lowest in the organized manufacturing sector of West Bengal compared to the industrially more advanced states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu over the last three decades. The organized workers in West Bengal, however, are getting relatively better wage rates compared to others except in Maharashtra. Chakravarty (2010) shows that when the growth rate of productivity declines in the post-1994–1995 era, the wage rate actually increases. Moreover, the rate of decline in the wage share to net value added shows an insignificant trend in the period after the new industrial policy regime. This is happening when there was a perceptibly sharp decline in the rate of growth of employment in the factory sector of manufacturing of negative order with the second period showing as low as (−)7.19 per cent per annum. On the basis of a detailed primary survey Chakravarty and Bose (2011) argued that along with the continuous decline of the infrastructural condition of the state, the age old militancy of the organized labour is also a very important reason behind flight of capital from the state even in the era of renewed emphasis on industry. The question remained that, given the Stalinist character of the then ruling party in the state and its mass organs (trade union in this case), why a strong party whip could not implement the policy changes as it did with regard to land reform and decentralization during the early years of the LF rule? The answer lies possibly in the fact that having been in power for so long the ruling party or its mass organs were no longer monolithic. Thus, there existed a multilayered power structure in the state where each local unit of the party wielded enormous power over the local people through ‘management of illegalities’ on the one hand and promotion of ‘clientelism’ on the other. The party has encroached upon every sphere, thwarting smooth transactions. Even if the leadership wanted the cadres to change their behaviour, unless the cadres saw the prospect of immediate gains, it was unlikely for them to behave in a ‘non-sticky’ fashion. So while there were apparent indications that the organized workers were losing power as the informalizaton proliferated, they actually stood to gain from this process. Chakravarty (2010) and Chakravarty and Bose (2011, 2013) have explained the mechanism through which the organized labour benefited from informalization and helped perpetuate this trend over the years destroying the industrial base of the state.

30  The backdrop In this context of increasing importance of informalization of the manufacturing sector and erosion of quality of employment, living standards of the urban poor (who often migrated from the rural areas) deteriorated significantly. In order to supplement family income women and children increasingly joined paid work force, the process we have discussed in Chapters Four and Five. The growth of the services sector-creating low-cost, low-skilled informal odd jobs-proliferating side-by-side the informal manufacturing create the space for the new entrants in the labour market. Domestic service turns out to be a major one among these informal activities, absorbing women and girl children in a significant way. We close our discussion in this chapter by briefly addressing the question whether demand for such odd jobs in the informal sector such as domestic service has also increased in the recent years. As we do not have dependable wage data for different categories of work, we need to look at other indicators. In spite of the poor performance of the formal sector industry in West Bengal for the last few decades, a growing urban affluence could be seen in the state during the same period. It needs to be mentioned here that the rate of growth of services in the state has been highly impressive in the recent years (Chakravarty 2006). There was also a notable increase in the work participation rate of women at the higher levels of the society in the urban areas of the state. These two developments together seem to be the explanation of how at least a sizable section of the increasingly vast informal labour market, mainly composed of women and girl children, is sustained. Chakravarty and Chakravarty in their 2008 paper depict some NSS data that give a comparative picture of the number of families per thousand whose expenditure on consumption was in the highest category in 1999–2000 and 2004–2005. It suggests a significant increase in the number of families per thousand in the highest consumption expenditure class in India in general and in West Bengal in particular. In 1999–2000, the number of richest families per thousand in urban West Bengal was below the national average. In 2004–2005, West Bengal stood at the fifth position along with Tamil Nadu6 far surpassing the national average. The high rate of growth of services in West Bengal in the recent years is likely to be a cause of this recent increase in affluence in the urban areas of the state. Comparable data for distribution of families in different consumption-expenditure classes in 2009–2010 are not available from the latest round of NSS: the categorization of consumption expenditure classes has changed very significantly. Apart from urban affluence, demand for manual services such as domestic help may also depend on the incidence of work participation of upper class women outside the home. For recent insights, we present some NSS data in Table 2.1. Table 2.1 shows the variance in the incidence of work by urban women with different educational qualifications in the state. The incidence of work for the highly qualified women in 2004–2005 and 2009–2010 is not strictly comparable for certain statistical difficulties. In 2004– 2005, women having graduate, post-graduate or even higher degrees are clubbed together in the highest educational category. In 2009–2010, the highest educational category is split into two: graduate degree holders and those having postgraduate and higher qualifications. Women in the highest category work in many

The backdrop  31 Table 2.1 Education specific work participation rates (per 1,000 population) for urban females (15 years and above) in West Bengal Level of Education

2004–2005

2009–2010

Not literate Literate and up to primary Middle Secondary Higher secondary Diploma/Certificate Graduate (and above for 2004–2005) Post graduate and above All

186 118  79  69  94 608 196 Not available separately 129

182 137 119  74  57   0 148 365 132

Source: NSS, Report No. 515, (Part I) and 537 Note: The category of workers considered refers to ‘usual principal status’. Usual principal status’ refers to the activity status on which a person spends relatively longer time during the 365 days preceding the date of survey. See also the note for Table 3.1.

more numbers in comparison with most categories below, in both the enumeration years. In fact, in 2009–2010, the incidence of work for pay (likely to be outside the home) turns out to be the highest for women with post-graduate and even higher degrees. These women seem to be coming from the upper echelons of the society. It is not difficult to see that these women are likely to create a new demand for domestic help both for household work as well as child care and the care for the elderly. During the survey among college teachers in Kolkata city, we found that on an average, the upper middle class households in the Kolkata city, where both husband and wife work outside the home, employ three to four domestic workers.7 Among them one often is a whole-time domestic taking care of the household in general and looking after the children in particular. During the childhood of these respondents, they had typically one or two domestic workers, and their mothers hardly worked outside the home. There is also a preference for girl child domestic workers in the urban areas of West Bengal. The NSS data show that the employment of small girls (5 to 9) has increased in 2004–2005 over 1993–1994 in urban West Bengal. This is an indication that small girls’ employment as domestics was gaining importance, possibly as whole-time domestics during this period. Save the Children, on the basis of its study of 6,892 households in 18 municipal wards of Kolkata (published in 2009) identified 652 child domestic workers among whom 84 per cent were girls. There were 56 per cent of these girl domestics aged between 12 and 14 years, and 83 per cent were primary school drop outs. We take up the different aspects of demand for domestic workers in more detail in Chapters Four, Five and Six.

Notes 1 The discussion on partition has been heavily drawn from Chatterji (2007). 2 Though, Planning Commission’s most recent estimates suggest a decline in poverty (both rural and urban) in 2009–2010 in West Bengal (The Telegraph, 22–03–2012).

32  The backdrop 3 This section is based on one of the author’s earlier publications [Deepita Chakravarty 2010; Deepita Chakravarty and Indranil Bose 2011, 2013] sometimes verbatim. 4 This had happened as a consequence of Indo–Pakistan war and droughts in the mid1960s (Alhuwalia 1985). 5 ‘Casuals’ or ‘contract labourers’ are not employed on a permanent basis and therefore do not come under labour laws of the formal sector. These labourers are sometimes employed through a contractor for a specific job for a stipulated time period. Alternatively, they can be employed directly, may not be even for a stipulated period, paid on a daily basis and doing all sorts of unskilled manual jobs. The wage rate for these contract workers is significantly lower than that of unskilled permanent workers. 6 It needs to be mentioned here that NSS data suffer severely from underrepresentation especially for the upper-income classes. 7 Conducted in March–April, 2014.

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The backdrop  33 Chakroborty, B. (2008), Indian Politics and Society since Independence: Events, Processes and Ideology, Abingdon: Routledge. Chatterji, J. (2007), The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dasgupta, A. (2004), Agrarian Reforms in West Bengal: A Closer Look at Actual Facts, Riverside: Department of Economics, University of California. Dasgupta, S. (1998), ‘WB and industry: A regional perspective’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33 (47 & 48): 3049–3060. Datta Chaudhuri, D. (1995), ‘Problems of the Electronic Industry in West Bengal: A Case Study’, in A. K. Bagchi (ed.), New Technology and the Workers’ Response (pp. 145– 166), New Delhi: Sage. Dreze, J. and Sen, A. (2002), India Development and Participation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gangopadhyay, S. (1988), Arjun, Kolkata, Anada Publishers. Gazdar, H. and Sengupta, S. (1999), ‘Agricultural Growth and Recent Trends in Well-Being in Rural West Bengal’, Sonar Bangla? Agricultural Growth and Agrarian Change in West Bengal and Bangladesh (pp. 60–91). New Delhi: Sage. Ghosh, M. (1998), ‘Agricultural development, agrarian structure and rural poverty in West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33 (47 & 48): 2987–2995. Ghosh, B. and De, P. (2004), ‘How Do Different Categories of Infrastructure Affect Development? Evidence from Indian States’, Economic and Political Weekly, 39 (42): 4645–4657. Giri, P. (1998), ‘Urbanisation in West Bengal, 1951–1991’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33 (47 & 48): 3033–3038. Goswami, O. (1995), ‘Calcutta’s Economy 1918–1970: The Fall from Grace’, in S. Chaudhuri (ed.), Calcutta: The Living City, II, Oxford University Press. Guha, R. (2007), India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, London: Pan Macmillan. Hariss, J. (1993), ‘What is happening in rural West Bengal? Agrarian reform, growth and distribution’, Economic and Political Weekly, 28 (4): 1237–1247. Kohli, A. (2009), ‘Politics of economic growth in India, 1980–2005, Part II: The 1990s and Beyond’, in A. Kohli (ed.), Democracy and Development in India, From Socialism to Pro-Business (pp. 164–185). Kohli, A. (2012), Poverty Amid Plenty in the New India, New York: Cambridge University Press. Lieten, G. K. (1990), ‘Depeasantisation discontinued: Land reforms in West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, 25 (40): 2265–2271. Lieten, G. K. (1992), Community and Change in Rural West Bengal, Delhi: Sage. Lieten, G. K. (1996), Development, Devolution, and Democracy: Village Discourse in West Bengal, New Delhi: Sage. Ramachandran, V. K. (1997), ‘Achievements in the countryside’, Frontline, 11 July. Rao, C. H. (1992), ‘Agricultural Policy and Performance’ in B. Jalan (ed.), The Indian Economy: Problems and Prospects. New Delhi: Viking. Rawal, V. and Swaminathan, M. (1998), ‘Changing trajectories: Agricultural growth in West Bengal, 1950 to 1996’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33 (40): 2595–2602. Raychaudhuri, A. and Basu, G. K. (2007), The Decline and Recent Resurgence of the Manufacturing Sector of West Bengal: Implications for Pro-Poor Growth from an Institutional Point of View, IPPG Discussion Paper 10. Sen, A. and Sengupta, R. (1995), The Recent Growth of Agricultural Output in Eastern India, with Special Reference to the Case of West Bengal, Paper presented at the

34  The backdrop workshop on Agricultural Growth and Agrarian Structure in Contemporary West Bengal and Bangladesh. Kolkata: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences. Sengupta S. (1981), ‘West Bengal land reforms and the agrarian scene’, Economic and Political Weekly, XVI (25–26): A69–A75. Sengupta, S. and Gazdar, H. (1996), ‘Agrarian Politics and Rural Development in West Bengal’ in J. Dreze and A. Sen (eds.), Indian Development Selected Regional Perspectives, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sinha, A. (2005), The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided Leviathan, Evansville: Indiana University Press. Tathya, O. S. B. (TOSB) (2006), ‘Paschim Bango Sarkar’, Amra Choli Samukhpane-Bam Front Sarkar, Kolkata: Basumati Corporation Ltd. Vaidyanathan, A. (1988), ‘Agricultural Development and Rural Poverty’, The Indian Economy, Oxford University Press.

3 Domesticity vs. paid work Domestic service in urban West Bengal

Women participate in paid work especially outside the home much less than men. Moreover, women generally tend to concentrate in low-paid unskilled jobs in the informal sector of the economy. These features are more predominant in the developing countries with India leading in many respects. However, developed countries to an extent also share the same experience of gender segregation in the labour market. Scholars from different disciplines of social sciences have offered explanations mainly based on empirical findings of the Western countries with an aim to theorise labour market discrimination. Many of these explanations are quite relevant for the developing countries as well. Recent research on developing countries’ experience of labour market disparities has enriched both theoretical and empirical literature on the issue. Feminist scholars have grouped the theoretical interpretations of women’s labour market behaviour broadly into two categories with some convergence over the years: individual choice and structural constraints. In this chapter, we aim to understand a typical labour market behaviour of urban women in West Bengal, a state not among the richer ones in India. Women’s comparatively low work participation and heavy concentration in low-paid domestic service in this state apparently look like an individual choice. In reality, it is constrained by the structural rigidities originating from cultural practices on the one hand and economic performance and inadequate state intervention on the other. In the rest of this section, we will discuss some relevant theoretical and methodological issues. The next two sections deal with women’s work in rural and urban West Bengal. We close this chapter with a discussion of girl children’s work behaviour in the urban areas of the state. The proponents of ‘the individual choice’ theory (the human capital theorists of the neoclassical school in economics as well as the sociologists belonging to the functionalist school), argue that women earn less because they have less skills, less labour market experience and also fewer qualifications than men. This is a consequence of household decisions regarding the allocation of time of men and women (Becker 1965; Mincer 1962; Mincer and Polachek 1974). As Walby (1990) points out, according to human capital theorists labour market choices are made perfectly rationally and decision-making units are not individuals but the households. It is in the interests of the adult members of the family that the household decides who will concentrate on unpaid domestic work and who

36  Domesticity vs. paid work on paid work. Specialized division of labour is assumed to be more efficient than both spouses doing some of each. Once it is decided that a person is going to be a home maker or a full-time wage worker, it cannot possibly be reversed given the investments involved. This has obvious consequences. Rejecting the idea that women’s lower wages result from lesser skills and labour market experiences Treiman and Hartmann (1981: 19) show, wage differentials originate from job segregation by sex. Indeed, the human capital theory is unable to tell us why women are always chosen by the ‘family’ to opt for household work and consequently, denied skill acquisition to join paid work. Moreover, the assumption of a perfect labour market underlying the human capital theory where employers pay employees according to their worth has also been heavily criticized by several commentators. Cockburn (1983) shows that more powerful workers are likely to be able to get their jobs designated as highly skilled: women workers are typically less powerful to be able to be recognized as skilled workers by the employer. In its technical sense, women may be skilled in terms of training involved but they might find it difficult to get it socially recognised in terms of designation and pay (Philips and Taylor 1980). As Walby (1990) notes, men are able to exclude women from better paid jobs as they are better organized than women and in turn able to keep women at a disadvantage. Empirical examples of men’s better ability to organize, at times on such issues that contradict the interests of their fellow women workers, abound. The practice of excluding women through organizational power though not unique to capitalism, certainly grew more widespread and often more violent with the coming of the modern factories and factory workers’ unions. Sheila Rowbotham (1973) has shown how in early modern England the beginnings of capitalism broke down informal customary arrangements and intensified competition among men. As a result women were gradually forced out of the more profitable trades and their work became associated with low pay (Rowbotham 1973: 2). For instance, men in the new printing industry were protesting against employing women in the unskilled printing processes in the 1630s and had virtually driven them out by the mid-seventeenth century. With the establishment of the modern factories and workers’ unions during the Industrial Revolution in England, working class women faced more troubles from their fellow men. They were discouraged to join unions dominated by men or were forced to withdraw membership. Rowbotham argues as women had a double responsibility for work and home, they were never at ease with their role as wage earners. Many men also did not like their women earning wages and resisted women’s entry into an already competitive labour market. Although women’s incomes were absolutely essential for working class families, men started to demand for a ‘living wage’ which would ensure sustenance of the whole family with the man’s income: ‘The desire to be master in their own home merged with the feeling that women should be protected from the factories’ (Rowbotham 1973: 33). Others have also shown how men even used violent methods to stop women entering into the industrial labour market during the early years of the Industrial Revolution in England. For instance, a whole factory where only women workers were being hired, was burnt

Domesticity vs. paid work  37 down by men in order to drive out unwanted competitors from the labour market (Burnette 2008). Men being in the better paid jobs and earning the so-called family wage, are able to dictate the terms of marriage, and thereby, women are forced to work at home and take care of the children. The burden of domestic work further thwarts women’s ability to acquire training for gaining better jobs. Thus it is a situation of a vicious circle where women are forcibly kept out of best jobs which leads to their disproportionate domestic burdens that contributes to their lesser ability to acquire best jobs. Hartmann (1979) argues that capitalism alone is not sufficient to unravel the nuances of gender relations in employment simply because patriarchal relations in paid employment predate capitalism. She emphasises on job segregation by sex as the central point of men’s control over women in all spheres of life. Kessler-Harris (2007) documents the similar anxiety among the male workers during the introduction of Fordist technology in late nineteenth and early twentieth century United States when women in large numbers started entering into the labour market. Anxious about losing jobs to low-paid women workers, the union leaders tried to drive them out of the work force. Very similar to the demand for family wage in England male workers in the United States argued for a ‘fair wage’ that would enable women to stay away from paid outside work (Kessler-Harris 2007: 26). From the above discussion, it is clear that labour market behaviour of women cannot be an outcome of individual choices of either the employer or the employee. Gender inequality in the labour market is structural and mostly determined outside the labour market. Folbre (1994) argues that while individuals and groups exert choices empowered by agency, they are constrained by formal and informal institutions such as the structural distribution of rules, norms, assets and identities. Women’s comparatively poor labour market performance results from these structures of constraints which take different forms in different contexts. With this brief discussion on the theoretical tools to understand why women do what they do, let us now turn to the case of West Bengal. Historically, incidence of women’s work for pay is significantly low in India in general and particularly in Bengal. It has been also pointed out that domestic service remains one of the most important avenues of women’s work in urban Bengal. Over the years this concentration has in fact increased, and the service has been strongly feminized. It has already been pointed out that historically gender segregation of jobs has much to do with culture. Thus the increasing importance of domestic service in women’s work in urban Bengal and their increasing concentration in the service has been explained as a result of the wide popularity of the culture of domesticity, apart from the more obvious economic factors, such as lack of alternative job opportunity. The culture of domesticity can be described as an attempt to allot men and women different spaces in society and to confine women within the four walls. This ideology was reformulated and reinforced in Bengal by a nineteenth century European middle class discourse. Most scholars associate this discourse on the remodeling of home and family relations with the beginnings of modern industrialization (Davidoff and Hall 1987). This domestic discourse was built around a belief that

38  Domesticity vs. paid work the natural order of human relations involved a patriarchal family system with a gendered separation of spheres of activity between the husband and the wife (Davidoff and Hall 1987). As we have already seen, Rowbotham showed how this middle class ideology inspired working class men during the Industrial Revolution in England to campaign for a living wage that would enable a wife to stay at home. The cult of domesticity identified the home as ‘women’s proper sphere’ which affected married women’s labour market participation in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Consequently in 1890, only 4.5 per cent of all married women in the United States were gainfully employed compared to 40.5 per cent of single women (Mankiller 1998). One can find variants of this domestic discourse in the colonies like India and Africa over the course of the nineteenth century. Samita Sen (1999a) shows how the idea of women joining paid outside employment began to be regarded as a highly shameful activity in late colonial Bengal. The process of turning working women into housewives or the ‘housewifization’ as Maria Mies (1989) describes it, was not limited to the upper levels of the Bengali society (Bandopadhyay 1990). We close the discussion in this section by looking at some methodological issues that are consequent upon the institutional constraints affecting women’s work participation behaviour as such and also the enumeration and computation of their work. Though a worldwide feature, comparatively low female work participation rate (FWPR) is particularly pronounced in South Asia, apart from some recent exceptions like Bangladesh. Scholars usually offer some standard methodological explanations for this. For instance, Boserup (1970) and Beneria (1982) argue that the question of low FWPR can be explained in terms of conceptual and measurement related problems implicit in the identification of ‘women in the labour force’. It has been pointed out that the procedure and definition followed by the standard data collecting agencies in developing countries suffer from a severe gender bias. In accordance with SNA (System of National Accounts) any human being who takes part in the production of all goods and services accounted in the national income statistics should be a part of the labour force. Production of these goods and services can be divided into two groups: market production and non-market production. A large number of people in the subsistence-led economies of the developing countries take part in the production of goods and services within the household where work is divided and shared by all the family members. In this setup, when we try to measure the contribution of women in non-market production, two kinds of problems arise. First is the deliberate exclusion of a large number of activities performed by women from the definition of gainful employment. Second, identifying women workers becomes difficult due to the cultural biases of traditional societies. These two contribute to the underestimation of women workers in a major way. (Jose 1989: 3). Traditional societies are characterized by ‘rigid notions of gender roles’: women are primarily considered as housewives. Any economic activities they may undertake along with their household duties (cooking, cleaning, rearing and caring for the children and the elderly and so on) are likely to be under reported

Domesticity vs. paid work  39 either by women themselves or by the respondents. Religious taboos and cultural biases prevalent in traditional societies help perpetuate these ‘cognitive’ problems. In the South Asian context researchers have cited clear evidence of such under reporting of women’s work in national labour force estimation. (Agarwal 1985; Clermont 1987). The strong cultural factors also directly determine the incidence of female work participation outside the home not only in traditional societies of South Asia but to a certain extent in the developed world also. Cultural factors, however, in the long run undergo changes as a result of development of capabilities and improvement in economic opportunities. Bangladesh is a case in point. We talk about Bangladesh in the last chapter. The strength of the cultural factors vary notably in explaining the wide disparity in female work participation rates over Indian states, one of the main points emerging from Table 3.1.

1. ‘Domesticity’, low work participation rate and the Land Reforms Labour market behaviour of women is ultimately determined by the structural factors inherent in the society as discussed in the last section. In this section, we attempt to analyse how the cultural specificities of domesticity influences the work participation behaviour of women in present West Bengal and whether institutional reforms related to land in the state has in any way determined women’s labour force participation. We argue that women’s domestic role has actually been strengthened by the land reforms leading to an increase in the number of small holders in an already fragmented land market in the rural areas of the state (see Chapter Two). Our ultimate aim is to understand the work behaviour of the poor urban women. Let us remember that a large proportion of these women is likely to be distress migrants from the rural areas. It is unlikely that these women would behave in a completely different way from their rural past when choosing an occupation. Second, according to the censuses, a significant number of girl children singly migrate from the rural areas to the urban areas of the state as well as to the other parts of the country. Newspaper reports also corroborate this trend of single migration of girl children. The numbers in Table  3.1 highlight two aspects: first, the much lower work participation rate (WPR) for women when compared to men, and second, the wide variation in women’s WPR within different states of India. The incidence of women’s paid work in rural India is relatively much higher than in the urban areas. While this is true for rural Bengal also, the state shows the second lowest incidence of female work for pay among the 16 major states of India. The gender gap, in this regard, is in fact, the highest. While agricultural work explains interstate variation of women’s work participation in India to a reasonable extent, West Bengal is a striking exception. A predominantly rice-cultivating state with relatively poor mechanization, West Bengal has the lowest WPR for women in agriculture in the rural areas among the 16 major states of the country (Table 3.1). This has historical roots.

40  Domesticity vs. paid work Table 3.1 Female and male work participation (usual status) rates (per 1,000 population) by 16 major states (2009–2010) in India States

India WB AP Assam Bihar Gujarat Haryana HP Karnataka Kerala MP Maharashtra Orissa Punjab Rajasthan TN UP

Urban WPR

Rural WPR

WPR difference

Female

Male

WPR difference

Female

405 443 366 435 384 420 427 400 406 353 372 416 449 444 390 378 421

138 141 (7) 176 (3) 93 47 143 (6) 130 159 (5) 170 (4) 194 (1) 131 159 (5) 119 124 120 191 (2) 80

543 584 542 528 431 563 557 559 576 547 503 575 568 568 510 569 501

286 456 155 395 416 265 272  88 254 346 274 180 335 291 153 198 330

261 152 443 (1) 158  65 320 250 468 370 218 282 396 243 240 357 405 174

Female WPR in agriculture Male 794 424 764 862 830 922 814 873 807 428 878 921 762 823 728 724 854

547 608 598 553 481 585 522 556 624 564 556 576 578 531 510 603 504

Source: NSS Report Number 537 Note: NSS uses different types of estimation for work participation rate depending on the definition used. Here we have taken the measure of ‘usual status’ employment. Usual status includes usual principal status (UPS) and usual subsidiary status (USS). While UPS refers to the activity status on which a person spends relatively more time, comparatively less time has been spent on the usual subsidiary activity status over the reference year of 365 days. This definition is much larger in scope compared to the Census estimates of main workers and therefore the numerical values are also considerably higher than the ones reported later from the Census.

It has been documented that, in the rural areas, women generally are engaged in three types of work: wage work and self-employment outside the household, self-employment in cultivation and industries related to the household sector and various domestic work in and around the household. Because of the cultural reasons, as mentioned above, domestic work has not been considered an economic activity by the major data generating systems of India. Unpaid domestic work is often intertwined with and inseparable from self-employment within the household. Women, all over India contribute to a large extent in pre and post-harvest operations at home and not in the field. In addition, poor peasant women also often assist their male relatives in the field. But women of upper echelons of the society usually will not do ‘outdoor’ work (Duvvuri 1989: 64, 65). While this explains the low work participation rate of women all over India, cultural bias against women’s paid outside work is particularly strong in West Bengal. There are very few detailed studies on the time allocation of women between various activities. However, it is generally acknowledged that the working day of

Domesticity vs. paid work  41 a poor woman in India may be anywhere from 12 to 16 hours. On the basis of a detailed study on time allocation of rural women in Rajasthan and West Bengal, Jain (1985) argued that while in Rajasthan women participate more significantly in visible work such as cutting grass and grazing cattle, women work predominantly at home in West Bengal. Historians on colonial Bengal have traced the exclusion of women from industrial work and from paid outside work in general in the 1920s and 1930s (Sarkar 1989; Sen 1999b). They have pointed out the growing social inhibition in Bengal in the closing years of the nineteenth century to women’s work outside the home. This inhibition was part of the middle class nationalist construction of the public–private dichotomy during that period. The middle class ideology of glorifying the housewife as against the working woman was quite influential even among the lower levels of Bengali society. Devaki Jain (1985) observed this cultural inhibition still present in the 1970s. On the basis of a survey of some villages in West Bengal, she observed that even poverty failed to push women to seek outside work to the extent it did in other parts of the country. It has also been pointed out that cultural inhibition to paid outside work pushed women to such gender specific occupations as domestic service, begging and prostitution (Banerjee 2004: 6). Nata Duvvury (1989) on the basis of district level data all over India argued that rural female WPR was likely to have increased with the increase in the Scheduled Caste (SC) and also the Scheduled Tribe (ST) population in a particular area. Fifteen years later, Sinha (2005) on the basis of detailed analysis of census data on four districts of West Bengal, however, did not find any clear relationship between female work participation and the percentage of SCs in the women population. But she has found a strong positive correlation between rural FWPR and the percentage of STs in the female population. It seems that inhibition to women’s outside work is not restricted within the upper castes in rural Bengal. In fact, notable decline in the child sex ratio also among the SCs in all states of India (except Kerala), an obvious indicator of increasing discriminatory attitude towards women, has been pointed out by Agnihotri (1997). This also is, however, not a recent phenomenon. Sekhar Bandopadhyay (1990) has shown how some of the ‘middle and lower castes’ in colonial Bengal, like the Namasudras and the Rajbangshis, in their attempts to improve their caste status withdrew their women from the public places. Tanika Sarkar (2001) shows that most upwardly mobile agrarian, artisanal and trading castes had been imitating the upper-caste domestic practices like ban on widow remarriage and the custom of infant marriage for long. Even Shudra castes had been practising Sati (practice of burning the widow at the funeral pyre of her husband), and there had been a corresponding long-term hardening of gender norms for women of these lower castes. We will have occasions to comment on this in the later sections. Low WPR of women in rural Bengal can therefore be explained to a large extent by the historical inhibition to women’s outside work that has perpetuated to the lower strata of the society. Along with cultural inhibition, the intertwining of outside work with domestic work as mentioned above led to a probable low incidence of female work participation in West Bengal. In the last chapter, we have mentioned that West Bengal is

42  Domesticity vs. paid work the only state in India which has undergone significant land redistribution process in the rural areas. But it seems there is no change, worth noting, in the incidence of paid work by women in rural West Bengal as a result of this important institutional reform measure. What can be the probable reason behind this? Two different patterns on the basis of distribution of land holdings among the cultivating households have been noticed in the literature. “First, there are regions with a higher degree of inequality in distribution, with concentration of large sized holdings, and second, regions with more even distribution of relatively small holdings. Women are found to be working in large numbers as wage labourers in the former category while they predominantly work as cultivators in the latter” (Jose 1989: 15). Table 3.2 depicts the broad land holding patterns by some Indian states in 2003–2004. We focus mainly on the three major rice cultivating states of West Bengal, TN (Tamil Nadu) and former AP (Andhra Pradesh) with comparative levels of mechanization in agriculture. On the basis of these data, Vikas Rawal (2008) argued that the land holding pattern in the states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura (we have not reported the data for Tripura) is more egalitarian compared to the other states mostly presented in Table 3.2, as a result of land reform efforts. There are a couple of points that need to be emphasized from Table 3.2. First, close to 65 per cent of the rural households own some land in West Bengal, heavily dominated by small holders constituting less than one hectare. In TN, on the contrary, only less than 45 per cent families hold some land. In the case of former AP, the landed families are about 50 per cent. Therefore, it can be argued that the possibility of being a cultivator in one’s own family field is much more in West Bengal than in TN or in former AP. This is more so for a peasant woman whose domestic chores are perennially intertwined with her work in the family field. The small holding cultivators also work as wage labourers in others’ fields, but anecdotal evidence tells us that in most of the cases it is the male member of the household who works as wage labourer if so needed. Cultural taboos are more likely to be stronger in land-owning families as the need to work outside the home Table 3.2  Land-holding patterns in India States

TN AP Ker WB Punjab Haryana UP Bihar India

Percentage of Households in Different Land-holding Categories Land less

Less than 0.4ha

0.4–1ha

1–2ha

2–3ha

3–5ha

5–10ha

10ha

55.43 48.75 36.74 34.69 29.51 25.96 16.31 31.01 31.12

21.2 16.55 49.52 42.71 38.66 37.6 41.98 42.49 29.82

13.65 17.72 9.3 15.81 8.33 13.52 22.86 16 18.97

5.64 9.09 3.33 5.4 9.54 9.85 12.42 7 10.68

2.16 4.06 0.44 0.97 5.79 5.59 3.43 1.98 4.22

1.3 2.63 0.58 0.33 4.79 4.26 2.1 1.09 3.06

0.6 1.04 0.1 0.09 2.43 2.8 0.81 0.29 1.6

0.02 0.47 0 0 0.95 0.43 0.09 0.15 0.52

Source: Vikas Rawal (2008)

Domesticity vs. paid work  43 for pay is comparatively less than the landless. Incidentally, Ashok Rudra (1992), on the basis of extensive field surveys in rural Bengal and also in parts of India, points out that female family members perform a large variety of productive labour connected with post-harvest processing of grains which often remains unaccounted in cost accounting of farms. Clearly, this is unlikely to happen if a woman has to work as a paid labour in someone else’s field, the much more prevalent case in TN or even in former AP. Therefore, it seems that the land holding structure, especially after the land reforms as claimed by Rawal, might have increased women’s propensity to be more homebound in rural Bengal and in turn helped perpetuate the perennially low work participation rate in the recent years. The experience of Kerala is very similar to West Bengal in this regard though not comparable in every respect. Thus, the fragmentation of land and the compulsion of women to stay at home for various types of cultivation related works in small and marginal farmer families during the post-reform period in the state has possibly strengthened the already prevalent ideology of domesticity. A comparison with Bangladesh shows that with a much larger proportion of landless labourers in that country, the WPR of women is also much higher than that of West Bengal (see Chapter Seven). The increasing importance of domestic service in urban women’s work in the state may therefore be explained not only in terms of lack of economic options, but a matter of cultural choice also. To those migrants from the rural areas who are forced to go to the city in search of work paid domestic service is a ‘natural choice’, an extension of women’s traditional role at home. As the urban working poor are mostly migrants, it is likely that they carry the burden of domesticity with them. We have already discussed how the upper-class upper-caste ideology and norms of behaviour, such as the concept of domesticity, had started influencing the lower castes and classes in the rural areas during the late nineteenth century. Women were losing factory jobs to men, and domestic service emerged almost as the only job option for working class women as it was seen to be the natural extension of women’s traditional role at home during the closing decades of colonial rule. As the urban labour force was largely these lower castes and classes from the rural areas, it is likely that they carried forward their value systems.1 According to the censuses, distress migration from the rural areas of Bengal in search of livelihood to Kolkata and other more happening Indian cities is increasing in the recent years. It’s not at all surprising if you suddenly hear a group of construction workers speaking in Bangla while working in a site in the outskirts of Hyderabad. Or it is nothing unusual if you get pure Bengali food cooked by a maid coming from the interiors of Bengal in a dinner invitation at a Kashmiri friend’s house in Gurgaon. Men migrate as construction workers and women as domestics. However, it goes without saying that West Bengal has most successfully implemented the land reform measures in the country. But unfortunately, in most cases women did not get land right as the slogan for the land distribution movement was, ‘langol jaar, jami taar’: land belongs to the one who ploughs. As there is a social taboo against women’s ploughing, it is the only operation which women do not perform. According to the government order of 1979, to be a beneficiary of the distributed land, a person has to directly perform four operations: ploughing, sowing,

44  Domesticity vs. paid work weeding and harvesting. As a result, women were generally not considered independent beneficiaries except in cases of widows without an adult son, deserted and divorced women. “Adult unmarried women did not get recognition as independent units, nor was there any provision for joint title in the first round of distribution. After 14 years of Left Front rule, when the major part of the land distribution programme had already taken place, the issue of joint titles was given some consideration formally” (Gupta 2002: 1748). In the absence of any autonomous women’s movement demanding such rights,2 expectedly not much improvement in the distribution of land rights to women had taken place in the state. While this has very important social implications as discussed by Agarwal (1994) and others in many occasions, the sheer shifting of land rights to women could have influenced the definitions used in large-scale data collection on work by the government in favour of rural women in India and specifically in West Bengal.

2.  Domesticity vs. domestic service: urban women When we turn to the urban picture, it is interesting to note that FWPR in West Bengal is notably higher than the national average. But the male–female gap in work participation for pay remains as bad as it is in the rural areas (Table 3.1). However, FWPR in the urban areas as such all over India is generally much lower compared to that of the rural areas. The argument that the ‘cult of domesticity’ may have been an important determinant of the work behaviour for urban women at least in Bengal gains more strength from the pattern of concentration of female work force in certain sectors of the economy. Table 3.3 demonstrates that about 50 per cent women are concentrated only in the community services sector in the urban areas of the state followed by manufacturing and trade. Compared to women, male work participation is less concentrated and dominated mainly by trade, manufacturing and transport. The concentration of female work force in the services sector is on the increase in the recent years mainly at the cost of manufacturing. In fact, the decline in female work participation in the manufacturing sector is so severe in 2009–2010 over Table 3.3 A comparison of female–male (usual status, per 1000) workforce participation rates in ­different industries in urban West Bengal Industry

Agriculture Manufacturing Community etc. services Trade Transport Construction Finance All

1993–1994

2004–2005

2009–2010

Female

Male

Female

Male

Female

Male

 86 305 501  49  19  15  18 143

 44 302 212 206  98  61  42 550

 31 354 496  75  6  9  21 155

 27 257 165 270 129  75  59 595

 45 285 547  87  16  4  16 141

 34 246 155 304 121  76  47 584

Source: NSS Report No 409, 515(61/10/1) Part I, Report No. 537

Domesticity vs. paid work  45 2004–2005 that the considerable increase in the services employment during the same period failed to resist the overall decline in the female work force participation in the urban areas. This decline, however, confirms the country-wide trend. Women’s loss of industrial jobs in Bengal can, however, be historically traced. Banerjee (2006) and Mukherjee (1995) showed how the avenues of women’s work in this region shrank between 1881 and 1931 as a result of the introduction of the ‘limited version’ of modernization in industry. Traditional household industries and modern industries such as jute, tea and coal mining were the main employers of women. With changes in production processes and the decline of traditional crafts, women lost their household jobs. New factory laws barred them from the coal mines. The jute industry, which had nearly 20 per cent women among labour by the turn of the nineteenth century, started employing single male up-country migrants at the cost of local women and men workers. It has already been mentioned that during the same period, there was a growing social attitude in Bengal in favour of women’s role within the home. After Independence, as discussed in the previous chapter, West Bengal saw a continuous decline in the industrial activities till date for a number of reasons. Consequently, hardly any new gainful employment has been generating in the formal manufacturing sector in the state. Moreover, frequent closure of factories and firms in this sector leaves a large number of mainly male workers out of job every day. Bagchi et al. (2005) pointed out a notable decline in the manufacturing employment in the state as a whole. Apart from the decline in employment in the formal sector, they have shown that employment in the informal manufacturing has also either remained stagnant or experienced a slight decline over the years. Data reported in Table 3.3 confirm this trend. Given the nature of employment in the informal sector, the trend of employment is ambiguous. This is more so as Chakravarty and Bose (2011) have shown that the informal manufacturing is performing much better in the state when we consider the output. The jobless and also better qualified from the formal sector manufacturing enter the burgeoning unorganized activities of the state. Majority of these workers are likely to be men as they have better possibilities of being skilled at least notionally. These ­workers along with the new entrants in the labour force, mainly the better-educated young men, are likely to out compete the older women in preferred jobs. Anecdotal evidence (interview with Arindam Dasgupta: 10 July 2014, Kolkata) suggests that introduction of increasing mechanization in some manufacturing activities such as book-binding, since the early 1990s aided by the liberal policies, has been changing the demand for both the quality and quantity of human labour in most of these industries. While the machines have reduced the need for human hands in general, the changed production processes have increased the demand for skilled workers to a considerable extent. Both these changes have substantially reduced the demand for women workers. As it is structurally determined, women mostly provide unskilled jobs. Thus, it is highly likely that if any new job is created in the manufacturing sector, it is for men as they are generally more skilled compared to women. Book binding is a case in point where traditionally a large number of illiterate or semiliterate women used to work in Kolkata city. It needs to be noted, however, that men’s WPR in the manufacturing has also declined in the recent years, though by a much smaller extent than women.3

46  Domesticity vs. paid work All this is happening in the context of no serious decline in the incidence of urban women’s work in the recent years compared to the early 1990s (Table 3.3). As a result of ever increasing competition from the male workers as mentioned above, women are forced to find their way in those sectors which will be least preferred by men, the jobs that are more compatible with ‘femininity’ and ‘domesticity’ (Table 3.4). However, men still constitute some 30 per cent of urban domestic workers in West Bengal which is yet another indication of poor economic performance of the state with a severe constraint on job opportunities. Now what are the activities where women concentrate? A comparison of West Bengal with 15 major states of India will be instructive. As the presentation of census data for work participation changed in 2001 into more detailed categorization, it’s difficult to delineate comparable broad trends on the basis of more recent data, and we have therefore decided to depict the scenario on the basis of the 1991 Census enumeration.

Table 3.4 Percentage distribution of urban women workers (all ages) in different divisions of work in the 15 major states of India, 1991 States

Div.0 to 1 Div. 2 Div.3 Div. 4 Div.5 Div. 53 Div.6 Div. Div. Excluding 53 7–8–9 X

Himachal Pradesh Punjab Haryana Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Bihar West Bengal Orissa Madhya Pradesh Gujarat Maharshtra Andhra Pradesh Karnataka Kerala Tamil Nadu

44.69

1.29

22.13 3.80

51.95 51.51 32.81 29.72 38.06 25.74 30.27 22.87

0.79 1.15 1.28 0.87 1.32 1.06 1.19 1.34

14.47 12.76 6.06 6.15 6.00 11.48 7.23 7.16

28.13 21.95 18.29

1.14 1.83 0.80

18.71 24.58 18.58

1.18 1.67 1.25

8.64

3.37

0.33 13.10 2.64

7.67 8.05 10.49 9.66 7.56 5.83 8.97 6.90

2.45 2.65 1.18 2.81 7.19 19.70 7.03 4.60

0.31 0.48 0.89 0.74 0.57 0.53 1.52 1.25

11.18 8.91 7.54 15.97 9.72 6.31 6.73 11.78 10.32

6.29 9.37 6.11

2.04 32.17 1.14 0.89 32.53 1.43 0.92 43.61 1.44

10.52 8.67 13.31 5.26 9.23 7.84

6.89 4.81 3.88

1.29 45.79 1.66 1.72 38.09 0.77 4.96 45.93 0.76

4.22 3.53 5.81 7.88 7.92 5.77 9.81 7.97

5.30 9.79 7.57

15.98 17.09 37.98 35.69 28.80 27.93 31.54 44.43

2.16 1.97 3.51 6.48 3.10 1.91 2.45 3.49

Source: Census of India 1991, Reproduced from Chakravarty and Chakravarty (2008) Note: (a) Only the main workers have been considered. A main worker is a person whose main activity is participating in any economically productive work for no less than 183 days in a year. If s/he works for less than 183 days s/he will be acknowledged as a marginal worker. Census definitions are more restrictive than that of the NSS ones and therefore not strictly comparable. See, notes for Table 3.1 also. (b) The different divisional codes refer to: (0–1): Professional, technical and related workers; (2): administrative, executive and managerial workers; (3): clerical workers; (4): sales workers, (5): service workers; (6): farmers etc.; (7–8–9): production related workers and labourers; (X): workers not classified by occupations.

Domesticity vs. paid work  47 Table 3.4 shows a relatively higher concentration of urban women workers in West Bengal in four areas: (a) production related works (Div. 7–8–9); (b) professional, technical and related work (Div. 0–1); (c) domestic service (Div.53 – a sub group of service works, Div. 5); and (d) clerical jobs (Div. 3). The importance of all the above mentioned divisions hold true for the other states except for Division 53. However, if we exclude domestic services (Group 53) from the broad category of manual services (Div. 5), the percentage concentration of women workers becomes more or less similar over all the states. The high percentage share of domestic service (20 per cent) in West Bengal makes the real difference. The dominance of domestic service in West Bengal has increased to more than 3 percentage points in 2001 over 1991 (Tables 3.4 and 3.5). In 2001, the percentage share of domestic service in urban women’s work in West Bengal has gone up to about 23 when it is only 10 per cent in the country as a whole. But researchers have shown that the importance of domestic service as a job avenue for the poor urban women is increasing the country over, many of who have migrated from the rural areas (see, Kundu 2008; Sengupta and Sen 2013; Unni and Raveendran 2007). Figure 3.1 demonstrates the high incidence of domestic service as a single occupation in urban women’s work in 2001 in different states of India. ­Figure 3.1 also demonstrates the strikingly high percentage of women concentrated in domestic Table 3.5  Women’s major work categories in urban West Bengal: 2001 Categories of Work

Percentages

Domestic work (Ayah, cook, maids, gardener, driver etc.) Bidi binding Spinning and finishing of bed covers Textile garments Tailoring Education and health related work

22.52  8.17  6.89  5.63  3.11 14.02

Source: Census of India, Economic Tables, 2001

Figure 3.1 Percentage of domestic workers in total urban working women in different states of India, 2001 Source: Census of India, Economic Tables, 2001

48  Domesticity vs. paid work service in West Bengal as has been already mentioned. It can be also seen that not only West Bengal, but also most of the eastern region (the generally poorer and not so well performing part of the country) shows a higher concentration of domestic service as a major occupation for urban women. Domestic service does not require any specific educational qualification and is simply a work that is an extension of what ‘women are born to do’. The second highest concentration of urban women in West Bengal is in the health and education sector. Women who work in these sectors are likely to be the better paid middle-class professionals of different grades working as teachers, clerks, receptionists, call centre employees, nurses and also doctors to a limited extent. Apart from the newly emerging call centre jobs, all the others are known as ‘suitable’ for women in urban India for a long time. A woman doctor is usually a gynecologist! These women are also likely to be the employers of paid domestics in a major way as we will be discussing in the later chapters. The other main categories of work that absorb urban women are classified under the manufacturing sector and a large part of it is done from home or in the factories where the labour process is dominated by women and is completely informal in nature in terms of labour regulations. These are often highly tedious jobs performed by women. Women’s femininity featured by the ‘theory of nimble finger and docility’ helps women’s entry in these traditional manufacturing sectors of bidi (indigenous cigar) binding, garments and to some extent textiles also (see Chakravarty 2007; Joekes 1995; Lee 1984; Lim 1984).

3.  Domesticity vs. domestic service: urban girl children We have already mentioned that domestic service is not only adult women’s work but also girl children’s work in post-Independence West Bengal. A look at the 2001 and the 1991 Census data (Table 3.6) suggests two important facts about work participation of women and girl children in the urban areas of the major states of India. First, girl children’s WPR is the highest in West Bengal in 2001 though, even in 2001 West Bengal continues to lag behind other major states in respect of the WPR of adult women. Second, in 1991, West Bengal was at the 10th position with regard to women’s WPR in the urban areas of all states; in 2001 it shows a substantial increase and has moved to the seventh position. In 1991, the state was in the fourth position with regard to girl children’s WPR in the urban areas of all states. All the three states above West Bengal exhibit a clear decline in girl children’s WPR in 2001 over 1991. West Bengal, however, shows a significant increase in the incidence of girl children working. Even more striking is the fact that around 2 per cent of the urban girl children in the age group of 5 to 9 years worked outside the home in West Bengal, while in other states of the country, children were scarcely reported to work for wages at this tender age in the early 2000s. Increasing participation of girl children in the job market in urban Bengal, often as domestics can be traced from the days of post-Partition years. Table 3.7 shows a continuous and quite significant increase in girl children’s workforce participation

Table 3.6 Work participation rates of urban females (all) and girl children (5 to 14 years) in 15 major states of India in 1991 and 2001 (percentage) States

1991

Himachal Pradesh Punjab Haryana Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Bihar West Bengal Orissa Madhya Pradesh Gujarat Maharshtra Andhra Pradesh Karnataka Kerala Tamil Nadu India

2001

FWPR

GC (5–14) WPR

11.10 (4)

0.73 (9)

4.31 (13) 4.65 (12) 5.36 (11) 3.75 (15) 4.30 (14) 5.79(10) 7.03 (8) 8.82 (7)

FWPR 12.99 (3)

GC (5–14) WPR 0.74 (8)

0.32 (15) 0.35 (14) 0.75 (8) 0.55 (10) 0.53 (12) 1.17 (4) 1.12 (5) 0.94 (6)

8.49 (9) 7.66 (10) 6.51 (13) 4.54 (15) 4.70 (14) 9.21 (7) 7.30 (11) 8.70 (8)

0.90 (5) 0.49 (13) 0.63 (10) 0.77 (6) 0.65 (9) 1.77 (1) 0.76 (7) 0.62 (11)

6.03 (9) 10.37 (6) 11.09 (5)

0.54 (11) 0.80 (7) 2.02 (2)

7.23 (12) 10.47 (6) 10.52 (5)

0.65 (9) 0.59 (12) 1.59 (4)

11.96 (1) 11.30 (3) 11.78 (2) 8.13

2.19 (1) 0.40 (13) 1.88 (3) 1.04

13.78 (2) 10.71 (4) 16.18 (1) 9.42

1.64 (3) 0.23 (14) 1.69 (2) 0.97

Source: Census of India 1991 and 2001, Reproduced from Chakravarty and Chakravarty (2008) Note: (a) Female work participation rate or FWPR refers to the worker population ratio (for all age group women) per 100 women population. Similarly, girl children work participation rate (GCWPR) refers to the worker population ratio for per 100 girl children (5 to 14). (b)  Only main workers have been considered. (c)  Ranks of different states according to FWPR and GCWPR are given in the parenthesis.

Table 3.7 Work participation rates (in per cent) of women and girl children and the percentage of girl children in total female workforce over 40 years in urban West Bengal Years

FWPR

GCWPR

Percentage of girl children in total female workforce

1961 1971 1981 1991 2001

5.12 3.92 4.66 5.80 9.21

0.24 0.50 0.86 1.18 1.77

1.89 5.05 6.33 4.56 3.75

Source: Census of India, different years, Part II-B (i), ‘General Economic Tables’ Note: FWPR refers to women’s work participation rate and GCWPR refers to girl children’s work participation rate. Main workers are considered alone.

50  Domesticity vs. paid work rate (GCWPR) in urban West Bengal over the four decades from 1961 to 2001. As there are conceptual differences regarding the definition of workers over the different censuses, we have also looked at the percentage share of working girl children in the total volume of female workforce in the 5 census years of our concern. There is a very sharp increase in the incidence of working girl children as a percentage of female work force in urban West Bengal in 1971 when compared to 1961. Further, a steady increase in 1981 is also discerned.4 However, there is a decline in the percentage of girl children afterwards. Since 1991, women’s work participation also started increasing steadily in the urban areas. According to census data, as against girl children boy children could hardly make their presence felt in the male work force of urban Bengal during the period when girls were increasing both in number as well as in proportion. This is mainly because of the vastness of the men folk at work. But it also needs to be mentioned that at least in some years incidence of paid work for boys is less than that of girls of the same age group as seen from Table 3.8. Table 3.8 depicts the work participation behaviour by urban women and men of different ages over a period of about 20 years in West Bengal. It is seen that the incidence of girl children’s work participation is generally higher than that of boy children in the youngest age group of 5 to 9 years in the urban areas of the state. However, for the immediately older age group of 10 to 14 years, it is difficult to locate such regular patterns. But in most of the years under consideration girl children’s WPR surpasses, though sometimes marginally, that of the boy children. In all other age groups women’s work participation is consistently much lower than that of the men confirming men’s traditional ‘bread winning’ stature. Table 3.8 also suggests a sharp decline in the WPR of girl children in the latest survey year. However, this is a feature experienced the country over and West Table 3.8 Female and male work participation rates (usual status, per 1000 population) for different age groups in urban West Bengal Age group

 5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59

1987–1988

1993–1994

2004–2005

2009–2010

Female

Male

Female

Male

Female

Male

Female

Male

6 78 119 147 176 237 203 219 174 202 179

3 76 302 624 871 964 979 971 987 967 850

11 88 113 166 189 215 276 239 279 196 142

2 48 314 601 858 928 981 975 984 964 914

20 67 160 256 220 234 235 257 159 180 172

5 91 289 668 872 953 966 986 961 916 917

1 29 106 145 233 274 200 172 194 218 188

0 28 262 584 903 968 983 977 982 964 889

Source: NSS Report No 409, 515(61/10/1) Part I, Report No. 537 & Sarvekshana, Spl. No., September 1990

Domesticity vs. paid work  51 Bengal is still at the highest position in terms of girl children’s work in urban India. We will try to address this issue of decline in girl children’s work participation rate in the recent years when we report our primary survey in Chapter Five. Before commenting on the possible explanations for this decline in the work participation rate of girl children in the recent years it is instructive to see where exactly these working girl children are located in urban Bengal. While the NSS data are available till 2009–2010, they are not of much help in this regard for two reasons: first, the NSS reports the disaggregated WPRs only in terms of the standard nine industry classification at the state level; and second, even that is not available in terms of the different age groups. On the other hand, the Census gives a more detailed breakdown in terms of divisions of work with respect to different age groups. Unfortunately, from the Census also we get this information on the basis of age groups only till 1991. Except West Bengal and Kerala, girl children are concentrated mainly in production work very much like their mothers in the urban areas of all other states. In West Bengal, close to 60 per cent girl children were engaged in domestic service alone in the early 1990s. The high incidence of girl children working in the

Table 3.9 Percentage distribution of urban girl children (5–14) workers in different divisions of work in 15 major states of India, 1991 States

Div.0 to 1 Div. 2 Div.3 Div. 4 Div.5 Div. 53 Div.6 Div. Div. Excluding 53 7–8–9 X

Himachal Pradesh Punjab Haryana Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Bihar West Bengal Orissa Madhya Pradesh Gujarat Maharshtra Andhra Pradesh Karnataka Kerala Tamil Nadu

2.36

0.00

3.03

0.67

 4.37

62.63

0.00

22.90 4.04

2.38 2.64 1.48 1.76

0.00 0.44 0.15 0.22

0.97 0.88 0.37 0.35

13.22 12.92  4.34  5.78

 6.88  6.02  3.41  4.69

17.53 15.27  3.02  3.79

0.70 4.26 4.27 0.77

55.15 54.77 79.42 74.05

2.36 0.83

0.41 0.12

0.77 0.24

 9.15  4.91  1.81  4.93

40.54 56.80

0.64 0.20

37.32 3.89 33.43 1.63

1.46 1.13

0.28 0.19

0.40 0.19

 7.36  2.99  5.66  2.77

26.06 10.73

1.93 2.40

57.02 2.81 73.04 3.89

1.65 1.15 0.41

0.09 0.28 0.15

0.62 0.40 0.13

 6.39  2.99  7.36  2.99  5.55  8.28

16.35 26.06 15.38

2.69 1.93 1.34

66.98 2.25 57.02 2.81 67.74 1.01

0.52 1.98 0.50

0.14 0.29 0.14

0.25 1.21 0.31

 3.49  3.59  2.24 30.23  3.65  2.68

22.21 35.27  5.33

1.44 0.77 1.49

66.73 1.63 25.46 2.53 84.81 1.01

Source: Census of India 1991, Reproduced from Chakravarty and Chakravarty (2008) Note: Same as for Table 3.6.

3.17 2.79 3.53 8.60

52  Domesticity vs. paid work match industry of Tamil Nadu, the bidi industry in former AP, the carpet industry in Jammu and Kashmir, and in gem polishing in Jaipur, are well recognized (for example, Burra 2006; Kak 2004). On the contrary, the prevalence of girl child workers in domestic service in urban West Bengal is conspicuously missing in the existing discourse on child labour. However, Burra (2006) while commenting on the invisibility of girl’s work in the literature on child work notes that boys are seen at work more often in public places like workshops, factories and the way-side small eateries. Girl children, instead, mostly work at home (Burra 2006: xix). In fact, one of the emerging major areas of girl children’s work in the recent day India is paid domestic service away from public gaze with the risk of all sorts of abuses involved. The trend of girl children getting absorbed in paid domestic service in large numbers seems to be continuing in the early 2000s as well. Unfortunately we do not have census estimates for the number of girl children engaged in domestic service in the 2001 Census. A comparison of the 1991 and the 2001 Census data indicates that the largest increase in working girl children has taken place in the services sector, most likely in domestic service. This is particularly true for girls aged 5 to 14 years, who can only be engaged in work that requires almost no skills. In fact, studies conducted by Save the Children on child domestics (2006, 2009) in Kolkata and three other relatively more urbanized districts of West Bengal suggest a significant predominance of small girls in domestic service. The percentage of girls among the total children migrating for employment to the urban areas of West Bengal from within the state is as high as 67 according to the 2001 Census. It needs to be remembered here that these girl children’s migration for work is a facet of a larger process of mainly internal distress migration caused by shortage of food in the rural areas as discussed in the previous chapter (see, Bandyopadhyay 2007; West Bengal Human Development Report 2004 and also the District Development Reports published in 2010). We address the migration issues in Chapters Four and Five in more detail. From the above analysis of secondary data and the large surveys by Save the Children, we know that a considerable number of girl children work as domestics in the state along with the older women. In fact in 1991, the latest year for which we have dependable macro data for the state, around 14 per cent of all women domestic workers in West Bengal were girls (Figure 3.2). A look at the age group wise WPR (Table 3.8) revealed from the NSS estimates shows a continuous decline in the work participation rates for the older girls in the age group of 10 to 14 from 1993–1994 to 2004–2005 and finally to 2009–2010 in urban West Bengal. It is interesting to note that this decline is registered for the younger age group in 2009–2010. It may not be grossly wrong if we assume that decrease in the WPR of urban girls in the recent years leads to a decrease (and quite considerable at that) in the WPR of girls in domestic service, as more than 57 per cent of them were concentrated in this service in 1991. This decline in the work participation of girl children is unlikely to be a policy outcome as no particular policy effort to this direction could be noted during this period in the state. On the contrary, in 2007 the then Chief Minister of West

Domesticity vs. paid work  53

Figure 3.2 Percentage share of different age groups in urban female domestics in West Bengal in 1991 Source: Reproduced from Chakravarty and Chakravarty 2008

Bengal declared in a public meeting that there was no possibility of implementing the Child Labour Prohibition Act (which finally includes domestic servants also) of 2006 in the state in near future (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 1 January 2007). However, there is a possibility that some of the employers might have voluntarily decided to abstain from employing child domestics after the Act was extended to include those engaged in paid house work. A different explanation can be the following. In the context of older women losing employment in manufacturing in large numbers and entering into the services most likely in the categories such as domestic service, the girls in younger age group are forced to withdraw from paid work outside the home. Arguably girl children in the age group of 10–14 are expected to be able to take care of household subsistence work in the absence of the mother while younger girls (5–9) are not so indispensable at home. However, only primary data can confirm this conjecture. Table 3.8 shows that while there is a decline in the WPR of the first four age groups in 2009–2010 over 2004–2005, there is a sustained increase in the work participation rate of older women, especially in the age groups of (25–29) years and (30–34) years since 1993–1994. However, there can be one more explanation of the decline in the girl children’s WPR. There is a possibility that with the increase in the earning abilities of the working mother and the consequent improvement of her agency within the family, the empowered woman is then likely to be in a better position to protect her girl child from working out. It is important to note here that a substantial number of girl children still work in the urban areas of West Bengal leading the state to the top in the country in this respect. Whether the mother will earn the agency of decision making within the family depends much on the kind of paid work she is

54  Domesticity vs. paid work engaged in and also the prevalent cultural specificities. We discuss some of these issues in Chapter Five. The decrease in the WPR is not restricted to the child population alone in 2009–2010, but is also applicable to the most important reproductive age groups of (15–19) years and (20–24) years of the urban women in the state as pointed out above. Is it suggestive of a renewed trend of ‘housewifization’? According to the third National Family Health Survey the number of women getting married below the age of 18 is not only the highest in the state but also is increasing. We noticed some such trends in our primary data reported in Chapter Five. We found that the relationship between the increasing trend of domestication of women or turning them into ‘proper housewives’ and the development of the working mother’s agency turned out to be quite complex. We close this discussion with a bit of a puzzle. Figure 3.3 depicts the work participation rates for urban women from different age groups for West Bengal along with TN, the state which has the highest FWPR and for India as a whole. Till the age of 19 years, the WPR of urban women in West Bengal is higher than not only the national average but also than TN, the state with the highest FWPR. The record of TN in bringing back children (including the girls) from factories to schools over the last 25 years or so is particularly impressive and the impact of this on girl children’s WPR is clearly evident from Figure 3.3, as well as Table 3.6. Figure 3.3 also indicates that the impact of reproductive age group on work participation is much severe in West Bengal compared to Tamil Nadu. The mean age at first birth is 20 years in West Bengal and 22 in TN. The total

Figure 3.3 Urban women’s work participation rates (usual status, per 1000) in different age groups: West Bengal (WB), Tamil Nadu (TN) and India Source: NSS Report No. 537

Domesticity vs. paid work  55 fertility rate (TFR) in urban Bengal is the lowest at 1.4 followed by TN at 1.6 (see Krishnaji 2010). With these relatively low TFR, it is expected that the reproductive burden will taper off quickly and the WPR would increase more sharply there after before it finally declines at a later age as it has happened in the case of TN. On the contrary, in West Bengal, while both the age at first birth and theTFR are lower than TN we notice a sharp decline in WPR at a very early age of mid 30s. It seems, it’s still the excessive pull of dearth of money that brings women into the labour market in the initial stages of family life in order to feed and educate the child at least to a certain extent. The moment things start getting settled a bit, the woman, primarily a ‘housewife’ withdraws herself from the labour market. Women are not really valuing their identity as ‘workers’. We have some primary evidence to support this conjecture in Chapter Five. We have already mentioned that with the manifold increase in urban affluence all over India since the economic reforms set in, poor women are finding avenues in domestic service in the urban areas in a major way during the last 10/15 years or so. In 1991, around 7 per cent of women used to work as domestics in urban India; this has increased to more than 10 per cent in 2001. Thus the demand for such services all over the country must have also increased. What is unique about West Bengal is the prevalence of girl children in this service. The NSS data show that the employment of small girls (5 to 9) has increased in 2004–2005 over 1993–1994 in urban West Bengal. This is an indication that small girls’ employment as domestic workers was gaining importance, possibly as whole-time domestics during this period. Save the Children, on the basis of its study of 6,892 households in 18 municipal wards of Kolkata (published in 2009) identified 652 child domestic workers among whom 84 per cent were girls. There were 56 per cent of these girl domestics aged between 12 and 14 years, and 83 per cent were primary school drop outs. Apart from the supply and demand factors at the household levels, this increasing participation of girl children in workforce can be seen as a major state failure over the years as well. This is particularly so because children are found out of school in the state of West Bengal in much larger proportions compared to many other states in India over the 1990s and also the 2000s. Things, however, at least, according to official data, seem to have improved in the recent years. Children out of school are easily available for work especially if there are ‘standard’ avenues of work open to them. While the number of schools is really no constraint for the dissemination of primary education in West Bengal, the infrastructure (school buildings and the teacher/student ratio) is poor. This is of more serious concern for girl children as most schools do not have toilet facilities. Moreover, the quality of education and the overall school environment are not conducive enough to retain poor children. The overwhelming importance of private tuition from the primary stages is worth mentioning here (Pratichi Trust 2002). Though the enrolment rates have improved recently, West Bengal still stands first among all states in India, and at a very high level, with regard to dropout rates among girl children in the year 2004–2005. However, a few studies have found that while there is no clear relationship

56  Domesticity vs. paid work between the phenomenon of child labour and the number of children enrolled or the number of schools in the area, dropout rates have a significantly high positive correlation with the incidence of child labour (Aggarwal 2004; Chandrashekhar 1997). Finally, it is worth mentioning here that the compulsory age of education (i.e., the age till which the statutory provision for free education is available) in West Bengal is 6 to 10 when in all the states successful in disseminating primary education it is 6 to 14. Kaushik Basu 1999 highlights that theoretical explanations for the causes of persistence of child labour date back to Karl Marx. Marx maintained that the fierce competition in the labour market during the Industrial Revolution in England drastically dragged the wage rate down to such a low level that it was essential for every household member to contribute to the household budget. A large number of contemporary labour market models with child labour dwell on Marx’s hypothesis of competitive dependence (see Doepke and Zillibotti 2005; Humphries 2010). Basu (1999) also notes that many of the dynamic models on persistence of child work are based on Marshall’s idea that increase in child labour decreases human capital acquisition leading to a vicious circle of continuing poverty and child labour. Basu and Tzannatos (2003) developed a model of persistence of child labour on the basis of two main assumptions: luxury and substitution axioms. According to the luxury assumption, the poor are forced to send their children for work because of extreme poverty. So children are supposed to be called back from the labour market when family income rises. In this view, parental behaviour is implicitly highly altruistic. The options of not working or school attendance for children in this context are considered as a luxury item. We will have occasions to relate this idea while discussing our primary findings on the migrant girl domestics in the fifth chapter. The substitution axiom maintains that from a purely technical point of view children can substitute adults in every task. However, employing adults is more costly, and therefore employers prefer children. This is plausible in the context of early industrialization in England or in some specific industries in the developing countries even in the recent years such as the case of domestic service to a large extent. But technological advancement leading to complicated production procedure in most industries no more allows perfect substitution between children and adults. Humphries (2010) argues that while in this basic model, child labour is primarily driven by poverty, she also recognizes that the persistence of child labour can have other non-economic causes. Thus Weiner (1991) argues that poverty is not the chief reason behind the high incidence of child labour in India. He argues that the hierarchical social orders of the Indian society influencing politico-economic outcome that ensures a persistent gap between classes. This further gets reinforced by denying education which undermines the capabilities of the poor. The Indian state has always given excessive importance to an education system that directly benefits the middle- and upper-income classes: ‘quality mass education has never been a priority of the Indian state’. This is a typical case of ‘elite capture’ of scarce resources (Bardhan and Mookherjee 2006). We deal with such issues in Chapter Six on the relationship between domestic workers and their employers.

Domesticity vs. paid work  57 Apart from poverty, the second argument for legitimizing child labour by the Indian government was that child labour was concentrated mainly in the traditional skill-based industries: fathers pass on traditional skills to their sons. If child labour was prohibited in such industries, those industries would die out eventually (Burra 1995). Burra (2006), on the basis of a series of case studies pointed out that while, in a few crafts artisans were still earning their living employing family labour, in industries listed as employing child labour, artisans have been replaced in a major way by the new technology. Her empirical findings strongly suggest that early labour force participation is not only hazardous to children’s health but also destroys their possibilities of gaining education, the only way they can possibly come out from the vicious circle of poverty. Engagement of girl children in domestic service ruins all possibilities of doing anything in the later ages and reinforces the idea that women’s primary capabilities relate to household duties either inside the household or in the labour market.

Notes 1 See Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000). Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890–1940. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 2 In a peasant movement against landlords in Bodh Gaya, Bihar women participants demanded and succeeded to get land rights in their own names (see Bina Agarwal 1994). 3 However, there are some manufacturing activities especially oriented to exports such as garments, gems and jewelleries, where women are generally preferred to men (see, Chakravarty 2007). 4 It needs to be noted that already in 1977–1978 (NSS 32nd Round), GCWPR was the highest in Kolkata city among the four metropolises.

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58  Domesticity vs. paid work Basu, K. (1999), ‘Child labour: Cause, consequence and cure, with remarks on labour standards’, Journal of Economic Literature, 37 (3): 1083–1119. Basu, K. and Thanatos, Z. (2003), ‘The Global Child Labour Problem: What Do We Know and What Can We Do?’ World Bank Economic Review, 7 (2):143–173. Becker, G. S. (1965), ‘A theory of the allocation of time’, The Economic Journal, 75 (299): 493–517. Benera, L. (ed.) (1982), Women and Development: The Sexual Divisions of Labour in Rural Societies, New York: Praeger. Boserup, E. (1970), Women’s Role in Economic Development, New York: St. Martin’s Press. Burnette, J. (2008), Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain, Cambridge University Press. Burra, N. (1995), Born to Work: Child Labour in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Burra, N. (2006), ‘Introduction’, in M. Weiner, N. Burra and A. Bajpai (eds.), Born Unfree: Child Labour, Education, and the State in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chakrabarty, D. (2000), Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890–1940, New Jersey, Princeton University Press. Chakravarty, D. (2007), ‘Docile Oriental Women and the Organized Labour: A case of an Indian garment export park’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 14 (3): 439–460. Chakravarty, D. and Chakravarty, I. (2008), ‘Girl Children in the Care Economy: Domestics in WB’. Economic and Political Weekly, 43 (48): 93–100. Clermont, G. L. (1987), Economic Evaluation of Unpaid Household Work: Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania, Geneva: ILO. Cockburn, C. (1983), Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change, London: Pluto Press. Davidoff, L. and Hall, C. (1987), Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Doepke, M. and Zillibotti, F. (2005), ‘The Macro Economics of Child Labour Regulation’, American Economic Review 95 (5): 1492–1524. Duvvuri, N. (1989), ‘Work Participation of Women in India: A Study with Special Reference to Female Agricultural Labourers, 1961–1981’, in A. V. Jose (ed.), Limited Options – Women Workers in India (pp. 63–197), India: ILO-ARTEP. Folbre, N. (1994), Who Takes Care of the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint, Routledge: London and New York. Government of West Bengal (2010),‘District Human Development Report: North 24 Parganas’, Kolkata : Development & Planning Department. Gupta, J. (2002), ‘Women Second in the Land Agenda’, Economic and Political Weekly, XXXVII, (18): 1747–1754. Hartmann, H. (1979), ‘The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism:Towards More Progressive Union’, Capital and Class, 8 (Summer): 1–33. Hartmann, H. (1987), ‘The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class and Political Struggle: The Example of Housework’, in S. Harding (ed.), Feminism and Methodology (pp. 109–134). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Humphries, J. (2010), Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jain, D. (1985), ‘The Household Trap: Report on a Field Survey of Female Activity Patterns’, in D. Jain and N. Banerjee (eds.), Tyranny of the Household Imaginative Essays on Women’s Work (pp. 218–228), Delhi: Shakti Books.

Domesticity vs. paid work  59 Joekes, S. (1995), ‘Trade related employment for women in industry and services in developing countries’, UNRISD Occasional Paper 5, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva, UNDP. Jose, A. V. (1989), ‘Female Labour Force Participation in India: A Case of Limited Options’ in A. V. Jose (ed.), Limited Options – Women Workers in India (pp. 63–197), India: ILO-ARTEP. Kak, S. (2004), ‘Magnitude and Profile of Child Labour in the 1990s: Evidence from the NSS Data’, Social Scientist, 32 (1/2): 43–73. Kessler-Harris, A. (2007), Gendering Labor History, Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Kundu, A. (2008), ‘Conditions of Work and Rights of the Female Domestic Workers of Kolkata’, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 50 (4): 853–866. Lee, E. (1984), ‘Introduction’ in Eddy Lee (ed.), Export Processing Zones and Industrial Employment in Asia (pp. 1–2), Bangkok, Asian Employment Programme/Geneva, (ARTEP), ILO. Lim, L.Y.C. (1984), ‘Labour and Employment Issues in Export Processing Zones in Developing Countries’, in Lee Eddy (eds.), Export Processing Zones and Industrial Employment in Asia (pp. 53–67), Bangkok, Asian Employment Program (ARTEP), ILO. Mankiller, W. P. (ed.) (1998), The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Mies, M. (1989), Capital Accumulation and Patriarchy on a World Scale, London/New York: Zed Books Mincer, J. (1962), ‘Labor Force Participation of Married Women: A Study of Labor Supply’, in Aspects of Labor Economics (pp. 63–106), Princeton University Press. Mincer, J. and Polachek, S. (1974), ‘Family Investments in Human Capital: Earnings of Women’, in Marriage, Family, Human Capital, and Fertility (pp. 76–110). NBER. Mukherjee, M. (1995), ‘Women’s Work in Bengal, 1880–1930: A Historical Analysis’, in B. Ray (ed.), From the Seams of History: Essays on Indian Women (pp. 237–239), New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Parsons, T. and Robert, F. (1956), ‘The Organization of Personality as a System of Action’, Family, Socialisation and Interaction Process (pp. 133–186). London: Psychology Press. Philips, A. and Taylor, B. (1980), ‘Sex and Skill: Notes Towards a Feminist Economics’, Feminist Review, 6 (7): 79–83. Pore, K. (1991), ‘Women at Work – A Secondary Line of Operation’, in N. Banerjee (ed.), Indian Women in a Changing Industrial Scenario, New Delhi: Sage. Pratichi Trust (2002), The Pratichi Education Report, Number 1: The Delivery of Primary Education: A study in West Bengal, New Delhi: TLM Books. Rawal, V. (2008), ‘Ownership holdings of land in rural India: Putting the record straight’, Economic and Political Weekly, XLIII, (10): 43–47. Rowbotham, S. (1973), Hidden from History 300 Years of Women’s Oppression and the Fight Against It, London: Pluto Press. Rudra, A. (1992), Political Economy of Indian Agriculture, Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi and Company. Sarkar, T. (1989), ‘Politics and Women in Bengal’, in J. Krishnamurty (ed.), Women in Colonial India Essays on Survival, Work and the State, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sarkar, T. (2001), ‘Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Domesticity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal’, in Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (pp. 22–52), Delhi: Permanent Black.

60  Domesticity vs. paid work Save the Children (2004), “Evaluation of Project ‘Comprehensive Intervention on Child Domestic Work’ ”, Kolkata. Save the Children (2006), ‘Abuse Among Child Domestic Workers’, Kolkata. Save the Children (2009), ‘Small Hands Big Work’, Kolkata. Sen, S. (1999a), ‘At the Margins: Women Workers in Bengal Jute Industry’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 33 (1&2), New Delhi: Sage Publications. Sen, S. (1999b), Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sengupta, N. and Sen, S. (2013, October 26), ‘Bargaining Over Wages: Part-Time Domestic Workers in Kolkata’, Economic and Political Weekly, XLV111 (43): 55–62. Sinha, S. (2005), ‘Female work participation in West Bengal: A village level analysis’, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 48 (3, Jul–Sep 2005): 563–577. Treiman, D. and Hartmann, H. (eds.) (1981), Women, Work, and Wages: Equal Pay for Jobs of Equal Value (Vol. 2101), Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Unni, J. and Raveendran, G. (2007), ‘Growth of Employment (1993–94 to 2004–05): Illusion of Inclusiveness?’ Economic and Political Weekly, 42 (03): 196–199. Walby, S. (1990), Theorizing Patriarchy, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Weiner, M. (1991), The Child and the State in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

4 For bed and board only The refugee maids

The emancipating social implications of the ‘coming out’ of the bhadramahila (a gentlewoman), the development of her agency, in late colonial and post-Partition Kolkata have been discussed and celebrated in a number of studies (Bagchi 1995; Chakravartty 2005; Chatterji 2007; Ray 1995). The toils and struggles of the working middle class women whilst adjusting to their new role have also attracted the attention of a generation of film directors including Ritwik Ghatak (1960)1 and Satyajit Ray (1963)2 as well as novelists and short story writers.3 In contrast, poorer women, the domestic maids or the petty traders struggling desperately to survive in post- Partition Kolkata (though many more in number than working middle class women), have failed to attract much academic or popular attention. However, a study of uprooted, single, migrant women from across the border who slaved in city homes, often receiving in return only food and shelter, reveals a different and much bleaker picture for women and work in post-Partition Kolkata.4 While the importance of paid domestic service declined for some time with the advancement of industrialization in the developed parts of the world before its vigorous comeback (Anderson 2000, 2001; Gregson and Lowe 2005;), the experience of the developing world was different. In India, for example, the importance of domestic service in urban women’s work has been continuing or even increasing during its last 50 years of industrialization. Of the 15 major states of India, West Bengal has one of the highest rates of domestic service since colonial times. We have already seen in Chapter Three that the available literature on women’s work in colonial Bengal highlights two important points. First, and as the censuses in the colonial period confirm, the rate of women’s participation in the work force was traditionally much lower in Bengal than in other parts of the country. Second, the avenues of women’s work in this region shrank between 1881 and 1931 as a result of the introduction of the ‘limited version’ of modernization in industry (Banerjee 2006; Mukherjee 1995). The jute industry, which had nearly 20 per cent women among labour by the turn of the nineteenth century, started employing single male up-country migrants at the cost of local women and men workers. It is interesting to note that during the same period, in Bengal there was a growing social attitude towards women working outside the home. This attitude was part of the middleclass nationalist construction of the public–private dichotomy during that period (Chatterjee 2006 [1987]). While

62  For bed and board only the bhadralok (gentlemanly) ideology of glorifying the housewife also affected the lower classes as well (Bandopadhyay 1990; Sarkar 1989; Sen 1999), working women tended to concentrate on paid domestic service since this was seen as an extension of woman’s traditional role in society (Jain 1985; Banerjee 2004). Thus domestic service emerged as one of the very few available, and acceptable, areas where the poor women could replace men in Bengal towards the closing decades of colonial rule. However, the incidence of educated-middle class women’s participation in paid work in the so-called respectable jobs, increased after the Second World War. The overwhelming importance of domestic service, particularly in urban women’s work, was continued in post-Independence West Bengal, although, for the first two decades men dominated women in service by claiming an almost 60 per cent share of the work in urban West Bengal until 1971. However, the scenario changed during the next 10 years, and women in domestic service outnumbered men in the urban areas of the state for the first time in 1981.5 More importantly, in the same year there was a significant rise in girls in domestic service below the age of 14 years. The present chapter argues that the three decades after Independence were crucial in shaping domestic service as a strongly feminized area of work with a large-scale presence of girl children working in the urban areas of the state. The high rate of participation of very young girls in paid work, in a state which has a historically low female work participation rate, has made the case unique. Specifically, this study tries to understand the problem in the context of the Partition of India in 1947, followed by the industrial stagnation of the state of West Bengal during the post-Independence period. As discussed in Chapter Two, the downward trend in industrial job opportunities in post-independent West Bengal, mainly due to sluggish investment, accompanied by large scale immigration of men, women and children from the bordering East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), led to an unprecedented increase in labour force, and this ‘glut’ of workers led to a decline in the wage rate. The situation was exacerbated by poor refugee women who, by offering to work for a very low wage and often for no wage at all in order to survive, gradually drove out the males of the host population engaged in domestic service in urban West Bengal. These poor males from the neighboring states of Bihar, Orissa and the United Provinces had historically made up a substantial section of the Kolkata labour market, many of whom had been employed as domestic workers in a state known for its prevalence of domestic service in colonial India. The replacement of male domestics by females was further facilitated by the gradual decline in inter-state migration due to the lack of employment opportunities in independent West Bengal. The second stage in the changing profile of domestic service in urban West Bengal was arguably set by the migrating girl children to Kolkata city in search of employment between 1971 and 1981. The period of analysis, in this chapter, spans the years from 1951 to 1981. However, there are occasional references to more recent findings. The secondary data sources used include the Census of India and the National Sample Survey (NSS). Reports of primary surveys conducted by others have also been used. Apart from

For bed and board only  63 these familiar secondary sources, the study has drawn heavily on contemporary newspaper insertions and reports and also on contemporary autobiographies and memoirs. Fictional writings of the period under consideration have also helped enrich our understanding of the society and the psyche of the period and the people concerned. As domestic service is primarily an urban feature, and much of West Bengal’s urbanization is still concentrated in the state capital, this discussion will mainly focus on the city of Kolkata. Furthermore, the reference point of the newspaper insertions and short stories and memoirs is also Kolkata. However, it has to be noted that during the period under discussion the actual geography of the ever-expanding city underwent significant changes. Consequently, the areas of enumeration covered by the decennial censuses on which this discussion depends differ in different years.6 The chapter has four sections. The following section documents the dominance of migrant males mainly from Bihar, Orissa and the United Provinces, employed in domestic service in the early decades of twentieth-century Kolkata. These men were gradually replaced by poor refugee women, frantically searching for jobs from the late 1940s. The next section attempts to explain this feminization of domestic service in Kolkata in the years immediately following Partition. Then the case is made regarding the intra-state migration of women and particularly of girl children who played an important role as domestic workers in Kolkata from the 1970s.

1. Driven out of the mills? The case of up-country migrant domestics These days people – pot-bellied gluttons in tattered clothes – from the districts of Munghyr and Gaya – have been crowding in Calcutta in search of jobs. They have either been driven out of jobs from the jute mills or have strayed from the tea gardens. Such people are utterly stupid having a gluttonous appetite and are apt in sleeping for long hours. To keep them [in domestic service] tantamounts to make camels read the scriptures. (Majumder 1936: 102)7 In this quotation, from his manual for housewives, Pratapchandra Majumder (1840–1905), a close associate of Keshabchandra Sen, who was also one of the founder members of the Nababidhan Brahmo Samaj, expresses his strong displeasure at the practice of hiring up-country male domestic staff in middleclass Bengali homes. Whilst advising Bengali housewives to treat their domestic workers with care, he excluded one particular group, the Hindi-speaking migrants, whom he felt could hardly be trusted with any responsibility. However, the urban middle class in contemporary Bengal did not share this opinion. There is substantial evidence to suggest that migrants from neighboring states were very often employed in middle class Bengali homes during the first few decades of the twentieth century. It has been noted that Kolkata or the then Calcutta, the centre of colonial trade and also the seat of colonial administration until 1911, had the dubious distinction

64  For bed and board only of being the only attractive destination for migration from three utterly impoverished zones: Orissa, Bihar and eastern United Provinces. It is not surprising, therefore, that the overwhelming majority of workers in the jute mills came from these areas (Goswami 1995: 88–96). Those who were not absorbed by the factories ended up on the lower rungs of the unorganized sector, many of them as domestic workers (see Table 4.1). Majumder was possibly referring to these particular up-country males, who were unable to secure employment in the mills, or failed, even when offered factory employment, to keep their jobs. By 1931, Kolkata and the adjoining district of the 24 Parganas had around four lakhs of migrants who accounted for 31 per cent of the city population (Goswami 1995). Domestic service was in fact quite prevalent in colonial Bengal, which was the first among the colonized Indian provinces to embrace English education and the Victorian ways of life. Popular literary sources from the last quarter of the nineteenth century described servant culture in ordinary middle class Bengali homes as an intrusion of foreign elements (Banerjee 2004). The social reform movement in nineteenth century Bengal which centrally involved the question of remodeling the traditional Bengali home, also enthusiastically propagated the Victorian model of companionate marriage (Forbes 1998). Companionate marriage could be successful if the bhadramahila could be partly relieved of the burdens of housework by providing her with paid help. Help for housewives was also a mark of status (Borthwick 1984). According to the 1911 Census, domestic service accounted for 12 per cent of all occupations in Kolkata, while Bombay, Madras and Delhi showed 7.3 per cent, 6.68 per cent and 6.1 per cent, respectively.8

Table 4.1  Migrant domestics in Calcutta in 1921 by their place of birth Born in

Male

Bankura Burdwan Dacca Hooghly Howrah Jessore Midnapore Nadia 24 Parganas Total intrastate migration Bihar Orissa U.P. Rajasthan Total

750 1,251 3,022 2,157 1,398 302 2,879 378 3,851 15,988 (36.58) 11,788 (26.97) 11,240 (25.72) 2,956 1726 43,698 (100)

Female 604 1,080 226 1,390 657 136 2,465 418 2,513 9,489 (77.42) 1,416 (11.55) 583 (4.76) 473 295 12,256 (100)

Source: Haraprasad Chattopadhyaya, Internal Migration in India: A Case Study of Bengal, Calcutta, K. P. Bagchi and Co. Kolkata, 1987 Note: Percentages are given in the parentheses.

For bed and board only  65 The 1921 Census shows (see Table 4.1) that a significant number of domestic workers came to the city from the neighbouring states of Bihar, Orissa and the United Provinces. While the total number of migrant male domestic workers coming to Kolkata from the districts of Bengal in 1921 was 15,988 (around 37 per cent), Bihar and Orissa supplied 11,788 (27 per cent) and 11,240 (around 26 per cent) respectively. A single district of Orissa, Cuttack, supplied around 9,000 male domestic workers to Kolkata in 1921. Not unexpectedly, contemporary autobiographies and memoirs make abundant reference to Bihari servants and Oriya cooks. Premankur Atarthi (1890–1964), a notable writer, has observed in his memoir, Mahasthabirjatak [Reminiscences of the Mahasthabir] (first published in1944), that during his childhood days (the last decade of the nineteenth century) almost every Bengali middle class family in Kolkata had a servant who came from Bihar. Many Oriya cooks are also found working in establishments known as ‘the mess’, where migrant working men and students lived and dined together.9 Unlike male servants, female servants (maids) came mostly from within Bengal, though some came from Bihar also (see Table 4.1). Satyajit Ray (1921–1992) and Hirendranath Mukhopadhyay (1907–2004) both remembered household Bihari maids of their childhood days in Kolkata in the early decades of the twentieth century.10 Evidence from other memoirs of the day, however, suggests the prevalence of part-time Bengali maids in Kolkata middle class households.11 Bengali maids are also depicted as important characters in contemporary Bengali fiction.12 According to the 1931 Census, the absolute number of domestic workers in the British districts of Bengal almost doubled between 1921 and 1931, and in those 10 years, the percentage of female domestics rose from 26 to 52.13 However, the reported outnumbering of men by women in domestic service in Bengal in the 1931 Census seems to have been reversed in later censuses conducted after Independence.14 Though domestic service continued to be the largest area of urban women’s work, women were around 42 per cent of the total domestic staff even in 1971 in urban West Bengal. According to census data, in Kolkata city, known for its historically poor sex ratio, the percentage of women domestics was even less. In 1981, the share of women finally surpassed that of men in domestic service in urban West Bengal, a trend which not only continued, but was intensified in 1991. This outnumbering was particularly significant in the youngest age group (0–14) years (see Table 4.4).

2. In search of a ‘home’: the refugee women domestic workers Wanted a middle aged female in an elite family for household chores. Food, shelter along with a monthly salary of Rs 15 offered. Refugees will be preferred.15 In one year, between January  1956 and December  1957, one of West Bengal’s largest circulated Bangla dailies, Jugantar, carried about 150 advertisements in the situations vacant column for domestic workers and cooks, among which more than 75 per cent asked for women applicants, mostly middle aged, single and in

66  For bed and board only search of shelter. This upward trend continued for the next 20  years: between January  1976 and December  1977, the Ananda Bazar Patrika, another Bangla daily also with a large readership, carried about hundred similar advertisements, of which almost 90 per cent asked for women applicants. However, the urban middle class possibly tended to employ domestic workers through social networks rather than through advertisements, so the newspaper data should perhaps be read as examples of new social trend. This upward trend in favour of women domestic staff is also evident from the census data (Tables 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4). Table 4.2 Percentage share of women in domestic service among all workers in the group in Calcutta Industrial Region in 1951 Occupational Division

Percentage Share of Women

9 (Services not elsewhere classified) 9.1 (Domestic services [but not including services rendered by members of the family]) 9.10 (Other Domestic Servants) 9.12 (Cooks)

17.97 31.25 36.47 27.69

Source: Census of India, 1951, Vol. VI, Part IV, The Calcutta Industrial Region Tables

Table 4.3 Percentage share of women in domestic service among all workers in the group in Calcutta City and Calcutta Industrial Region in 1961 Occupational Division

Calcutta City

Calcutta Industrial Region

9 (Service, Sport and Recreation Workers) 9.1 (Housekeepers, Cooks, Maids and Related Workers) 9.11 [Cooks, Cook-Bearers (Domestic and Institutional)] 9.12 [Butlers, Bearers, Waiters, Maids and Other Servants (Domestic)]

18.20 31.57

17.76 33.45

14.86

16.93

37.14

38.87

Source: Census of India, 1961, Vol. XVI West Bengal & Sikkim Part X-A, Tables on the Calcutta Industrial Region Book (ii)

Table 4.4 Percentage share of women and girl children (0–14) years in domestic service in urban West Bengal in 1971 and 1981 Year

Women

Girl Children

1971 1981

42.00 58.02

40.63 60.43

Source: Census of India1971, Series 22 West Bengal Part 11- B (iii), General Economic Tables & Census of India 1981, Series 22 West Bengal Part-111 A&B (iii), General Economic Tables

For bed and board only  67 Data on domestic service in West Bengal provided by the first two consecutive censuses after Independence in 1951 and 1961 are not exactly comparable because of the differences in the definition of domestic service and the area of enumeration. However, a close look at tables 4.2 and 4.3 suggests an increase in the female share in the categories related to domestic service. The data provided by the 1971 and the 1981 censuses (Table 4.4) are more compatible and, over the 10-year period, clearly show an increase in the percentage share of both women and girl children in domestic service in urban West Bengal. In order to understand the changing profile of domestic service in the state, the changing economic scenario in general in urban West Bengal during the initial decades of Independence needs examination. As we have already discussed in detail in Chapter Two, during this time, the state, and particularly its capital city Kolkata, saw one of the largest movements of people in history. In the 1930s, most of the industries in Bengal, once an industrially advanced state, were in recession, and net investment by the companies controlling them had slowed down or ceased altogether. We have also discussed in Chapter Two how the dislocations of the Partition severely affected the trade links between East and West Bengal. The most important industries in this region, jute and tea, were badly hit. After Independence, the central government policies of freight equalization for coal and steel, and emphasis on import-substitution, dealt a further blow to Bengal’s industry (Bagchi 1998). This was aggravated by the confrontationist strategy on the part of the state followed since the beginning of Congress rule and carried on by the Left Front Government – which prevented it from lobbying pragmatically to obtain licenses and industrial investment (Sinha 2005). Further obstacles to industrial resurgence were in the forming of a radical trade union movement, backed by leftist intellectual support, and by central government ceasing to invest in the infrastructure sector in the mid-1960s, which adversely affected West Bengal’s engineering industry and precipitated large-scale unemployment in formal manufacturing in the state. The industrial stagnation and the consequent downward trend in job opportunities during the late 1940s and the early 1950s was accompanied by large scale immigration from the bordering East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Millions of men, women and children entered West Bengal between late 1946 and early 1971 (Chakrabarty 1990). This influx of refugees caused an unprecedented increase in the labour force during these years of stagnant investment. Most workers naturally concentrated in and around Kolkata which provided some hope of a livelihood. The novel presence of women and children amongst them was significant, as prior to the 1940s migrant labour force to the city consisted mainly of single males from neighbouring states. Partition made the real difference in the female–male ratio as, according to census data, there were 580 women per 1,000 men in Kolkata in 1951 as against 456 women per 1,000 men in 1941. The female–male ratio further improved in favour of women (612) in 1961. In urban West Bengal the ratio moved even more in favour of women during the post-Partition years. From the 554 women per 1,000 men in 1941, this increased to 657 women per 1,000 men in 1951, and again to 701 women per 1,000 men in 1961.

68  For bed and board only As only a small fraction of refugees were rehabilitated by government funds, most struggled to settle by their own efforts (see Chapter Two). In an already over-­ populated job market, wages were generally low. So in order to survive, the entire family had to work. This was particularly true for the slum dwellers, but also included a significant number of middle class refugees. In fact, compared with the women of the ‘host’ population (residents of West Bengal), the incidence of refugee women joining paid work was significantly higher in most of the categories in 1951 (Table 4.5). The 1951 Census shows that a substantial percentage of ‘displaced’ (refugee) women (18 per cent) obtained employment in the upper levels of the services sector, which included health, education and public administration, with similarly only 9 per cent for the host population. So from as early as 1951, more than 15 per cent of these jobs (taking into account the total volume of women’s work in Urban West Bengal) were taken up by refugee women. Most refugee women, however, were employed in the lower rungs of the services sector as domestic workers (42 per cent), with 33 per cent taken up by the host population. A significant number of refugee women were also employed in the retail and petty trade. The gradual increase in the percentage share of female domestic workers from 1951 onwards, and the final outnumbering of men by women in 1981, can partly be explained by the high influx of female workers to the city during the three decades under discussion. However, the question remains how refugee women could replace men in a historically male-dominated job, a domain largely constituted Table 4.5 Employment behaviour of the ‘displaced’ and the ‘host’ women in Calcutta Industrial Region in 1951 Category of Work

Percentage of Displaced Women in Total Female Workforce of Different Categories

Percentage of Displaced Women in Total Displaced Women Workers in Selected Categories of Work

Percentage of Women (Excluding Displaced Women) in Selected Categories of Work

8 (Health, education and public administration) 8.1 (Medical and other health services) 8.2 (Educational services and research) 9 (Services not elsewhere classified) 9.1 (Domestic services) All

15.37

 18.09

  9.19

20.49

  9.00

   3.22

18.11

   6.51

  2.72

 8.59

  46.69

 45.87

10.63

  42.23

  32.77

 8.45

100

100

Source: Census of India 1951, Vol. V1, Part 1V, The Calcutta Industrial Region Tables

For bed and board only  69 of single male migrants from Bihar, Orissa and the United Provinces. Even the 1961 Census shows that of the total volume of male domestic workers in Calcutta Urban, more than 75 per cent were migrants (see Table 4.8). Census data suggest therefore that the refugee women must have replaced the migrant male domestic workers from the neighbouring states in substantial numbers and that this was made possible by settling for a low wage. The up-country migrant male domestic workers had come to the city alone, leaving their families behind in rural homes. Therefore, compared with the poorest section of the destitute refugee women, the migrant males had a better fall-back position and had more responsibilities. Arguably they had to send some money home from whatever small amount they received as wages.16 The refugee women, on the other hand, in their frantic search for a means to survive were often able and ready to work for a lower wage than were the migrant males. Often destitute and in search of a safe shelter, sometimes they offered to work in return for food and accommodation only. The particular emphasis in newspaper advertisements on employing widowed women or destitute women [nihshahay (helpless)/ nirjhanjhat (unencumbered)/ anatha (destitute)] as the preferred domestic workers, requires further explanation. Among the displaced population a significant number were single women or women with children not accompanied by an adult male member of the family. They were shifted to various camps after their arrival and contemporary reports indicate that women from all levels of society, including college girls as well as illiterate rural women, lived in appalling conditions. There was an acute shortage of accommodation in the camps, and floating barges were also rented to provide shelter.17 Finding a shelter was a great problem for a large section of newcomers, who had no previous roots in the city. Even educated migrant young men advertised in newspapers offering tuitions to children in well-to-do families in post-Partition Kolkata, in return for food and shelter. These advertisements were published in newspaper columns under the heading ‘ahar o basathan chai’ (food and shelter sought) often mentioning that the applicants were from the other side of Bengal.18 Some newspaper advertisements preferred middle-aged, destitute widows as whole-time domestic staff and cooks, and offered ‘food and shelter’ followed by a ‘meager salary’, evidently in order of priority. Some even substituted the word ‘salary’ with ‘pocket money’, indicating the lesser importance of money compared with the employers’ assurances of secure and possibly permanent shelter.19 Some formulated the insertion as ‘food, shelter and some salary will be given also’ (khawa thaka o betan-o dewa hoibe).20 Others invited women to work for ‘food and shelter only’ declaring the employers’ inability to offer any wage at all21 or a meager amount of rupees 1 or 2 as ‘pocket money’.22 Moreover some employers preferred children, particularly girl children, as whole-time domestic workers as early as the 1950s.23 The frequent advertisements for maids and cooks in newspapers suggest the salary structure and nature of work the domestic workers were expected to perform in Kolkata during the years immediately following the Partition. Most required whole-time help. Part-time maids and others presumably gained

70  For bed and board only employment through local networks. whole-time women domestic staff was generally expected to perform a wide range of combined activities ranging between washing, cooking, looking after children and housekeeping. Most advertisements, however, did not specify the duties to be performed: ‘all types of household chores’, ‘cooking, etc.’, ‘cooking and household chores’ were the preferred phrases. A typical example is worded as follows: ‘Wanted an unencumbered lady to help in cooking and household chores for a small family. Shelterless refugees will be preferred. Salary between rupees 10 and 15’.24 Salary for the activities mentioned above ranged from as low as 7–8 rupees and 15 rupees per month, along with food and shelter.25 Some advertisers required women domestic staff and housekeepers who had ‘some education’: ‘Wanted a lady with some education to help running [sic] a small family. Salary according to ability’.26 Some also wanted their cooks and domestic staff to be able to tutor their children, and in such cases, 5–10 rupees extra salary were offered.27 However, in the few cases where advertisers wanted male applicants (only 15 cases in 1956 as compared with 150 insertions for female domestic staff in the same year published in Jugantar) the salary offered ranged between rupees 15 and rupees 25.28 There was only one case where the advertiser preferred a male child domestic, and the salary offered was rupees 10.29 Another striking difference was in the nature of duties to be performed by men and women domestic workers. In the case of male domestic staff, advertisements usually specified the nature of jobs to be performed, for example, ‘wanted a male cook’ or ‘wanted a male domestic for cleaning and washing’.30 The fact that women in general (some advertisements also mentioned a preference for female applicants from West Bengal),31 and refugee women in particular, were increasingly employed in middle class homes in post-Partition Kolkata because they could be hired at lower wages than men does not seem to be the only reason behind the preference to employ females. The nature of jobs expected to be performed by whole-time female domestic staff, as described in the advertisements, indicates that they were taking over many of the household duties which traditionally had been performed by middleclass women themselves. This substitution was arguably necessary, at least to a certain extent, because in post 1947 Kolkata middle class women (many of whom were also refugees) increasingly took paid employment outside the home.32 Thus, some employers expected their domestic staff to work as nuclear family members possibly because both husband and wife worked outside the home. A typical advertisement for this situation might read: ‘Wanted for a family of only husband and wife a female who would do household chores like a family member. Bed, board and pocket money offered’.33 This desperate search for a helping hand by a working couple in post-Partition Kolkata reminiscent of a film on a similar theme by Tapan Sinha in 1968 titled Apanjan (family member/someone close and intimate). It is clear from the above discussion that Partition, with its inevitable economic compulsions simultaneously gendered two very different labour markets in post 1947 Kolkata by pulling out both the bhadramahila and her maid to join the paid workforce. In the first case, though a very small section of middle class women

For bed and board only  71 actually worked outside the home, the bhadramahila could exercise some agency, an instance of which was to hire domestic help to carry out many of the duties of the housewife. It is also interesting to note that newspaper advertisements in the 1950s requesting whole-time help with cooking, home management and childcare were often published by women.34 Furthermore, in spite of the fact that the number of poor working women was much larger than their middle class counterparts, and that the gendering of the lower rungs of the job market was more obvious, the desperate conditions in which poor women opted to work out of the home rendered the question of the relationship between earning and agency, irrelevant. Things worsened with time when girl children began to swell the Kolkata labour market and made it even more gendered in the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike the single, male migrants from the neighboring states, the refugees immigrated as families. They had therefore families to support and compared with the family units of the host population the refugee families were often larger in size (Chakravartty 2005). The refugee men competed well in the Kolkata job market, but their wages were often not sufficient for a family of five or six members to survive. Around 100 rupees was considered to be a decent salary in Kolkata of the 1950s, though it was hardly enough to make two ends meet.35 Displaced women therefore had to participate in paid workforce more frequently than women in the host population. Refugee families of middle class origin could no longer stick to their traditionally antagonistic attitude towards women working out of the home. On the other hand, they took special care to educate their daughters so that they might enter the job market with some qualification and gain employment in ‘respectable’ jobs. Scholars have pointed out the enormous struggle by the middle class refugee families to get themselves and particularly their women educated (Chakravartty 2005; Chatterji 2007). On the basis of government survey reports, Joya Chatterji (2007) has argued that the literacy rate of the refugee population in general, and of refugee women in particular, was not only significantly higher than their counterparts in the host population in the early 1950s, it was increasing at a faster rate. In 1950, literacy rates of women refugees were four times higher than those women in the host population. This shows that many were already literate or had some education at the time of immigration. According to Joya Chatterji (2007), by 1955, there was a 60 per cent increase in the rate of literacy among refugee women. Much of this struggle bore at least some fruits. It has already been noted in Table 5.5 that a substantial percentage (18 per cent) of displaced women succeeded in getting jobs in the upper levels of the services sector which included health, education and public administration as against 9 per cent in the case of the women in the host population. Consequently, as early as 1951, more than 15 per cent of these jobs (taking into account the total volume of women’s work in urban West Bengal) were taken up by the women from the displaced population. The significant presence of literate educated men and women among the destitute and frantically job hunting population also lowered the value of education in the market. Men with college-level education were ready to offer tuition for bed and board.36 Employers could expect their cooks also to act as tutor to their children, or could split the same pay between a cook and a tutor.37

72  For bed and board only However, the social impact of women joining the ranks of professionals in increasing numbers was tremendous. As the self-settled displaced population lived in clusters in and around the city of Kolkata the incidence of women seeking employment from a particular locality could be clearly identified. The working bhadramahila was thus an increasingly important phenomenon in urban West Bengal. However, in spite of the aversion of the bhadralok to women working outside the home (as referred to earlier), economic pressure following the Depression and the Second World War, had forced at least some of them to take up paid employment38 even before Partition. The figures in Table 4.6 hint at who were the employers of domestic workers in Kolkata during the early 1950s. In Kolkata City in 1953, the incidence of employing domestic workers, as expected, is most frequent in the highest expenditure class. It is likely that each of these households is employing at least one domestic worker and some of them more than one. However, it needs to be remembered that, although the incidence in employment is much lower in the lower expenditure classes, together they are likely to generate a sizable demand for the workers. Arguably most of the working bhadramahilas belonged to the expenditure classes from rupees 100 a month upwards. It is worth noting that at least some families in the expenditure class of rupees 51–100 a month also employed domestic staff. As noted above, the duties performed by the whole-time workers included cooking, other household chores and often looking after the children. The nature of the duties implies that these might be performed in the absence of the housewife who worked outside the home. Short stories by Narendranath Mitra published during the late 1940s and the 1950s in the Bangla periodicals aptly portray middle class and lower middle-class families (many of whom were immigrants) whose women went out for paid work leaving their homes in the care of female domestic staff (for example, Abataranika [Sequel] (Mitra 1986 [1949]), later made into a classic film titled Mahanagar [The Big City] by Satyajit Ray). In Abataranika, we find the maid performing the wifely duties such as looking after the children, making the beds etc. a fact which the husband of the working wife accepts grudgingly.39 Table 4.6 Distribution of domestic servants per 100 households according to different expenditure classes in Calcutta City, 1953 Household Expenditure (Rs. per Month)

Number of Domestic Servants per Hundred Households

0–25 26–50 51–100 101–200 201–300 301–500 501 and above

. . . . . .   0.5   4.1  17.7  49.4 108.2

Source: NSS Report No. 17, Report on Sample Survey of Employment in Calcutta, 1953

For bed and board only  73 Such necessity has also been borne out by contemporary memoirs (for example, Pramila Datta, Phire Dekha [Glancing Back], 1998). Thus the paid maid was emerging in a new social role of housekeeper cum caregiver in post-1947 Kolkata. This was a role which the male servants were not expected to perform (for detailed discussion, see Chapter Six). Housekeeping was introduced as a new category within Division 9 of the 1961 Census and showed some concentration of women in this sphere; and newspaper advertisements from the 1950s also reflect the social demand for women housekeepers. The gradual breakdown of traditional joint families with a number of adult women, and the emergence of nuclear families composed of husband, wife and children, also point to the urban middleclass preference for whole-time female domestic workers.40

3. Away from home: intra-state migration, women and girl children domestics Being unable to feed me anymore after thirteen years of marriage, my husband, an agricultural labourer, asked me to go to the city and earn my living by working as a domestic there.41 Refugee women were not the only competitors of the up-country males in the domestic job market in the in post-Independence Kolkata. Internally, migrating female domestic workers, like the one quoted above, were also found to be numerous in the Census estimates of 1971. In 1974, a government report42 discussed the issues of women and girl children domestic workers in Kolkata, reporting that some women migrated on their own to the city for employment from the districts of West Bengal, and not as part of a migrant family. These women, often assisted by their very young daughters, are reported to have left their sharecropper husbands at home to earn a living as domestic workers. This trend of ‘women only’ migration to meet the increasing preference for female domestic workers in the city was corroborated by a newspaper report based on a survey of city maids. The case of one of the respondents, Kalidasi, from the 24 Parganas has already been mentioned at the beginning of this section. Another, named Minati (cited in the same report) from the Sunderban area of the same district and 17 years of age is also reported to have migrated alone to work as a whole-time domestic in the city. 43 Internal distress migration of women and men from the hinterlands to Kolkata City can, however, be traced way back to the waning years of colonialism. From the late 1920s and early 1930s, Kolkata and its suburbs experienced the migration of poor labourers from rural Bengal. They, if fortunate, acquired jobs as domestic workers, but generally made a living as petty workers and beggars. Goswami (1995) points out that this type of migration was closely related to the earlier agrarian crisis in Bengal, intensified during the years of the Depression from 1930 to 1938. This is also likely to have played an increasingly important role in feminizing domestic service. The 1921 Census shows that the main suppliers of these female domestic workers to Kolkata city were the six districts of the then 24

74  For bed and board only Parganas, Midnapore, Dacca, Hooghly, Howrah and Burdwan. Of the total 12,256 female migrant domestic workers to Kolkata in 1921, 20.5 per cent came from the 24 Parganas and another 20.11 per cent from Midnapore. An interesting feature of the migrant domestic workers from within Bengal was that the proportion of females in some districts was very close to that of males (Table 4.1), indicating that women moved to find employment in comparable numbers with men when migration took place within short distances. With an increase in distance, however, the share of women migrants decreased. This continuous process of rural-urban migration before Partition, reached its peak during the Bengal Famine of 1943. Amongst the large numbers of starving people who migrated to Kolkata from the rural areas in search of food, many were women and children.44 Studies have shown that during the famine numerous women and children were abandoned by the earning male members of their family.45 Migration related to rural dispossession continued after Independence, but has not received due scholarly attention, as research in the main has focused on cross-border migration. The internally migrating destitute women must also have swelled the lower rungs of the economy, mostly as petty service workers such as domestics illustrated in Tables 4.2 and 4.3 by the recorded trend of increasing feminization of such services. Newspaper advertisements during the years immediately following Partition for female domestic staff also indicate a distinct preference for women from within West Bengal, at least amongst a small section of the advertisers alongside the obvious preference for refugee women.46 The following is a typical example of advertisement in the ‘situations vacant’ column preferring a woman domestic from West Bengal: ‘Wanted a middle aged unencumbered female for household chores. Food, accommodation and a salary of rupees 8 to 10 offered. Only the residents of WB need apply’.47 Table 4.7 reveals that in 1961, most of the migrant female service workers to Kolkata came from the rural areas of the different districts of West Bengal, closely followed by Pakistan.48 Male migration for service work, on the contrary, was still dominated significantly (more than 50 per cent) by the up-country workers along with migrants from the neighbouring state of Orissa. The second largest supplier of male service workers was, of course, again Pakistan. Male migrants from within the state, absorbed in service work were meager. Narrowing down the statistics further, domestic service as a category was mainly the domain of migrants in 1961 Kolkata (see Table 4.8). Furthermore, by combining the figures in Tables 4.7 and 4.8, it can be argued that it was the up-country male migrants on the one hand and female migrants from the rural areas of the state along with those from East Pakistan, on the other, who dominated domestic service in Kolkata during the early 1960s. Thus, the 1961 Census data also confirm the increasing incidence of refugees joining domestic service, a trend noted in the previous section. As many refugees settled in the neighbouring districts of Kolkata, the Partition might have also played a crucial role also in intra-state distress migration.49 However, since only the 1951 Census gives information on the ‘displaced population’ and the total population separately, it is not possible to estimate the percentage share of refugees, neither in different services nor in rural–urban migration, from later censuses.

For bed and board only  75 Table 4.7  Migrants in other services: Calcutta, 1961 Migrated from

Male

Female

Rural areas of the state Pakistan Bihar Orissa UP Total

33,240 (14.59) 71,047 (31.19) 71,376 (31.33) 18,765 (8.24) 25,904 (11.37) 227,824 (100)

14,420 (37.63) 13,420 (35.02) 3,369 (8.79) 556 (1.45) 1,391 (3.63) 38,325 (100)

Source: Census of India, 1961 Vol.XV1 West Bengal and Sikkim Part 11-C (iii) Migration Tables Note: Percentages are given in the parentheses.

Table 4.8 Domestics (housekeepers, cooks, maids and related workers): Calcutta City, 1961 Category

Male

Female

Total domestics Migrant domestics

73,919 (100) 55,716 (75.37 per cent)

34,109 (100) 24,627 (72.20 per cent)

Source: Census of India, 1961 Vol. XV1 West Bengal and Sikkim Part X-A, Tables on the Calcutta Industrial Region Book (ii) and Vol. XV1 West Bengal and Sikkim Part 11-C (iii) Migration Tables

The post-Partition years in Kolkata also witnessed an increasing number of girl children in the job market, often as domestic workers. Although information on girl children’s paid work is sparse in the 1951 Census, the 1961 Census gives both the total number of working girl children and an estimate of their sector-wise participation. In Chapter Three (Table 3.7), we have noted a significant and continuous increase in girl children’s work force participation rate (GCWPR) in urban West Bengal over the two decades from 1961 to 1981 is clear from the census data. There is a sharp increase also in the incidence of working girl children as a percentage of female workforce in urban West Bengal in 1971 (5.05) over the figures published for 1961 (1.89). Further, a steady increase in 1981 (6.33) is also discerned.50 The next question is whether the increase in girl children’s work participation rate was in any way related to the increase in distress migration. According to 1981 Census data, 4,642 migrant girl children in Kolkata (Calcutta urban agglomeration) reported seeking employment as the reason for their migration to the city from different parts of the state. Another 1,352 girl children from outside the state had migrated for employment to Kolkata city also in 1981. Of these 5,994 migrant girl children, 3,559 were reported to be working as main workers in Kolkata city by the 1981 Census. Again, according to the 1981 Census, the total number of girl children in Kolkata working as main workers was 6,522. Therefore the percentage of migrant girl children amongst the main workers was as high as 55 in 1981. It needs to be remembered here that the remaining migrant girl children

76  For bed and board only who reported employment as the major reason for their migration in 1981 (who did not work as main workers but were quite likely to be working in some status) were most likely to be working as domestic staff in city homes under different (probably familial) disguises. The 1981 Census revealed yet another remarkable feature of migration for employment to the city from different parts of West Bengal. For the first time girl children emerged as a major constituent of migrant females coming to the city to find employment. Moreover, in 1981, girl children constituted 54 per cent of the total migrant children who had reported employment as the major reason for their migration to the city from different parts of the state. Furthermore, there was a dramatic change in gender of child main workers who reported employment as the major cause of migration to Kolkata from different parts of the country. In 1961, boys (0–14  years) constituted around 93 per cent and girls around 7 per cent in the total volume of working migrant children in Kolkata. Twenty years after, girls (0–14 years) constituted 37 per cent of all children who were reported as migrant main workers in 1981 Kolkata. This was not all. In 1981, girls below 14 years of age were recorded as 19 per cent of all women who came from different parts of the state to Kolkata for employment. Interestingly, 20 years before, girls below 14 years constituted a meager 0.84 per cent of all women migrant workers to Kolkata. 51 This reveals two points: first, girls closely followed boys in terms of migration for employment within the state of enumeration, and second, the increasing importance of girl children in the urban female migrant workforce. As already mentioned, migrant girl children constituted around 55 per cent of the total number of girl children engaged in different divisions of work in the city in 1981 as main workers. According to 1981 Census data, around 88 per cent of working girl children were engaged in domestic service in Kolkata, so it is reasonable to conclude that those girls who migrated to seek employment were mostly employed as domestic staff. Domestic service was thus emerging as a new job market where migrant girl children displaced at least some adult women, and girl children outnumbered boys in domestic service in 1981 for the first time in urban West Bengal (see Table 4.4). As noted earlier, girl children were found to be working as helping hands for their migrant mothers who worked as domestic staff in early 1970s Kolkata (as reported in Towards Equality, Government of India [1974]) and were preferred by at least some middle class families as early as the 1950s. It must be reiterated that the ‘internal migration’ is primarily distress migration caused by a shortage of food in rural areas. This is why, as we have discussed in Chapter Two, internal migration decelerated as a consequence of rural institutional reforms during the 1980s. But, as the land reforms were not all pervasive, the lowest classes continued to migrate to the city in search of food and remained the main source of domestic servants for the urban elite. As already mentioned (see Chapter Two), as late as 2004, the WB Human Development Report noted a substantial amount of distress migration from agriculture and industries into the services sector. Incidentally, in 2004–2005, in urban West Bengal, more than 50 per cent of women were employed in the low-paid manual services sector, and this significant increase in the incidence of poor migrant women employed in low-paid manual services in the cities is now commonplace all over India.

For bed and board only  77 But West Bengal also has a unique feature. The 1981 Census revealed that at least 500 more girls than boys in the same age group migrated from rural areas of the state to Kolkata to seek employment, and that this movement by girl children continued unabated in 1991 and 2001. The possible reasons behind this gender gap in migration will be explored in the next chapter. Now how do we explain the preference for girl children domestics when their mothers and older sisters also do not have many options for work? We do not have enough data (from the NSS and other sources) to answer this question. In Chapters Two and Six, we have discussed some broad evidence of increase in urban affluence that have possibly led to an increase in the demand for domestic workers in urban middle class households. At a micro level, a primary survey among employers would have been the best solution if the urban middle class responses to child worker–related queries were not as cautious as they are now especially after the enactment of the 2006 law barring the employment of domestic workers below the age of 14 years. In our interview with 20 employers, mostly service sector professionals in the city, conducted in March–April 2014,52 almost none acknowledged of ever having employed a child domestic. Almost all replied that children should not work and should be taken care of by the state. Only one employer held that if the choice was between starvation and any other alternative including work for pay, nothing is unacceptable. As interviews with employers did not yield much result, we had to depend for information on girl children domestic workers, on the reports by Save the Children (2006; 2009) and others. Much of these reports prepared on the basis of large scale surveys that were conducted before 2006, and could probably collect more dependable data. Surveys conducted by us as well as by others on the wages of domestic workers indicate that employing a girl child as a whole-time domestic worker is a less costly affair than employing an adult woman. It is also much easier to control her and to make her do all sorts of jobs. If the servant needs to be at home when the adult members of the employer family are away during the day time some other considerations also matter. The girl child whole-time domestic is evidently more reliable than an adult or a boy child servant especially in the context of increasing cases of reported involvement of domestic workers in murder, theft and other crimes in employers’ households (‘Domestic Disturbance’, Outlook, 23 April 2012; ‘Servants turn killers’, India Today, 15 January 2011). The whole-time girl child domestic worker is expected to perform the role of a companion to the employer’s child in a nuclear home, especially when both parents are working. According to the prevailing cultural discourse on domesticity, girls from poor families are supposed to be more caring than boys of the same age group and from the same class background. Such stereotypes are often informed by common experience: poor working mothers are often seen to rely on their young daughters, and not on sons, to look after their even younger children. Another study on child domestic workers in Kolkata reports that 32.4 per cent of the girl child domestic workers surveyed were involved in baby care at employer’s homes (Banerjee 2008). The same study conducted among 330 child domestics engaged in Kolkata metropolitan area, also found that 48.2 per cent were engaged in cleaning, sweeping and dusting, another 10.6 per cent in cooking and the rest in

78  For bed and board only outdoor duties such as taking children to schools. Save the Children (2006) also reported that most of these child workers received monitory remuneration below 200 rupees and up to a maximum of 500 rupees per month. They worked approximately 12 to 18 hours a day attending to all sorts of duties such as caring for babies/infants, attending to the elderly, cleaning, washing and sometimes cooking as well. They worked for long hours at a stretch with no rest. Moreover, girl children also migrate out of West Bengal to work as domestics in other big cities of the country. Bombay House Workers’ Solidarity, a Mumbai-based domestic workers’ organization estimated that around 45 thousand children worked as domestic servants in Mumbai alone, among whom 90 per cent were girls. Again most of these girls were whole-time domestics brought to the city from outside (Hamid 2006). The Nithari incident (2006) near Delhi and also others indicated later that rural West Bengal was one of the chief suppliers of girl children domestic workers to urban India. Our own surveys among supplier families revealed the same trend. We shall take up this issue in the next chapter which tries to understand the supply-side behaviour.

Notes  1 Meghe Dhaka Tara [The Cloud-capped Star] (1960) based on a novel by Saktipada Rajguru of the same title (1960).  2 Mahanagar [The Big City] (1963) based on a short story by Narendranath Mitra titled Abtaranika [Sequel].   3 See also, Pratham Kadam Phool [The First Kadam Flower] (1970) based on a novel by Acintya kumar Sengupta of the same title (1961).   4 There are, however, a few exceptions: See Banerjee N. (1985).   5 In 1981, women domestics of all ages enumerated in Kolkata were still a little less in number than male domestics, though girl children had already outnumbered boy children in the service in both West Bengal urban and Kolkata. This difference can be explained by the fact that Kolkata, long a city of single male migrants got a major part of its supply of adult female domestics from the surrounding districts, who commuted to the city daily, already in the late 1970s.Thus while the Kolkata middleclass was the buyer of their service they were enumerated by the Census in the districts where they resided. In fact, as early as the late 1980s, local trains carried every morning hundreds of maids from the villages of southern Bengal to Kolkata which were described as ‘jhee (maid) specials’ by the city elites. The commuting maids, mostly adults, who work part time in a number of city homes, are still very much visible in the metropolis.   6 For instance, in 1951 Census the area of enumeration is defined as Calcutta District and Calcutta Industrial Region, in 1961 as Calcutta City and Calcutta Industrial Region, in 1971 as Calcutta Urban Agglomeration, and finally in 1981, as Calcutta Urban Agglomeration and Calcutta City.   7 See Majumder, P. (1890) (3rd edition 1936), ‘Dasdasi’ (Servants and maids), in Streecharitra. Translation ours.   8 Goswami (1995) notes that though Calcutta was the glittering jewel of the Raj, it was surrounded by one of the poorest hinterlands. This gives us a hint of extreme income disparity leading to the prevalent practice of employing the poor as domestics by the richer sections. See, Goswami (1995).   9 The gradual decline in the number of cooks and domestic staff (mainly male) from neighboring states could also be related to the decreasing importance of the mess in post-Partition Kolkata. That male cooks from Orissa found regular employment in Kolkata messes is borne out by a number of contemporary memoirs (for

For bed and board only  79 example,  Ganguly P.  (1994)). Before 1947, many of the city messes were inhabited by students and office-goers from the other side of Bengal who spent the weekend at the village or mufassil home and the rest of the week in the city mess. Men from the same district usually preferred a common shelter and establishments soon came to be known after the residents’ regional identity; such as the Jessore mess, the Dhaka mess etc. Nirendranath Chakravarty suggests in his memoir (Neerobindu [Water-drops] 1993) that after Partition, this type of weekend commuting was no longer possible, and thus the mess was no longer a convenient option. The final blow to the Kolkata messes according to him, however, came with the introduction of local trains run by electricity, connecting the suburbs and districts of West Bengal with the metropolis. As the distance between the home and the city was remarkably shortened, many from this side of Bengal, who had previously lived in the Kolkata messes, now found it more convenient to commute daily. Gone were the days of the mess-life of Kolkata thriving with the Bengali babus and their Oriya thakurs [cooks]. 10 See the memoirs by Satyajit Ray, Jakhon Chhoto Chhilam [When I was in my childhood days] 1982; Hirendranath Mukhopadhyay, Tari Hote Teer: Paribesh, Pratyaksha o Pratyaer Brittanta [From the Boat to the Shore]: A Narrative of Nature, Experience and Faith 1974. 11 See the memoirs by Nirendranath Chakrabarty, Neerobindu (1993); Samar Sen, Babubrittanta (1978). 12 See for instance, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay, Charitraheen [The Depraved] (1917) ; Narayan Gangopadhyay, Ektala (1953). 13 See for a related discussion, Engels, D. (1996: 199–200). Engels explains this increase in terms of ‘depeasantization’ in the context of Burdwan Division in the 1920s. 14 During the 1930s and the 1940s, male workers also started losing jobs along with females in large numbers in the industry as a consequence of Depression and finally the Partition of Bengal in 1947. In this context, it is not unlikely that the male workers returned to their old domain of domestic service reversing the trend once again in 1951. 15 Jugantar [A Bangla daily published from Kolkata] 22 September 1956. 16 Premankur Atarthi (1890–1964) in his memoir, Mahasthabir Jatak has noted that in his childhood, the Bihari servants in Bengali middle class homes in Kolkata saved enough from their meager salaries to make remittances to their families in Bihar. This seems to be also the case with the domestics from the UP and Orissa. 17 A report in Amrita Bazar Patrika (15 June 1950) quoted in Gargi Chakravartty, ‘Coming out of Partition’, p. 49. 18 Jugantar, 28 March 1954; 27 March; 4 April 1956. 19 Jugantar, 4 March; 11 March; 16 September 1956; 12 December 1960. 20 Jugantar, 14 March 1954. 21 Jugantar, 23 January; 28 March 1954. 22 Jugantar, 9 May 1954. 23 Jugantar, 23 April 1954; 15 December 1960. 24 Jugantar, 17 March 1957. 25 Jugantar, 3 January 1954; 29 April 1956. 26 Jugantar, 11 March 1956. 27 Jugantar, 11 March 1956. 28 Jugantar, 6 January 1955;1 July; 28 July; 20 September 1956. 29 Jugantar, 22 May 1956. 30 Jugantar, 6 January 1955; 1 July; 28 July; 20 September 1956. 31 Omkar Goswami (1995) notes that distress migration from the rural hinterlands to Kolkata city was quite prevalent even before the Partition. This internal migration probably was the source of maids from West Bengal. 32 See Bagchi, J. (1995); Ray, B. (1995); Chatterji, J. (2007). 33 Jugantar, 11 February 1954. 34 Jugantar, 17 March; 31 March 1957; 1 February; 14 November 1960. 35 Government of West Bengal, Rehabilitation of refugee: A statistical survey, 1955, State Statistical Bureau, Alipore, 1956.

80  For bed and board only 36 Jugantar, 16 January 1960. 37 Jugantar, 30 January 1960. 38 Women particularly in families with no adult or able males started working as stenographers, telephone operators, in the Food Rationing Department etc. Ray (1995). 39 Some other stories by Narendranath Mitra portraying refugee women in domestic service in post-1947 Kolkata, and the dates of their first publication are ‘Dwicharini’ [The Double-Dealer] (1949); ‘Purna’ [Turned Full] (1952); ‘Mulya’ [Value] (1952). 40 The gradual decrease in the size of the refugee families which initially often tended to be larger, has been noted by Kanti B. Pakrashi in his The Uprooted: A Sociological Study of the Refugees of West Bengal, India, Calcutta, 1971. 41 Reported by a domestic worker, Kalidasi, from the South 24 Parganas and working in Kolkata in 1976. A report on domestics in Ananda Bazar Patrika, 11 December 1976. 42 See, Towards Equality (1974). 43 An earlier survey among the part-time maids living in the kasba area of the city in the early 1970s (Niranjan Halder 1974) found that all the 18 women domestics interviewed were migrants to the city. Three of them had come from Bangladesh, 13 from the South 24 Parganas and 2 from the Howrah district. Three among them were young girls between 12 and 15 years of age who had migrated to the city along with their mothers (also among the respondents). We have already noted that newspaper insertions in the early 1950s show that some families in Kolkata preferred girl children as domestics (Jugantar, 23 April 1956). 44 The Bengal Destitute Persons Ordinance allowed the colonial police to hound out thousands of such famine-destitute and drive them away from the city. However, many probably remained and started a new life inside the city in water pipes and beside railway lines (See, Goswami 1995). 45 For example, see (Agarwal 1990; Mahalanobis et al. 1946) 46 Jugantar, 28 February; 7 March; 21 March 1954. 47 Jugantar, 21 March 1954. 48 Migration from Pakistan to West Bengal actually took place from the then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The 1961 Census records it as Pakistan, as Bangladesh was not created until 1971. 49 Among the districts of West Bengal, other than Kolkata, the main concentration of refugee settlement was in the 24 Parganas followed by Nadia. See (Chatterji 2007). 50 It needs to be noted that already in 1977–1978 (NSS 32nd Round) GCWPR was the highest in Kolkata city among the four metropolises. 51 We have already documented that female migration for employment to Kolkata was mostly intra-state. Therefore, the case of girl children migrants from all areas to Kolkata for work in 1961 and that of girl children migrants from all areas within the state to Kolkata for employment in 1981 are largely comparable. 52 Interview March–April 2014.

References Agarwal, B. (1990), ‘Social security and the family: Coping with seasonality and calamity in rural India’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 17 (3): 341–412. Anderson, B. (2000), Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour, Palgrave Macmillan. Anderson, B. (2001), ‘Why Madam has so many bathrobes? Demand for migrant workers in the EU’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 92 (1): 18–26. Atarthi, P. (1944/2009), Mahasthabir Jatak, Kolkata: Dey’s Publications. Bagchi, J. (1995), ‘Women in Calcutta: After Independence’, in S. Chaudhuri (ed.), Calcutta: The Living City, II, Kolkata: Oxford University Press.

For bed and board only  81 Bagchi, A. K. (1998), ‘Studies on the economy of West Bengal since Independence’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33 (47&48): 2973–2978. Bandyopadhyay, S. (1990), ‘Caste and Social Mobility’, in Caste, Politics and the Raj Bengal 1872–1937, Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi and Co. Banerjee, N. (1985), Women Workers in the Unorganized Sector the Calcutta Experience, Hyderabad: Sangam Books. Banerjee, S. M. (2004), Men, Women, and Domestics: Articulating Middle-Class Identity in Colonial Bengal, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Banerjee, N. (2006), ‘Working Women in Colonial Bengal: Modernization and Marginalization’, reprinted in K. Sangari and S. Vaid (eds.), Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, New Delhi: Zubaan. Banerjee, S. R. (2008), ‘Child Labor in Suburban Areas of Calcutta, West Bengal’, Islamia Hospital, Kolkata. Borthwick, M. (1984), The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849–1905, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Census of India, 1961, Vol. XVI West Bengal and Sikkim Part II-C (iii), Migration Tables. Census of India 1971, Series 22 West Bengal Part II- B (iii), General Economic Tables. Census of India 1981, Series 22 West Bengal Part-III A&B (iii), General Economic Tables. Chakrabarty, N. (1993), Neerobindu, Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing. Chakrabarty, P. K. (1990), The Marginal Men: The Refugees and the Left Political Syndrome in West Bengal, Kalyani: Lumiere Books. Chakravartty, G. (2005), Coming out of Partition: Refugee Women of Bengal, New Delhi: Bluejay Books. Chatterjee, P. (1987), ‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question’, reprinted in K. Sangari and S. Vaid (eds.), (2006), Recasting Women Essays in Colonial History, New Delhi: Zubaan. Chatterji, J. (2007), The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chattopadhyaya, H. (1987), Internal Migration in India: A Case Study of Bengal, K. P. Bagchi and Co. Kolkata. Chattopadhyay, S. (1917/1989), Charitraheen [The Depraved], in Sarat Rachanabali, Vol. 2, Kolkata: Tuli-Kalam. Datta, P. (1998), Phire Dekha [Glancing Back], Kolkata. Engels, D. (1996), Beyond Purdah? Women in Bengal 1890–1939, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Forbes, G. (1998), Women in Modern India, The New Cambridge History of India, IV, 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gangopadhyay, N. (1953), Ektala, Kolkata: Bengal Publishers. Ganguly, P. (1994), Chalaman Jiban [Mobile Life], Kolkata: Pratikshan Publications. Goswami, O. (1995), ‘Calcutta’s Economy 1918–1970: The Fall from Grace’, in S. Chaudhuri (ed.), Calcutta: The Living City, II, Oxford University Press. Government of India (1974), Towards Equality: Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India, Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, New Delhi. Government of West Bengal (1956), Rehabilitation of Refugee: A Statistical Survey, 1955, Alipore: State Statistical Bureau. Gregson, N. and Lowe, M. (2005), Servicing the Middle classes: Class, Gender and Waged Domestic Work in Contemporary Britain, Routledge. Hamid, A. (2006), ‘Harsh, Everyday Realities’, Economic and Political Weekly, 41 (13): 1235–1237.

82  For bed and board only Indian Express, 30 December 2006; 4 January 2007. Jain, D. (1985), ‘The Household Trap: Report on a Field Survey of Female Activity Patterns’, in D. Jain and N. Banerjee (eds.), Tyranny of the Household: Imaginative Essays On Women’s Work, Delhi: Shakti Books. Mahalanobis, P. C., Mukherjee, R. and Ghosh, A. (1946), A Sample Survey of After Effects of the Bengal Famine of 1943, Kolkata: Statistical Publishing House. Mahanagar [The Big City] (1963). Directed by Satyajit Ray. Film. India. Majumder, P. (1890), ‘Dasdasi’ (Servants and maids), in Streecharitra: Streejatiya Unnatibishyak Upadesh ebong Drishtanta (3rd edition, 1936) (Women’s Nature: Instructions with Examples on the Uplift of Women), Kolkata: Nababidhan Publication Committee. Meghe Dhaka Tara [The Cloud-capped Star]. (1960). Directed by Ritwick Ghatak. Film. India. Mitra, N. (1949),‘Dwicharini’ [The Double-Dealer], reprinted in Narendranath Mitra, Galpamala (1986), Kolkata: Ananda Publishers. Mitra, N. (1949), ‘Abataranika’ [Sequel], reprinted in Narendranath Mitra, Galpamala (1986), Kolkata: Ananda Publishers. Mitra, N. (1952),‘Purna’ [Turned Full], reprinted in Narendranath Mitra, Galpamala (1989), Kolkata: Ananda Publishers. Mitra, N. (1952), ‘Mulya’ [Value], reprinted in Narendranath Mitra, Galpamala (1994), Kolkata: Ananda Publishers. Mukherjee, M. (1995) ‘Women’s Work in Bengal, 1880–1930: A Historical Analysis’ in B. Ray (ed.), From the Seams of History: Essays on Indian Women, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Mukhopadhyay, H. (1974), Tari Hote Teer: Paribesh, Pratyaksha o Pratyaer Brittanta [From the Boat to the Shore]: A Narrative of Nature, Experience and Faith, Kolkata: Manisha. Niranjan Halder, N. (1974), ‘Kolkatar Thike Jhi’ [Kolkata’s Part-time Maids], Samatat [A Bangla Little Magazine]. Pakrashi, K. B. (1971), The Uprooted: A Sociological Study of the Refugees of West Bengal, Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta. Pratham Kadam Phool [The First Kadam Flower] (1970). Directed by Inder Sen. Film. India. Ray, B. (1995), ‘Women in Calcutta: The Years of Change’, in S. Chaudhuri (ed.), Calcutta: The Living City, II, Kolkata: Oxford University Press. Ray, S. (1982), Jakhon Chhoto Chhilam [When I was in my childhood days], Kolkata: Ananda Publishers. ‘Sahare ese Thike Jhi : Vidya nei Bhabishyat-o na’ (Becoming a part-time maid in the city: neither education nor any prospect). Ananda Bazar Patrika, 11 December 1976. Sarkar, T. (1989), ‘Politics and Women in Bengal’, in J. Krishnamurty (ed.), Women in Colonial India Essays on Survival, Work and the State, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sen, S. (1978), Babubrittanta (Babu’s Tale), Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing. Sen, S. (1999), Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sen, S. (2008), ‘Gender and Class: Women in Indian Industry, 1890–1990’, Modern Asian Studies, 42 (1): 75–116. Sinha, A. (2005), The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India – A Divided Leviathan, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

5 When daughters migrate and mothers stay back

According to 2001 Population Census, around 10 in every 1,000 girl children work for pay in urban India.1 It is more so in urban West Bengal, a state which records historically low female work participation rate (WPR) (Banerjee 2006; Sen 1999).2 In 2001, the incidence of girl children’s paid work in West Bengal was the highest among all states of India (around 12 per 1,000) as discussed in Chapter Three. In contrast, boy children’s work participation in the urban areas of the state generally hovers around the India’s national average. From the previous census estimates we know that more than half (57 per cent) of the young girls are engaged in domestic service (Chakravarty and Chakravarty 2008) in the urban areas of this state. A large number of these working girls have migrated from their rural homes alone (not as a part of the family) for work as whole-time domestics in the city (Save the Children 2009). This process of girl children’s migration has in fact started in the early 1960s as documented in the previous chapter. While boy children are found in different hazardous jobs too, whole-time domestic servants, mostly girls, are described as one of the contemporary forms of slaves by the United Nations (UN 1999). In Chapter Three, we have shown that according to the 2001 census, around 23 per cent women are engaged in domestic service in the urban areas of the state. For one single work category, this is indeed quite high. The prevalence of older women working as whole-time domestic workers is relatively less. Employing a girl child as whole-time domestic is less costly than employing an adult woman. It is also much easier to control her and to make her do all sorts of odd jobs. The girl child whole-time domestic worker is evidently more reliable than an adult especially in the context of increasing cases of reported involvement of adult domestics in different sorts of crimes. We have discussed the demand side factors in some detail in the earlier chapters. However, let us remember that according to the survey report mentioned above, around 16 per cent of the child whole-time domestic workers in the city homes are boys. Moreover, Amit Kundu (2008) reports that demand for adult women domestic workers in the recent years has increased substantially with increasing participation of middle class women in outside work. This is supported by secondary data also. Therefore, the prevalence of girl children in domestic service is not entirely demand driven. Supply-side factors too are likely to have played an important role in determining who will go

84  When daughters migrate out for work: mother or daughter. It needs to be remembered that the decisions taken by the household are informed by the broader socioeconomic and cultural practices. For instance, poor households sometimes decide to send adult married women for paid domestic work outside the home. At other times, they change their coping strategy by substituting them mostly with girl children and rarely with boy children, though paid domestic work turns out to be more hazardous for small girls. The dynamic of the market in determining the outcomes has not been elaborated in this study as the subject requires a separate research. We concentrate here on the supply-side factors alone. Focus on the household as a unit of analysis to understand the nature of women’s work and gender relations was part of the women’s movement of the late 1960s and the 1970s. This Second Wave Feminism initiated some of the 1970s debates on domestic labour and the family by critiquing the New Household Economics of the 1960s, a tradition which considered the household as a unitary structure having a single utility function without differentiating between household members (see, Beneria 2009; Folbre 1986 for a discussion). Feminist economists critiqued these widely accepted Neoclassical models (for example, Becker 1981), mainly from the perspectives of gender inequality and women’s oppression (for example, Folbre 1988, 2001; Hartmann 1979, 1987; Katz 1991). Amartya Sen (1990) among others applied the cooperative bargaining model to understand intra-household relations by visualizing family as a bargaining unit in which family members cooperate as long as it is beneficial to each of them. Situations of conflict among family members also arise. There can be a number of cooperative solutions but the final outcome of these solutions will depend on the bargaining power of each of the household member. This conceptualization, of course, is in contrast to the unitary household model of the Neoclassicals. Bina Agarwal (1990) extends this argument to explain the large scale abandonment of women and children during the Great Bengal Famine of the 1940s. She argues that a disaster (such as a famine) may cause dissolution of the woman’s fallback position, while that of the man is sustained to some extent. The woman’s ability to contribute to the family’s economic sustenance and her consequent bargaining power may decrease to the extent where the man finds non-cooperation more advantageous. This, in turn, creates a tendency towards the desertion of women and children. We relate this idea to a continuing situation of hunger when the family elders jointly decide to abandon the most vulnerable member of the household, the girl child. It has been pointed out that endowments (assets and labour power) and the ability to exchange them primarily determine the strength of the bargaining power within the family in relation to subsistence needs such as food (Sen 1981). Apart from these two factors there are a few more which do not depend on private property or market exchange such as traditional rights of access to communal resources, access to traditional social support systems, support from the state and from the non-governmental organizations etc. (Agarwal 1997: 8–9). Agarwal in her 1997 paper also deals with the role of social perceptions and norms in determining the bargaining power within the family at length. We highlight the

When daughters migrate  85 importance of the ideology of ‘domesticity’3 as a predominant social perception in moulding the bargaining outcome with respect to the fate of the girl child. To stay with Sen and Agarwal’s contention, inequalities among family members in respect of these factors will place some members in a weaker bargaining position compared to others. While gender is one significant basis of inequality age can be the other and gender and age together can be an even stronger basis of inequality. Girl children are likely to be at a specifically disadvantageous position as a result of their ‘perceived contribution response’ (Sen 1990: 136).4 Does the outcome change with the improvement in the economic position of the mother leading to an increase in her agency within the family? Agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. Therefore, ability to take a decision independently is certainly a major component of women’s agency. This chapter tries to understand the specific factors influencing the household decisions as whether to send the adult woman or the girl child for paid work outside the home. In this context, we also look at the question of the mother’s agency. However, whether paid outside work leads to development of mother’s decision-making power and also whether such agency has any implications for children’s well-being in general and girl children’s well-being in particular is a complex matter (­Kambhampati 2009; Quisumbing and Maluccio 2000; Standing 1990). Our empirical findings relate mainly to primary data. As a substantial number of women and most of the girl children are engaged in domestic service in urban West Bengal, we have conducted detailed interviews with the families of about 60 women and girl children domestic workers in and around the capital city of Kolkata. Given the nature of the objective, we have followed a purposive sampling procedure in order to select the study units. The aim of this study, and hence, the methodology adopted, consists in exploring the meaning and motivations for particular courses of action rather than attempting to arrive at generalizations.

1. Some relevant macro indicators and the primary data In this section, we present some secondary data in order get an idea about the incidence of families sending both girl children and older women for paid outside work. This dataset also hints to some relatively less-discussed dimensions of gender-related discrimination that has situated West Bengal in sharp contrast with other Indian states. We then move on to describing the primary data. As discussed in Chapter Three (Table 3.8), there has been a sharp decline in the WPR of girl children in the latest survey year of the NSS. This is a feature noticed the country over. But West Bengal is still at the highest position in terms of girl children’s work in Urban India. We have discussed some possible explanations of this decline in Chapter Three. While reporting the primary survey in this chapter, we will get back to this issue of decline again. Table 3.8 suggested that the incidence of girl children’s work participation was generally higher than that of the boy children in the youngest age group of 5 to 9 years in the urban areas of the state. However, for the immediately older age group of 10 to 14 years, it was

86  When daughters migrate difficult to locate such regular patterns. But in most of the years under consideration girl children’s WPR surpasses, though sometimes marginally, that of the boy children. In all other age groups, women’s work participation is consistently much lower than that of the men. Do these girl children and women come to the paid labour market in the urban areas of the state mostly from the same families? Let us note that women’s WPR in urban West Bengal is the highest for the upper income groups followed by the three lowest income groups (Chakravarty et al. 2012).5 As girl children workers are most likely to come from the poorest sections, it can be assumed that there will be a considerable intersection of families sending both girl children as well as adult women for work. We have already mentioned that more than half of the working girl children are concentrated in domestic service. Save the Children, in their three consecutive reports mentioned that a large number of these girls work as whole-time domestics in city homes. They come to the city as single migrants. We therefore turn to the migration data in order to get some macro idea. It has been argued in Chapters Three and Four that the emerging job market for women and girl children during the post-Partition years in West Bengal was mainly paid domestic service. Migrant girl children constituted around 55 per cent of the total number of girl children engaged in different divisions of work in the city in 1981. We have noticed that in 1981, around 88 per cent of working girl children were engaged in domestic service in Kolkata, so it is reasonable to conclude that those girls who migrated to seek employment were mostly employed as domestic workers possibly as whole-time domestic workers. How do the female migration at other age groups compare with that of the males? Figure 5.1 reveals that in 1991, women outnumbered men in migration for employment only at the lowest age group. Also, the gender gap in migration is the lowest in the age group immediately following the youngest one. As women get married mostly before the age of 18 in the state (NFHS 2005–2006), the main concentration of migrated working women between 15 and 19 years is likely to take place around the lower boundary of the age group of (15 to 19) years. On the contrary, concentration of the males is likely to be around the higher boundary of the same age cohort. Our primary observation reported in the next section goes a long way to support this conjecture. In Figure 5.1, we have noted that in terms of absolute numbers, male migration for employment is much higher than that of the females except for the youngest lot in 1991. But Figure 5.2 tells us that the migrants as a percentage of total female workers in the same year for every age group are much higher than that of their male counterparts. This is, however, not unexpected for women’s WPRs among the distress migrants are likely to be higher compared to settled city dwellers. Second, we find that the gender gap in migrants as a percentage of total workers is the sharpest in the case of the youngest age group followed by the immediately next age cohort. In 1991, the percentage of girl children migrating to Kolkata for work increased to 56 per cent from 54 per cent in 1981. The trend of girl children’s single migration for employment continues in 2001. Unfortunately the level of disaggregation of migration data available for 2001 is comparatively more limited than that of the earlier years’: data for migration

Figure 5.1  Female and male migration for employment from different parts of West Bengal to Kolkata City in 1991 for different age groups Source: Census of India, 1991, ‘Migration Tables’ Note: Migration for all duration has been considered. If we look at the migration for employment figures as a percentage of total female and male workers in the city for every age group, we get some more interesting insights. 35 30 25 20

Male Female

15 10 5 0

0–14

15–19

20–24

25–29

30–34

35–39

40–49

50–59

60–69

Figure 5.2 Female and male migration for employment to Kolkata city from different parts of West Bengal as a percentage of total workers in the metropolis in 1991 for different age groups Source: Census of India, 1991, ‘Migration Tables’ and ‘General Economic Tables’ Note: The workers refer to both main and marginal workers.

88  When daughters migrate for work from within the state to the cities/metropolises by sex and age are not available for 2001 Census. Therefore, we have to consider the figures referring to the migration from the rural to the urban areas of the sate in 2001. Similar to the experiences of 1981 and 1991, Figure 5.3 reveals that in the year 2001, women outnumbered men in migration for employment only at the lowest age group. In 2001, the percentage of girls among all children migrating for employment from the rural parts of the state to the urban areas was more than 67. Whole-time domestic service is most likely to be the natural destiny for these single migrants. Two observations can be made from this data: first, it is unlikely that both the girl child and her mother are migrating for work from the same family as they usually substitute each other. Second, the lower incidence of boy children’s migration for work can be explained by the fact that they are more likely to be working in local markets.6 Incidentally, Figure 5.4 shows that the percentage of girls among all children migrating for work is the highest in West Bengal when compared to the other states having comparable large urban aglomerates. This was also the case in 1991. Second, while the percentage of women migrating for work declines subsequently for the later agegroups in all states under consideration, the decline is strikingly sharp for the reproductive agegroups in West Bengal and so also in Maharashtra. It needs to be mentioned here that the internal migration we are talking about is primarily distress driven caused by shortage of food in the rural areas. Thus with the introduction of institutional reforms (such as the redistribution of land to the marginal holders and the landless) internal migration as a whole decelerated

Figure 5.3  Migration for work from the rural areas of the state to the urban areas, 2001 Source: Census of India, ‘Migration Tables’, 2001 Note: The migration tables containing these information for the year 2011 are not available yet.

When daughters migrate  89 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

0–14 WB

15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–59 MH

AP

Karnataka

60+ TN

Figure 5.4 Percentage of age-groupwise migration for employment by women from rural and urban areas of the state to the urban areas within the state of enumeration in 2001 Source: Census of India, ‘Migration Tables’, 2001 Note: Migration refers to 0 to 9 years. MH, AP, TN stand for Maharashtra, former Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, respectively.

during the 1980s (Giri 1998) in West Bengal. But, as the land reforms were not all pervasive, migration to the city in search of food continued by the lowest orders. Single migration of girl children for work is a particular facet of this process. West Bengal Human Development Report notes a substantial amount of distress migration from agriculture and industries to services as late as in 2004. The 2004–2005 NSS data revealed that parts of rural West Bengal suffered from maximum food inadequacy in the country (Bandopadhyay 2007)7. The migration data clearly suggest that it is unlikely to have a substantial intersection of families sending both girl children and their mothers for work as whole-time workers outside the home. Anecdotal evidence suggests that older women migrate for work usually with the family but it is unlikely to be so for the girl children who are mostly found as whole-time domestic maids in urban West Bengal. What determines the choice of which female member would go for work? Certainly this is a question that cannot be answered through secondary data alone. But, as West Bengal stands in sharp contrast with many other states in its record of girl children’s work, some state specific factors are likely to have played an important role in determining the outcomes. Some of these features are also found

90  When daughters migrate in a number of other states also. We have tried to address these issues through our primary survey. Primary data As our question relates to understanding why households take different strategies regarding women’s paid outside work in different contexts, we decide to narrow our enquiry down to domestic service, a job market, shared by both women and girl children, though often in different categories. From our informal interactions with the city-based adult domestic workers and the reports by Save the Children mentioned earlier, we came to know that the domestics working in the urban areas of West Bengal were of three types: city dwellers, daily commuters from the nearby rural areas and whole-time maids. Among these categories, girl children heavily dominate the last one, that is of whole-time maids. The first two groups are part-time workers, while the third one is whole-time. For the sake of convenience, we decided to locate our primary survey mainly in the city of Kolkata and the two adjacent districts of North and South 24 Parganas known for the supply of domestics to the city. As no exhaustive list of domestic workers in the city (forget about their ages) is available containing the information required for any systematic sampling procedure, we had to basically proceed through informal channels to access as many women as possible in each category. We could talk to 60 households in all. The survey was conducted in different phases between March 2008 and February 2010. Table 5.1 gives the breakdown of different categories of domestics with whom or with whose families we could talk to. In the first two categories as mentioned in Table 5.1, we have talked with the adult woman who is the domestic worker herself. For the whole-time domestics, we had to depend on the family members, mainly mothers. We have found

Table 5.1  Different categories of domestic workers Categories of Domestic Workers

Number

Geographical Area

City-based

30

Regularly commuting

12

Girl child whole-time domestic

18

City slums: Bagbazar Galif Street area and Kalimata Manoranjan Colony in Kolkata proper Village Piyali, South 24 Parganas, an adjacent district of Kolkata Village Sandeshkhali, North 24 Parganas, another adjacent district of Kolkata

Note: Among the city-based respondents, in two households, both the mother and the girl child work as domestics.

When daughters migrate  91 it considerably difficult to access the commuting women and more so with the families of the whole-time girl children domestics for two different reasons that we mention in due course. So, the number of households in these two categories is constrained by accessibility. While it was possible to talk to more workers in the city-based group, we did not find newer insights as we were increasing the number of respondents and therefore decided to stop at 30. We had a semi-structured questionnaire for conducting the interviews covering mostly qualitative questions with some quantification wherever possible. The questions mainly relate to the economic situation of the family including employment status and incomes of the household members, the decision-making processes within the family especially in matters related to children, and the work environment of the women and girl children. We located the two city slums mentioned in Table 5.1 with the help of a domestic worker. It wasn’t difficult to interact with these women during their leisure time. The second group of the adult women domestics are the daily commuters to the city from the adjacent villages. Ananya Roy, in her survey conducted in 1997 found a large number of women domestics commuting daily from their rural homes which were connected to Kolkata by regular trains (Roy 2008). In fact, as early as the late 1980s those local trains which carried hundreds of maids every morning from the villages of southern West Bengal to Kolkata were described as ‘jhee8 specials’ by the city elites. With the help of a college student from that area, we could locate a village named Piyali in South 24 Parganas District from where a large number of women regularly commute to Kolkata city every day. It turned out to be quite difficult to engage in conversation with these women because they were found to be extremely tired after returning home from work and also preoccupied with household chores. We thus could talk to only 12 women in this category. However, it was most difficult to locate and access the families of girl children whole-time domestics. We narrate the process of selection of the village Sandeshkhali in Section 4. The next two sections deal with the findings from the primary survey.

2. Domesticity vs. paid work: adult women We begin with the adult domestic workers. Some of these women are based in the city, while others regularly commute from nearby villages (Table 5.1). Our aim is to understand the analytics behind the adult women’s work participation outside the home. In this context, we also try to understand how a ‘social norm’ the ‘ideology of domesticity’ influences household decision. We have dealt with the concept of domesticity in Chapter Three. The cult of domesticity identified the home as ‘women’s proper sphere’ which affected married women’s labour market participation in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Women joining paid outside employment began to be regarded as a highly shameful activity in late colonial Bengal. Historians have documented the process of turning working women into housewives. The ‘housewifization’ was not limited to the upper levels of the Bengali society alone as discussed in Chapter Three. Devaki Jain (1985) observed this cultural inhibition still present in

92  When daughters migrate the 1970s. On the basis of a survey of some villages in West Bengal, she reported that even poverty failed to push women to seek outside work to the extent it did in other parts of the country. We talked with two generations of city-based adult women serving as domestic workers in the city. These women work part-time, on an average, in four to five upper/middle class city houses close to their slums. With the significant increase in demand for paid domestic help in the city (Chakravarty and Chakravarty, 2008), our city based respondents are able to earn (Table 5.2) what they consider enough to make two ends meet by working 8 to 10 hours a day outside the home. This work schedule entails them to take care of the family chores. While all these women contributed significantly to the household budget, some of them seemed to be the main bread-earners, either in the absence of adult males in the family or in the case of irregular earning of the male members. These women reported that most of their children, both daughters and sons, had been put in school and never participated in paid work. They have also mentioned that the incidence of girl children working from city slums have decreased substantially in the recent years. Though, there are two exceptions as mentioned in Table 5.1. In both the cases the families have experienced some sudden calamities recently. This experience can at least partly explain the considerable decline in the WPR of urban girl children in 2009–2010 over 2004–2005 in the state (Table 3.8). However, the dropped-out daughters take a significant responsibility of household chores when mothers are at work. From the detailed discussions with the city-based adult domestic workers, we gathered the following insights. They can earn more, by working in different households, often combining the duties of a maid and a cook, compared to a girl child working as a whole-time domestic in a single household (Table 5.2). As the mother in the family starts earning substantially from her outside employment, there is usually a change in the time allocation of girl children. The family is likely to find it more convenient to keep the somewhat older girl child at home as a substitute who will take care of the household chores and look after the younger siblings when the mother is away for outside work. Here strong economic incentive weakens cultural inhibition. In this case, the girl child keeps working at home. Apart from the monetary considerations, the duration of work is also important in deciding whether the mother or the girl child will go out for work. Households prefer adult women to spend relatively less time outside the home. Table 5.2  Average earnings of different categories of domestics Categories

Average Earnings of Domestic Maids per Household per Month

Average Earnings of Cook per Household per Month

City-based adult women Commuting women Whole-time domestics (girl child)

Rs. 300–400 Not more than Rs. 200 About Rs. 500

Rs. 700–800

Source: Survey data; survey was conducted during 2009–2010

When daughters migrate  93 But there is yet another possibility. While interacting with these mothers we could feel their eagerness to educate their children including daughters.9 Let us remember that some 20 years back, these mothers were working at city homes as child domestics. When we asked the women why they did not send their dropped-out daughters to work as whole-time domestics – a common practice in their childhood – in some cases we were almost challenged. They wanted to know whether they should send their daughters to be killed and raped at the employers’ place. It clearly shows these women’s awareness about the frequent incidents of abuse of the girl children domestics in the city often reported by the media. As these women earn substantially and in some cases are also the main bread-earners, their ability to influence family decisions at least regarding the children is likely to have increased. This is an indication of increase in the decision-making power within the family or the ‘agency’ of these working women. Adult women respondents in the city seemed to be quite confident of their own bargaining power at the work place. Probably, their prolonged exposure to outside work in a metropolis has made them capable to utilize the increasing opportunities due to the service sector boom. Their ability to retain jobs as well as bargaining for higher wages for extra piece of work in an unstructured organized manner is highly likely to have strengthened their fall-back positions within the family. Agarwal (1997) discusses how the outcome of extra-household bargaining influences the outcome of the intra-household bargaining. Jean Dreze and Amrtya Sen (2002: 246) hold that ‘these positive links between gainful female employment and the status of women are also relevant to the female child, in so far as they affect the importance that is attached to her development and wellbeing’. However, one question still remains: whether a mother, who resists sending her female child out for work, also wishes her daughter to work and earn her own living when she grows up or she wants to see her in an entirely domestic role? We will see that the question of relationship between participation in paid outside work and development of agency is complex. Let us take a few examples: a domestic maid Kaberi is the main breadwinner as her husband, a bus conductor and an alcoholic, is unable to provide for the family. She has two children: a daughter and a son. Both the children go to school; the daughter has passed the school-leaving examination. Kaberi has arranged for tuition and computer training for her children from her meagre earning. She apparently seems to have earned some agency from her breadwinning status in the family. However, Kaberi represents a typical case who is often being beaten by her alcoholic husband. Still, obeying her husband’s wishes, she refuses an offer of earning more by working as a whole-time domestic. There are exceptions also. Shyama, a mother of two and working as a domestic in Kolkata, decided to leave her rural home in search of some earning to secure a better future for her children. As a punishment of disobeying the wishes of her marital family, she had been driven out of the home. This is an example of conflicting outcome of a bargaining procedure. Devoid of any fall-back position Shyma first went back to her natal family who did not disapprove the abandoned daughter’s decision to work out in the city.

94  When daughters migrate The city-based women were mostly unanimous that it was the failure of the male member in the family (father or husband) to provide for others that forces women to seek job outside the home. One elderly widow working as a domestic worker since her teens replied that she considered sending her daughter-in-law for paid outside work to be a matter of shame. Another domestic, a mother of two children, recalled the ‘good old days’ when her father-in-law was alive and provided for the whole family. Her husband, a drunkard, was unable to do so, and she had to come out of the home (which she considered a matter of misfortune) to feed her children. Despite the fact that these women seemed to have earned some decision-making power in family matters, it is clear that they were not appreciative of their identity as workers. They seemed to be quite keen to see their daughters pursue a different course of life, rather as ‘happily-married’ housewives than as domestic workers.10 Our long interactions with city-based workers reveal that their urge for educating girl children is basically determined by the marriage market. Shyama reports that because of the lack of education two of her cousins back in the village are not getting suitable matches as the groom’s families prefer brides with some education. Domesticity was clearly preferred to paid outside work. Raka Ray (2000) in a study on Kolkata domestics came to more or less similar conclusions with ours. She observes that as domestic work in India is individualized, unorganized and also much stigmatized, ‘domestic workers minimize their identities as workers and instead think of themselves as women and men, mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, daughters and sons’ (2000: 713–14). She also mentions that the individualized and isolated nature of the work, which causes such minimization of the worker – identity, is particularly applicable to whole-time domestic service. Most of the city-based adult respondents started working as domestics at the age of 10 or 11 years. Some started their career even at 6 or 7 years. As the average age of our respondents was 40 years, they started working sometime in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Women and girl children outnumbered men and boy children in domestic service in the urban areas of the state for the first time in 1981 (Chakravarty and Chakravarty 2013). Let us remember that both agriculture and industry were stagnating in the state especially during the late 1960s and the 1970s. While agriculture somewhat picked up as a result of institutional reforms by the mid-1980s, performance of the industries was a continuous low. However, recent changes in the state economy led by the boom in the services sector, especially in and around the metropolis have opened up opportunities both at the higher as well as at the lower ends of the society. This is true for both women and men. More women have joined the labour market probably both as professionals and as domestic helps of those professional women. Table 3.8 suggests an increase in women’s WPR for the age groups of (25–34) years in 2009–2010 over 2004–2005. We now turn to the regularly commuting adult domestic workers. All the women in this group commuted to the city daily to work as part-time maids in different houses. All were from landless families, four were widows and two deserted by their husbands; the rest were married to husbands who had irregular incomes. So in each of these cases women contributed significantly to the household budget

When daughters migrate  95 and were likely to enjoy a certain amount of decision-making power in the family especially regarding children. These women also reported that they did not send their children to work, and on the contrary, had put them in school though some of them had worked as whole-time domestics in Kolkata in their childhoods. However, their aspirations for the future of their daughters do not seem to be different from those of the city dwellers. One important difference between the commuters and the city-dwelling group seems to be that the commuting women do not enjoy the agency at their work places as the city-based women have been enjoying for a considerable period of time. The commuting women take the train to Kolkata at six in the morning and come back home around three in the evening. Leave is allowed 4 days a month. Some employers threaten to sack if increment is asked for, or leave is taken for more than 4 days a month. Working conditions are generally quite difficult for these women. On the contrary, most women in the city-dwelling group are not particularly unhappy about their working conditions. All women in the commuting category complained of the competitive nature of their job, and according to them, this very fact provided the employers with the opportunity of pursuing the practice of hire and fire. The anxiety of losing jobs seemed to worry the commuter respondents most. The commuting domestics also get a lower pay compared to the city-based ones for the same work (Table 5.2). As these domestic workers live far away from the households they work for, they are alien to those localities. They are most probably being looked at as intruders who entered the local labour market applying wage cut. Thus the possibility of some sort of unionization that could have offered a security to these women at the work place is remote here. This uncertainty at the workplace is likely to influence the intra-household bargaining outcome even when women earn substantially. But we do not have enough evidence to say something concrete.

3. Domesticity vs. paid work: girl children In this section, we focus on the survival strategy of households sending girl children for work outside the home. Let us consider a situation where cultural inhibitions thwart women’s (in the reproductive age group especially) participation in paid employment. Thus, in this society, women are doubly disadvantaged. Like in any other traditional society she does not have property rights over land and larger animals. She is further constrained by the sociocultural inhibitions about earning in exchange of her labour power. This is a widely practised ideological barrier imposed on women in north India and also in parts of eastern India including West Bengal. One outcome of this ideological barrier is the preference for part-time to more remunerative whole-time work by older women discussed in the last section. Let us also assume that in the context of a village economy the mothers have very limited options in the local market. In this context, suppose male earning becomes insufficient.11 This will lead to a decline in family income and the consequent decrease in the availability of food and other means of subsistence. The cultural inhibition notwithstanding women’s outside work participation

96  When daughters migrate is likely to increase in this situation but not to the extent of a situation where no such inhibitions hold sway; more so, because of the insufficient employment opportunities in the local market. So, to supplement family income children are likely to be sent for work. Again, given the strong preference for the boy child, who is considered to be the future support of the family – perceived performance response – the household is likely to take a joint decision to protect him from the hazards of paid outside work. The head of the household or the family will instead, choose to send the girl child for work first, particularly when there is a significant market for such gendered labour. It is also likely that as long as the family can afford, it will try to equip the boy child with some education thinking about future prospects. Let us remember Agarwal’s notions of social norms and social conceptions. A parallel can be drawn from Agarwal’s discussions on abandonment of women and children because of the weakening of the fallback position of the woman in situations of famine. Here, in the context of continuous abject poverty, the elders in the family abandon the weakest member who doesn’t have a fallback position at all. That the girl child is the most dispensable member is more clearly borne out when families choose to sell her even in the flesh trade market as documented by some empirical studies (Ganguly Thukral and Ali 2005; Nair and Sen 2005). However, when the girl child attains puberty, she becomes the centre of honour for the family and has been withdrawn from the labour market. Ananya Roy (2008) reported about a village named Tnetultola in the South 24 Parganas where a considerable number of houses sent their very young unmarried daughters to Kolkata as whole-time domestic workers in order to meet the increasing consumption needs of the families. There she found such houses from which young daughters went to the city one after another. The village was quite far from Kolkata. Our own surveys reported above also point to the fact that the incidence of girl children working as domestics from the city or from the adjacent areas has come down significantly. This goes a long way to support the decline in the girl children’s WPR in 2009–2010 over 2004–2005 as reported above. But even according to 2009–2010 NSS data the highest number of girl children in the age group of (10–14) years is found to be working in the urban areas of the state. Save the Children earlier (2006) confirmed the same trend. We therefore realized that we needed to go to the interior villages to find out the sources of the whole-time working girl children in the city.12 We decided to go to the interiors of the North 24 Parganas, a district which is well known for its high rate of working girl children. Although agricultural productivity in this district is quite impressive, 81.84 per cent of the households in the rural parts of the district still suffer from shortage of food (Govt. of WB 2010). The village we identified is Sandeshkhali, in the block13 Sandeshkhali II in the Sunderbans area. The block records the highest percentage (59.70) of Below Poverty Line (BPL) households in the district. There are 15.36 per cent of the households of the district that can generally manage only one square meal a day and that too not throughout the year. Migration for employment is a major coping strategy in Sandeshkhali II with the highest percentage of migration for employment in the district (Govt. of WB 2010). However, the gender and age pattern of

When daughters migrate  97 such migration is not clearly revealed in this report. But the report mentions two more important points. First, a large number of girl children are being trafficked from this area, and second, a civil society organization, Jabala, is trying to ensure safe migration, for quite some time, to prevent the exploitation of young girls who migrate from rural areas of the district to metropolitan cities and major towns in search of work. This along with the anecdotal evidence led us to infer that the incidence of girl children migrating for work as whole-time domestics was most likely to be quite high in this area. A number of poor families depend on the income of such working girl children who are regularly recruited by contractors. We could talk with 18 such families. It seemed to be a widespread practice violating the legal ban on the employment of children below 14 years also in paid domestic work in 2006. In the context of the large scale trafficking of girl children from this area of the state as mentioned above and also confirmed by media reports in recent years, our finding assumes particular significance. However, none of the married women from the 18 respondent families have migrated for work, not even as domestics, a common experience in many other parts of the developing world including India as cited in the First Chapter of this book. Among these 18 migrant domestic workers only one was an adult woman deserted by her husband, who had decided to go to a far off city in search of work leaving her children behind. The family endorsed her decisions probably because deserted women were not supposed to be as indispensable to the family as the married women.14 In one of the abovementioned families, we chanced upon a girl who had been working as a whole-time domestic in Kolkata and was brought back home for marriage. She was about 15 years old. The cultural factor of inhibition to older women’s (especially after marriage) work outside the home seems to be more important than the economic considerations in determining the outcome here. Let us note that some of the city-dweller respondents, though migrants, came to the city as part of the household.15 Second, in most of the cases boy children are kept at home, and parents try to continue their education as long as possible, sometimes even with the support of the daughters’ earning. We have noted earlier that for decades the number of boy children migrating for work to the urban areas of the state has been much less than that of the girl children. These girl children are often recruited by a contractor who supplies them to city homes in different parts of India. The contractor-employer is often a local person with some political clout and recruits through village level agents. These agents are mostly close relations of the child who is being sold away for a meagre amount. The households with whom we interacted in Sandeshkhali were mostly landless, extremely poor and also illiterate. They seemed to have no idea where exactly their daughters were working, what their duties were or how much they were earning. The contractor is supposed to pay the daughter’s monthly earning to the parents in the village. While some complained that the contractors and their agents were not paying regularly others seemed to be satisfied. Among the 18 households, there were only two cases where the families had sent boy children

98  When daughters migrate to work out though most of the families we talked to had both young sons and daughters. In one case, a widowed father offered his only child, a boy, to a contractor to work as domestic in a household near Kolkata and that, too, after the devastations of the cyclone Aila in 2009. In the second case, a widowed mother sent both her daughters and the only son to work out. While the daughters never went to school, the son was in class V when he was sent to work. The mother reported the incidence of sending the boy out, as a great misfortune: It was only after the devastating storm Aila that I was forced to send the boy for work outside the home. The boy studied till the fifth standard. My daughters were never sent to school. Parents in general seemed to be less enthusiastic to send their minor sons to work away from home even when there was an option. A typical response of a mother in this context was: ‘unless a boy is orphaned he is not sent for work away from home’. Let us take one more example: A widowed mother has one son and two daughters. The son is about 20 years old, working as a daily wage labour in nearby places. Both daughters are younger than him and the youngest one has been sent out to Delhi for domestic work. The mother was asked why she decided to send the young daughter (about 14 years) so far off instead of her elder son when it was a common practice for men to migrate for construction and other types of work from Bengal to the other parts of India. Her response was the following: The burden on the brother was too much therefore she had to go. How much the brother alone can do? I don’t know how much the employers pay her as she has recently gone for work. I also don’t have much idea about the kind of work she does, may be cleaning, washing the pots etc. This indifferent attitude on the part of the family seems to be all the more grave in the context of the high rate of trafficking of girls reported from the area and the higher possibility of girl children being sexually abused in any case. Clearly, the families in their survival strategies to cope with continuous abject poverty are being guided by their strong boy preference. In this case, it looks like a cooperative outcome of the decision of the household elders to abandon the most easily dispensable member as a strategy to fight with continuous abject poverty. This takes us back to the theoretical conjectures put forward at the beginning of this section. It is worth noting here the strategies followed by the Taiwanese households regarding daughters’ joining factory work. Wolf (1990: 5) quoting Greenough (1985: 277), mentions: ‘Parents socialize daughters “to believe that they themselves were worthless, and that literally everything they had – their bodies, their upbringing, their schooling – belonged to their parents and had to be paid for . . . Since daughters permanently leave their natal home upon marriage, they must pay back their debt early in life. Because daughters were seen as “short-term” members of the family, parents did not waste resources in schooling them’ (see

When daughters migrate  99 also Chant 1998: 12; Webbink, Smits and Jong 2012: 631). It will not be out of place to remember here that while critiquing Becker’s unitary households, Folbre (1986: 19) says that the ‘rotten kid theorem’ does not solve the problem of ‘rotten parents’. Naila Kabeer and Simeen Mahmud (2004: 151) note that most of the migrant garment workers in Dhaka city are young unmarried girls from poor land-less rural families entering into the labour market for the first time. As they get older, domestic responsibilities of marriage and child care pull them back home. They search for flexible part-time work. Let us remember that the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh share a common past with close cultural affinities such as the practice of excluding women from paid work outside the home. Kabeer and Mahmud (2004: 147) also show how household barriers were relaxed as a result of pressure of poverty on the one hand and opening up of opportunities in the garment sector, on the other. But interestingly, here also the younger women are chosen to be sent to the alien city in search of work, and are called back according to the dictates of ‘domesticity’. We take up this issue in more detail in the last chapter. Turning to Sandeshkhali, do the mothers of the migrant girl children also work outside the home? If so, what are its implications for girl children’s migration for paid outside work? Our survey in the city as well as in village Piyali revealed that the mother’s earning by way of outside work made a significant difference in the fate of the girl child. The mothers in all the 17 families (except the one where the mother is dead) we visited in Sandeshkhali also worked outside for pay. But there is a significant difference between the two groups. As livelihood options are severely restricted, the illiterate women of Sandeshkhali mostly collect small fish from the adjacent river Vidyadhari and supply those to the local fisheries in return for a pittance. In a remote village like Sandeshkhali exposure to the media and other sources of information about the world at large is restricted, more so for the women. Such a situation is clearly not at all conducive to the development of agency of the mothers in question. Let us remember in this context that there has been a long-standing debate whether paid work outside the home necessarily increases women’s freedom and agency in all places and under all circumstances (see, Kogel 2003 for a cogent discussion on this). To conclude, girl children’s WPR in India is significantly high. It is one among the highest in the urban areas of West Bengal, a state which records historically low female WPR. Data suggest that in this state girl children’s WPR often surpasses that of the boy children, while women’s WPR in all other age groups is significantly much lower than that of the men. Moreover, girl children migrate for paid work in many more numbers than boy children. This is contradictory to the trends of women’s and men’s migration for work. Many of the discriminatory practices against women and girl children begin within the household. This chapter explored these apparently contradictory outcomes by looking into the role of the family. Our findings suggest that usually women and children participate in the paid labour market outside the home when male income becomes insufficient. Households decide to send the older women instead of the younger ones for paid outside

100  When daughters migrate work when such work is more remunerative for older women, and they can combine job requirements with family responsibilities. Thus older women noticeably prefer part-time domestic work compared to whole-time domestic service or in some cases even to factory jobs. In most of these cases girl children share the unpaid family chores. In other situations when the mother’s outside income from the local market is less compared to the young daughter’s earning as migrant whole-time paid domestic, the family decides to send the girl child for work even though it can turn out to be more hazardous for her compared to a boy child. Family tries to protect the boy child as long as possible given the ‘perceived contribution response’. Besides boy preference, the ideology of domesticity has also turned out to be a significant factor determining which female member (mother/ daughter) will be sent out for work at times of financial needs. Given the strong cultural inhibition to women’s work outside the home and the widely prevalent discriminatory practices against girl children, younger girls turned out to be the natural choice to take up the brunt of supplementary income. However, even in the cases where mothers’ work and/or paid employment earned them some decision-making power and the fate of the girl children were found to be better, the strong influence of the ideology of domesticity almost always complicated the final outcome.

Notes   1 (a) Here WPR refers to the reported statistics and depends on the definitions used for work in the secondary data sources that systematically undervalues women’s and girl children’s work participation in India (Sen and Sen 1985). (b) This statistic refers to main workers alone and is likely to increase substantially if we include the marginal workers also. This concept has been discussed in detail in Chapter Three.   2 Women’s WPR in India is known to be much lower than many parts of the world. According to 2001 Census, only around 94 women work in every 1,000 women population in urban India when we consider main workers alone. In urban West Bengal, it is around 92 (see Table 3.6).   3 See the discussion on ‘domesticity’ in Chapter Three.   4 Contributions to the household by women and girl children are being valued less than men and boy children: thus women and girl children should receive less.   5 This is strikingly different from the states suggesting high work participation of women such as former Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu where the high WPRs are represented by the poorest classes.   6 A related observation made from Figure 5.3 is that the gender gap in migration is the lowest in the age group immediately following the youngest one. As women get married mostly before the age of 18 (National Family Health Survey, Third Round) in the state, the main concentration of migrated working women between 15 and 19 years is likely to take place around the lower boundary of the age group of (15 to 19) years. On the contrary, concentration of the males is likely to be around the higher boundary of the same age cohort. While we have supportive evidence from our primary data, it requires large scale primary data to prove this conjecture.   7 Though Planning Commission’s most recent estimates suggest a decline in poverty (both rural and urban) in 2009–2010 in WB (The Telegraph, 22–03–2012).  8 ‘Jhee’ refers to domestic maid.

When daughters migrate  101   9 Quisumbing and Maluccio (2000: 53) quoting Guyer (1997: 121), however, notes that though across countries, the most consistent effect is that relative resources controlled by women tend to increase the shares spent on education it cannot be held as the sign of mothers being more altruistic than fathers. They argue as for certain reasons mothers expect to live longer than fathers; mothers have a purely economic reason for spending more to have healthy and educated children who will look after them in their old age. 10 Interestingly during the course of our survey in the city, we found that most of our respondents were enthusiastic viewers of some specific television serials. Some such popular serials with suggestive titles like Kiu ki sans vi kavi bahu thi (‘Because the mother-in-law was once a daughter-in-law’), Sansar sukher hoi ramanir gune (‘The woman makes the household a pleasant place to live in’), Ma (‘The mother’) are telecasted for months together. With their strong patriarchal overtones, these telecasts are often great levellers as they are able to attract both the domestic and her employer, the middle class house wife. This can happen either because of a sudden calamity or because of prolonged 11  non-performance of an economy leading to crunch in production and thereby in better employment opportunities. 12 Whole-time domestics are enumerated at the place of work by the NSS or the Census. 13 Block refers to cluster of villages. 14 Unmarried minor girls seemed to be the most preferred group of domestics followed by the destitute adult women by the employers. 15 It is important to note here that while WB shows the highest percentage of women getting married below the age of 18 in the country as a whole, in the rural parts of North 24 Parganas, it is as high as 80 per cent (Govt. of WB 2010).

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102  When daughters migrate Chakravarty I. and Chakravarty, D. (2013), ‘For bed and board only: Women and girl children domestics in post-partition Kolkata’, Modern Asian Studies, 47 (2): 581–611. Chant, S. (1998), ‘Households, gender and rural-urban migration: Reflections on linkages and considerations for policy’, Environment and Urbanization, 10 (1): 12. Davidoff, L. and Hall, C. (1987), Family Fortunes: Men and women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dreze, J. and Sen, A. (2002), India Development and Participation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Folbre, N. (1986), ‘Hearts and spades: Paradigms of household economics’, World Development, 14 (2): 245–255. Folbre, N. (1988), ‘The Black Four of Hearts: Towards a New Paradigm of Household Economics’, in J. Bruce and D. Dwyer (eds.), A Home Divided (pp. 248–264), Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Folbre, N. (2001), The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values, New York: New Press. Ganguly Thukral, E. and Ali, B. (2005), ‘Status of Children in India Inc’, New Delhi: HAQ, Centre for Child Rights. Giri, P. (1998), ‘Urbanization in WB, 1951–1991’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33 (47–48): 3033–3038. Government of WB (2010), ‘District Human Development Report: North 24 Parganas’, Development & Planning Department. Hamid, A. (2006), ‘Domestic workers: Harsh everyday realities’, Economic and Political Weekly, 41 (13): 1235–1237. Hartmann, H. (1979), ‘The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards More Progressive Union’, Capital and Class, 8 (Summer): 1–33. Hartmann, H. (1987), ‘The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class and Political Struggle: The Example of Housework’ in S. Harding (ed.), Feminism and Methodology (pp. 109–134), Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Jain, D. (1985), ‘The Household Trap: Report on a Field Survey of Female Activity Patterns’ in D. Jain and N. Banerjee (eds.), Tyranny of the Household Imaginative Essays on Women’s Work, Delhi: Shakti Books. Kabeer, N. and S. Mahmud (2004), ‘Globalization, gender and poverty: Bangladeshi women workers in export and local markets’, Journal of International Development, 16 (1): 93–109. Kambhampati, U. (2009), ‘Child schooling and work decisions in India: The Role of household and regional gender equality’, Feminist Economics, 15 (4): 77–112. Katz, E. (1991), ‘Breaking the myth of harmony: Theoretical and methodological guidelines to the study of rural third world households’, Review of Radical Political Economics, 23 (3–4): 37–56. Kodoth, P. and V. J Verghese (2012), ‘Protecting women or engendering the emigration process’, Economic and Political Weekly, XLVII (43). Kogel, C. M. (2003), ‘Globalization and women’s paid work: Expanding freedom?’ Feminist Economics, 9 (2–3): 163–183. Kundu, A. (2008), ‘Conditions of work and rights of the female domestic workers of Kolkata’, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 50 (4): 853–866. Mankiller, W. P. (ed.) (1998), The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History (pp. 263–266), Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Mies, M. (1989), Capital Accumulation and Patriarchy on a World Scale, London/New York: Zed Books.

When daughters migrate  103 Nair, P. M. and Sen, S. (2005), Trafficking in Women and Children in India, Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Quisumbing, R. A. and J. A. Maluccio (2000), ‘Intra Household Allocation and Gender Relations: New Empirical Evidence’, Washington, DC: The World Bank Development Research Group, The World Bank. Ray, R. (2000, Fall), ‘Masculinity, Femininity, and Servitude: Domestic Workers in Calcutta in the Late Twentieth Century’, Feminist Studies, 26 (3): 691–718. Roy, A. (2008), Kolkata Requiem: Gender and the Politics of Poverty, India: Pearson Longman. Save the Children (2004), ‘Evaluation of Project “Comprehensive Intervention on Child Domestic Work” ’, Kolkata. Save the Children (2006), ‘Abuse Among Child Domestic Workers’, Kolkata. Save the Children (2009), ‘Small Hands Big Work’, Kolkata. Sen, A. (1981), Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sen, A. (1990), ‘Gender and Cooperative Conflicts’, in I. Tinker (ed.), Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development (pp. 123–149), New York: Oxford University Press. Sen, S. (1999), Women and Labour in Late Colonial India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sen, G. and Sen, C. (1985, April 27), ‘Women’s Domestic Work and Economic Activity: Results from National Sample Survey’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XX, No. 17: WS49–WS56. Standing, H. (1991), Dependence and Autonomy Women’s Employment and the Family in Calcutta, London and New York: Routledge. Webbink, E., Smits, J. and De Jong, E. (2012), ‘Hidden child labor: Determinants of housework and family business work of children in 16 developing countries’, World Development, 40 (3): 631–642. Wolf, D. (1990), ‘Daughters, decisions and domination: An empirical and conceptual critique of household strategies’, Development and Change, 21: 43–74.

6 From family members to invisible essentials Masters, mistresses and their domestic workers

Paid domestic service has been one of the most common occupations of the urban poor in colonial Bengal and more so in post-Partition West Bengal. Unlike the developed parts of the world where the importance of domestic service has been argued to have declined for some time before its reappearance in the last few decades, India and more particularly West Bengal never experienced any such decreasing trend during at least the last half century. Whilst the demand for paid domestic service in the urban areas of the state has been increasing, the providers of such service have changed. We have already documented in Chapter Four how domestic service was more and more feminized in post-Partition urban West Bengal. The erstwhile male domestic servants from Bihar, Orissa and the United Provinces were gradually replaced by immigrant females from the former East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, and migrant women and girl children from the rural parts of the state. With the increasing participation of educated middle class urban women in paid outside work in the state during the same time, the nature of service expected from the new domestic workers was also changing. Although maidservants were well known in colonial Bengal and even much before, the new maid was emerging in a more crucial role of caregiver and housekeeper in the nuclear households of post 1947 days. The substitution of the ‘wifely duties’ by the paid maid also helped to strengthen the notion of the home as a gendered space. Along with this, there was a marked change in the nature of a section of the employers of domestic workers, the urban middle class, from the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when a significant portion of this class started to reap the benefits of economic reform. Whether these changes in the profile of the domestic workers, on the one hand, and the increasing affluence of a section of the employers, on the other led to any change in the relationship between the master/mistress and the maid deserves some attention. There are some excellent studies on the relationship between domestic workers and their employers in the context of modern England. Such studies are based on accounts left by the domestics as well as the employers, the urban middle class. While the earlier generation of these scholars (Davidoff 1974; Horn 1975; Newby 1975; Taylor 1979) on the subject tended to analyse master–servant relationship in more or less unilinear narratives of oppression and resistance, more recent studies focus on shades in between (Light 2010; Steedman 2007). Middle class writings

Invisible essentials  105 in Bengal on domestic workers focusing on the relationship between these two social groups are particularly rich from the late nineteenth century to the early decades of Independence. However, the numerous servants and maids in colonial Bengal have hardly left any record of their lives. On the basis of middle class writings, Swapna M. Banerjee (2004) attempted to reconstruct master–servant relationship in Bengal during the late colonial period. The dominant note of paternalism and class consciousness which she has indicated in such bhadralok writings of the period under consideration was interspersed with middle class self-critique. This self-critique assumed a new form in the realistic and leftist writings of the 1940s and the 1950s. Middle class lament in literature over the end of the ‘good old faithful servant’ as well as its self-critique, however, could be less and less heard around the 1970s and the 1980s. The employers of paid domestic workers in colonial Bengal were British officials, European private businessmen and Bengali upper and middle class. Both the white and non-white employers articulated a lot on the aspect of employer-domestic worker relationship. The colonists’ discourse was mostly aimed at essentializing the criminal nature of the native domestic workers and the need to control them through legislation (Kolsky 2010). The background to attempts at legislation was often the excesses such as physical violence and murder of Indian domestic workers and other menials by European planters and army men. The Bengali middle class made a systematic critique of such colonial measures during the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century in various sorts of writings including editorials in newspapers, articles and fictions. The idealized employer–domestic worker relationship which we find in many autobiographical writings and fictions of the period was in fact a cultural critique of the ‘commercialized west’ and suggested a strong urge to stick to pre-colonial bonds of caste and kinship ties. The Bengali middle class formulated the menial labour question in a strong nationalist overtone a century ago. Any issue which could have pointed out confrontation between members of the indigenous society were either avoided or very carefully dealt with. The question concerning the domestic workers, the largest group of menials the bhadralok had to deal with, found widest coverage in literature, including autobiographies, memoirs, didactic writings and fictions. In fact, the sheer number of reminiscences of domestic workers of the bygone days left behind by the bhadralok (mostly upper caste Hindus) and a section of the bhadramahila and the similarity in their mood attracts attention of any careful reader. However, domestic workers were more and more marginalized in literary discourse from the 1980s. They have been pushed out of the centre stage of the world of Bangla literature which they had once occupied and seem to have instead captured headlines in newspapers carrying reports either of grueling torture on them or their alleged involvement in cases of murder and arson in employers’ homes. In the present chapter, we take up the 1980s as the cutoff point as we find a marked change in what we choose to call ‘the politics of representation’ since then. Concern about servants and maids gradually started losing importance and can hardly be found in the works of any major writer during the last two or three decades.

106  Invisible essentials Whether this waning concern in representation has any bearing on the relationship between domestic workers and their employers in real life is difficult to probe. However, there is an increasing number of reports of abuse of domestic workers (especially of whole-time girl children maids living with their employers) and also of the involvement of domestic workers in theft and killing of employers, in the recent years (‘Domestic Disturbance’, Outlook, 23 April 2012; ‘ Servants turn killers’ India Today,15 January 2011). Before the 1990s, both types of reports were quite scarce. The late 1980s and the 1990s is also exactly the period from when some sections of the Indian/Bengali middle class has been growing in size, in affluence, and been hiring more paid help. The social distance between the middle class and their menials and the consciousness about such distance are also likely to be increasing. The present chapter has five sections. The second section briefly discusses middle class representations of domestic workers in Bangla written literature before the 1970s and the 1980s. We have also tried to explore how different ideological discourses such as nationalism, realism and leftism possibly molded middle class attitude towards their personal staff. The sources of information are newspaper reports and mainly literary discourse of different types produced during the period. For the more contemporary period, as there is a near absence of representation of domestic workers in any significant way in Bangla written literature, we concentrate on how some sections of present day middle class employers perceive their relationships with their maids and servants. Thus in section three, we first document contemporary newspaper reports on abuse of domestic workers particularly of whole-time girl child maids in middleclass homes and then move on to record the responses of different sections of middle class employers such as the service sector professionals, home makers, NGO persons, trade union leaders etc. We depend on interviews conducted by us as well as by others for the purpose. Section four attempts to situate the problem in the wider context of the increasing income inequality and the consolidation of the middle class. However, in the absence of servants’ accounts the story of their relationship with the employers is one-sided and often tends to be unilinear. Archival materials are not of much help either as it is difficult to reconstruct the subtleties of social history from official records. Oral history or large scale interviews with domestic workers could have yielded significant insights into the complexities of the problem if there were any scope of comparison between the accounts by generations of servants and maids. Therefore we have to rely on the accounts of generations of employers only, and that too on the most articulate section, the middle class literati, who wrote and talked. But the middle class never was and is homogenous as there are several layers within this class. The views of the lower middle class is also absent in this narrative. A survey of popular television serials, popular cinema and theater would have given us entry in to the world of those sections of the middle class whom we usually miss in written literature. As such a survey requires a separate study we could not afford to concentrate on that. Therefore in the almost absence of any significant reflection on the problem in the written literature of the recent period we depend on how different sections of the urban upper middle

Invisible essentials  107 class, the literati, the socially powerful men and women with some say in politics, deal with issues related to domestic workers. We try to understand the real motives behind what they say about their domestic workers as well as the meaning of their silence, or what they don’t say. Our forced choice of evidence tends to lead us to generalizations about present day master–servant relationship. Because of the above-mentioned limitation of sources, we have missed the shades that exist in any human relationship. The only recent example of a domestic worker writing her life is the two memoirs in succession by Baby Halder who migrated to Delhi leaving her marital home in West Bengal, to work as a whole-time domestic (Halder 2004, 2008). She describes in detail how after much bitter experience in former work places, she finally found an employer who treated her not only as a human being but also encouraged her to become a writer. If there were many more Baby Halders, it would have been easier to reconstruct our story. The present study is thus an attempt to understand why a vibrant chorus on employer–domestic worker relationship gradually dies down and is replaced by a different discourse, rather than an exploration into the real world where masters, mistresses and maids interacted. We try to situate this difference in middle class attitude in the wider context of class and gender relations in the state. We particularly focus on the increasing economic gap between the classes that has recently taken place. This is also the period when the profile of the domestic workers in the state has been changing with more women and girls below the age of 14 years, arguably the most vulnerable section of the society, entering into the expanding care economy in the state. A study of middle class attitude towards this section of people will also involve an analysis of the complex relationship between gender and class. It is always easier to measure increase or decrease in economic gap than in social difference between the classes. Dreze and Sen (2013) note that there is much evidence of growing economic inequality in India in recent decades. For instance, per capita expenditure data suggest an increase in rural–urban disparities as well as growing inequality in the urban areas. The comparatively affluent in the urban areas have been the main beneficiaries of rapid economic growth in India in recent years. Similarly, per capita income data indicate a growing concentration of incomes at the top, and wealth data also point to growing disparities in the post-reform period. This is also true for West Bengal. We try to explore whether this increasing economic inequality has led to possibly deteriorating social relations between the employers and their domestic workers. Social relationship between the two above-mentioned groups of people can be reconstructed on the basis of contemporary newspaper reports. Newspaper reports on the abuse of domestic servants are, however, a frequent feature only from the post-2000s and more so after 2006, when employing children below 14 years as domestic workers was banned. However, it is quite difficult to determine whether abuse of servants and maids by their employers is entirely a recent phenomenon, increasing in the recent years, or has a longer history. The difficulty arises mainly due to lack of evidence. Compared to the recent times, we scarcely get any data on the abuse of household domestic workers, except those committed by European

108  Invisible essentials settlers, during the earlier period of this discussion, presumably because of the fact that the main source of evidence on master–servant relationship was the writings of the Bengali middleclass employers themselves. However, it seems unlikely that if cases of abuse of domestic workers were frequent in Indian homes, the British press would miss such opportunity to malign the ‘babu’ (the Bengali gentleman).

1.  The lost world of masters and servants The nationalist media vigorously took up the cases of murder and abuse of labourers including domestic workers at the hands of the white employers during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. The colonial judiciary often defended such cases of murder as a result of hitting by pointing out that the Indians had weak spleens prone to rupture even when struck casually. Jordanna Bailkin (2006: 480–481) shows how Indian national newspapers reacted to such racist stand taken by the judiciary. The Amritabazar Patrika asked sarcastically why Indians were so much more likely to die of ruptured spleen when they were struck by whites than by members of their own race.1 Somprakash characterized ‘boot and spleen’ cases as so typical as to have become ‘proverbial’: what the editors described as ‘That Old Story Again’.2 In the Oudh Punch of 1884, a symbolic spleen addresses the forces of nature that have made it so peculiarly vulnerable to foreign violence.3 Between June 1895 and December 1895, Amritabazar Patrika carried reports of and editorials on at least five such cases of assault against native labourers by European employers. Detailed reports of the hearing in the Dinapore Punkha Coolie Murder Case in which the accused George Howard, ‘a private in the A. Company of the Manchester Regiment stationed at Dinapore’ was acquitted of the charge of murdering a punkha-coolie, was published day after day by the same newspaper.4 Sarcastic editorials were written often covering 3 to 4 columns.5 Then again in September 1895 detailed reports of hearing in another case where Andrew Anderson, storekeeper of Messers Burn and Company Engineers, Howrah, was charged with ‘culpable homicide not amounting to murder’ of a native coolie employed in the company.6 Reports of such major cases of alleged murder were interspersed with coverage on comparatively minor cases of assault on Indian labourers by European employers. The biasness and incompetence of the administration and the judiciary was pointed out and ridiculed by citing examples of such cases where Indians were harassed with false charges (1 July 1895) or punished heavily for comparatively minor offences (13 October 1895). The servant question was, however, most thoroughly dealt with in late colonial literary works produced by the Indian/Bengali intelligentsia. While generations of memoir writers articulated a most cordial master–servant relationship, the altruistic family was not the only image we get from Bangla literature produced during the period. Some of the autobiography writers were quite conscious about their shortcomings in dealing with the menials. Prasannamayee Debi (1857–1939) observed in her memoir Sekaler Katha (1901) that the relationship between the employers and their domestic staff was no longer the same as it had been in her childhood. She also held the employers responsible for the deteriorating relationship.7

Invisible essentials  109 Kalyani Datta, though writing much later than Prasannamoyee, on employer– domestic worker relationship prevalent in middle class families in Kolkata during the early decades of the twentieth century, also laments that relationship between the employers and the domestic workers has much deteriorated in her lifetime.8 This mood of middle class self-critique is reflected also in creative literature such as in numerous contemporary popular satires9 as well as in short stories and poems by Rabindranath Tagore10 and others. Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, Tagore and other major literary figures during the period dealt with the problem of how best to handle the menials in considerable detail also in their discursive writings. Along with the ‘woman question’ the ‘servant question’ was another issue centring on which the late nineteenth century Bengali literati built their case for cultural difference between the ‘commercialized’ or ‘materialistic’ west and the ‘spiritual’ east. Whilst the colonial government attempted to formalize master–servant relationship by bringing the matter within the scope of law, a number of Bengali literati rejected the idea of a legal contract between the social classes. While critiquing the British attitude to cases of abuse of Indian menials at the hands of European employers, Tagore argued that for such kind of treatment Indians themselves were to blame: ‘We should never forget that dignity cannot be ensured by law; it has to be earned’ (1894).11 Stating that the fault lies in the way Bengalis themselves treat one another, he asked: ‘Do we not beat up our servants, treat our subordinates with arrogance and express disrespect towards the lower classes?’ (1894)12 Bhudev Mukhopadhyay (1875–1876) had earlier argued the practice of physical violence against the menials is an imitation of the British.13 An anonymous article on the difference between the master–servant relationship of the bygone days and the author’s time, serialized in consecutive two issues of the Bamabodhini Patrika (1903–1904) argued: ‘The present-day master-servant relationship has become more or less contractual. Earlier it was between two human beings, now it is a give and take relationship. That is why we Indians also sometimes talk [in favour] of master-servant laws’.14 This mood of lack of enthusiasm for legal reforms on the one hand and faith in self-reform on the other, in fact characterize a majority of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century middle class discourse on ‘the lower classes’ in general and on ‘master–servant relationship’ in particular. While discursive prose writers argue in favour of a change in middle class code of conduct or a return to past modes of social behaviour, most memoir and fiction writers imagine to have experienced an ideal relationship in their childhood. However, representation of master–servant relationship also varied with time. A century that spans the 1870s and the 1970s cannot be treated as a monolithic block. The Great Depression of the 1930s, the 1943 Bengal Famine, the Second World War and finally the Partition of India and Bengal – the series of events together transformed the hitherto known world. The 1940s saw the experiments with realism in Bangla literature along with unprecedented economic hardship and social distress. One aspect of this realism in literature was the portrayal of employer-domestic worker relationship in a different manner: middle class self-critique assumed a new form. Middle class gaze was replaced by that

110  Invisible essentials of the marginalized: how the lower orders such as the menials looked at their employers. Savitri Roy (1918–1985) in one of her remarkable short stories titled ‘Ora Sab Pare’ [‘They are capable of anything’] (1945) portrayed the shattered image of the middle class employers in the eyes of their domestic workers. The chief character of the story is Golapi, a part-time maid who migrated to the city in search of food after the Great Famine of 1943. She was initially much fond of her employers, a young and educated middle class couple, who had seemed to be much unlike the babus of her village days, the brute zamindars and darogahs. Golapi was shocked to learn that her new employers were not really much unlike the former ones when she was unduly suspected of stealing an ornament of her mistress. In another short story ‘Swarga Hoite Biday’[‘Farewell from the Heaven’] (1950) written in the context of the Partition, the author describes the agony of an old maid when she came to know that her employers who she believed treated her like their ‘apanjon’ (family member), would migrate to India leaving her in strife torn Pakistan. In both stories the central characters are the maids, in the eyes of whom the middle class employers become (ora) the other. In still another short story, ‘Radharani’ (1945), the young widow, Radharani, worked as a maid first in a zamindar’s house in a village and later on in a middle class family in a city. In both the places, she was raped by her employers. Sulekha Sanyal (1928–1962) novelist and political activist, in a novel, ‘Navankur’ (1956) [The Seedling] believed to be based on the author’s own life, dealt in some detail with the theme of binary opposition between the value systems of the older generation of feudal lords and the new generation of intellectuals, in respect to their relationship with domestic workers. In ‘Navankur’ [‘The Seedling’], the story of Chhabi, the intellectual and political activist, this binary opposition is reflected in the behaviour pattern of old household servants who sided with the younger generation in cases of conflict between the two generations of the zamindar family. Child domestic workers (mostly boy children) have also been represented either in memoirs or in fictions.15 Achintya Kumar Sengupta, another noted writer of the realist phase, in a story titled ‘Apurna’ [‘Unfinished’] (1939), narrated how a boy child domestic worker was made a victim of middle class duality. Another contemporary writer, Santosh Kumar Ghose also portrayed a boy child domestic as the central character of a short story titled ‘Chinemati’ [‘Porcelein’]. It is a story about how a child domestic worker comes to know about the fragility of middle class life. Middle class duality vis-à-vis the domestic workers was also the central theme of a remarkable short story, ‘Sadhucharan’ (1985) by Dibyendu Palit. The most famous in this realistic series was of course, a whole novel on a boy child domestic worker and his unscrupulous employers, ‘Kharij’ [‘The Case Is Closed’] (1974), by Ramapada Chowdhury. However, as has been already mentioned girl child domestic workers hardly feature in Bangla fiction, though in reality they seem to have crowded the market in urban West Bengal at least since the late 1970s. Much later, Mahasweta Debi wrote on domestic workers in the backdrop of internal migration due to rural dispossession in post-independent West Bengal. Chinta, a part-time maid working in south Kolkata, who had migrated to the city

Invisible essentials  111 from Medinipur along with others, is the central character in Mahasweta’s short story ‘Chinta’ (1984), which according to the author, is based on her actual experience. In this story also we find an attempt to expose the duality in middle class treatment of the sub-altern. We have already seen in Chapter Four how Narendranath Mitra in his short stories published during the 1940s and the 1950s portrayed middle class and lower middle class families (many of whom were immigrants) whose women went out for paid work leaving their homes in the care of female domestics (for example, Abataranika [‘The Sequel’] (1949), later made into a classic film titled Mahanagar [‘The Big City’] by Satyajit Ray (1963). In Abataranika, we find the maid performing the ‘wifely duties’ such as looking after the children, making the beds etc. We have discussed in Chapter Four how the maids (often whole-time) were becoming a necessity for those middle class families whose women went to work and also how poor refugee women were often seen to cater to this new social need. The paid maid was emerging in a new social role of housekeeper cum caregiver in post 1947 Kolkata. In a very interesting story, titled ‘Dwicharini’ (1949), Mitra wove on the intricate competitive relationship between two employer families over a young refugee maid in post-Partition Kolkata.16 In a number of other stories, he depicted the evolution of love and hate relationship between the male domestic workers and the young daughters of the employers which sometimes also ended in marriages (for instance, ‘Shubhadrishti’, 1946; ‘Puratani’, 1956). The new social need to employ whole-time female domestic workers has also been borne out by contemporary memoirs. Phire Dekha (1998), a memoir by Pramila Datta, a refugee woman teaching in a school in post-Partition Kolkata has already been mentioned. In this book, the author gratefully remembers how she had been able to go out for work leaving her child in the custody of a very responsible old maid. She refers the maid as one with the same status of a mother-in-law in her memoir (Datta 1998/1936: 102–103). Bharati Ray refers to her dependence on the paid caregiver who looked after her baby daughter while she went out for work.17 Middle class working women writing their relationship with domestic workers thus represent a new genre, different from the nationalist altruism or the leftist/realist self-critique. There are, however, still other discourses on the bhadralok-menial relationship in Bengal. Middle class memoirs, though scarcely, also attest to more harsh treatment meted out to household servants and maids. From Pratapchandra Majumder we come to know that during the early years of the last century, servants were quite often beaten in Bengali bhadralok households, a practice which the author of the manual, Streecharitra (1890: 104–105), does not approve of. Contrary to the evidence provided by Prasannamoyee Debi (1901) and Kalyani Datta (1992) regarding the practice of feeding servants and maids before the mistress of the household sat for her lunch or dinner, Jnanadanandini Debi (1850–1941) recalls in her memoir (1957) that as a child bride, she saw in Tagore family, maids being offered leftovers.18 She, however, does not disapprove of the practice. Sudhangshubala Sarkar (1895–1987) recalls the way servants and maids were punished (1990: 42).19 Champakali Basu (2003: 24–25), much later (mid-twentieth century

112  Invisible essentials north Kolkata), referred to more incidences of ill-treatment. Balaichand Mukhopadhyay recalls in his autobiography (Paschatpat) how he used to flog his servants as punishment for disobedience (1978: 240). Thus although scarcely, memoirs also testify to the fact that employer–domestic relationship was not always that cordial as has been claimed by most middle class autobiographers. The only known autobiography written by a domestic worker himself, during the period under consideration, attests to experiences of abuse. Sumit Sarkar (2004) has quoted ‘Haridas Palit (a pseudonym), who introduces himself at the beginning of his autobiography Bangiya Patit Jatir Karmi (1915) as a Hindu and by jati a Namasudra. He has narrated his early life in a village in Bardhaman district where he worked, like his mother and sister, as servant in the house of an upper-caste master. There he was frequently insulted, flogged and treated as an ‘untouchable’. He recalls how his master always had a wash after beating him (Sarkar 2004: 69–70). It is also evident from contemporary newspaper reports that relationship between domestic workers and their employers was not always as cordial as claimed by most middle class commentators. Reports of involvement of domestic workers in crimes against employers were sometimes published in dailies20 though those against domestic workers by Indian employers were almost nil during the period. However, as already mentioned, if such cases of abuse which led to death of domestic workers were frequent in Indian middle class homes during the period, it seems unlikely that the European press would have missed them. In both the patronizing representations and middle class self-critique, domestic workers were very much present. They were crucially present also in those kinds of writing which prescribed social distance with them and the need to control them (Banerjee 2004). In contrast, literature produced during the last two or three decades have either erased the domestic workers out or pushed them to the margin. They come and go serving tea or asking for instructions from the mistress or the master and are much like the invisible characters in detective stories. The reader is hardly made aware of their presence. For instance, if we compare the portrayal of domestic servants in popular Bangla adventure or detective stories written by two generations of authors, we find some important differences. Hemendra Kumar Roy’s Ramhari acts as a guardian of the two young adventure heroes, Bimal and Kumar. The old and loyal servant nourishes them with good food, accompanies them to far off and dangerous lands, even to Mars, and even risks his life to protect them (Jokher Dhon [The Treasure Guarded by the Demi-god] 1924; Abar Jokher Dhon [The Treasure Guarded by the Demi-god Revisited] 1933; Meghduter Mortye Agaman [The Extra-Terrestrial Arrives on the Earth] 1933). Saradindu Bandopadhyay’s Putiram assists the detective Byomkesh in solving mysteries (Upasanhar [The End], 1936; Adim Ripu [The Original Vice], 1955). However, Satyajit Ray’s Srinath is seen in no other role than serving tea and that too when asked for by his employer Feluda, the detective (Sonar Kella [The Golden Fortress] 1971; Joi Baba Felunath [The Elephant God] 1973; Kailashe Kelenkari [Vandalism in Kailash] 1975). Again, almost every major writer before the 1970s/1980s has contributed at least one or two important pieces on the theme of employer–domestic worker relationship. The list includes Rabindranath Tagore,

Invisible essentials  113 Sarat Chandra Chattopahdyay, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Narendranath Mitra and many others. In contrast, those writing after the above-mentioned period, barring a few exceptions, have hardly concentrated on the question.21 Important film directors during the post-1980s period have also hardly dealt with the complexities of the problem.22

2.  Masters and maids: the present We have been discussing how servants and maids have been pushed to the margins of Bangla literature during the recent years. Domestic workers have, instead, captured newspaper headlines. We begin this section with contemporary media representations of abuse of domestic workers in urban middle class homes in the state. Media reports indicate that almost all such victims are girl children who had migrated alone from the interior rural areas of the state to work as wholetime maids in the city. Here are some instances: Baishakhi Pradhan from East Medinipore (West Bengal), aged 12 years and working as a whole-time maid in a middle class family in the Thakurpukur area of south-west Kolkata, was found hanged in her employer’s residence on 10 July 2009 (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 11 July 2009). The dead body of another child domestic worker, Alo Sen (aged 11 years) from the South 24 Parganas, was reported to have been dropped on the street by her employers, a business family residing in Howrah (Pratidin, 29 July 2008). Others, more fortunate, managed to flee from their employers’ places, but with severe injuries caused by burns or beating (Kolkata, Ananda Bazar Patrika, 4 September 2013; 11 October; 11 May 2012; 25 February 2008). Among them, Uma Mondal, also aged 11, fled from her employers place at Jadavpur, south Kolkata, with severe burn injury (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 25 February 2008). Yet another, aged about 15 years, escaped from her employer’s place at Alipur, south-west Kolkata, with marks of severe injury all over her body, caused by beating (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 7 November 2009). In the last case, the employers happened to be high officials of the central government. A senior official of the state police was also reported to be involved in torturing a 7-year-old girl domestic worker who also managed to flee from her employers’ place (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 7 June 2009). Such cases of abuse ranging from beating, causing burn injuries, keeping in starvation and isolation to rape and murder are quite regularly reported by the media. Quite expectedly many other cases of abuse do not come to the police at all. In a survey conducted by Save the Children (2006) on child domestic workers in West Bengal, some glaring statistics came out. It reported that around 68 per cent of the children surveyed had faced physical abuse; 46.6 per cent among them had faced severe abuse that had led to injuries; 32.2 per cent had their private parts touched by the abuser, while 20 per cent had been forced to have sexual intercourse; 50 per cent of these children do not get any leave; 37 per cent never see their families; 32 per cent of families have no idea where their daughters are working; 27 per cent admitted they knew they were getting abused; 78 per cent of workers receive less than rupees 500 a month. The facts of being girls, underage,

114  Invisible essentials single migrants and working in isolated places invisible from public gaze have all possibly added to their vulnerability. In this section, we will try to situate middle class responses to cases of abuse in particular, and employers’ views on issues related to domestic workers in general in the context of widening economic and social distance between the classes since the 1990s. Scholars on the globalization of care work in the present day developed parts of the world focus on the reappearance of paid domestic service with a changing profile of caregivers. The traditional lifecycle servants and maids in early modern Europe were first replaced by lifelong domestic workers from the rural areas and then by the immigrant nannies and caregivers from the developing countries of south Asia, Latin America and East Europe in today’s world. Sheila Mcisaac Cooper (2004) has shown how in early modern England many masters and servants were connected by kinship ties and patron–client relationships, a fact, which according to her, worked in favour of the young adolescent domestics as protection against abuse. By the nineteenth century the upper and middle classes started to withdraw their children from domestic service and as a result, the above-mentioned ties between the master and the servant broke down. Maids and servants were placed in further disadvantage with the entry of school-leavers, persons with little or no qualifications and therefore having limited options, non-English speakers and undocumented workers into paid domestic service in the modern world. Helma Lutz and Susanne Schwalgin (2004), Rhacel Salazar Parrenas (2004) and many others have attracted our attention to the increasing vulnerability of the immigrant women domestic workers who often do not have any legal documents of immigration. Scholars have described the condition of these global migrant domestic workers as that of slaves. Although Indian states except Kerala do not encourage female domestic workers’ cross-border migration, poor rural women and girl children domestic workers migrate to the urban areas on a large scale within the country. Newspaper reports and anecdotal evidence suggest that West Bengal is on the lead in this regard where female domestic workers migrate both within and also outside the state. Chapter Five documents that a significant portion of these workers are girl children below 14 years of age who often migrate singly from their rural homes to work as whole-time domestics in isolated urban middle class homes. Despite the 2006 ban on engaging children below 14 years in paid domestic service, the media regularly reports not only their existence but also, as mentioned at the beginning of this section, the horrible conditions in which they work. We have already discussed the possible reasons behind the preference for girl children whole-time domestic workers among a section of the urban employers. However, even if any employer is ready to reveal that he or she has a child domestic worker, the actual intentions are never fully revealed. For instance, soon after the enactment of the ban (December 2006) a senior bureaucrat of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Sudha Pillai, while commenting in an interview on the rampant practice of employing girl children domestic workers in middle class homes observed: ‘A lot of euphemisms are used . . . These girls are known as

Invisible essentials  115 “playmates” and “household helps” ’.23 According to Mohammad Ashraf Ali of Right Track, a Kolkata-based charity organization, most of the employers of these girl children argue that they are doing a noble job by keeping these young girls as domestic maids.24 For instance, Barnali Bose, a homemaker based in Kolkata says: ‘I know about the legislation . . . But it doesn’t apply to me. I’m a good employer. I’m not doing anything criminal’. She prefers a girl child as a domestic because ‘it’s easy to order them around. If they make mistake, you can twist their ears’.25 In Chapter Five, we have discussed that the vulnerability of the girl child ready to be abandoned by her family possibly increases her value as a preferred whole-time worker. We have also noted that the preference for girl child domestics among a section of the city employers is a combination of economic, social and cultural factors. It may be worth noting here the argument of Karen Tranberg Hansen (1986) working on colonial and post-colonial Zambia. According to Hansen, a manufactured gender role depicted African women as sexually loose and tempting to male employers and therefore the memsahib employers and their counterparts after Independence carefully avoided female household domestic staff. Arguing in much the same line, Raka Ray (2000) emphasized the role of sexuality in determining the preference for pre-puberty girls to young women as whole-time domestic workers in middle class homes in Kolkata of the 1980s. However, when we were conducting our primary survey in April 2014,26 we found employers of domestic workers to be extremely cautious about replying whether they had ever hired the service of a child or not. The reason was understandably the fact that a ban on employing any child below 14 years also in domestic service had already been enacted in 2006. In our discussions with upper middle class professionals from different walks of life in the city, very few acknowledged having employed a child domestic at present. Nearly all held that children should not work and be taken care of by the state. Only one employer thought that if the choice was between starvation and any other alternative including work for pay, no job option was unacceptable. Most of them, however, were quite enthusiastic about pointing out that master–servant relationship now has changed for the worse when compared with that existing in the previous generation. Some noted that the deterioration was due to change in the attitude of the domestic workers who have become more ‘commercial’ and ‘inhuman’. Two employers made a distinction between relationship with a part-time worker (which according to them is more contract based) and that with a whole-time domestic (which is supposed to be more emotion based). One replied that relationship is unequal, based on power and therefore by nature exploitative. Another observed that like any other relationship, the one between an employer and her or his domestic has many dimensions. We also interacted with different groups of domestic workers on the issue.27 A group of women, commuters and recent migrants working in comparatively well-off areas of the city bitterly complained of their work conditions. One lady from this group mentioned that the amount of food served to the maids was so little that they themselves did not give to their hens at home! ­Others told about how they faced threats of pay cuts and

116  Invisible essentials getting fired. The settled city-dweller women, who worked in the comparatively less well-off areas, however, did not particularly complain of their work conditions. According to one domestic worker from this group (who had a graduate degree), this difference in the behaviour of two groups of employers was due to the difference in their economic status: better the economic condition, the more distant they were from their domestic workers. On the contrary, another domestic worker related ill treatments particularly in matters of providing food to domestic workers with employers’ economic hardship. She narrated how retired employers made fuss when a domestic worker asked for an extra spoon of sugar in her cup of tea. Capturing social difference between the classes is difficult: it cannot always be equated with the above-mentioned instances of offering enough food to the domestic worker or not. However, a domestic worker is able to determine conditionalities of work in her favour to a large extent if she is part of a collective decision-making process. Settled city-dwellers are likely to enjoy this agency at the work place compared to the commuters and recent migrants. Returning to our conversation with employers about unionization most answers were uncertain. None commented on the central or state level laws (implemented in some states) regarding minimum wage and minimum days of leave for domestic workers.28 In a recent work (2009) on domestic workers in contemporary Kolkata, Raka Ray and Seemin Qayum have in fact located two generations of employers in the city with markedly different attitude towards their domestic workers. Based on 52 oral histories of employers and 44 of servants gathered in the process of interactions with 500 households in the city, the authors compare the experiences and opinions of two generations of bhadralok employers; the older generation, who are now between 60 and 80 years of age and who have vivid memories of the old feudal system of having servants, and those in their 30s and 40s, who aspire to a more ‘modern’ relationship. While both depend heavily on paid helping hands, the older and more ‘nationalistically oriented’ employers idealize the past in which servants were considered ‘part of the family’, who lived in and were loyal to the family. The younger generation is more ‘market oriented’, and many of this new generation of employers, according to the authors, emphasize a practical contractual relationship (Ray and Qayum 2009: 50–52). Some of the domestic workers with whom the authors have interacted have also yearned for more personal relationships with their employers, claiming that they were taken better care of in the past and that the new generation of employers treats them merely as workers. Ray and Qayum have focused on some practical factors responsible for a changing relationship between employers and domestic workers, such as the breakdown of joint families living in big houses and the rise and growth of nuclear families living in modern apartments; the replacement of the family retainers by part-time live-out domestics, etc. An activist of a Kolkata-based organization, Forum against the Oppression of Women, narrated her experience in leading protests against the murders of two girl child domestic workers in middle class homes in the city during the early 1980s (Chatterjee 2000). In the first case, the forum joined a protest movement organized and led by the adult women domestics working in the area where the

Invisible essentials  117 unnatural death of a girl child domestic worker had occurred. The members of the forum soon found out that the participant domestic workers in the movement had been sacked by their middle class employers for their role in the agitation. Also the local political groups had become extremely hostile towards them for listening to outsiders such as the forum members. In the second case, the agitating adult women domestic workers had been threatened to withdraw their movement by the women’s wing of one of the then ruling Left Front partners. On the issue of organization of domestic workers for pursuing their various demands scholars have noted a similar middle class hostility or lack of interest. In a state like West Bengal, which is known for its radical trade union politics till at least the 1980s, there has been no serious attempt to organize the domestic workers. This is despite the facts that paid domestic service is historically one of most important urban occupations and the highest proportion of urban working women are engaged in this sector at present in the state. Seven states including two eastern states of Bihar and Orissa (where domestic service is also prevalent) have already passed minimum wage acts for domestic workers in their assemblies, but West Bengal has not made any such attempt. In the three southern states of Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, there was considerable organized pressure of the labour unions to take the legal initiative (Neetha 2013). However, central trade unions have not shown any interest to organize domestic workers throughout the country till very recently. In recent years, federal affiliated unions, such as the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), have started showing some interest in organizing some informal workers in Kolkata. From their very inceptions trade unions in India have been less sensitive to women’s issues (Chakravarty 2007), and West Bengal is no exception in this regard. The feminization of domestic work further reduces the likelihood of unionization. Sengupta and Sen (2013: 61) argue: “Central trade unions and political parties in Kolkata have been taking more interest recently, partly due to the growing visibility of organisational politics of these workers in other states and partly due to the impending legislations.” They have documented how the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) in its recent efforts towards building a union of domestic workers (named Paschimbanga Grihasahayika Mahila Samiti) has recognized minimum wages as a desired goal but expresses its inability to make it an immediate agenda for struggle. The reason behind such inability, according to the AIDWA is class differentiations among employers and issues of affordability, resulting in resistance from within the organization itself. The authors have cited a senior member of the Indian National Trinamool Trade Union Congress in this context who explains: ‘trade union leaders, activists and bureaucrats, however, radical their political professions are nevertheless almost invariably employers of domestic workers’ (Sengupta and Sen 2013: 61). Civil society or NGO initiatives to fight for the rights of the domestic workers such as the National Domestic Workers’ Movement (NDWM) established in 1985 in Mumbai, the Pune Shahar Molkarin Sangathana in 1980, Karnataka Domestic Workers Congress (KDWC) etc. are also rarely seen in the state. The NDWM has now spread to 23 states in the country. The Self Employed Women’s Association

118  Invisible essentials (SEWA) in Kerala, Stree Jagruti Samiti (Bangalore), Gharelu Mahila Kamgar Union (Kanpur) are some other private efforts to organize the domestic workers. However, with the exception of a few sporadic initiatives, there has been little attempt to organize on a large scale. In explaining the relative absence of independent women’s movement in West Bengal compared to other parts of the country, Raka Ray (1999) has some insights to offer. She argues that urban women led independent movements in other big cities like Mumbai and Delhi, as well as Hyderabad and Bangalore, but not in Kolkata. According to Ray, the explanation for this lay in the ‘issues women tend to organize around, rather than in the absence of organizing’. (Ray 1999: 4–5) She maintains that Kolkata has a hegemonic field with a homogenous political culture where power is more concentrated than Mumbai with a fragmented field, a heterogeneous political culture and a dispersed distribution of power. This means that in Kolkata most of the political space is occupied by the ruling power, leaving little room for subordinate groups to establish themselves, while in Mumbai, it is easier for multiple groups to coexist in the absence of any ultimately powerful organization. This argument can be well extended to explain the absence of NGO movement in the state in general and NGO’s speaking for the women’s question in particular. Any independent attempt of organizing has been swiftly co-opted here by the ruling political parties with the help of their highly political grass root level organizations.

3.  In search of an explanation We have already seen that nationalism was probably the determining factor behind the specific formulation of the dominant discourse on master–servant relationship during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. The earlier effort to portray the Indian society as a composite whole had, however, gradually started losing its significance along with its credibility after 1947. Scholars have pointed out how the nationalist mood was already waning soon after Independence. Tapan Raychaudhury (2005) argues that after 50 years of Independence, there has been a change in our political culture with a significant waning of the nationalist ideology. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay thinks that this had happened much earlier. According to him (2012), within a year or two after Independence, people, especially the middle class, were losing faith in the Congress government in West Bengal. Bandyopadhyay (2012: 63) has quoted a letter to the editor in the Amrita Bazaar Patrika (7 February 1949), the author of which identified several important factors, among others, contributing to the somewhat changed attitude of the people to their national government. These were very high prices of food and other necessities of life and the consequent distress of the people; popular belief, especially among the intelligentsia, that the civil liberties of the people were often being infringed by the state and finally widespread corruption amongst government servants. Internal contradictions within the indigenous society thus came to the forefront. Possible transformation of social relations in the next few decades can also be understood in the context of this ideological background of the waning of the

Invisible essentials  119 nationalist spirit. As has been already pointed out, there were two simultaneous changes also: income inequality was increasing since the 1970s, and there has been a consequent change in the nature of the middle class; and the profile of the domestic workers also underwent significant changes with an ever increasing number of women and girl children joining the said workforce. From the late 1970s, India started experiencing notable increases in the rates of growth of gross domestic product. The increase has been remarkable especially since the early 2000s. Though, West Bengal is not among the highest performing states, the growth indicators are quite good in this state also (Kohli 2012). It has been pointed out by several commentators that this increase in the rate of growth of gross domestic product is not being shared by the poorer sections of the society the country over with no exception to the then leftist West Bengal (Dev and Ravi 2007; Himanshu 2007). While overall poverty declined as a result of increase in the growth rates, the decline in poverty has been much more in the rural areas than in the urban areas. Income inequality in the country as a whole and especially in the urban areas has been increasing very significantly over these years (Corbridge et al. 2012; Kohli 2012).29 In West Bengal, the growth in the size and affluence of the higher layers of the middle class coincided with increase in single migration of girl children from the rural areas as pointed out earlier. A considerable part of this migrant workforce were being increasingly engaged in urban middle class homes as domestic workers. With the widening social gap between the more and more affluent employers and their domestic workers, the scope of class antagonism also widened. Along with the ill treatment of girl children domestic workers in some urban middle class households, the rate of involvement of menials in different sorts of crimes against employers was on the rise during this time. The mid-1950s and the 1960s when Narendranath Mitra was writing some of his finest commentaries on employer–domestic worker relationship, the income gap and the consequent difference in lifestyle between at least a section of the middle class employers and their domestic workers was not as wide as it is these days. In fact, the income and lifestyle of a considerable section of the lower middle class, was visibly close to the domestic workers they employed (see Chapter Four). This was particularly true of the middle class refugee families whose women participated in paid outside work to make two ends meet and therefore had to employ maids as their substitutes. In a number of stories, Mitra shows how thin and uncertain was the layer differentiating the class status between the mistress and the maid. In one such short story (‘Mulya’ [The Price] 1952), a maid finds the lady who was once her mistress working as a domestic in another house in order to provide for her child’s education. The tie of dependence between the working mistress and her maid, as discussed earlier in this chapter, and the empathy of the maid for her mistress fighting for a cause (‘Head Mistress’ 1950), are themes which typically suit the uncertain social scenario of post-Partition West Bengal. However, as mentioned in the introductory section, Mitra was portraying the lower middle class, a section which we could not really capture through the data we could access.

120  Invisible essentials There is clear evidence that in the post-reform period disproportionate shares of consumption gains have gone to better off urban residents. There can be little doubt that it has increased further in the more recent years. We have already mentioned that as a result of this the character of the so-called middle class in the cities changed very significantly with many more layers within the middle income group. As the major reason behind the spur of growth in the urban areas of West Bengal was the services sector growth requiring higher educational qualifications, and ‘middle classes’ were obviously the significant gainers. This was added by the increase in the educated upper class women’s participation in paid outside work from the late 1990s and early 2000s (see Chapter Two). This has consequently increased the demand for menial services especially of the domestic maids and cooks, in all Indian cities with Kolkata standing at a very high level. Apart from the obvious economic implications of increasing inequality for growth performance (see, for example Dreze and Sen 2013), there are some significant political and social implications. In Indian society, the democratic rights of citizens are often violated, as the way one is treated depends a great deal on one’s economic status and resources. Weisskophf (2011) argues that in this context, substantial economic inequalities between individuals hinder the development of a sense of community or a cohesive society. Economically deprived and socially disrespected people are often tempted to challenge the established order in a variety of disturbing and sometimes violent ways – such as strikes, protests, sabotage and crime. The increasing antagonism between the more affluent middle class employers and their domestic workers in present day West Bengal, probably, can also be explained in this light. The growth in the size and affluence of the middle class and its increasing consolidation can to a certain extent explain the stands taken by this class on the issues related to domestic workers. The increasing influence of this class, the employers of domestic workers, on the ruling party (capability to influence political decisions as discussed above) which was in power for over three decades in the state can also explain the failure of the Left Front to effectively handle domestic workers’ issues. We have already noted in Chapter Two that over the years, the major ruling parties in the Left Front in West Bengal were primarily serving the middle class interests. Sanjeeb Mukherjee (2007) argues that the change in 1977 was a political revolution where the old ruling classes were dislodged from social and political power by the Bengali babu or bhadralok particularly the lower middle classes including teachers, clerks, contractors and the labour aristocracy in the organized sector of the economy. The Left brokered a firm alliance with this class and with the peasantry. It also enjoyed the support of the poor both in the cities and in the countryside. As a result of the introduction of institutional reforms (such as the redistribution of land to the marginal holders and the landless discussed in detail in Chapter Two) in the countryside at least a section of the poor were benefited. As a result, internal migration to the cities did decline initially (Giri 1998). Dipankar Basu (2001), however, documents that it was the rich and mainly the middle peasantry who ultimately reaped the fruits of the much trumpeted land reform efforts of

Invisible essentials  121 the Left Front. This failure of the institutional reform was likely to have led to the continuation of migration to the cities in search of food by the lowest orders. Single migration of girl children for work is a particular facet of this process. Let us remember that West Bengal Human Development Report notes a substantial amount of distress migration from agriculture and industries to services as late as in 2004. The 2004–2005 NSS data revealed that parts of rural West Bengal suffered from maximum food inadequacy in the country (Bandopadhyay 2007).30 Basu (2001) also argues in the same article that the consolidation of ideological and political hegemony of this middle peasantry in the rural areas was completed by strengthening the local level democratic institutions called the panchayats. These so-called decentralized institutions of governance actually served to manufacture consent for the new power structure by building up consensus at the grass roots level. The elected representatives of this three tier local bodies in the rural areas wiped out the bureaucratic control enjoyed by the government officials earlier. Paramesh Acharya (1993) points out that most of the office bearers of these local democratic institutions were not only from the upper castes but also from the upper income classes. Hardly any effective representation of women could be noted. It has been argued that the nature of policies pursued by these elected bodies had a distinct pro-middle class tilt (Basu 2001). The backgrounds of elected representatives and the nature of the policies they pursue ascertain that the marginalized sections such as the menial workers have hardly any space available for pushing forward agendas that reflect their specific class interests against the diktats of the party leadership. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the district-level leadership came from the rich and middle peasantry means that this route is significantly closed for the marginalized. Thus, over time, this political ruling class formed a powerful block consisting of the middle classes of various walks in the cities, middle and rich peasants in the countryside. The social core of the middle class providing leadership to this block consists of teachers and clerks. This ruling class, particularly the middle class, according to Mukherjee (2007), is primarily political in nature, in the sense that its sustenance and well-being are derived from the state and its revenues, that is, from the social surplus. State power was used to benefit itself in the form of jobs, privileges, influence etc. It has been argued that the communist parties undertook significant changes in the policy thrust undermining the rural question after their initial years in power. Along with this shifting focus the middle class which provided the communists with the strongest ideological support since the beginning through the turbulent days of the 1960s and the 1970s, had also started to shift their priorities. The poorly paid teachers and clerks agitating against price rise on the streets of the metropolis could no longer be found in the 1980s. Studies have pointed out a notable improvement in urban affluence since then. This is likely to have led to a sharper stratification within the middle class. This new and more consolidated bourgeoisie quite expectedly intervened and manipulated policy implementations whenever they felt their class privileges were likely to be threatened. The Government of India banned the employment

122  Invisible essentials of domestic workers below 14 years in December 2006. Six months after the ban was imposed, some government official of the concerned department of the state reported that not a single prosecution has been made in West Bengal against employers found to have violated the new labour law (Dainik Statesman, 11 June 2007). The then Marxist Chief Minister of the state is reported to have said that the law cannot be put into force with immediate effect until the fundamental cause of child labour, that is, poverty is eradicated (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 1 January 2007). Similarly, city-based, elite rights activists hardly place the issue of violence against domestic workers on their priority list. It is also difficult to find anybody addressing the question in the letter to the editor columns in numerous dailies published from the city. Though girl children domestic workers have started frequenting middle class homes in the city since the1980s, they are not visible in elite public discourse. This silence seems to be quite conspicuous when we remember the context of the legal ban on employing servants and maids below the age of 14. Incidentally, as mentioned before, according to the 2001 Census, the rate of work participation of girl children in the urban areas of West Bengal was the highest among the 15 major states of India. And most of these girl children were engaged as domestic workers in city homes. Moreover, we have already documented (Chapter Five) that a sizable section of these girl children had migrated to the city alone to seek whole-time employment as domestic workers, a fact which increased their vulnerability.

4.  Concluding remarks In 2004, Dananjay, a caretaker of a middle class housing complex in Kolkata was put to death for his alleged involvement in the rape and murder of a teenage girl residing in the same apartment. While announcing death sentence to the alleged murderer, the Division Bench of the Kolkata High Court observed the case to be quite unique as the child was raped and killed by someone who was supposed to ensure her security. Large sections of the Kolkata middle class, the media, the top-level leaders of the ruling coalition and women’s groups, in short the literati, joined hands to demand capital punishment of the accused.31 The man, who hanged the convict, became overnight, sort of a symbol of the much awaited gender justice.32 The issue attracted the attention of the press over the years and brought out important questions on the relationship between gender and class. However, there is no indication that after the exemplary punishment of the accused domestic worker in the above-mentioned case of violence against women and girl children has decelerated in India as a whole and in West Bengal in particular. According to newspaper reports, sex determination tests to eliminate the female fetus are being routinely performed in city clinics despite the ban on such tests (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 23 September 2013). The ratio of females per 1,000 males is decreasing in the 0–6 age group as people are becoming wealthier. According to the 2011 Census, this has happened in big cities all over India (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 27 April 2011). According to the Crimes in India 2013 report released by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), West Bengal

Invisible essentials  123 ranked third in crimes against women. Both the state as a whole and Kolkata city recorded a very high number of cruelty cases against women by husband or his relatives. The number of crimes against women recorded under different heads such as cases of assault, rape, kidnapping and abduction etc. domestic violence ranked the highest (The Hindu, 5 July 2014). Newspapers frequently report cases of bride-burning for dowry in middle class and upper middle class homes in Kolkata (The Times of India, 14 September 2012; The Hindu, 5 July 2014). Very few cases, however, provoked such fury and consolidation of the urban elite as Dhananjoy’s case was able to do. The case, the verdict on it and the public response, point to an interesting mixture of class and gender concerns. Dhananjoy was seen as having violated gender and class boundaries. Middle class mass hysteria in demanding the ultimate penalty for the rape and murder of a child of the same class background and the blatant refusal to give a second thought to the repeated pleas by the accused and his family that he was not guilty, suggested a strong consolidation of class interests.33 The urban elite’s reactions seemed to be provoked by a fear that its daughters were in danger from the domestic workers turned betrayers. Incidentally, in a recent judgment (reported in Ananda Bazar Patrika, 22 February 2011) rejecting the plea to waive death sentence on Ajmal Amir Kasav, accused of killing a number of innocent citizens in 2009, the Division Bench of the Bombay High Court compared the uniqueness of the crime with that Dhananjoy was accused of. Kasav’s act, according to the above mentioned Division Bench had challenged the sovereign nation. Dhananjoy’s act possibly seemed to have challenged ‘the voice of the nation’, the middle class. In the judgment of the court the nation and its middle class very appropriately converged.

Notes   1 S. K. Ghose, Indian Sketches, Calcutta, 1898 quoted in Bailkin (2006: 480–481).  2 Somprakash, 5 June 1876 quoted in Bailkin (2006: 481)  3 Oudh Punch, 29 January 1884 quoted in Bailkin (2006: 481).   4 Amrita Bazar Patrika (28 June 1895: 5, 4 columns); (29 June 1895: 5, 3 columns).  5 Amrita Bazar Patrika (2, 4, 5, 7 July 1895: 4).  6 Amrita Bazar Patrika (21, 22, 24 September 1895).   7 Prasannamoyee writes: ‘Relationship between the employer and their domestic worker those days was like that between a teacher and his student, king and his men, father and son. Nowadays imitating the custom of the foreigners we treat the domestic workers almost like slaves. The master, the mistress and even their five year old child do not hesitate to abuse and insult the menials. The domestic staff, in turn, has become miscreants, looking forward to the scope of robbing their masters.’ Sekaler Katha (1901) reprinted in 1997: 16–17. Translation ours.   8 Kalyani Datta narrates in her memoir Thor Bori Khara (1992: 75–76): ‘I have made people laugh by telling them about the ancient custom of performing the last rites (pindadan) of dead servants even before one’s own ancestors. However, I fail to understand how things have changed these days so much so that people have become such disjointed’. Translation ours.   9 Some examples are ‘Boubabu’ by Gosaindas Gupta (1883); ‘Pas Kora Mag’ by Radhabinod Halder (1902); ‘Novel Nayika Ba Shikhito Bou’ by (anonymous, date unknown) compiled in Hardikbrata Biswas (ed.), Prahasone Kalikaler Bangamahila (2011).

124  Invisible essentials 10 See Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Khokababur Pratyabartan’ (1891) reprinted in 1988; ‘Postmaster’ (1298 BS?) reprinted in 1988; ‘Puratan Vritya’ (1894) reprinted in 1931. 11 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Apamaner Pratikar’ (1894) reprinted in (1987: 646). Translation ours. 12 Ibid. 13 Bhudev Mukhopadhyay writes in Parivarikprabandha, first published in Education Gazette, 1875–1876 (9th edition 1919: 76): ‘. . . we have most probably been infected with the [habit of] beating the servants. This is a result of unnatural imitation. British masters beat up Indian domestic workers . . . they, however, rarely flog menials of their own race. . . . Proud men may treat the defeated . . . as animals. But this kind of [treatment] is not acceptable by a master to his servant when both belong to the same race, same language and same religion.’ Translation ours. 14 Anonymous, ‘Nutan o Puratan Prabhu o Bhritya’, Bamabodhini Patrika (1903–1904: 276). Translation ours. 15 Rabindranath Tagore wrote his famous story ‘The Postmaster’ (1298 BS?), the central character of which is a 10-year-old girl child domestic. 16 See also, Narendranath Mitra’s two other short stories ‘Purna’ (1952) and ‘Mulya’ (1952) reprinted in Galpamala 2 (1989) and Galpamala 4 (1994). 17 Ray reveals in her memoir Ekal Sekal Panch Prajanmer Itikatha (2008: 193–194) the real motive which led her to bear with Narayani, the ‘rough-and-tough’ maid: ‘I would go to college, Isha to school. Young Tista was completely safe in the custody of Narayani while nobody else was at home. I knew that this rough natured, poor, childless widow loved Tista with all her heart. One becomes a mother not only by giving birth, but also by nurturing.’ Translation ours. 18  See Jnanadanandini Debi, ‘Smritikatha’ (Shaka era 1879) [1957] reprinted in (1990: 16). 19 Sarkar recalls an incidence of the early 1920s in north Kolkata in her memoir Smritir Malika (1990: 42): ‘My younger aunt [father’s sister] had engaged a maid from Orissa to look after her children. Once she accompanied us [for a walk outside] with aunt’s younger daughter in her arms and holding another daughter by hand. Suddenly she lost hold of the [second] child in the crowd. We came back home all in tears. The maid was suspected [of some foul play] and had been tied with rope. However, my father searched out the lost child within a short time’. 20 Amrita Bazar Patrika reports (4 January 1906: 5, colm. 5) the execution in Alipore jail of one Kamta Prasad Upadhay, a cook, in the employ of Babu Baroda Prasad Mozumdar, of Barisa, Kolkata. The cook was hanged being convicted of murder of his master’s wife and attempted murder of two infant children of his master. Next month (7 ­February 1906: 7, colm. 2) the same newspaper reports the assault on a European by a dismissed native servant and his subsequent arrest in Chitpur area of the city. 21 Some instances are Tapan Bandyopadhyay (2008), ‘Hridyer Ariel’, Sharodiyo Sandesh; Tapan Ain (9 November 2008), ‘Kajer Bou’ Rabibasario, Ananda Bazar Patrika; Prabudhha Bagchi, Desh (17 November 2013), ‘Sabita Upakhyan’. 22 One exception is the film ‘Bariwali’ [The Landlady] (2000) by Rituparna Ghosh. In this film (though the central story is about something else), the complex relationship between a lonely landlady and her two domestic workers, one male and another female, has been depicted in the usual sensitive style of the director. Another recent film ‘Nayan champar Dinratri’ (2014), directed by Sekhar Das depicts the toils of women domestic helps in city homes, which is also the central theme of the film. 23 Report by Amelia Gentleman, 18 February 2007, Asia–Pacific–International Herald Tribune. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Interview conducted among service sector professionals in Kolkata city in April 2014. 27 Interview conducted in some parts of the city and also in two villages, Piyali and SandeshKhali (North 24 Parganas) in February and March 2008/2009.

Invisible essentials  125 28 See for instance the 2013 central legislation. 29 Gini coefficient increased from 0.27 to 0.28 in rural India and 0.35 to 0.37 in urban India during 2004–2005 and 2009–2010. 30 Though, Planning Commission’s most recent estimates suggest a decline in poverty (both rural and urban) in 2009–2010 in West Bengal (The Telegraph, 22 March 2012) quoted in (Bandopadhyay D. 2007). 31 See Biswajit Roy and Nilanjan Dutta (2008), Anatomy of an Execution for a detailed discussion. 32 The social worker wife of the then Marxist chief Minister of the state and other ruling party MPs went to the extent of sharing the same forum at a public meeting and allowing to be photographed, with the hangman, Nata Mallick. (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 27 June 2004) 33 A comparison between middle class reactions in the recent two rape-murder cases, the Nirvoya case and the Kamduni incident can give some more insight.

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7

The case of Bangladesh

We have tried to trace how domestic service evolved as the most important work avenue for both women and girl children through a historic interaction between social, cultural and economic factors specific to Bengal. Occasional references to some other states have been brought in only to highlight the contrast. But as each Indian state has its own complex story to tell, we decided not to enter into the metamorphosis of these stories as such. Instead, we felt that a somewhat closer look at the socioeconomic and cultural interactions in post-independent East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, would be more instructive to understand the outcomes in West Bengal. Bangladesh and West Bengal – the two parts of South Asia – were an integrated whole till 1947 with much lingual and cultural commonalities. Women traditionally were more home-bound in this region than in many other parts of India. With more or less similar experience of economic development till the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the two Bengals have seen major economic transformation in two different directions: land reform efforts in West Bengal and the advent of export-oriented garment manufacturing activities–led industrialization in Bangladesh. Since this time, the statistics regarding women’s work started showing significant differences (See Jose 1989 and Table 3.7 of this book). We had opportunities to comment on the possible implications of land reform on women’s work in West Bengal. In this chapter, we concentrate on Bangladesh in the main. The analysis here is based on secondary literature. However, this is in no way an attempt at substantial explanation of the complex events unfolding in the country since Partition. Our focus is narrow and mainly aimed at understanding certain trends in women’s paid work participation behaviour in the urban areas of the country. The story unfolds in late colonial Bengal. Around the late 1930s and early 1940s, agrarian decay reached its peak breaking into the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. Industries that were mostly owned by the British and the Marwaris in undivided Bengal started experiencing serious challenges following the worldwide Depression, War and the intensified anti-colonial struggle in the region. Large numbers of people both in the rural as well as in the urban areas were losing livelihoods. There was a rapid increase in the low-paid, informal labour market which started strengthening its grip over the economic activities of the urban areas of Bengal since then. The poor became poorer. Women and children were forced to enter paid work outside the home to make the two ends meet.

130  The case of Bangladesh Historians have often pointed out that women’s participation in paid work outside the home in Bengal, even among the lower classes, were barred by the sociocultural stipulation of domesticity. Therefore, it is likely that a comparable level of economic hardship would have dragged women in many more numbers into the workforce in a different context less constrained by domesticity (Jain 1985). This is perhaps a major reason, among others why with similar agro-climatic conditions and cropping pattern (major crop: paddy), women’s work force participation was historically much less both in rural as well as in urban Bengal when compared to Tamil Nadu and erstwhile Andhra Pradesh. Women’s domestic role in Bengal region was highly valued.1 Women’s avenues of work in urban Bengal were shrinking as a result of continuous decay in the economy over the years. Studies have documented how women lost employment in manufacturing both in the factory as well as in the non-factory sectors during the late colonial period. The only avenue of these retrenched women was the informal sector. We have shown how dire need forced the refugee women to enter into the workforce in large numbers crowding domestic service in post-Partition Kolkata (Chapter Four). However, distress migration of women (and men) in search of livelihood to Kolkata city from the rural hinterlands of the erstwhile East Bengal has a long history. This was most prevalent especially during the years of the Famine. The agrarian crisis of the colonial period that continued after Independence in both parts of Bengal remained a perennial factor behind distress migration to the cities. In the urban areas of Bangladesh also, women tended to concentrate in domestic service. Even with noticeable change in the composition of women’s work in urban Bangladesh, statistics still suggest the importance of domestic service as an avenue of work for women in general and girl children in particular in the recent years (Baum 2011). Till the early 1970s, work participation rates of women in Bangladesh both in the rural as well as in the urban areas were significantly low. The cultural specificities of ‘domesticity’ that we have earlier mentioned in the context of West Bengal played a major role in thwarting women’s work for pay outside the home. Cain et al. (1979: 434) argued that the barriers women faced in accessing paid work were hardly loosening: ‘The systemic nature of patriarchy suggests that solutions to the problem of women’s vulnerability and lack of income-earning opportunities will not be easily reached’. But the prospects of new economic opportunities apparently were able to loosen the shackles of patriarchy. Kabeer et al. (2004b: 147) argue: ‘The industry’s “revealed preference” for female labour effected a very visible transformation in the gender composition of the country’s labour force, both in terms of female rates of participation in paid work and its diversification into the industrial sector’. In the early 1950s, most people were engaged in agriculture for their livelihood in Bangladesh. Though West Bengal, by then, was industrially much more developed, a large part of the population was engaged in agriculture as well in the state. But the picture in Bangladesh changed notably with the advent of the export-oriented readymade garment manufacturing industry in the country. Women’s work participation particularly saw a dramatic change both in terms of

The case of Bangladesh  131 magnitude and a shift in terms of sector. By the mid-1980s, only 11 per cent of women workers remained in agriculture while the percentage of men engaged in the primary sector was 63. Garment industry jobs were never attractive to men as an unskilled male worker could earn more from agricultural work in the rural areas than what he could have earned from some unskilled job in garment manufacturing. Afsar (2001) has pointed out that garment factory work is more remunerative and stable compared to the other important avenues of women’s work. In the early 1970s, women constituted only 4 per cent of urban manufacturing workforce. Much like Kolkata, the predominant occupation of poor urban women was domestic service then. The advent of garment manufacturing activities pulled the percentage of women working in the manufacturing to 55 per cent by the middle of the 1980s. This led to an increase in women’s work force participation to 20.5 per cent in 1995–1996 from 12 per cent in the early 1970s (Kabeer 2001). During the 1990s, around 25 per cent of the total female workforce was concentrated in garment manufacturing of the country alone. For a single sector, this is indeed a very high concentration. As a result, the share of women in new industrial employment was 39 per cent in the mid-1990s. This rose to 60 per cent in 2000 (Kabeer and Mahmud 2004a).

1.  A quick look back At this point, it is instructive to take a look at the development experience of Bangladesh since Independence that has led to an apparently different outcome for women’s work behaviour in the urban areas. The development picture of East Pakistan (erstwhile East Bengal) after Partition was not rosy. Since its inception, the dominance of West Pakistan over the East made it clear that the East would never have its proper share in the development process. Sayeed (1960, 1967) documents how as early as in 1954, the politically dominant lower-middle classes in East Pakistan, the jotedars in the countryside coupled with the urban petty bourgeoisie were completely disillusioned about the Muslim League and the then government in power. They understood that East Pakistan was unlikely to get access to state power and enough resources for development (Khan 2000). The import substituting industrialization pursued in Pakistan over the decades of the 1950s and 1960s was not only heavily concentrated in the West, but also often done at the direct cost of the East. A good example can be the transfer of agricultural export surplus invested in obtaining machinery from abroad to develop industry in the West. Repeated devaluation of the Pakistani rupee, in order to make heavy imports cheaper made the farmer accept a lower price for the agro exports of jute and cotton as well (Papanek 1967). So, industry was not growing. The already stagnating colonial agriculture that we have mentioned in the Second Chapter was also not getting any boost from the new nation either. On the contrary, in fact, agriculture was actually being exploited for the benefit of industry in West Pakistan, leading to a continuous increase in the hardship of the poor in the East. This increasing economic hardship is one of the major reasons along with the religious persecution behind the continuous cross-border movement of

132  The case of Bangladesh people to West Bengal over these decades. As a legacy of colonial Bengal, land was highly fragmented in East Pakistan as well. Though policies were formulated (Noman 1988), no serious land reform effort has been made in the country and therefore the incidence of landlessness is more prevalent in Bangladesh than in West Bengal with the same rural past. It has been argued that on top of this, social sector expenditure in Pakistan in general suffered seriously as a result of overexpenditure in military development as well as in generating industrial resources (Jalal 1995). The situation in the East was naturally worse. The extreme concentration of wealth and industrial resources in the hands of the emerging capitalists who were almost entirely non-Bengali was bitterly opposed, however, not only by the Bengalis but also by a group of so-called socialists in the West by the late 1960s. As a result of this growing political contestation and instability, finally from around 1967, the central government started shifting a significant portion of industrial investments to East Pakistan. But the two decades of neglect had meant that East Pakistan did not have many entrepreneurs like the ones groomed by the Pakistani government in the West since the beginning of its industrialization efforts. As Bengali entrepreneurs were not forthcoming yet, political pressure from the East was powerful enough to result in a rapid relocation of new investments, the industrial investment mainly entered in the public sector building up the ever neglected infrastructure in the province. Consequently, the share of the public sector shot up in East Pakistan (Khan 2000: 29, 30). However, the increasing public resources leading to easy availability of funds did succeed to create a new Bengali bourgeoisie. Shovan (1980: 15) notes that there were 16 major Bengali business houses, each with assets of more than Rs. 25 million, and with combined assets of nearly Rs. 700 million by 1971 (Sobhan 1980). These nascent industrial elite were predominantly small to medium entrepreneurs. So it is likely that by the time Bangladesh achieved its independence, some industrialization effort had already started in the country after prolonged neglect. This is most likely to have helped the garment industry to flourish in the country in some way. Thus, till the mid-1970s the development outcome of Bangladesh economy was not much different from that of West Bengal. Sugata Bose (1999) shows negative growth rates in per capita agricultural output in Bangladesh till the 1980s. The rate of growth between 1949 and 1980 was as low as (–)51 per cent per annum. This clearly depicts the incessant agrarian decline that might have led to a continuous distress migration to the cities especially by the landless. The picture of West Bengal agriculture was no better. At the industry front, while West Bengal saw a continuous decline of an established sector, Bangladesh virtually had no effective industrialization that could act as a viable alternative to the rural poor. The readymade garments and women’s entry As mentioned already, Bangladesh economy, however, changed dramatically with the advent of export-oriented garment manufacturing industry by the middle of the 1970s. Readymade garment manufacturing is a highly labour intensive,

The case of Bangladesh  133 low-technology process. Over the years, some limited technological upgrading through microelectronic equipment did take place in the pre-assembly stages. But it is difficult to mechanize the assembly stages. Moreover, as long as the sources of cheap labour are not exhausted mechanization of these processes is uneconomical as well (Joekes 1995). The rapid growth in the demand for readymade garments in the developed countries over the last century helped the industry to take a leading role in the industrialization experience of these countries. The steady growth of larger manufacturing firms coupled with mass unionization across much of the industry during this period forced the entrepreneurs to continuously search for cheaper labour. Increasing incorporation of women into the labour market especially for assembling jobs was a direct outcome of this process. Fierce price competition in the production of mass clothing forced relocation of sections of the clothing industry, initially out of expensive urban locations within these countries, and subsequently to the ‘low-wage economies’ of Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong known as the newly industrializing countries. These countries pursued relatively more open economic policies and emphasized on a highly disciplined and non-unionized labour force that could facilitate production of same quality at a much lower price. This restructuring of the market leading to a high level of import infiltration in the developed countries, posed a credible threat to the persons concerned. This insecurity finally led to the Multifibre Arrangement in 1974, which brought together several dissimilar attempts to regulate the rapid growth in developing country exports of clothing and textiles. These measures had led to import restrictions and implementation of quota in the countries from where the rate of growth of exports surpassed a stipulated rate. Consequently, the quota constrained countries started a practice of ‘quota hopping’: searches began for fresh, low-wage sites which were still ‘quota-free’. Bangladesh entered into the picture at this point. However, the industry got a real boost only when there was significant change in the domestic policy environment (Kabeer et al 2004b: 135). We have mentioned that a group of small and medium entrepreneurs along with some physical infrastructure had already started growing in Bangladesh by the late 1960s. In the late 1970s, a number of entrepreneurs from quota-restricted countries set up subcontracting relationships with some of Bangladesh’s ready-made garment factories with a view to taking advantage of the absence of quotas (Khan 2009; Lewis 2011).2 During this time, the Bangladesh government started giving various incentives to these new ventures. Moreover, the country also liberalized its trade policy to a very significant extent to attract large investments in the sector and facilitate exports. Investors, within the country were increasingly attracted to the readymade garment industry after the changes that occurred around this time in the domestic policy environment. Till then, Bangladesh was committed to its pre-Independence industrial policy of import substitution which helped perpetuate a complex set of protective measures directed to restrain imports and develop an industrial base to cater to the domestic market (Kabeer et al 2004b: 136). Export-oriented industrialization has emerged as a significant element in the industrialization programme of several Asian countries during the 1970s and the

134  The case of Bangladesh 1980s (Lim 1984). Quoting the UN (1995), Chakravarty (2007) notes, there are certain universal regularities in the composition of exports of manufactures and related patterns of labour use by gender. As mentioned above, the experiences of the early exporting countries indicate that the increasing cost competition in the export markets leads entrepreneurs to search for newer sources of cheap labour. Apart from the dominant ‘nimble finger’ hypothesis, it has been argued that ‘young women, particularly in the newly industrialising countries of Asia, have been oppressed, both socially and economically for so long that they are forced to develop low “aspiration” wages as well as low “efficiency” wages’ (Standing 1989: 1080). These women are ready to work for very low wages and for longer hours under exceedingly inhospitable conditions of work. Their ‘oriental docility’ normally does not let them join unions and agitate against the management (Standing 1989). Joekes (1995) maintains that the most important, though not the sole reason behind the differential distribution of male and female workers of different branches of industry, is the gender gap in wages in manufacturing. An additional reason behind women’s increasing absorption in the export-oriented manufacturing is their alleged high turnover rates which help make a flexible work force (Barbezat 1993; Lim 1984): women workers are less likely to protest layoffs.3 This in fact is a corollary of the docility argument. Oriental women’s ‘docile behaviour’ (though highly contested, see for example, Chakravarty 2007) is an expression of the cult of domesticity: women of different continents all over the world are expected to be bound by which ways. The statistics about increase in women’s employment in the export-oriented garment manufacturing factories in Bangladesh we have discussed before clearly suggest the same pattern. Women initially work as helpers and then as machine operators. An operator’s job is the highest category that a woman can expect to get (Ensing 2011: 40). This requires little and repetitive skills. Not much training with the machine is required in order to perform these functions successfully. It is, however, widely believed that the boring, tedious and back-breaking nature of machine operation is better performed by women. For that matter, stitching and mending are supposed to be very much a woman’s work just like cooking, washing, cleaning and caring. Though men generally constitute a smaller share of the garment manufacturing labour force in Bangladesh, even in this industry, they get the better paid and more skilled jobs. It is important to note that the majority of the women workers in the garment industry are migrants from the rural areas. Moreover in most of the cases, it is their first job. Since the beginning, the readymade garment manufacturing industry preferred to employ women for the reasons discussed earlier. The women, the industry used to employ them, worked before in ‘kinds of occupation’ traditionally associated with a feminine tag such as domestic service. Moreover, these women often used to migrate to the cities along with their families in search of livelihood. But as the industry started getting matured and employing women became an accepted practice, young women, from the villages, entering into the labour market for the first time, started migrating singly to the city solely in search of a job in the garment sector (Kabeer and Mahmud 2004b).

The case of Bangladesh  135 We have seen in the context of West Bengal that if a family has even a tiny plot of land of their own the woman is more likely to be working in the family farm while the man often goes out to work as wage labour. The cultural stronghold of domesticity tries to keep the woman attached to the household to the extent possible. Even when a family becomes landless the long arms of domesticity are still visible. One outcome of the complex interplay of increasing financial distress, market demand and the diktat of patriarchy thus, is the single migration of girl children to the cities as whole-time domestic workers, while older women stay back. These girls are usually withdrawn from the workforce as soon as they attain puberty. In the Bangladesh scenario, researchers have pointed out that in landless families the probability of women to migrate in search of work is much more than men (Afsar 2001; Feldman 1993). Kabeer and Mahmud (2004a, 2004b; Kabeer 2003) relate this trend with the broader pattern of South Asia showing a positive correlation between female participation in paid work and household poverty. While this is quite obvious, we feel economic reasons alone are not sufficient to explain the story. Let us consider the fact that in garment factories, young unmarried girls predominate, and they are withdrawn from the workforce for marriage and reproduction (Islam 2005: 23–26; Kabeer and Mahmud 2004a). In this context, Ensing (2011: 41) notes: ‘Work in a garment’s factory, although not in a girl’s home, is still considered to be inside work, and thus relatively safer than working in public. The safety particularly involves protection from indecent exposure to men’. It needs to be mentioned here that the importance of early marriage for women in Bangladesh is no less than that on the other side of the border. In the third chapter, we have reported that according to the National Family Health Survey (2005–2006), among all Indian states the number of women getting married below the age of 18 is the maximum in West Bengal. The UNICEF and BBS (2007; 2009; 2010) identify Bangladesh as one among the countries having the highest rates of women’s early marriage. There are 74 per cent of Bangladeshi girls married before the age of 18. The median age at first birth is 18.1 in Bangladesh and 20 in West Bengal. While the total fertility rate is declining over the last five decades, it’s still quite high, at around 2.3 in the urban areas and 2.5 in the rural areas of Bangladesh. To this end, urban West Bengal stands at 1.4; in fact, the rate is the lowest in India. Decline in school dropout rates is also not quite significant in Bangladesh. A  large number of dropped-out girls in Bangladesh end up in middle class city homes as domestic workers (Baum 2011; UNICEF 2004). About 8 to 9 percent of girls between the ages of 5 to 14 are working (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics 2003). In a country where 60 per cent of the manufacturing workforce is women, and the rate of women’s work force participation is quite high in the context of developing countries, the above-mentioned dismal demographic trends are difficult to explain. The high incidence of child labour in general and girl child labour in particular (Lieten 2011; UNICEF, BBS 2007; 2009; 2010) is also a paradox. Studies (Kabeer et al. 2011; World Bank 2008) have pointed out the development of a sense of agency by way of ensuring a stable income among women workers engaged in the garment industry in Bangladesh. This has been possible as garment employment has made women’s presence felt in the labour market of the

136  The case of Bangladesh country. Kabeer et al. note: ‘working women appear to conduct themselves differently, to feel optimistic about their future and a sense of control over their own lives’ (2011: 50). This note of optimism is difficult to retain when we consider the macro demographic indicators related to marriage and child birth of Bangladesh as discussed before. However, Kabeer and others have also pointed out that the relationship between paid work and agency is complex: one does not guarantee the other. In our earlier analysis of women’s work behaviour in West Bengal, we have shown that the women domestic workers, especially the settled city-dwellers also have achieved some decision-making power over crucial matters of their lives and also the family. To this end, these developments are welcoming indeed. What is worrying is the persistence of the patriarchal notions and culture of domesticity in the society influencing the psyche of the employees as well as the employers. The educated employers use it often in their own favour and the employees, the women, keep accepting the standard notions about gender roles in the society and consequently in the economy. However, there are changes in women’s work behaviour in both West Bengal and Bangladesh as they go out of the home for paid work in increasing numbers to cater to the demands of the market. This complex interaction between cultural constructs, market opportunities and women’s work behaviour in the context of West Bengal is what we have studied in this book. Our analysis of women’s labour market behaviour in the context of increased economic opportunities in Bangladesh, in fact questions the apparent dissimilarities in the outcome of women’s work behaviour between West Bengal and Bangladesh. However, to say something conclusive about Bangladesh, a more elaborate and in-depth study is required.

Notes 1 Incidentally, even today, maximum number of girls get married below the age of 18 and become a mother as early as at the age of 20, one among the lowest in the country. Girl children’s participation in schools is not particularly low, but a large number of them dropped-out even in 2004–2005. 2 A good example of this is the understanding between a local firm Desh Garments in Bangladesh and Daewoo from South Korea. 3 The paragraph has been taken from Chakravarty (2007).

References Afsar, R. (2001), ‘Sociological Implications of Female Labour Migration in Bangladesh’, in R. Sobhan and N. Khundker (eds.), Globalisation and Gender: Changing Patterns of Women’s Employment in Bangladesh, Dhaka: University Press Limited. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. (2003), Report on National Child Labour 2002–03. Barbezat, D. (1993), ‘Occupational segmentation by sex in the world’ IDP Women/ WP-13, Equity For Employment Interdepartmental Project, International Labor Office, Geneva. Baum, N. (2011), ‘Girl Domestic Labour in Dhaka: A Betrayal of Trust’, in G. K. Lieten (ed.), Working Boys and Girls at Risk Child Labour in Urban Bangladesh, Dhaka: The University Press Limited. Development Goals London: Commonwealth Secretariat/ IDRC Publication.

The case of Bangladesh  137 Bose, S. (1999), ‘Agricultural Growth and Agrarian Structure in Bengal: A  Historical Overview’, in B. Rogaly, B. Harriss-White and S. Bose (eds.), Sonar Bangla? Agricultural Growth and Agrarian Change in West Bengal and Bangladesh (pp. 41–59), New Delhi: Sage. Cain, M., Khanam, S. R. and Nahar, S. (1979), ‘Class, patriarchy and women’s work in Bangladesh’, Population and Development Review, 5 (3): 405–438. Chakravarty, D. (2007), ‘Docile oriental women and the organized labour: A case of an Indian garment export park’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 14 (3): 439–460, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ensing, A. (2011), ‘Young, Poor and Female: A Triple Burden for Working Girls in the Homes and Streets of Dhaka’, in G. K. Lieten (ed.), Working Boys and Girls at Risk Child Labour in Urban Bangladesh, Dhaka: The University Press Limited. Feldman, S. (1993), ‘Contradictions of Gender Inequality: Urban Class Formation in Contemporary Bangladesh’, in A. W. Clark (ed.), Gender and Political Economy: Explorations of South Asian Systems, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Islam, N. (2005), Dhaka Now, Contemporary Urban Development, Dhaka: Geographical Society. Jain, D. (1985), ‘The Household Trap: Report on a Field Survey of Female Activity Patterns’ in D. Jain and N. Banerjee (eds.), Tyranny of the Household: Imaginative Essays on Women’s Work (218–228), Delhi: Shakti Books. Jalal, A. (1995), Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative Historical Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joekes, S. (1995), Trade Related Employment for Women in Industry and Services in Developing Countries, UNRISD Occasional Paper No. 5. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, United Nations Development Programme. Kabeer, N. (2001), Bangladesh Women Workers and Labour Market Decisions: The Power to Choose, New Delhi: Vistaar Publications. Kabeer, N. (2003), Mainstreaming Gender in Poverty Eradication and the Millennium Development Goals, London: Commonwealth Secretariat/IDRC Publication. Kabeer, N. and Mahmud, S. (2004a), ‘Globalization, gender and poverty: Bangladeshi women workers in export and local markets’, Journal of International Development, 16 (1): 93–109. Kabeer, N. and Mahmud, S. (2004b), ‘Rags, Riches and Women Workers: Export-Oriented Garment Manufacturing in Bangladesh’, Chains of Fortune: Linking Women Producers and Workers with Global Markets (pp. 133–164). Kabeer, N., Mahmud, S. and Tasneem, S. (2011), ‘Does paid work provide a pathway to women’s empowerment? Empirical findings from Bangladesh’, BRAC Development Institute, Dhaka: BRAC University. Khan, M. (2000), The Political Economy of Industrial Policy in Pakistan, 1947–1971, SOAS, Department of Economics, Working Paper 98. Khan, M. (2009), Learning, technology acquisition and governance challenges in developing countries. e-prints, soas.ac.uk Lieten G. K. (2011), ‘Introduction’ in G. K. Lieten (ed.), Working Boys and Girls at Risk Child Labour in Urban Bangladesh, Dhaka: The University Press Limited. Lewis, D. (2011), Bangladesh Politics, Economy and Civil Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lim, L.Y.C. (1984), ‘Labour and Employment Issues in Export Processing Zones in Developing Countries’, in E. Lee (ed.), Export Processing Zones and Industrial Employment in Asia (pp. 53–63), Bangkok: Asian Employment Programme (ARTEP), International Labour Organization.

138  The case of Bangladesh Noman, O. (1988), The Political Economy of Pakistan, 1947–1985, KPI Publishers, Chapters 1, 2 and 3. Papanek, G. F. (1967), Pakistan’s Development – Social Goals and Private Incentives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sayeed, K. B. (1960), Pakistan: The Formative Phase, Karachi: Pakistan Publishing House. Sayeed, K. B. (1967), The Political System of Pakistan, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Sobhan, R. (1980), ‘Growth and contradictions within the Bangladesh bourgeoisie’, Journal of Social Studies, 9: 1–27. Standing, G. (1989), ‘Global feminization through flexible labour’, World Development 17 (7): 1077–1095. UNICEF and BBS. (2007; 2009; 2010), Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, Bangladesh. United Nations (1995), Women in a Changing Global Economy: 1994 World Survey on Role of Women in Development, New York: United Nations Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development. World Bank (2008), Whispers to Voices: Gender and Social Transformation in Bangladesh. Bangladesh Development Series, Paper No. 22, Washington, DC: World Bank.

Index

Abuse, domestics 105 – 106, 107 – 108, 111 – 112; boy children 1; girl children and women 1 – 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 19, 93, 113 – 114, 116 – 117; nationalist reaction 107 – 109 Agency, decision making power of women 4, 5, 8, 37, 53 – 54, 61, 71, 84 – 85, 91, 93 – 94, 95, 99, 116, 135 Agriculture, condition (W.B.) 16, 18 – 23, 76, 89, 94, 121; and domesticity 39 – 40, 42; Bangladesh 130 – 132; and Partition 16 – 17 All India Democratic Women’s Association 117 Amritabazar Patrika 108, 118 Ananda Bazar Patrika 2, 53, 66, 113, 122, 123 Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) 2, 11, 42, 43, 52, 117 Atarthi, Premankur 65 Bamabodhini Patrika 109 Bandopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan 112 Bandopadhyay, Saradindu 112 Bangalore 118 Bargaining: Cooperative 84; extra household 93; intra household 93 – 95 Basu, Champakali 111 Bengal Famine (1943) 6, 74, 84, 109, 110, 129 Bihar 8, 15, 16, 23, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 104, 117 Bombay, see Mumbai Bombay House Workers’ Solidarity 78 Centre of Indian Trade Unions 117 Child Labour, Abolition and Rehabilitation Act (2006) 11, 53, 77, 97, 114, 115, 122

Child labour, Bangladesh 135; rehabilitation 11; theory 55 – 57 Choudhuri, Ramapada 1, 110 Crimes, domestics accused of 84, 105 – 106, 110, 112, 120, 122 – 123; see also Dhananjoy case Communist Party of India (CPI) 18, 19, 121; Communist Party of India [Marxist, CPI(M)] 17, 26, 121; and refugees, 18 Datta, Kalyani 109, 111 Datta, Pramila 73, 111 Debi, Jnanadanandini 111 Debi, Mahasweta 110 Debi, Prasannamayee 111 Delhi 2, 3, 25, 64, 78, 98, 107, 118 Depression (1930) 16, 67, 72 – 73, 109, 129 Dhananjoy Case 123 Discrimination, at work 9, 35; intra household 8, 35, 41, 85, 99 – 100 Domesticity, and paid work 4, 11, 37 – 39, 44, 46, 85, 91 – 100, 130; and land reform 39 – 40, 42 – 43, 77, 99 – 100; Bangladesh 99, 134, 135 – 136; see also Housewifization Export-Oriented Garment Manufacturing 129, 130 – 134, 135 Feminization of domestic service 1, 2, 4, 8, 37, 62, 63, 65, 73, 74, 104, 117 Fordist technology 37 Forum against the Oppression of Women 116 Freight equalization 25, 27, 67 Gandhi, M.K. 25 Gender segregation 3, 7, 8, 35 – 37, 41

140 Index Gharelu Mahila Kamgar Union (Kanpur) 118 Ghatak, Ritwik 61 Ghose, Santosh Kumar 110 Global Nanny Chain 7 Globalization 7, 114 Green Revolution 22 Halder, Baby 107 Housewifization 38, 54, 91 Human Capital Theory 35 – 36 Hyderabad 43, 118 Immigrant, see migration Import substitution policy 25 Indian National Congress 19, 25, 26, 67 Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) 117 Indian National Trinamool Trade Union Congress (INTTUC) 117 Industrial Stagnation 19, 23 – 25, 62, 67, 94 Informalization / Informal Economy 3, 6, 7, 12, 16, 17, 18, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29 – 30, 35, 45, 64, 94, 129 Invisibility, of domestic service 1, 4, 9, 94, 112 – 113; of girls work 52, 122 Jabala 97 Jhee Special 91 Jugantar 65, 70 Karnataka Domestic Workers’ Congress 117 Kerala, girl child 51; migration from 6, 7; sex ratio 41 Kinship ties 9, 105, 114 Kharij 1, 110 Left Front Government 6, 16, 23, 25, 26 – 27, 44 Land Reform/ Institutional Reform 6, 15, 19, 20, 22, 23, 29, 39, 42, 43, 76, 88, 89, 94, 120, 121, 129, 132; see also Operation Barga Liberalization, Post-liberalization 4, 26 – 27, 56, 104 License Raj 26 Life cycle domestics 9, 114 Majumdar, Pratapchandra 63 – 64, 111 Marx, Karl 56 Middle East Watch Women’s Right Project 10 Memoirs by domestic workers 107, 112; see also Halder Baby and Palit Haridas

Men servants 4, 8, 16, 62, 69, 70, 73, 74; boy servants 1, 83, 110 Middle class: affluence/growth 4, 7, 11, 25, 30, 55, 77, 104, 106, 107, 116, 119; and Left Front 120 – 121; consolidation 120 – 123; ideology 38, 41, 62 – 63, 64, 71, 72; peasantry 21, 120 – 121; see also Work Participation Migrant, see migration Migration: boy children 1, 76, 86 – 88, 97 – 98; comparison between West Bengal and other states 88 – 89; decline 88 – 89; female – male comparison 86 – 88, 96 – 98, 99; girl children and women 1 – 2, 3, 5, 24, 39, 52, 63, 73, 75 – 76, 83, 86 – 88, 89, 96 – 98, 99, 114, 119, 121, 122, 130, 135; cross border 2 – 3, 5, 6, 7, 9 – 10, 114; distress 15, 16, 24, 43, 52, 73, 74, 75, 76, 86, 110, 121, 132; from Asia 2 – 3, 8; from East Pakistan, East Bengal, Bangladesh 4, 8, 16 – 17, 62, 67, 74, 130; from Jharkhand 3; from Kerala 6, 7; from Philippines 3, 6, 8, 9; from Srilanka 3, 6, 8; from West Bengal 3, 78, 97; rural to urban 3, 6, 23, 43, 47, 73 – 74, 88, 110, 114, 119, 121, 134; up-country 16, 61, 64, 65, 69, 73, 74; within Bangladesh 132, 134 – 135 Mukhopadhyay, Balaichand (Banaphool) 112 Mukhopadhyay, Bhudev 109 Mukhopadhyay, Hirendranath 65 Mukhopadhyay, Prabhat Kumar 113 Mumbai 24, 64, 78, 117, 118, 123 Muslim League 131 Nababidhan Brahmo Samaj 63 National Crime Records Bureau 122 National Domestic Workers’ Movement 117 Nationalism 25, 41, 107 – 109, 118 – 119 Nationalist, see nationalism Nehru, Jawaharlal 17 Neo Classical Model 84 New Household Economics 84 New Industrial Policy 15, 27 – 29 Nithari Case 3, 78 NGO 11, 84, 106; in organizing domestics 117 – 118 North 24 Parganas 90, 96 Operation Barga, land reform 6, 20, 21, 39; Bargadar 23 Oriental Docility 134 Orissa 8, 15, 23, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 74, 104, 117

Index  141 Oudh Punch 108 Palit, Dibyendu 110 Palit, Haridas 112 Panchayats, decentralized planning 20, 22, 26, 121; Panchayati Raj Act (1973) 26 Partition/ Post-Partition, and women’s work 3 – 4, 6, 7 – 8, 48, 61, 69 – 70, 75, 86, 104, 111, 119; industrial stagnation 45 – 46, 67; migration estimate 16 Paschimbanga Grihasahayika Mahila Samiti 117 Poverty 15, 23 – 24, 41, 52, 56 – 57, 76, 89, 92, 96, 98, 99, 119, 121, 122, 135 Pune Sahar Molkarin Sangathana 117 Ray, Satyajit 61, 65, 72, 111 – 112 Raychaudhury, Tapan 118 Rotten Kid Theorem 99 Roy, Bharati 111 Roy, Hemendrakumar 112 Roy, Savitri 110 Sanyal, Sulekha 110 Sarkar, Sudhangshubala 111 Scheduled Castes 10, 16, 41; WPR 41 Scheduled Tribes 10, 41; WPR 41 School drop out, see school enrolment School enrolment 5, 31, 55 – 56, 92, 93, 135; midday meal 11 Second Wave Feminism 84 Second World War 24, 62, 72, 109 Sen, Keshab Chandra 63 Sen, Mrinal 1 Sengupta, Achintya Kumar 110 Self Employed Women’s Association 117 Sex Ratio 41, 65, 67, 122 Sexual Harassment of Women at work place, Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal Act (2013) 12 Sinha, Tapan 70 Somprakash 108 South 24 Parganas 90, 91, 96, 113 Stree Jagruti Samiti Bangalore 118 System of National Accounts (SNA) 38

Tagore, Rabindranath 109, 113 Tamil Nadu (TN) 2, 11, 29, 42, 43, 52, 54, 55, 130 Tenancy Reform Programme 20 Total Fertility Rate (TFR) West Bengal 54 – 55; comparison with other states 55; Bangladesh 135 Trade Union 25, 26, 36, 29, 67, 95, 106; domestic workers unions 117 – 118, 133; and Industrial Revolution in England 36 Trafficking 96 – 97, 98 24 Parganas 64, 73, 74, 90 Unorganized sector, see informalization Unorganized Workers’ Social Security Act (2008) 12 United Provinces (UP) 8, 15, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 104 United Front Government 19, 20 Uttar Pradesh (UP) 22 Urban affluence, see middle class Victorian Way ofs Life 64 Wages /salary 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, 25, 29, 30, 36, 37, 38, 40, 56, 62, 65, 68 – 69, 70, 71, 74, 78, 92, 95, 116, 117, 133 West Bengal Industrial Corporation 27 West Bengal Land Reform Act (1955) 20 Women’s Movement 44, 84, 116 – 117, 118 Work participation, women 1, 7, 18, 23, 30, 38 – 40, 41, 43 – 45, 49, 52, 62, 86, 94, 99, 104, 111; Bangladeshi women 43, 130 – 131, 135; boy children 49 – 50, 84, 85, 99; comparison between West Bengal and other states 54, 130; decline 52 – 54, 85, 92; female – male comparison 39 – 40, 44, 46, 50; girl – boy comparison 84 – 85, 99; girl children 1, 5, 8, 11, 23, 31, 48 – 51, 52, 75, 84, 85, 92, 96, 99, 122; in agriculture 40; married women 38, 91, 97; middle class women 7, 18, 30 – 31, 48, 70 – 71, 86, 94, 104, 111, 119 – 120; rural – urban comparison 40