Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion: Issues and Perspectives Across the Globe 9811697728, 9789811697722

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Smita Mishra Panda Annapurna Devi Pandey Supriya Pattanayak   Editors

Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion Issues and Perspectives Across the Globe

Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion

Smita Mishra Panda · Annapurna Devi Pandey · Supriya Pattanayak Editors

Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion Issues and Perspectives Across the Globe

Editors Smita Mishra Panda Centurion University of Technology and Management Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Annapurna Devi Pandey Department of Anthropology University of California Santa Cruz, CA, USA

Supriya Pattanayak Centurion University of Technology and Management Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

ISBN 978-981-16-9772-2 ISBN 978-981-16-9773-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword

This timely volume demonstrates some of the various ways that the workings and effects of globalisation, driven in good part by the logics of the neoliberal restructuring of global capitalism, have intensified the dynamics and disparities deepening the severity of social exclusion. Social exclusion is an integral feature and consequence of social inequality in its multiscalar and multisited configurations within and across world societies. Most immediately, in the context of the current moment, the coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic has graphically exposed the major fault lines on the national and transnational landscapes where enduring disparities of wealth, power and life expectancy are vividly manifested and exacerbated by the current health crisis. The pandemic disproportionately burdens the most existentially and structurally vulnerable segments of world societies. These populations have long been unjustly subjected to the formidable forces of social exclusion, exhibited across several dimensions and domains, often overlapping and mutually constituting. These compelling conditions have become particularly urgent now in the light of not only, the pandemic but also, the wider context of convergent crises of health disparities (even before the pandemic), economic and environmental injustices, climate change, (im)migration/citizenship and liberal democracy. These convergences are even more complicated by the tensions arising from invidious distinctions (Berreman, 1972) related to ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexuality and generation/age. These are salient axes of difference, inequality and power that implicate established notions and norms concerning who do or do not belong to communities, nations and even the human species. Ultimately, these exclusions and inclusions are the result of culturally meditated sociopolitical processes that come to be naturalised. The multidimensional and intersectional problems of social inclusion need to be situated within a complex nexus that is mapped across the fractured geographies of life, death, power and the regimes of truth that enable or disable what we think we already know about them. These challenging circumstances make this collaborative publication a most timely and worthwhile contribution to the social sciences and policy studies. The empirical evidence, critical social analyses and theoretical formulations that the contributors to this volume offer, help us to think through the complex workings of social inequalities, power dynamics and the possibilities that justice affirming v

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forms of human agency and potential policy interventions represent for the future and well-being of the world. The introductory essay and the many chapters it frames and contextualises powerfully illuminate how social exclusion in the multiplicity of forms it assumes is a major obstacle to realising ‘democracy, human rights, justice and equality’ (Introduction) in culturally meaningful and politically efficacious ways. This book’s critically nuanced and solidly documented chapters all provide invaluable insights into social exclusion and some of the attempts undertaken to create conditions conducive for social inclusion in several settings around the world, in both the Global North and South. However, the South and the world beyond the West (e.g. Singapore in the East) are in the foreground of the analyses emanating from the contributor’s cases from Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and India, with the latter occupying a great deal of attention. Because of these foci, we should not infer that social exclusion is largely a problem outside of the Global North and advanced (or ‘overdeveloped’?) societies that are too often touted as paragons of development and democracy. The dilemmas of exclusion/inclusion are not at all restricted to developing or underdeveloped countries. What is significant in my view about the Southern locations of much of this book is that they offer interesting possibilities for developing critical social analysis and ‘theory from the South’—something that Australian sociologist and trans-woman Connell (2007) and Comaroff and Comaroff (2011) have advocated. According to them, we cannot explain or find practical solutions to the world’s problems without understanding and taking advantage of the epistemological opportunities that the hemispheric South and, I interject, metaphoric Souths in the North provide. Southern lenses and vantages, when mobilised as ex-centric, non-hegemonic tools (Harrison, 2016) can potentially help us to see the world—including the North—in promising new ways. This collection reflects the intellectual cosmopolitanism of its authors, but it also signals that critical social analysis and theorisation can emerge from the South. Southern theory, however, need not assume the form of insular, narrowly mapped nationalist trajectories of knowledge. In my view, there are more promising possibilities to the extent that the Global South provides cross-fertilising grounds for the (co)production of knowledge through the cooperative work performed within an array of intra- and international relationships that contribute to the building of multicentric and intercultural networks for dialogue, exchange and collaboration. I am thinking of new forms of scholarship and divisions of intellectual labour that depart from the conventional asymmetrical relationships between individuals and research institutions that, despite the best intentions, remain in the afterlife of colonial forms of knowledge production with its hierarchy of knowledges and knowledge producers. Such unequal relations are critically examined in decolonial discourses on the coloniality of power, knowledge and being. These critical perspectives have been strongly influenced by the interventions that Latin American and Caribbean thinkers have made, among them Quijano (2000), Mignolo (2011) and Wynter (2003). African scholars—Thiong’o (1987, 2012), Nyamnjah (2016) and Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2020)— have also played an important part in these conversations, through which the world of knowledge making and knowledge for worldmaking otherwise are reimagined.

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Although the dominant nexus of power and knowledge is not easily subverted, serious attempts at levelling the epistemic playing field are being pursued within, in the social sciences, including in the movement for world anthropologies (Ribeiro & Escobar, 2006). This movement’s directives for new practices and policies are being seriously engaged by those of us committed to more egalitarian and ethically responsible forms of scholarly practice, which work against the grain of colonial-style divisions of labour in which nativised intellectuals form the South and structurally minoritised zones within the North are glorified informants rather than peers and partners in all aspects of the knowledge making process—including in the formulation and testing of theory. While this book navigates across a considerable global terrain, it is clear that India is an important site, with Indian and Indian diasporic scholars playing a leading role in framing and coordinating an inclusive discourse with an international network of kindred thinking colleagues. The book is compiled in a way that encourages readers to engage the various chapters intertextually rather than as separate or singular entities. We are encouraged to read the book with multifocal lenses that make legible the similarities and differences among the social exclusions in various venues across the globe—from Australia, USA and Canada to India, Papua New Guinea, Mexico and Singapore. The Indian state of Odisha, where underdevelopment and impoverishment are prevalent, figures prominently as an important stage for performing critical social analysis in a third of the collection’s chapters, in which we encounter the diversity of those who have been excluded. The collection aptly demonstrates how Odisha offers a generative context for examining several different modes and sites of social exclusion as they apply to a broad cross section of salient sectors of Indian society: tribal communities, widows, the elderly, impoverished youth and sexual minorities. We find tribal communities confronting dominant models and strategies of development. Development-centred modes of forest management set the stage for tribal people’s struggle against the modernity engendered forces of dispossession and displacement from the territories they have historically inhabited and stewarded in accordance with culturally, socioeconomically and ecologically sustainable principles. The experience of India’s tribes resonates with those of indigenous people in Australia and North America (comprising Canada, the USA and Mexico), where assaults on territorial and resource sovereignty are a major concern in a world in which land grabbing—along with ocean grabbing, as one of the chapters explains—has grown into a major problem on a global scale. In another compelling case of social exclusion, we learn that the Hijra, belonging to a transgendered community, are stigmatised and othered along multiple dimensions of inequality. They have become especially vulnerable to high rates of COVID infection and death. Matters of health, economic precarity and gender/sexual repression intersect in ways jeopardising the well-being and survival of this community. This research resonates with findings from ethnographic analysis of similar communities in other parts of the world, including the USA, where racially subjected, particularly Black trans-women, not uncommonly inhabiting the informal economy as sex

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workers and sex-work activists, are disproportionately targeted by police and vigilante terror (as corroborated in the fieldwork of Chibundo Egwuatu, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). This embodied vulnerability has become more visible because the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), of which the famous internationally visible #BlackLivesMatter network is an integral part, has insisted that all Black lives matter, indicating that differentiations and intersections of class, gender and sexuality must all be taken into account. In a national setting in which class-privileged cis-heteropatriarchal white supremacy is systemic and adamantly denied, the predicaments of racialised sexual minorities make them particularly vulnerable to the worst plights of social exclusion, scapegoating and structural violence. This is a serious concern warranting public attention all around the world. This provocative collection of perspectives also addresses the varied vulnerabilities and attendant exclusionary experiences of witch-hunted women, migrants and refugees, working poor youth, fishers in coastal communities whose seascapes have been captured for commercial development and clients of welfare-to-work policy reforms. Readers will gain invaluable insights into the intricacies of social exclusion/inclusion through the multivalent, textured stories—and counter-stories—the various authors tell about domestic workers in Singapore, Muslim refugee women in the War on Terror context of the Islamophobic USA, phenotypically visible West African and North-eastern Indian migrants in Delhi, working poor youth navigating the challenging terrain of informal and formal employment and welfare-dependent families whose household heads are forced to work in what are often dead end, less than living wage jobs to meet the shifting criteria of personhood and citizenship in the neoliberalised milieu of eroding welfare states. There is so much rich material in this book, which invites us to read and re-read its multilayered contents. This book amply demonstrates that the problem of social exclusion is one that demands deeper scrutiny on the part of committed communities of scholars, who produce knowledge that is grounded in robust research, both basic and applied, for the public good, construed in a radically democratic sense of that term. For their contributions towards this end, the teamwork invested in this book should be commended. However, social exclusion and inclusion are not only the preoccupation and responsibility of academics. These interrelated issues also warrant serious engagement from many other constituencies, particularly those concerned with matters of public or social policy. Practitioners working within civil society organisations, social justice activists in social movements, elected and non-elected officials in various agencies of government and seats of mandated power and ordinary citizens whose public opinions and civic participation make a difference all have the responsibility to contribute to making and, more importantly, remaking policy. As a process, effective policymaking entails reimagining and redefining the very terms of what policy needs to be and do, if it is to be implemented for the purpose of bettering the lives of the world’s most vulnerable categories of people and ensuring that their life worlds and environments are humane and sustainable along every relevant dimension— from inter-group dynamics to the biodiversity necessary for the entire ecological continuum of planetary life and being. More academics need to embed themselves in

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more encompassing coalitions of knowledge and knowledge application that permit us to play active roles in ongoing engagements with civil society, social movements and apparatuses of national and supranational multilateral governance. Excluded populations have been othered and relegated to the status of outsiders, regardless of whether they have emigrated from elsewhere or are citizens according to the codification of constitutional law. Dejure law and de facto reality often conflict and contradict each other. In the light of this, policy and legal reforms that purport to promote social inclusion can result in disappointing and adverse outcomes. This could be the case because of the unintended consequences of well-meaning actions, or it could result from implicit bias and intentionality. In too many contexts, it is in the interest of established authorities to only scratch the surface rather than penetrate beneath it to disrupt and dismantle the underlying structures that hold up the status quo with its deeply entrenched hierarchy of wealth, privilege and power. When the interests of the included, especially the most privileged and powerful echelons, and those of excluded sectors diverge and are in structural antagonism, substantive transformations, as the co-editors and others point out, are difficult if not impossible to achieve. At best, reforms are partial and palliative. Nonetheless, more egalitarian and transformation-oriented forms of democratic collective action from below and the exertion of ‘strong citizenship rights’ (Introduction) can potentially offset some of the adverse effects of social exclusion. The mobilisation of broad-based citizen participation has the potential to hold policymakers and political leaders accountable. That, at least, is the hope and dream that seeks new horizons beyond the limitations commonly associated with liberal democratic regimes, whether in the North or South. In these contexts, the interests of the few tend to be favoured over those of the many, the 1% over the 99% who constitute ‘the rest’ (The Guardian, 2021). Although inclusion is the logical antithesis of exclusion, as a concept and a multifaceted sociopolitical phenomenon, inclusion requires careful interrogation. As indicated in this book, it is often a double-edged sword rather than a simple panacea that resolves problems and reconciles antagonisms. We must be careful what we ask for, because inclusion within a system fraught with deep contradictions and camouflaged modes of perpetuating dehumanising tiers of humanity and predatory zones where all other forms of life and being are vulnerable to exploitation is not a real solution. This book, particularly the chapters in the final section, helps us work our way beyond the conventional wisdom with its established assumptions and categories. New lenses need to be crafted for discerning potential paths forward towards new horizons for theory and practice. In many respects, we need to unthink before we can rethink and remap what can be the best avenues for moving towards greater measures of success in critical projects of alternative worldmaking. What steps can scholars and scholar activists take to move us further along in creating conditions for a world otherwise, a pluriverse with its expansive space for humane and convivial modalities of inclusion and inclusiveness? Such a worldmaking project would refuse the traps of neoliberal dispossession and late modernity’s circuits of ‘development’ and ‘democratisation’, which too often perform rituals of imperial globality’s (including US foreign policy’s) secular civilising mission (Barth & Hobson, 2021) rather than create sustainable conditions for generating

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socio-economic justice; direct, participatory forms of power sharing; and modes of mutuality across all major domains of human sociality and inter-species ecology. In some Latin American contexts, these are considered necessary if not sufficient conditions for engendering and promoting buen vivir (‘good living’) as characterised in the Indigenous-inspired decolonial imagination (The Guardian, 2013). There are roughly similar cosmovisions articulated in other parts of the world. When ‘sustainable development’ and ‘representative democracy’ support plutocracy and oligarchy over the needs and interests of ordinary people, particularly those excluded from the potential benefits of social, cultural, political and economic sectors of society, they are part of the problem, not solutions to it. When policymaking and reform purporting to promote social inclusion are so entangled in the capital accumulating logics of development and democratisation—even when the language of human rights, equality and justice is deployed—there will continue to be serious obstacles and impediments to redressing pervasive forms of social exclusion. This edited collection grew out of a vibrant conversation that was facilitated in the context of the 2019 Inter-Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES), which convened in Poznan, Poland. I played a small role in that session by serving as a discussant invited to think with the presenters about the significance and implications of their respective research projects. Our open discussion stimulated us to think about what could be achieved through the continued cross-fertilisation among networks of researchers with convergent interests in social exclusion/inclusion. Such opportunities for cross-pollination and synthesis could provide the basis for meaningful contributions to and intervention in how anthropologists and other social scientists understand the problem of social exclusion and the most effective means to rethink and remedy it. At a moment when the forces of globalisation, an important aspect of late modernity, are driven by the logic of flexible accumulation by dispossession, displacement and, in many contexts, disposability, what can be done? Profit over people is a good part of the dystopic trend and the context within which the UN’s optimistic 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—17 to be exact with 169 targets—have been enumerated. The SDGs represent a blueprint for peace and prosperity and supposedly are an improvement over the earlier eight Millennium Development Goals, which left a great deal of space for criticism. Indeed, it is imperative for the world community to forge and work towards shared goals and objectives. Nonetheless, there remain limitations that must be seriously addressed (Harrison, 2019). For example, the SDGs do not consider the extent to which the space for policy change is constrained by international neoliberal economic agreements that favour the world’s most powerful states. Moreover, the SDGs do not adequately challenge the uneven playing field on which powerful countries, international financial institutions, transnational corporations and transnational NGOs produce and reproduce inequalities in income, wealth and power at national and global levels, causing the very problems that the SDGs are supposed to solve. These contradictions are the very grounds upon which social exclusion in its multidimensionality and complexity is situated. The contributors to this volume acknowledge that trends in the design

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and implementation of reforms for social inclusion often fail to penetrate beneath the surface of symptoms to the underlying structural causes. This volume does a great service in diagnosing problems of social exclusion and the limitations of policy reform. It stimulates us to think in more critical and, hopefully, more creative ways about what needs to be and can be done. The interrelated tasks of diagnosis and repair constitute a long-term commitment that social scientists must make as agents of change in wider coalitions of knowledge making and public engagement. Those coalitions must accept the challenge of finding ways to heal the wounds that pathologies of power (Farmer, 2004) inflict. October 2021

Faye V. Harrison Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Gainesville, FL, USA

References Barth, B., & Hobson, R. (Eds.). (2021). Civilizing missions in the twentieth century. Brill. Berreman, G. (1972). Race, caste, and other invidious distinctions in social stratification. Race, 13(4), 385–414. Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (2011). Theory from the South: Or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa. Paradigm Publishers. Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Polity Press. Farmer, P. (2004). Pathologies of power: Health, human rights, and the new war on the poor. University of California Press. Harrison, F. V. (2016). Theorizing in ex-centric sites. Anthropological Theory, 16(2–3), 160–176. 10.1177/1463499616652516 Harrison, F. V. (2019). The 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development Goals: A critical perspective on goal #5—Gender. Paper presented at the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences Inter-Congress in Poznan, Poland. Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2020). Decolonization, development and knowledge in Africa: Turning over a new leaf . Routledge. Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2016). #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at resilient colonialism in South Africa. Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group. Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215–232. Ribeiro, G. L., & Escobar, A. (Eds.). (2006). World anthropologies: Disciplinary transformations within systems of power. Berg. The Guardian. (2013). Buen vivir: The social philosophy inspiring movements in South America. Oliver Balch’s interview with Eduardo Gudynas, February 4. The Guardian. (2021). We showed it was possible to create a movement from almost nothing: Occupy Wall Street ten years on. Andrew Anthony, September 12. Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. James Currey.

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Thiong’o, N. (2012). Globalectics: Theory and the politics of knowing. Columbia University Press. Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation—An argument. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257– 337. Faye V. Harrison is Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology as well as Faculty Affiliate with the Program on Women and Gender in Global Perspectives, the Center for African Studies and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She is Sociocultural and Political Anthropologist specialising in the study of social inequalities, human rights and intersections of race, gender, class and (trans) national belonging (or not belonging). She has also contributed to the history and politics of anthropology and of African American/African diaspora studies. Some of her recent writings address domestic and international divisions of intellectual labour and performing diverse acts of theory work on ‘ex-centric’ stages. She earned her BA at Brown University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology at Stanford University. She has done research in the Caribbean, the UK and South Africa as well as in the USA. Her intellectual interests and professional activities have also taken her to many other places in the world, including Nigeria, India, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan and China. She has published extensively on the gendered division of labour within Jamaica’s urban informal economy; the interplay of gangs, crime and politics in Jamaica; the impact of neoliberal globalisation on everyday life in Jamaica, Cuba and the USA; racism, anti-racism and human rights in the global context; and critical race feminist methodology as a tool for global research.

Preface

The idea of the book on social exclusion germinated at a Conference of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, August 2019, at the Inter-Congress on World Solidarities, organised by the Adam Mickiewicz University at Poznan (Poland). Five papers presented in the conference are included in the volume along with others. With the proliferation of literature on the subject, we reviewed what novelty we could bring to the table. We thought it would be most appropriate to understand and analyse social exclusion and policies of inclusion under one umbrella document, more specifically emphasising in issues and perspectives from across the globe. Social exclusion continues to be central in both policymaking and academia around the world, in both developing and developed countries. The book is divided into four thematic sections containing sixteen chapters: Political Economy of Social Exclusion; Inclusionary Policy Outcomes; Persistent Challenges to Social Exclusion; and Rethinking Social Exclusion and Inclusion. The chapters in this volume bring together diverse issues on social exclusion, which can be broadly classified under five main dimensions—concept, theory, policy, magnitude and diversity and impact. Policies of inclusion discussed in the chapters have their limitations in bringing about full social inclusion, at best it is partial and at times can revert back to its original state of exclusion. Therefore, addressing the very structures that are responsible for exclusion is the only path to bring about the desired social inclusion in society, no matter how utopian it may appear to achieve. We would like to thank all the authors for contributing to this volume. We are grateful to Prof. Faye V. Harrison (University of Illinois) and Prof. Triloki Nath Pandey (University of California, Santa Cruz) for having written the foreword and afterword, respectively, in the volume. We would like to express our gratitude to Prof. Kameshwar Choudhary (Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow) for discussing and providing critical inputs to the introduction chapter. Finally, we would like to thank our universities (Centurion University of Technology and Management,

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Odisha, and University of California, Santa Cruz, USA) for encouraging us and giving us the space to participate in the IUAES conference and writing of the volume. Bhubaneswar, India Santa Cruz, USA Bhubaneswar, India

Smita Mishra Panda Annapurna Devi Pandey Supriya Pattanayak

Contents

1

Introduction: The Reality of Social Exclusion and Policy of Inclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Smita Mishra Panda, Supriya Pattanayak, and Annapurna Devi Pandey

Part I 2

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4

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Political Economy of Social Exclusion

From Self-governance of Forest to Illegal Occupants: The Creation of Exclusion Through Dispossession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Virginius Xaxa

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Triple Oppression and Exclusion: Muslim Refugee Women in the USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Huma Ahmed-Ghosh

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The Everyday Fault Lines of Inclusion and Exclusion in Delhi: Of Othering, Counter Voices and a Politics of Belonging . . . . . . . . . . Bobby Luthra Sinha

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Globalisation and Social Polarisation: Spatial Repercussions of Global Labour Flows of Domestic Workers in Singapore . . . . . . . Shahed Khan

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Witch Hunts in India: The Nexus with Forms of Exclusion . . . . . . . . Govind Kelkar, Sarika Sinha, and Dev Nathan

Part II 7

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Inclusionary Policy Outcomes

MGNREGS in Odisha: Social Inclusion and Exclusion Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Supriya Pattanayak

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Tragedy to the Commons and Outcomes of Blue Growth: Comparative Study on the Politicised Environment of Aquaculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 J. Jeffrey Immanuel and N. C. Narayanan

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When Welfare Goes Hand in Hand with Social and Economic Exclusion in Québec, Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Éric Gagnon Poulin

Part III Persistent Challenges to Social Inclusion 10 Encountering and Engaging with Modernity: Vulnerability and Exclusion of Youth in Odisha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Ragnhild Lund and Smita Mishra Panda 11 Exclusion of Widows and State Welfare Policies: Some Insights from Odisha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Annapurna Devi Pandey and Swarnamayee Tripathy 12 Social Exclusion of the Hijra During COVID-19 Pandemic in Odisha: Vulnerability and Precarity Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Smita Mishra Panda 13 Social Exclusion of the Elderly in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Annapurna Devi Pandey 14 Oil Exploitation and Socio-economic Vulnerability in Mexico . . . . . . 253 Victoria Chenaut Part IV Rethinking Social Exclusion and Inclusion 15 How (Not) to Exclude…? Against Totalising and Colonising Delusions of Inclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Jacques Boulet 16 Living Between the West and the Pacific—Papua New Guinea and the Question of Social Inclusion/Exclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Yaso Nadarajah Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

Editors and Contributors

About the Editors Smita Mishra Panda is Professor and Director Research at the Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha. A gold medalist from Delhi University, she has a degree in Rural-Regional Development Planning and a Ph.D. in Gender and Development Studies from the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. Her research focuses primarily on gender and development, natural resource management (livelihoods, policies and institutions), governance, rural development, indigenous people’s life and livelihoods and transgender issues. She has around 30 years of teaching, research and consulting experience in South East Asia and India. Smita has worked as a researcher at the Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand); UN Researcher at the UNCRD (Nagoya, Japan); taught at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (Gujarat); and has been a visiting faculty at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway), Monash University (Australia) and Curtin University (Australia). Widely travelled, she has presented papers in several national and international conferences. She has also published extensively in a number of scholarly journals. Smita has authored Engendering Governance Institutions: State, Market and Civil Society (Sage, 2008); Co-edited Gender, Mobilities and Livelihood Transformations: Comparing indigenous people in China, India and Laos (Routledge London, 2013). Annapurna Devi Pandey is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz (USA). She has also taught for a decade at the San Jose State University and has spent a teaching Semester at Sea sponsored by the University of Virginia. She has been Senior Fulbright Scholar in India as well. Her areas of research and teaching include gender and Indian diaspora in the USA and indigenous communities in India. Supriya Pattanayak is Vice Chancellor of Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She is trained in Social Work and has extensive

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teaching, research and policy experience. Her research interest is in the field of gender and development issues, and social work pedagogy. She has worked with NGOs, multilateral and bilateral agencies, federal and state governments. In her role as State Representative (Odisha), Department for International Development India (British High Commission), she collaborated with various development partners in pursuance of harmonization of development efforts and achievement of MDGs. She has taught in Australian Universities and been Visiting Research Fellow at the St Petersburg State University, Russia.

Contributors Huma Ahmed-Ghosh is Professor in the Department of Women’s Studies at San Diego State University. She is also currently Director of the Centre for Islamic and Arabic Studies. She received her Ph.D. in 1990 in Cultural Anthropology from Syracuse University and M.A. and M.Phil. from the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has published extensively on women in Afghanistan, Muslim women in India and in the US diaspora, widows in India and beauty pageants in India. She recently published two edited books titled, Contesting Feminisms: Gender and Islam in Asia and Asian Muslim Women: Globalization and Local Realities(2015). Her current manuscript on Transgressive Sexualities: Queer Muslim “Women” Claiming Rights is Asia is currently under review for publication. She is deeply engaged with community development in San Diego, primarily working on gendered issues in the refugee communities in the city. Jacques Boulet has studied, worked and lived in five continents, starting in his native Flemish Belgium—where he received his Social Work Undergraduate Degree in 1965. He worked for 3 years as a volunteer in a community development project in Congo and subsequently obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Community Development and Social Planning at the Institute for Social Studies in The Hague (Netherlands). He taught in social work education programs in Germany throughout the seventies also being involved in several grassroots community projects and processes. From 1980 to 1985, he studied and worked at the University of Michigan (USA), attaining a Ph.D. (in Social Work and Sociology). He was Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor between 1985 and 1996 in two Australian universities (Melbourne University and RMIT), leaving academia in 1997 to start a local community learning centre, the Borderlands Cooperative, representing a mixture of community activism, learning and research/consultancy centre and ‘incubation space’ for good ideas. With Borderlands, he is involved in consulting, research and activist work and has worked in community health, local government policy development, community arts, volunteering support and a broad range of organisational development projects. He was involved in some way with over 130 projects the cooperative completed since its inception till today. The accredited graduate school, OASES, equally imagined and developed by Borderlands, operating from 2005 to 2016 and of which he was

Editors and Contributors

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Founding Head of School, offered a master’s degree in sustainability and social change. Victoria Chenaut is Professor and Researcher at Mexico’s Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS, Mexico). Her research area is Legal Anthropology, particularly issues of legal pluralism, gender and law, justice and inter-legality in indigenous regions. Her present research refers to the social and environmental impact on rural and indigenous populations of oil extraction under neoliberal policies. She is Member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and of the Executive Committee of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES). J. Jeffrey Immanuel is Human Geographer and a Ph.D. student at the Department of Geography, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA, funded by the Coastal Climate Risk and Resilience (C2R2) Initiative. He has a bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from Anna University, Chennai, India, and a master’s in Technology and Development from IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India. His current areas of research interests include marine spatial planning, marine governance, blue growth and climate change through the lens of decolonial political ecology and trans-disciplinarity as a form of research praxis. Govind Kelkar did Ph.D. in Political Economy of China and is currently Professor and Executive Director, GenDev Centre for Research and Innovation, India, as well as Visiting Professor, Council for Social Development, and Institute for Human Development, India. She was Senior Adviser, Landesa/Rural Development Institute, Seattle, USA (May 2013–March 2020); and Regional Council Member of AsiaPacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, Chiang Mai, Thailand. She is Distinguished Adjunct Faculty of Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok, Thailand. She has the position of Honorary Professor in the Institute of Ethnology, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Yunnan, China, and Honorary Senior Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. She has previously taught at Delhi University, the Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai and the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok, Thailand. At AIT, she founded the graduate program in Gender Development Studies and also the Gender, Technology and Development Journal, published by SAGE and now by Routledge India. She has extensively worked on gender relations in rural energy and women’s land rights in Asia. She has contributed numerous articles to scholarly journals and written 16 books with a focus on gender relations in Asia and has been in close touch with the women’s movements in the region. Her recent books include Witch Hunts: Culture, Patriarchy and Structural Transformation (2020) and Women, Land and Power in Asia (2013). Shahed Khan holds an undergraduate degree in Architecture and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in Urban Planning. He worked in the private sector before joining the academia and has taught architecture and urban planning at universities in Asia and Australia. Throughout his career as Academic and Researcher, he has remained committed to encouraging students and professionals of the built environment to shape liveable human settlements and promote inclusiveness, social justice and equity

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in cities. While his research interests cover a wide range of planning and urban design topics related to community development and sustainability, his two main areas of focus include the functioning of informal settlements inhabited by the urban poor in developing countries and the impact on citizens of the forces of globalisation that accentuate differences between the Global North and Global South. At Curtin University, Australia, he served as Head of the Department, Planning and Geography, and later as Director International (School of Design and the Built Environment). During this time, he introduced structured and rigorous learning into the urban planning curriculum through a series of international study tours aimed at highlighting intercultural learning across various planning contexts and exposing Australian students to urban planning challenges brought about by globalisation and rise of global cities in Asia. Currently, he serves as Adjunct Faculty at Curtin University (Australia) and Centurion University of Technology and Management (India). Ragnhild Lund is Professor of Geography in the Department of Geography, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on three broad areas: gender and development (livelihoods, body space, activism, rethinking and reproducing gender and gender-based violence); mobility and migration (mobile livelihoods, development-induced displacement, gendered mobility and Indigenous people); and social geography (cultural encounters, youths, children, friends, social exclusion, post-war and post-disaster recovery). She has published extensively in international peer-reviewed journals and books and has led several large research projects in Asia. Yaso Nadarajah is Associate Professor in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. The primary focus of his research is working through both local and global challenges in areas stretched and remade by customary practices, national agendas and global markets. Her current research in Papua New Guinea, India, Malaysia and Australia is grounded through critical reflexivity and discourses of decolonisation; seeking ways where theory, method and praxis are attentive to lived realities is locally engaged and open to multiple ways of knowing. He is currently working on Locating Theory in Development: Self, the Other and Difference, (2021); and is Co-author of Rethinking Development through Study Tours: Interpreting the Field and Negotiating Different Viewpoints, (Montfort, Malawi, 2016); Searching for Community—Melbourne to Delhi, (Manohar, India, 2015); Rebuilding Communities in the Wake of Disaster: Social Recovery in Sri Lanka and India, (Routledge, India, 2012); and Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development—Other Paths for Papua New Guinea, (University of Hawaii, 2012). N. C. Narayanan is Professor of Development Studies at the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA), Core Faculty at the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and Associate faculty at the IDP for Climate Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India. He is Adjunct Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, IISC campus, Bangalore; Visiting Faculty at the Tata

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Institute of Social Studies, Mumbai; Shiv Nadar University, UP, and was FulbrightNehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow at the University of California Berkeley. He was earlier Executive Director of the South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWAters) and Faculty at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). His areas of interest are water/sanitation/climate policy process, local governance, coastal wetland management, flood adaptation, development theory, political ecology of resource use and trans-disciplinary research (concept and practice). Dev Nathan is Economist, Research Director of the GenDev Centre for Research and Innovation and Visiting Professor at the Institute for Human Development. He is Co-editor of the Cambridge University Press series on Development Trajectories in Global Value Chains. He is Co-author of Witch Hunts: Culture, Patriarchy and Structural Transformation (2020) and of the forthcoming Reverse Subsidies in Global Production: Gender, Labour and Environmental Injustice in Garment Value Chains. His current research focus is on knowledge and inequality. Éric Gagnon Poulin is Visiting Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology at Laval University and specialises in Economic Anthropology. He is interested in poverty, social exclusion, the labour market, sustainable development and resistance in Quebec and Latin America. His research interests include analysis of the state’s discourse on poverty, neoliberalism and the transformations of the welfare state. His current project focuses on the links between employability measures, the proliferation of precarious jobs and systemic poverty. He is also President of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA). Bobby Luthra Sinha is Chief Researcher, Adiwasi Samta Manch (ASM), Chhattisgarh, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Asian, African and Latin American Studies (CAALAS) at the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), Delhi. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Basel in Switzerland and Postdoc from the University of Kwazulu Natal in Durban, South Africa. Trained in multimedia ethnographic studies, she has several documentaries to her credit. She specialises in comparative and interdisciplinary studies in social anthropology and political science. Keen on migration studies, she is Co-chair at the Scientific Commission of Migration, International Union of Anthropological and Ethnographic Studies (IUAES). Sarika Sinha is a part of the autonomous women’s movement in India and is Director of Policy, Campaigns and Communications at ActionAid Association. She primarily works with some of the most dispossessed communities, namely indigenous people dying of starvation, caste-based sex workers, manual scavengers and children in difficult circumstances. Prior to taking a national portfolio, she has worked across Karnataka, AP, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and MP. Apart from being involved in movements, she also teaches at various educational institutes like the Coady International Institute, Ambedkar University and Indian Institute of Forest Management. She is also engaged in policy work and implementation through several governmental platforms and commissions. She has been a part of women’s committee of Governor of Madhya Pradesh, the State Secretariat of Madhya Pradesh, All India Institute of

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Medical Sciences, Border Security Force, to name a few. She played a key role in drafting several policies across the country and has been instrumental in rolling out primary healthcare workers and one stop crisis centre in India. She is Chevening Scholar and has studied at London School of Economics. She has also been awarded under the International Visitor Leadership Program by the Government of USA. Swarnamayee Tripathy is currently Professor of Public Administration and heading the Department of Public Administration at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She is also Director of Journalism and Mass Communication Program at the university and former Coordinator of School of Women’s Studies, Utkal University. She has authored Political Participation of women workers in India 2000 (Vikas); coauthored Self Help Groups, Empowerment and Women (2017); New Horizons of Health care in India (2018); and co-edited Women in Indian Society: On A Resurgent Path 2018; Women reinventing Development: The Odisha Experience 2020. She has presented research papers at several conferences in India and abroad. She has published 35 research papers and chapters on women’s issues and disaster management. Her papers have been published in reputed national and international journals. Political thought and theory, administrative theory and thought are dear to her heart. She has been a resource person in academic staff colleges and universities across India on political thought and issues of gender, public policy and governance. Virginius Xaxa is formerly Professor of Sociology at Delhi School of Economics, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati campus and Tezpur University and is presently Visiting Professor at the Institute for Human Development, Delhi. He has been Member of the National Advisory Council (NAC) during UPA Government II and also Chairman of the High Level Committee constituted by Prime Minister to study the educational, health and economic status of the tribal communities in India. His research interests concern with issues of social exclusion, social identity, development, indigenous peoples, plantation labour and north-east studies. He is author of State, Society, and Tribes: Issues in Post-Colonial India (2008), Economic Dualism and Structure of Class: A Study in Plantation and Peasant Settings in North Bengal (1997) and Co-author of Plantation Labour in India (1996). He is also Coeditor of Tribal Politics in India (2021), Employment and Labour Market in Northeast India: Interrogating Structural Changes (2018), Work, Institutions and Sustainable Livelihood: Issues and Challenges of Transformation (2017), Forest Lanterns: A Collection of Essays on Solutions for Nourishing India’s Tribal Children (2016) and Social Exclusion and Adverse Inclusion: Adivasis in India (2012). Smita Mishra Panda Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India Annapurna Devi Pandey University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA Supriya Pattanayak Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Abbreviations

AICRP AISCCON AUD BA BC BGI BPL BTech CALD CBD CEPE CIFRI CMFRI CMIE COVID-19 CSR DBT DU EC EEA EPZs EU FAO FBI FC FDW FGD GDP GMI GOI/GoI GPs

All India Coordinated Research Projects All India Senior Citizens’ Confederation Australian Dollar Bachelor of Arts Backward Caste Blue Growth Initiative Below Poverty Line Bachelor of Technology Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Central Business District Center for Studies on Poverty and Exclusion Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute Center for Monitoring of the Indian Economy Coronavirus Disease Corporate Social Responsibility Direct Benefit Transactions University of Delhi European Commission Emic Evaluation Approach Export Processing Zones European Union Food and Agriculture Organisation Federal Bureau of Investigation Forward Caste Foreign Domestic Workers Focus Group Discussion Gross Domestic Product Guaranteed Minimum Income Government of India General Practitioners xxiii

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GT ICDS IGNOAPS IGNWPS ILO IMF INR IPC JNU LAFTI LASI LGBT LGBTQ MA MAGA MBA MBM MDGs MFP MGNREGS MINT MNC MOEF MoM MOU MPCE MPEDA NADP NALSA NCRB NCS NCW NDTV NE India NGOs NRM NSAP NSSO NUA NWFP OECD OEP PIL PLD PNG

Abbreviations

Gram Tarang Integrated Child Development Services Indira Gandhi National Old-Age Pension Scheme Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme International Labour Organization International Monetary Fund Indian Rupees Indian Penal Code Jawaharlal Nehru University Land for the Tillers Freedom Movement Longitudinal Ageing Study in India Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Master of Arts Make America Great Again Master of Business Administration Market Basket Measure Millennium Development Goals Minor Forest Produce Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey Multinational Corporations Ministry of Environment and Forest Ministry of Manpower Memorandum of Understanding Monthly Per capita Consumption Expenditure Marine Products Export Development Authority National Aquaculture Development Plan National Legal Services Authority National Crime Records Bureau Nature Conservation Society National Commission for Women New Delhi Television Limited North-East India Non-Governmental Organisations Natural Resource Management National Social Assistance Program National Sample Survey Office New Urban Agenda Non-Wood Forest Produce Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Overseas Employment Program Public Interest Litigation Partners in Law and Development Papua New Guinea

Abbreviations

POEA PPP PR PRA PRI SC SDG SHGs SRS SSEPD ST STEP TRACT UMBC UN UNDP UNHCR USA WFF WFFP WRI WTO

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Philippine Overseas Employment Administration Public–Private Partnership Permanent Resident Participatory Rural Appraisal Panchayat Raj Institutions Scheduled Caste Sustainable Development Goals Self-Help Groups Sex Reassignment Surgery Social Security and Empowerment of Persons with Disability Scheduled Tribe Scheme for Training Employment Program Tiger Research and Conservation Trust Urban Micro-Business Centre United Nations United Nations Development Program United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United States of America World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers World Forum of Fisher Peoples Widows’ Rights International World Trade Organization

List of Figures

Chapter 7 Fig. 1

Analytical framework—contexts underpinning social exclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 8 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Study areas—Perunthottam, Naicker Kuppam, Savadi Kuppam . . . Study area—Idindhakarai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GIS map of Perunthottam village—delineating spatial and temporal patterns of oppression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

141 142 148

Chapter 14 Fig. 1

Oil wells in Municipalities of the Chicontepec Paleochannel (States of Puebla and Veracruz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

255

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List of Tables

Chapter 6 Table 1 Table 2

Witch persecution/killing in selected eight districts of India (based on cases that occurred between 2015 and 2020) . . . . . . . . . Forms of exclusion in witch persecutions in Indian case studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

96 97

Chapter 7 Table 1 Table 2

MGNREGS performance in the sample districts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Person days of work generated by social categories . . . . . . . . . . . .

121 122

Chapter 8 Table 1

Different caste categories in Perunthottam village . . . . . . . . . . . . .

143

Chapter 10 Table 1

Youth in the different locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

178

Chapter 12 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4

Earnings of the Hijra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hijra occupation affected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Income difference of the Hijra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Experiences of exclusion during the pandemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

218 219 221 222

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List of Boxes

Chapter 6 Box 1 Box 2 Box 3 Box 4

........................................................ ........................................................ ........................................................ ........................................................

98 101 102 103

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Chapter 1

Introduction: The Reality of Social Exclusion and Policy of Inclusion Smita Mishra Panda, Supriya Pattanayak, and Annapurna Devi Pandey

Social exclusion continues to surface in development and public policy debates all over the globe. The concept of social exclusion is used to denote a group of people or a community, who are excluded from the everyday activities in society in a variety of ways. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 put out by the United Nations to promote ‘inclusive development’, within the framework of a transformative agenda, in which all the seventeen goals have a strong underlying message of inclusion, equity and sustainability across the world. Simultaneously, the importance of negating the detrimental impacts of social exclusion on humankind is being realised by governments and various development agencies all over the world. Despite constitutional, human rights and other safeguards to create an equitable society, social exclusion as a social construct is practised in myriad forms in different societies. It negates the basic principles of democracy, human rights, justice and equality. Social exclusion and inclusion remain a growing concern among policymakers and intellectuals. They seem to be more pronounced in the developing world, where the very structural foundations of the society are unequal and divisions along lines of caste, class, gender, religion and other social categories are sharply manifested. The developed world too is struggling with its own social exclusion issues with respect to race, immigrants, minorities of different kinds, women and others. With the retreat of the welfare states, the terms ‘exclusion’ and ‘inclusion’ came into vogue in the post-industrial, democratic, industrial and capitalist societies (Byrne, 2005). However, with rising consciousness regarding human rights, citizenship rights, individual dignity, gender and social equality, social and distributive justice, the debate on social exclusion is alive in the face of struggles for inclusion all over the world. S. M. Panda (B) · S. Pattanayak Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India e-mail: [email protected] A. D. Pandey University of California, Santa Cruz, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_1

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Social exclusion persists all over the world despite efforts at keeping democracy alive since the late seventeenth century (Oommen, 2014). Poverty and deprivation have been at the core of understanding social exclusion from the time literature on the subject has been published. The term social exclusion was coined by Lenoir in 1974 in the context of France and defined the excluded as those who are not only the poor but also the handicapped, suicidal, aged people, abused children, substance abusers and others who formed about 10 per cent of the population. Thereafter, the term gathered momentum, particularly during the period of the economic crisis of the welfare state and a range of social and political crises (Silver, 1994). Rupture of social bonds is the French definition of social exclusion in which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society within which they live (European Foundation 1995 quoted in de Haan, 2001). Silver (2015) provides a working definition of social inclusion, referring to it as ‘one of a multi-dimensional relational process of increasing opportunities for social participation, enhancing capabilities to fulfil normatively prescribed social roles, broadening social ties of respect and recognition and at the collective level, enhancing social bonds, cohesion, integration or solidarity’ (p. 3). Social exclusion according to Sen (2000) is best understood within the Aristotelian framework of freedoms and capabilities. This, he argues, can help in understanding the causal as well as the constitutive analysis of poverty and deprivation, which have been used extensively in several poverty- and development-related studies across the world. The perspective also offers useful insights for scrutiny and policy related to social inclusion. Deprivation is at one level, and there is also freedom of expression that is crucial to unravel the different layers of social exclusion. This makes social exclusion a multidimensional concept involving economic, social, political, cultural and unique aspects of disadvantages and deprivation often described as the process by which individuals and groups are wholly or partly excluded from participation in society (Popay et al., 2008). It also means that social exclusion is not merely a synonym of poverty, but is multidimensional, relative and structural (Khan, 2020). In understanding social exclusion and inclusive growth, Deshpande (2013) affirms that it is imperative to focus on the continuum of disadvantage from primarily economic (what you have) to primarily cultural (who you are) dimensions. She further goes on to make a distinction between the two extremes and hybrid forms of injustice in which social groups are characterised by a combination of economic and cultural disadvantages such as gender, ethnicity or caste in the case of India. Hence, policies have to be accordingly designed to address the complex nature of the disadvantages of those groups. A robust definition of social inclusion by the European Union would be useful to conceptualise what it means to come out of exclusion. It says—‘Social inclusion is a process that ensures that those at risk of being left out gain opportunities and resources to participate fully in economic, social, cultural and political life and enjoy a standard of well-being that is considered normal in the society in which they live. It ensures that they have a voice in decisions which affect their lives and access to markets, public services and their fundamental rights’ (Silver, 2012, p. 2). More on social inclusion is elaborated in the ensuing sections.

1 Introduction: The Reality of Social Exclusion …

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What is also increasingly seen is that globalisation has led to acceleration of the process of social exclusion in the world. With the opening of borders over the years, cross-territory migrations have led to proliferation of multicultural societies. This is further complicated by issues of forced migration. Through their plural composition, multicultural societies are witnessing marked diversities and differences among the citizenry. Hierarchy and hegemony of the dominant groups and their determination not to dispense with the privileges enjoyed by them over a period of time have led to denials, discriminations, deprivations and disadvantages for groups of people who are minorities and marginalised. Differential social identities have become the bedrocks of social exclusion in the countries of the world today. Migrants, religious, racial and ethnic minorities, refugees, weaker sections, LGBTQ groups, economically marginalised groups, sex workers, ex-offenders, differently challenged, people in conflict regions and youth in cities strongly experience exclusion. Social exclusion creates a trajectory of disadvantages and deprivations of inter-generational character that have long-term detrimental consequences. Besides inequality, they contribute significantly to poverty and a life deprived of dignity. There is ample evidence across the world of how individuals and groups/communities internalise their excluded status and start accepting what is handed out to them by dominant groups and the ruling class (Pease, 2013). There is also evidence of how excluded groups are organising themselves in the form of social movements demanding for their rights and social justice (Escobar, 2004; Mayer, 2009). This volume brings together sixteen chapters, out of which five were presented in the form of papers at the Conference of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, August 2019, Inter-Congress on World Solidarities, organised by the Adam Mickiewicz University at Poznan (Poland). We intend to bring in cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary issues and perspectives from India, Canada, Mexico, USA, Papua New Guinea, Australia and South East Asia to this volume. There are five chapters that are focused on Odisha (E. India), and the justification for including them in this volume is that it is one of the economically backward regions of the country and a range of social exclusion issues have been addressed, which have never been researched before. All chapters are written keeping in view social exclusion, but when dealing with exclusion or responding to inclusive policies and interventions, there can be processes that are internal to communities and groups, often leading to various inadvertent consequences. The focus of social exclusion in the chapters is varied. The volume is divided into four thematically linked sections—political economy of social exclusion; inclusionary policy outcomes; persistent challenges to social inclusion and rethinking social exclusion and inclusion.

1 The Political Economy of Social Exclusion ‘State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters’ (Frederich Nietzsche in introducing the state in ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’).

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Adam Smith is considered to be the father of political economy, whose theory of the invisible hand contributed to the central justification for a laissez-faire economic system that laid a strong foundation for a capitalist economy in which the government has a limited or no role to play. However, such economies led to accumulation of unlimited wealth, control of means of production by a few who exploited the rest for their own selfish interests. The free market did not benefit the society equitably. There are innumerable examples from all over the world, where the marketled economy has led to exclusion and marginalisation, manifested through labour market discrimination, limited political participation, restrictions on access to public services such as education, health and others (Gradstein & Schiff, 2006). The downside of capitalism is uniquely described by historian Beckert (2014), who uses the history of cotton production by Europeans to analyse the connection between the institution of slavery and emergence of modern capitalism, which he refers to as ‘War Capitalism’. The latter conveys the aggressive appropriation of the market by private individuals through their unbridled actions. Further, they are protected by the state for their actions. Slavery, argues Beckert, was inherently embedded in the emergence of capitalism and the boundless economic divide that exist between countries today. Similarly, ‘Archipelago Capitalism’ facilitates free market capitalism to flourish on the sidelines of the world which serve as tax havens with relaxed regulations and minimal taxes to support business owners and conglomerates from all the world to thrive (Ogle, 2017). The state and the market thus become a formidable pair acting at the behest of business houses benefiting a few individuals to make colossal profits. Social exclusion is embedded in and fuelled by such forms of capitalism discussed above, where slavery, exploitation of the proletariat, discrimination of minorities, women and others exist and are sustained despite modernisation and growth of nations. Those excluded live in the margins, referred to as ‘marginal’ by Tsing (1994), need to be understood in the backdrop of political–cultural specificities, such as the military and administrative programs of nation states, regional political economies, international policy directives and local-to-global discourses on gender, ethnicity and religion. Social exclusion often results from the failure of one or more of four institutions that can integrate individuals and groups into the societal community. These include family and other social networks, which foster integration into the local community; democratic institutions like education system and health care, which promote civic integration; the labour market, which facilitates economic integration; and the welfare state, which promotes social integration (Bhalla & Lapeyre, 1999; Littlewood & Herkommer, 1999; Rogers, 1995). In discussing about exclusion of minorities, Bhattacharyya et al. (2010) observe the importance of acknowledging the tension that may exist between the agenda of inclusion and the choice of ‘selfexclusion’. Some groups, e.g. ethnic minorities, may choose, for a variety of reasons, to remain outside the mainstream economic, social and political institutions. Further, there are arguments suggesting that both the language and agenda for inclusion, as currently articulated, may not be accessible and relevant to marginalised groups in countries of the Global South (Lombe & Sherraden, 2008; Rogers, 1995).

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Social media, as a tool in the hands of the ruling class, has become the biggest propaganda machinery in history that promotes lies, prejudice, indifference and nonscientific facts all over the globe. Supported by Internet companies, social media has come to play a detrimental role in spreading news on hate crimes against certain excluded religious and ethnic minorities (UN Special Rapporteur, 2020). The ‘othering’ process and exclusion of certain individuals and groups are strengthened by social media. However, social media is like a double-edged sword. It has also allowed voices of people to be heard which were not heard before, says Sacha Baron Cohen (English actor and producer)1 . Democracy which depends on shared truths is in the retreat and autocracy which depends on shared lies is on the march.

The chapters in this section deal with a range of issues in the light of political economy of social exclusion, namely systematic alienation of tribal communities from forests in India; the anti-immigration and anti-refugee policy of America and its impact on Muslim refugee women from middle-east where they encounter different forms of oppression; globalisation and movement of labour across international borders in which the women workers face exclusion in public spaces in Singapore; promotion of majoritarian interests and discrimination against minority migrants based on race and identity; the practice of witch hunting and different forms of social exclusion faced by women in Delhi the capital city of India. There are many paradoxes in the state’s treatment of its minorities in different sociocultural milieus. In his chapter, Xaxa documents the varied policies of the state to exclude the tribes from managing their own land and resources. The British colonial state excluded the tribal people from managing the forest and its resources which severely affected their innate relationship to nature and its environment. In post-independent India, the state perpetuated the policies developed by the colonial state and legitimately claimed the tribals as outsiders in relation to their land leading to their massive displacement and loss of identity. The discontent among the tribals led to uprisings and violence that uprooted 300,000 households. Although the Scheduled Tribe and Other Forest Dwellers Act 2006 came into being to protect the tribals and their natural habitats, Xaxa observes that there is a huge gap between theoretical policymaking and its implementation by the state. The bureaucracy in implementation of the Act and the apathy of the state officials towards the tribal communities as a minority make the Act non-functional in many instances. Further, he aptly argues that ‘rights legally won and restored remain yet to be translated into reality’. Ahmed-Ghosh in her chapter situates Middle Eastern women refugee in the USA as the main trope in the context of the country’s anti-immigration and antirefugee stance, particularly during the Trump administration which claimed to ‘Make America Great Again’. American state policy corresponds to Judith Brown’s liberal, capitalist and bureaucratic state as masculinist which entails the domination of minorities, especially women. Using ethnographic research, she deconstructs the concept of ‘refugee women’, in which she emphasizes the crisis of cultural 1

https://www.openculture.com/2019/11/sacha-baron-cohen-links-the.

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adjustment, along with looking after families, finding employment and coping with patriarchal norms within their families and in the American society. Adjustment to the foreign lands is further aggravated as these women are poised at the intersection of Islamophobia, gender discrimination and poverty, therefore excluding them socially as well as politically in the USA. These refugee women therefore face triple oppression in their host country. The movement of foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in South East Asia like between the Philippines to Singapore is the focus of Khan’s chapter. He deals with globalisation and the flow of labour employment that gets generated across international borders and posits the processes of social exclusion of the FDWs in public spaces as they negotiate the socio-economic, institutional and spatial constraints to claim their right to the city. Although the FDWs contribute significantly to the economy of Singapore and the Philippines, they are marginalised by the state. Using Lefebvre’s concept of politics of social production of space as well as Oldenburg’s concept of ‘third places’, Khan has analysed the domestic workers’ rights and existence in the new destinations. Luthra-Sinha’s chapter brings into discussion the political economy of social exclusion of two migrant groups in the city of Delhi, namely from West Africa and North-east India, who grapple with scorn and condemnation due to their distinct racial features, while struggling to adjust to the city’s sociocultural milieu. By using ethnographic accounts and vignettes from the life world of migrants, she analyses available literature and data sources to demonstrate how citizens of Delhi not only, replicate state-inspired models of inclusion and exclusion, but also learn to counter overt as well as covert methods and models of, ‘othering’ when need be. Such growing citizen/local–migrant dynamics typically unfolds an ethnographic time and space of migrant hubs which interfaces many inter-subjectivities and everyday encounters between diverse communities and groups. They provide a glimpse of fault lines as well as solidarities experienced and enacted in Delhi’s space and time. Her concern is that Delhi being the capital city of India and also the migration hub promotes majoritarian interest and intentionally develops a sense of self and the ‘other’ in relation to its minority migrants in the name of race, ethnicity and language. In the process, India’s defining feature as unity in diversity is challenged by such discriminatory practices of othering and belittling migrant communities. Kelkar, Sinha and Nathan’s chapter is on a subject that has been on the anvil of misogyny for a long time and continues to make headlines. It deals with witch hunts, mainly of women, as an extreme form of exclusion. Based on 115 case studies in five states of India, they critically examine the various forms of exclusion to which women, often old and unsupported, are subjected to. Women are accused of using supernatural power to cause harm, ranging from seizure of land and forms of levelling of those who are thought to have illicitly become better-off. Exclusion is also from political positions and spiritual knowledge. Having dealt with the factors behind witch hunts, the chapter also deals with the manner in which the state, its laws, judicial system and the police is dealing with the cases of witch hunt. The authors argue that if witch hunts have to be curbed, importance of insisting on evidence of

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supposed supernatural powers and the fostering of alternative ways of thinking about illness and misfortune need to be pursued.

2 Inclusionary Policy Outcomes Social inclusion is a challenge, and it is widely observed that just framing laws and policies is not enough. The constitution of most democratic nations proclaims equality, justice and brotherhood and is something that is given as rights to its citizens including human rights. Further, the challenge to democracy varies across nations as by and large they have hierarchical social order, age-old customs and practices, economic development policies, exclusionary ideological constructions on nationhood, among many others (Bhattacharyya et al., 2010). Thus, democratic constitution in practice is systematically violated giving rise to at times newer forms of social exclusion, making inclusion policies difficult to implement in the countries of the world today. Several laws and policies underscore redressal of social exclusion in varying contexts in countries. The seemingly inclusionary policies have not necessarily transformed lives and life opportunities of those excluded. The problem of translation of proactive policies into action at the ground level is often quoted as an explanation for non-performance by the state. Corruption and misrepresentation of laws coexist along with apathy towards the affected people in the face of economically and politically powerful despite constitutional safeguards. Silver (2015) contends that social exclusion and inclusion are context-dependent concepts in three senses—(a) ideal of an inclusive society varies by country and region; (b) different places have different histories, cultures, institutions and social structures that have an influence on economic, social and political dimensions of social inclusion and the interplay among them; (c) location and region that determine access to resources and opportunities. Conceptualising exclusion and inclusion as dichotomous categories is too simplistic. The boundaries of exclusion and inclusion are not rigid. Kabeer (2000) provides a useful taxonomy to understand social inclusion in which she proposes five possible solutions in which social groups may find themselves—privileged inclusion; secondary inclusion; adverse incorporation; self-inclusion; hard core exclusion. Towards implementation of policies, some gain and others lose simultaneously, which means that the same efforts at bringing about any change can lead to remarkably differential results. The efforts at mainstreaming of excluded groups such as the tribal communities in India may lead to loss of their language, cultural identity and sense of belonging. It is a disadvantage for them and can be termed as ‘adverse incorporation’. Nathan and Xaxa (2012) refer to it as a process of adverse inclusion, an inclusion that has largely negative results as compared to the state of exclusion (2012: 1). This is often discussed as a challenge by development policymakers who are in a dilemma whether to intervene or leave the tribals on their own. Similarly, some communities like the transgender and refugees can be said to fall in the category of hard core exclusion, an exclusion determined by factors like societal structure and weak policies of the government.

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Is inclusion possible for those who have been excluded or getting excluded? This is a question that cannot be answered easily. The issues relate to the diverse understandings of the term inclusion among people, policymakers and implementers; the focus on inclusion and its integration; and the ways of determining progress in inclusion. Besides it is important to recognise that the patterns of development within countries and between countries mean that the experience of exclusion and inclusion is very different, thus highlighting that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ response is not very useful. Policies of inclusion are meant to mitigate exclusion. However, policies are framed in such a manner that they sometimes foster ‘included as excluded and excluded as included’ (Hilt, 2015) and ‘excluded from the excluded’ (Inclusion International, 2020) leading to the larger question of whether the goal of ‘full’ inclusion as propounded in several policies is, in fact, realisable. In policy analyses, one observes a conceptual inflexibility that arises, especially when social inclusion and exclusion are applied to complex social situations. The inclusion/exclusion policy debates introduce an easily understandable and broadly applicable strategic and political criterion: people fall within or outside specific social criteria, above or below certain limits which express differences. Two further considerations are important, (i) the individuation of the processes of inclusion and exclusion that explores peoples’ ability to choose options they consider the best in relation to their life and (ii) the social contexts in which processes of inclusion and exclusion take place and the extent to which social organisations are capable of offering broad-based alternatives (Mascareno & Carvajal, 2015). These binary formulations while useful for policy articulation and implementation because of their instrumental nature are not very helpful to address the complex social realities. The three chapters discussed in this section critically analyse the policies of inclusion in different situations. Certain complexities are brought out in the efficacy of policies of employment protection and social exclusion of most vulnerable groups in the context of MGNREGS in Odisha; contradictions and hegemony of policies in excluding small-scale fisher communities in Kerala; neoliberal approach in corporatisation of welfare assistance that sustains poverty and exclusion in Canada. Pattanayak’s chapter looks at the famous Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which pledges to promote livelihood security by creating durable assets in villages of India. She examines the program in the context of Odisha’s four Western districts, which has led to social exclusion of most vulnerable groups such as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes living below poverty levels and women across these categories. In doing so, she also delves into the outcomes of social exclusion, most significant being distress migration from the villages. Immanuel and Narayanan in their chapter in the backdrop of Blue Growth policy critically examine the systemic issues that differentiate ‘capture fishers’ from ‘captive fishers’ by comparing two contrasting villages in Tamil Nadu state of India. They do so by identifying different forms of capital proposed by Bourdieu and reframing commons as a form of social capital. The policy which is intended to be inclusive on paper is hegemonic that excludes the small-scale fisher communities by appropriating their source of power (commons) through ‘ocean grabbing’, thereby setting off ‘Tragedy to Commons’. The possibility of making the policy structurally

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inclusive for the artisanal fishing communities is also recommended by the authors. Welfare policies to address social exclusion can potentially be counterproductive to its citizens due to faulty foundations of the planned interventions. Poulin is his chapter has examined the adoption of ‘Act to combat poverty and social exclusion’, in Quebec, Canada. Using empirical data on people living below the low-income line, he highlights the impact of the neoliberal ideology on the corporatisation of the welfare assistance in Québec, making individuals responsible for their conditions without considering the socio-economic factors and other structural mechanisms that produce and reproduce poverty and exclusion in the society.

3 Persistent Challenges to Social Inclusion Notwithstanding the existence of a barrage of policies and programs to address social exclusion, there remain several persistent challenges to inclusion in the society. Welfare policies of the state, political will and efficiency of the government programs and their accountability, role of civil society organisations, democracy and strong citizenship rights are all responsible for minimising outcomes of social exclusion. Some outcomes, however, are intricately linked to structural dimensions of the society that require transformational change and cannot be directed through policies alone. Many excluded groups fall in the bracket termed by Fraser (1998) as ‘bivalent categories’, where people face exclusion in resource allocation (redistribution) and socially acceptable identities (recognition). In this backdrop, entrenched structures and values in society, inadmissible discourses on culture, religion and gender to name a few are being used by a privileged few to their advantage to validate unequal power structures. These need to be challenged in which apart from change in legislations and policies for the vulnerable and marginalised, it is imperative to change the mind-sets and attitude of people to accept diversity. ‘Social inclusion of the excluded groups can only happen if everyone becomes "part of the group" that defines the culture, values and standards of the society in which they live. Actions which can be used towards this purpose include education, dialogue and public awareness campaigns’ (UN-ESCAP cited in DESA, 2009, p. 32). Such prescriptions are easier said than done in which long drawn concerted and consistent efforts with strong political will are imperative to sustain the benefits of inclusion. It is obvious that inclusion policies cannot be imposed in a society where social exclusion is an integral part of the social order and accepted as a normative social feature. The challenge is how to bring about change in the private domain of an individual like the household and the immediate community or village. Such challenges will continue to bother policymakers, planners and academia working on social exclusion and inclusion. There is no blueprint approach to address social exclusion or one-size-fits-all policy. Oommen (2014) recommends a morphology in the context of India, in which he has provided suggestions for inclusion approaches depending on the group, their sociocultural features and nature of exclusion. Such a morphology is useful if the outcomes of inclusive interventions are monitored regularly to oversee the

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progress made in case of different groups and also adopt interim course corrections if required. It is like maintaining a report card to monitor the progress that is bringing about change and certain reforms in the society. Such prescriptions would be unacceptable to Marxist scholars, who firmly believe that for any change to take place, the very foundational structures causing social exclusion have to be abolished. The phenomena of social exclusion, poverty and inequality all go together and are embedded within capitalist system itself, as essential characteristics of the current social order (Quark, 2008). Therefore, the structure of the capitalist system which is private ownership of means of production and their operation for profit, needs to be dismantled for any long-term desired transformation in society to happen. One can therefore argue whether such structural changes are possible within the given system of social order which is inegalitarian to start with. At best, partial inclusion of the excluded is possible, and it is incongruous to expect social transformation where equality can be achieved in a certain time frame. Chapters in this section deal with specific categories of exclusion such as lowincome youth in cities, widows, trans-community, elderly and local communities affected due to exploitation of hydrocarbons. There are persistent challenges to inclusion in each of these categories, which the authors have discussed. In the spectrum of social exclusion, the trans-groups in India, for example, are the worst placed compared to the low-income youth in the cities. However, a low-income youth or elderly belonging to a trans-community will be further excluded and faced with multiple challenges to inclusion. The nature of disadvantage, therefore, could be a combination of economic deprivation and cultural dismissal. Despite policies, inclusion has remained at best partial in all the groups mentioned above, and exclusion continues to be a challenge. Challenges will continue to persist if the structural part of inclusion is ignored, which rests on the specific nature of political economy of exclusion in each of the cases. Structural transformation is not possible in such a market-oriented capitalist scenario that promotes individual growth and inclusion. Most inclusionary policies therefore remain palliative in nature and do not lead to full social inclusion. The chapter on youth by Lund and Panda deals with their mobility from Odisha to work in the informal and formal sectors in Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru and Tiruppur cities. Many of them belong to the lower castes, poor families and indigenous communities who migrated from the countryside in Odisha to obtain appropriate training to work in certain predetermined garment factories in Bengaluru and Tiruppur . There are others who have lived in slums their entire lives and continue to work in the capital city of Bhubaneswar. The attempt made by the authors is to understand how young men and women who live in disadvantaged conditions access, aspire and prepare for job opportunities and adjustments in the city. They discuss how youth move and manoeuvre to counter differences in the material (physical resources and economic poverty) and social structures (gender, ethnicity, caste and class) that cause inequality in the city. The outcomes of their efforts can be observed in the form of vulnerability and exclusion that is gendered and relational. Pandey and Tripathy have attempted to frame the vulnerability of widows in India with a focus on old-age homes in Odisha. Patriarchy and male vigilantism continue

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to impose archaic social norms on the widows, in which their status in the family, community and society ranges from indifference and social exclusion to physical and emotional torture. Widows find themselves in situations where they are economically deprived, socially discriminated and excluded from normative frameworks of daily life. The chapter examines the state’s inability to fulfil its duty of care for destitute and abandoned widows. Using the lived experiences of widows in a government-funded care home in Odisha, the authors argue that the state’s welfare approach excludes effective policies for widows’ economic rehabilitation and empowerment, thereby denying them a life of dignity and purpose. They also call attention to the struggle of the widows to secure their basic legal, constitutional, human rights and entitlements. The transgender in India is one of the most excluded, marginalised and stigmatised communites in the country. They fall in the bivalent category of exclusion according to Fraser (1998). Panda in her chapter has examined the challenges faced by a transgender (Hijra) community in the state of Odisha during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the strict lockdown period. Contrary to the popular perception that the pandemic is a ’great equaliser’, the differential vulnerabilities in the society of which Hijra community is one is exposed. Based on an empirical study in five locations of the state, the chapter analyses the impact of the pandemic on Hijra life and livelihoods. Exploring vulnerability to precarity dimensions of the Hijra life and livelihoods during the pandemic forms the centrality of her analysis. Precarity is that in which the Hijra’s gender identity and gender expression along with survival are adversely affected leading to long-term negative consequences caused by the pandemic, despite protection policies promulgated by the Odisha and Indian governments. The elderly in India are also faced with exclusion and neglect in both rural and urban milieus. Pandey in her chapter explores the experience of India’s ageing population particularly those disengaged from the society and living on the edge, socially, culturally and politically excluded. She looks at how the elderly are being deliberately isolated, abandoned and deprived of family care and put under home health care or in old-age homes. In that, she focuses on the struggles and challenges faced by the elderly with the changing inter-generational relationships. She has attempted to broaden the understanding of ageing population and expand public policy discussions on their safety and well-being. Chenaut in her chapter focuses on the impact of extraction of hydrocarbons (oil and gas) by a giant national company PEMEX on the lives of rural communities in the municipality of Papantla, Veracruz (Mexico). Her analysis is regarding the intersectionality of neoliberal policies, local dynamics and legal processes embedded in history. Since mid-1980s, due to globalisation in Mexico, the forces of capitalist system have ushered in neoliberal policies resulting in increased poverty and inequality in the country. The empirical analysis is based on a study in a village Emiliano Zapata, in the state of Veracruz, where poverty and social vulnerability intersect and risk the lives and livelihoods of the local communities, where large-scale oil installations like PEMEX and its subsidiaries are present. The chapter highlights the impact of oil exploration on agricultural production and health. They are adversely

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affected due to aggressive extraction-based industrialisation in the region. Socioeconomic vulnerability and exclusion are the outcomes of oil exploration combined with state’s apathy towards the local communities.

4 Rethinking Social Exclusion and Inclusion The academic space on social exclusion and inclusion is swamped with issues, challenges and strategies on the subject. Social exclusion tends to emerge and re-emerge all over the globe in different forms. For example, the current COVID-19 pandemic and the manner in which it has exacerbated inequalities and exclusion, disproportionately affecting minority ethnic communities, transgender and others, are a case in point. The colonial epoch that had spread capitalist political economy promotes high-energy, high-speed, high-rise, high consumption development model which has led to disastrous outcomes especially during the pandemic times all over the world (Mohanty, 2021). Therefore, rethinking social exclusion and inclusion would mean examining the current paradigm of development and social order around the world. The section on political economy of social exclusion of this chapter discusses the relentless effort made by the state and market to promote capitalism, where inclusionary policies and programs make little sense in the face of the existing structural inequalities and exclusion that exist in the society. Exclusion strengthens the power and sense of entitlements of those privileged in the society. The rich and powerful will always find ways to exclude and label the excluded as others when it comes to executing inclusive policies and legislations. Unfortunately, the state is also influenced and in a way controlled by such capitalist forces and thus fails to maintain its neutrality towards all citizens. There are several inclusive policies and legislations prescribed by governments all across the world, and yet, not much has changed with respect to exclusion of the excluded. At best, inclusion has been partial or ad hoc. Sustaining the benefits of inclusion by those excluded remains a distant dream. As already discussed, social exclusion like many other social problems is created by societal structures and cultural assumptions. Added to this, obsession with the current paradigms of growth, globalisation and development, which allegedly promises wealth and material prosperity for all, there is an urgent need to counter such exemplar. At the academic level, Alternative Futures: India Unshackled (2017) is one such outcome of critical theory and activism that provides ideas and tools for moving effectively towards post-patriarchal, post-capitalist and pluriversal worlds, in which humans and nature are not seen as separate entities (Arturo Escobar in Kothari & Joy, 2017). Rethinking of social exclusion and inclusion needs to be posited within the wider framework to execute true political and economic democracy, local self-reliance, abolition of divisive categories like caste, religion and others, besides rebuilding a relationship of respect and closeness with nature (ibid). This may sound like impossible utopias. However, the authors in this edited volume have brought out some elements of a coherent collective vision based on common elements of justice, equity and sustainability, all of which stimulate reflection, thinking and dialogue,

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to make such a vision more robust, inspiring and eventually actionable (ibid). The future can thus bring about social inclusion of all citizens where they feel that they are treated equally with justice, opportunities and rewards. Although the above volume is India-centric, the underlying philosophy is applicable to other countries across the globe as well. Winlow and Hall (2013) have critiqued the social exclusion debates of being obsessed with the outcomes rather than the causes of deprivation and marginality of people or groups. Therefore, according to them, the policies are of shallow nature that does nothing to change the structural challenges and systemic injustice continues. Their suggestion is that the interventionist state should push the social or the collective at a structural level to bring about any long-term changes. However, everyday lives of people are about finding the fault lines and recommending doable strategies to give some relief to those excluded. Long-term transformations are possible, but it is well known that they are long drawn and arduous. And, it is this very reason that attempts by the state and non-state agencies stop short of suggesting any intervention that has semblance of bringing about radical change. There are two chapters in this section which discuss exclusion and inclusion at discursive levels and have provided pointers to rethinking on the subject. Boulet attempts to create a reflective template for practices and theories aimed at progressive inclusive policies, programs and relational behaviours and attitudes by first examining the words and concepts that are used to describe them. Very eloquently, he discusses the common structural reasons underlying most if not all forms of social exclusion and of the challenges encountered when attempting to become more successful with legislative and programmatic attempts at realising true inclusion as ‘societies and organisations/communities’. He has presented two societies—the USA and Australia as model ‘vignettes’ illustrating some of these challenges while offering a starting point for creative imaginations and the possibility to move towards a state of extended ‘inclusive diversity’ by including the non-human in sustainable practices. He discusses the importance of intersectionality at work and its facilitation in understanding its dynamics for a range of excluded groups. He has critiqued the notions of mainstreaming to subvert social exclusion which many consider as normal. Nadarajah brings into perspective from Papua New Guinea, living between the west and the pacific. She addresses the question of social exclusion and inclusion in the country and argues for deepening a critical understanding about the intellectual origins, applicability and political consequences of the concepts looking at the analytical tools within both the context of colonial and post-colonial Papua New Guinea. Drawing on the works of local scholars, poets and artists, she looks at the question of women and social inclusion as a point of departure. The arguments built by her relate to understanding of performativity of the notion of social inclusion from below within the context of a heterogeneous society and its historically autonomous clan-or-tribe-based political entities. The chapters in this volume bring together diverse issues on social exclusion, which can be broadly classified under five main dimensions—concept, theory, policy, magnitude and diversity, and impact. Rethinking social exclusion and inclusion needs to be pursued along two axes—political economy and public policy. The existing

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political economy of social exclusion has to be questioned, keeping in mind that it is not the same in cultures and countries across the globe. The structural limits of policies and programs on inclusion do not allow formulation of policies which are radical in nature, as it will not be accepted by the ruling/political class. Additionally, there is a need to develop a coherent theoretical perspective to capture an integrated picture of issues related to exclusion. Towards this, the historical specificity of different contexts relating to social exclusion and structural divisions and complexities of society need to be understood prior to formulation of policies and programs for any sort of intervention for social inclusion. Blending of top-down and bottom-up approach to social inclusion is recommended, where those excluded are not just treated as beneficiaries but as active agents and partners in formulation and implementation of the policies. They must develop a stake and demand for change, or the state machinery can never be held accountable for their failures. As already brought out in the chapters that policies of inclusion have their limitations in bringing about full social inclusion, at best it is partial and at times can revert back to its original state of exclusion. Therefore, addressing the very structures that are responsible for exclusion is the only path to bring about the desired social inclusion in society, no matter how far-fetched it may appear to achieve. Finally, how to view society is aptly described in the following quote: When society is seen in binary divisions or when multiple structures and functions are considered divisive, the concept of ‘Mainstream’ becomes a major category of research. The Universe is diverse, but inclusive, Exclusiveness is man-made. The inclusive philosophy is “Both And” and the exclusive philosophy is “Either Or.” The “Both And” philosophers have pronounced that, the division between self and the other is the activity of the narrow minded individuals and systems; but the broad-minded ones make the Universe an extended family (Personal communication with eminent linguist, Padma Shri Dr. Debi Prasanna Pattanayak).

References Beckert, S. (2014). Empire of cotton: A global history. Vintage. Bhattacharyya, H., Sarkar, P., & Kar, A. (Eds.). (2010). The politics of social exclusion: Democracy at crossroads. Routledge. Bhalla, A. S., & Lapeyre, I. (1999). Global integration and social exclusion with special reference to Poland and Hungary. The European Journal of Development Research, 11, 101–124. Byrne, D. (2005). Social exclusion. Open University Press. De Haan, A. (2001). Social exclusion: Enriching the understanding of deprivation (pp. 22–40). International Development Research Centre. DESA. (2009). Creating an inclusive society: Practical strategies to promote social integration. United Nations. Deshpande, A. (2013). Exclusion and inclusive growth. United Nations Development Programme. Escobar, A. (2004). Beyond the third world: Imperial globality, global coloniality and antiglobalisation social movements. Third World Quarterly, 25(1), 207–230. Fraser, N. (1998). Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recognition, participation. WZB Discussion Paper FS, 1, 98–108. Grastein, M., & Schiff, M. (2006). Political economy of social exclusion with implications for immigration policy. Journal of Population Economics, 19(2), 327–344.

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Hilt, L. T. (2015). Included as excluded and excluded as included: Minority language pupils in Norwegian inclusion policy. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 19(2), 165–182. Inclusion International. (2020). Excluded from the excluded: People with intellectual disabilities in (and out of). Official Development Assistance Kabeer, N. (2000). Social exclusion, poverty and discrimination: Towards an analytical framework. IDS Bulletin, 31(4), 83–97. Khan, S. (2020). Social Exclusion of Muslims in India and Britain. Journal of Social Inclusion Studies, 6(1), 56–77. https://doi.org/10.1147/239448II2094470 Kothari, A., & Joy, K. J. (Eds.). (2017). Alternative futures: India unshackled. Authors Upfront. Littlewood, P., Glorieux, I., & Jönsson, I. (1999). Social exclusion in Europe: Problems and paradigms. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315242927 Lombe, M., & Sherraden, M. (2008). Inclusion in the policy process: An agenda for participation of the marginalized. Journal of Policy Practice, 7(2–3), 199–213. https://doi.org/10.1080/155887 40801938043 Mascareno, A., & Carvajal, F. (2015). The different faces of inclusion and exclusion. CEPAL Review, 116, 127–141. Mayer, M. (2009). The ‘Right to the City’ in the context of shifting mottos of urban social movements. City, 13(2–3), 362–374. Mohanty, M. (2021). May day during Covid 19. Economic and Political Weekly., 56(21), 4–5. Nathan, D., & Xaxa, V. (Eds.). (2012). Social exclusion and adverse inclusion: Development and deprivation of Adivasis in India. Oxford University Press. Ogle, V. (2017). Archipelago capitalism: Tax havens, offshore money, and the state, 1950s–1970s. The American Historical Review, 122(5), 1431–1458. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.5.1431Pu blished Oommen, T. K. (2014). Social inclusion in independent India: Dimensions and approaches. Orient Blackswan. Pease, B. (2013). Undoing privilege: Unearned advantage in a divided world. Zed Books, eBook Edition. Popay, J., Escorel, S., Hernandez, M., Johnston, H., Mathieson, J., & Rispel, L. (2008). Understanding and tackling social exclusion. Final report to the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health from the Social Exclusion Knowledge Network. https://doi.org/10.1177/174 4987110370529 Quark, A. (2008). Social exclusion in the new economy: Beyond the digital divide. Currents: New Scholarship in the Human Services, 7(2) 1–16. Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations. The Free Press. Sen, A. (2000). Social exclusion: Concept, application and scrutiny. Social Development Papers No. 1. Asian Development Bank. Silver, H. (1994). Social exclusion and social solidarity. International Labour Review, 133, 531–578. Silver, H. (2012). Framing social inclusion policies. Background paper for the World Bank Social Development Department Study on Social Inclusion. World Bank Silver, H. (2015). The contexts of social inclusion. DESA Working Paper No.144, United Nations. Tsing, A. L. (1994). From the margins. Cultural Anthropology, 9(3), 279–297. UN Special Rapporteur. (2020). Concept note. Asia-Pacific Regional Forum on Hate Speech, Social Media and Minorities. Winlow, S., & Hall, S. (2013). Rethinking social exclusion: The end of social? Sage.

Part I

Political Economy of Social Exclusion

Chapter 2

From Self-governance of Forest to Illegal Occupants: The Creation of Exclusion Through Dispossession Virginius Xaxa

Abstract The tribes were the guardians of the land and forest and enjoyed unrestricted access to forest and forest resources, till the onset of colonial rule in India. With expansion and consolidation of the colonial state, the control and management of the forest were taken away from tribals from the second half of the nineteenth century that led to their restricted access to forests and depletion of forest wealth due to its exploitation for raising revenue, infrastructure development and commercial profit. And yet the full brunt of such legal and policy measures was not so acutely felt until the country-wide eviction drive of tribes from the forest in 2002–2004 following the series of orders of India’s Supreme Court. The tribes and civil society organisations came together and launched the campaign for the restoration of tribes’ rights on land and forest they had historically owned and controlled. The outcome of this campaign was The Scheduled Tribe and Other Forest Dwellers Act 2006 (Government of India, 2006). The scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers Act 2006 (https://tribal.nic.in/fra.aspx.) aimed at undoing historical injustice. The chapter examines the ways and extent the forest-related policies and legislations impacted tribes and explores the nature and types of social exclusion it gave rise to and the vulnerabilities the communities had to encounter.

V. Xaxa (B) Visiting Professor, Institute for Human Development, New Delhi, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_2

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1 Introduction: The Setting It is somewhat inconceivable to think of the life world of tribes outside of the forest. Until the onset of British rule and administration, they enjoyed unrestricted access to forest and forest resources. In a way, they were rulers of the forest. Yet they did not destroy it as it formed part of their moral order. However, with the coming of the British rule and more importantly with the colonial state’s takeover of the forest administration and management from the second half of the nineteenth century, the forest resources began to deplete and access of tribes to forest and forest resources started to erode. The introduction of the Forest Act, 1927 only aggravated the situation as the act classified the forests into reserves, protected and villages. Subsequently, the introduction of reserved and protected vested the rights of control on the state thereby appropriating the right that inhered in the village. Following this, their unrestricted access came to halt; they were now subject to the objective and regulation of the state. However, the full brunt of state control and management came to be felt only in postindependence India because of the new policies and legislations that were enacted from time to time. The Forest Policy of 1952 stipulated 33% of the area of the country under the forest which primarily meant land under the jurisdiction of the forest department (Mukerji, 2001). Further, the policy introduced the concept of national interest and in its name, the village community came to be denied access to the forest and its produce. More acts and policies followed. The Wildlife Sanctuary Act 1972 (GoI) and the Conservation of Forest Act 1980 (GoI) were primarily protection and conservation-oriented. In the name of protection and conservation, the harassment of the forest dwellers and the threat of eviction became imminent. It finally culminated in country-wide evictions in 2002–2004. The houses were burnt, and standing crops were destroyed leading to unprecedented misery and deaths. Approximately 300,000 households were estimated to have been affected by the eviction drive. It is at this juncture that the tribes and civil society organisations came together and launched the campaign for the restoration of tribes’ rights on land and forest referred to earlier in the discussion. The Scheduled Tribe and Other Forest Dwellers Act 2006 (GoI) aimed at undoing historical injustice which was an outcome of such a campaign. The chapter examines the relationship between tribes and forests from the lens of social exclusion by focusing on the steady erosion of control, management and use of the forest by tribes. The chapter is organised into four sections. The first section deals with the concept of social exclusion by keeping the tribes in mind. The second section looks into the factors and processes leading to loss of control and management over the forest. The third section deals with the forest policies and legislation and their impact on tribes especially in post-independence India. It also looks into the nature and type of vulnerabilities tribes face in their day to day lives. Finally, the paper engages with the campaign of addressing the historical injustice and restoration of the rights they enjoyed.

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1.1 Social Exclusion as Historical Process Social exclusion may be understood as the denial of things valued in society. These may be freedom, honour/status, income/wealth and power. These are analytically distinct but in concrete social reality, they coincide. The differential social arrangement or access to things so valued gives rise to social inequality in society. Social inequality thus acts as the axial principle of social exclusion. Inequality in society assumes various forms, the most common being class, caste, race, ethnicity and gender. Even religion at times takes the form of social inequality. Social exclusion is thus primarily conceptualised in terms of denial or deprivation of groups and social categories from access to things valued in society. This being the case, social exclusion is invariably studied in a societal context that may be conceptualised from the level of a globalised world to a nation state and from there to the state/province and then to the village. Further, social exclusion is generally studied within a contemporary time frame. In other words, it studies social exclusion in the context of the existing social arrangement. In fact, much of the studies on tribes including the studies and reports of the Planning Commission, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, NGOs, scholars and activists writing on tribes do draw attention to the phenomenon of their social exclusion along with various indicators of social and economic development. In respect of the economic well-being, the exclusion is shown in terms of the differential position of social categories living below the poverty line, share in state employment and access to income, assets and other indicators of economic life. In the education sphere, social exclusion is discussed in reference to literacy rate, level of educational attainment as well as a shortfall of educational institutions and teachers. As for the sphere of health, the exclusion is studied with a focus on the shortfall of health infrastructure and health workers plus health status of tribal communities such as maternal mortality, infant mortality, child mortality, under 5 mortality, etc. The persistence of the poor economic, health and educational status of tribes despite the state’s effort to alleviate them through the special allocation of resources and affirmative action programs is often attributed to their so-called primitive state of living. Such an assumption about their status with the exception of educational attainment needs to be problematised and further probed. This means that the overall development status of tribes needs to be historically contextualised and examined to see if the status following the state’s intervention or their incorporation into the larger social system is better, worse or the same in reference to the status before such developments. As for education, i.e. modern education is concerned, it is not possible to problematise historically, as tribes did not have the tradition of reading and writing until their historical incorporation. Social exclusion studies have generally overlooked historicising development in the context of tribes. In the process, they fail to account for the processes of social arrangement that create inclusion in one sense but also exclusion in another sense. In other words, inclusion can be both positive and negative. The aspects of inclusion leading to exclusion are generally conceptualised as adverse inclusion. Generally, the historical process in the case of tribes is viewed

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as one contributing to their overall well-being as they have been drawn out from their isolation and primitiveness and integrated into the larger and relatively more developed economy and society.

1.2 Adverse Inclusion Tribes in India lived in relative isolation from the larger Indian society. This was reflected in geographical, social, economic and political spheres. Land, forest and other resources were under their control. They had their own government, which they administered as per their own laws, traditions and customs. This meant they enjoyed autonomy over their territory. Their interaction with the outside world including the state and people in its vicinity was negligible. Yet they could not be studied in reference to social exclusion, as they did not form part of the single economic, political and social system. To understand aspects of social exclusion, the incorporation of tribes with the wider world requires attention. Such incorporation into the larger political and economic system took place with the advent of British rule. The British brought tribes under the colonial state through war and conquest. Annexation and declaration were the other means. After having brought the tribal areas under the British, they introduced among them regulations— civil and criminal prevalent in non-tribal areas. All these were alien to the tribal ethos and traditions. Of the regulations, the introduction of private property and landlordism had far-reached consequences on traditional land tenure systems such as lineage, clan and village community-based ownerships. The erstwhile revenue collectors and other administrative officials were superimposed as owner-landlords over lands that tribes had traditionally owned and controlled. Through measures such as these, tribes lost their rights of ownership over their land. Rather, they were turned into tenants of the landlords. Since landlords had to pay a high rate of revenue to the colonial state, they passed this burden on tenants. Tribal tenants were unable to meet the increasing rent demands of their landlords resulting in their large-scale eviction from their land in favour of more enterprising peasants from the plains. Tribes were in the process getting turned into landless labour. Even in areas marked by the absence of landlordism, there was massive land alienation from tribes to non-tribes. This took place through measures such as fraud, deceit and mortgage. As tribes did not have the tradition of reading and writing, they had no system of record-keeping. Nontribes took advantage of this situation. They forged documents and evidence in their support. In this, they were aided by the local administrative officials who were mostly non-tribals. Seeking justice through the legal system was almost impossible for tribes. Neither did they understand the system of court nor the language used in the court. Everything was alien to them. Alongside this process of land alienation, there was another process at work in tribal areas which too had adverse consequences on them. This concerned their rights over the forest. The British took away the management of the forest from tribes and vested it upon itself. This restricted their free access to forest on which they were dependent for their food, firewood, grazing of the cattle and

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other necessities of life (Bosu Mullick, 1993). Such restriction had been in practice all through the British period. Land alienation combined with restriction of rights over forest had far-reaching consequences on tribal societies. All these had bearing on the autonomy they had under the traditional system. They were greatly grieved over what they had been through and rose in open revolt against the British. Some of the early revolts were namely Pahariya Sirdars (1778), Tamar Revolt (1789, 1794– 5), tribal revolt (1807–08), agrarian tribal revolts (1811, 1817, 1820), the Great Kol Insurrection (1831–32) and the Bhumij revolt (1832–33) (Raghavaiah, 1979). Both tribes and non-tribes came under one single political and administrative authority under the British. Both were subjected to the same laws, rules and regulations barring some exceptions. The same was the case in the economic sphere. They were brought under a single economic order through the land, labour, credit and commodity market. Thus, they became part of the same political and economic system as was the case with the larger Indian population. However, the position of tribes in the new politico-administrative system was marked by their exploitation, domination and discrimination. Both the colonial administration and non-tribal population of traders, merchants and money-lenders had a role in pushing tribes in the situation in which they found themselves. Thus, tribes experienced two tiers of colonialism, one of the British and the other of dominant natives. The former controlled and subjugated tribes through the law, rules and administration and the latter through settlement and the appropriation of tribal land. Tribes with control over land, forest and governance were pushed at the margin of the new political and economic system. The process of integration of tribes into the larger economic and political system under the British came with a price. In short, the integration was intertwined with the process of exclusion in the form of loss of their ancestral land on the one hand and the power to determine and shape their life and destiny on the other (Xaxa, 2020). The British drew tribes into the larger economic and political system through war and conquest or annexation. Correspondingly, the inclusion was marked by the political domination which was worked through the imposition of laws, rules and regulations on the one hand and on the other new institutional structure of civil and criminal administration. The improvement in means of communication that the British established under its administration facilitated the movement of the nontribal population from the plains to tribal areas in pursuit of agricultural land, trade and commerce. Trade and commerce exposed the tribes to a market economy. This initially took the form of a commodity market. Soon, however, it moved to the credit market which opened the space for the land market. The shrinking of land due to transfer or sale as a part of the payment of debt gave rise to the sale of labour in the market in return for wages. This brought tribes increasingly in contact with the outside world which used their knowledge about laws, rules and regulation of colonial administration to divest tribes from their land and get it transferred in their favour. Fraud, force and money-lending were the mechanisms through which the non-tribals appropriated the tribal land. Such phenomena were so rampant that tribes rose against them and the British in revolts and rebellion several times. The Santhal revolt (1855–57), the Kherwar/Sardari struggle (1858–95), the Birsa Munda

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movement (1895–1990) are notable among these revolts, etc. (Ekka, 2011; Singh 2001). What these point to is the integration/inclusion of tribes into the colonial state and market economy marked by domination and exploitation. At the same time, it led to their exclusion in the form of dispossession from land and forest, their most important asset.

2 Forest as Aspect of Existential Dependence 2.1 Forest Resource as Source of Food Tribals’ dependence on nature is evident if one studies their livelihoods. To begin with, they are dependent on forests for their food. In fact, tribals’ food habits are intimately related to their relationship with nature. Among the settled agriculturist tribes, the staple food consists of rice, dal and vegetables. Leaves, flowers, seeds, roots and fruits procured from the forest are also an integral part of their daily diet. Of these, people grow only a few of them. Kujur in her study points out that there are 87 kinds of common native plants, which form the food of the Oraons (Kujur, 1989 pp. 157–161). According to Hoffmann, the Mundas use 71 different wild plants as potherbs. Of these, there are 26 plants whose tubers, corns and roots are consumed as vegetables and 15 trees and shrubs whose young leaves are used as potherbs. There are still 10 others whose leaves people eat raw, and another 25 wild trees and plants whose flowers they eat as vegetables. He also enumerates 17 cultivated tubers and roots that are used as food, 28 plants cultivated for other purposes, and used also as potherbs, and 14 plants cultivated as potherbs (Fernandes, 1993. p. 49). In regions where shifting cultivation is practised, food value trees and plants along with crops from shifting cultivation constitute more than 50% of their food. In fact, the estimation is that at least 50% of tribes’ food requirement comes from the forest; some even mention the figure as high as 80% (ibid. 48).

2.2 Forest and Material Culture Besides food, tribals are also dependent on the forest for materials required for making their huts/houses as well as for preparing tools, implement required for their routine economic and household activities. In the case of tribes, dependent on hunting, fishing and food gathering, shelters are generally very elementary and poles, frames and roof materials required are all obtained from the forest. Agriculturist tribes have houses generally made of mud walls and tiled/thatched roofs. They also use bamboo and timber as poles and frames for building houses. Their dependence on the forest is also evident from making tools and implements for their daily use. Agricultural implements like plough and yoke, devices used for lifting water for

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irrigation, threshing and winnowing tools, etc. are all made from materials obtained from forests. And that is the case with tools required for hunting, fishing and food gathering. Hunting implements such as bows and arrows, slings, spears and swords are generally made from bamboo, branches of trees, creepers, weeds, etc. Similarly, tools, baskets, traps used for fishing are made of bamboo. As for the nets, they are made of twines. Bamboos and leaves are used for making umbrellas and the hooded waterproof coat. Paddy husking contraptions, mats, cots, wooden stools, baskets, cups, plates, cushions, rope, mortar and pestle, and oil presses are other tribal household items, which too are made from forest products. Besides, art objects, artefacts, musical instruments and ornaments are also made of forest products. In fact, the entire material culture of tribes is rooted in the tribal people’s dependence on the forest and its products. They cannot be severed from their ties with the forest (Xaxa, 2008). The household items, for example, among the Oraon tribe comprise mats, baskets, plates, cups, cushions, rope, brooms, etc., which are all made from leaves, fibre, reeds procured from the neighbouring forest (Xaxa, 1998).

2.3 Forest as Source of Medicinal Plants There is a close relationship between tribal communities and their natural environment with respect to knowledge about the treatment of diseases. Medicinal herbs found in the forest and its adjoining areas are used for the treatment of diseases. Among the Oraons, for example, approximately 34 kinds of diseases such as headache, toothache, stomach-ache, eye and ear pain, fever including malaria can be treated with herbs collected from the forest. Wounds, constipation, diarrhoea, dysentery, epilepsy, rheumatism, insomnia, tetanus, eczema are the other health issues that are also be treated with such medicines. Medicines are generally derived from leaves, roots, bark and plants found in the jungle. People grow some of them even in their fields (Kujur, 1989, pp. 138–144). From a study of tribal medicine in Kerala, it has been found that 39 species of roots, 15 fruits, 30 leaves and 12 barks besides latex, flower and other plants and herbs are commonly used among tribes as the medicine (Fernandes, 1993, p. 51).

2.4 Forest as Source of Monetary Income Apart from being the very source of their being and livelihood, tribals and other forest dwellers derive a large portion of their monetary income. One of these sources is firewood. No wonder that the state officials and the forest department have accused tribes of destroying the forest. Such phenomena are, however, a recent development. The major source of income for the large majority of tribals is not firewood, but what in administrative records is described as the minor forest produce (MFP). Scholars and activists however contend such description; as for the tribal, it is not a

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minor but a major source of income. Hence, they prefer the term non-wood forest produce (NWFP). Some of the major NWFP are lac, kath, bamboo and leaves like tendu, keond, sal, gungu, etc. Mahua flowers and fruits are also an important source of income for the tribals. Needless to say that non-timber forest produce holds different values in different places and regions. The fact of the matter, however, is that the collection, processing and sale of NWFP and firewood provide several days of employment to the tribals (Fernandes, 1993).

2.5 Forest and Slash and Burn Cultivation Another mode of existential dependence on the forest is slash and burn or shifting cultivation, which is widely practiced in hill regions of northeast India. The practice is more popularly known as jhum. Such agricultural practice is also found among some tribes in certain pockets of eastern and central India. This livelihood practice among the tribes has come under sharp criticism from development planners and environmentalists. The argument made against shifting cultivation is that it destroys forest wealth by causing deforestation. It is therefore suggested that tribes be advised to switch over to either terraced cultivation or horticulture. The argument and suggestion are however made without giving adequate and careful attention to the problem. As Misra (1976) says if deforestation is the argument, it has to be shown that more forest is needed; that forest growing is more profitable than crop growing; that growing forest is cheaper and a forest market exists. Alternatively, it has also to be shown that cultivable land either exists elsewhere or gainful employment in other occupations is feasible.

3 Political Economy of Forest and Tribes 3.1 Colonial Setting The harmonious relationships between the natural and social world that existed for centuries got ruptured under colonial rule. This had much to do with the colonial forest policy. The policy in its embryonic form had its genesis in a memorandum entitled, ‘Charter of Indian Forest’ that outlined the framework of control and management of the forest as early as 1855. As per this memorandum, the British limited the rights of the tribes over the forest resources that they historically enjoyed. In a way, this was a blueprint of the colonial forest policy that was to come later. Before the introduction of the colonial forest policy, tribals were virtually the lords of the forest. They enjoyed unrestrained access to forest and forest produce. The forest was an essential part of their existential and cultural life. The colonial policy however turned it upside down. By vesting power in the hands of the State, it paved the way for its control and

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management of forests. The result was the drastic curtailment of tribes’ rights and privileges that they had enjoyed. The policy in itself did not lead to change until it was put into motion. Accordingly, the British set up the Forest Department to execute the policy. It was translated into action only after the appointment of Dietrich Brandis, a trained German Forester as the first Inspector General in 1864. The Indian Forest Act 1965 was passed soon thereafter. Of the objectives of the Act, the most important was to bring the forest under the government’s authority and control in addition to declaring any land with trees/bushes as forest by notification. The objective was also to make a rule for the preservation of the forest and empower the Forest Department to punish any breaches of the Act. The Act was revised and made operational in most provinces in 1878. Under this Act, the forest was classified into three categories, viz. the reserved, protected and village forests. Such classification restricted the rights of the tribes. Under the Act, the government was to issue notification stating tribes to make their claims over land and forest produce in the proposed reserved forests. Forest Settlement Officers were instructed to record the rights of the forest dwellers over the forestlands. The acts had provisions to set aside some forest tract as pasture as well as a collection of the forest produce including changing the limits of the proposed forest. This led to exclusion of forestland of sufficient size for settling the rights of the claimants. The Act had also provided for recording of claimants’ rights in certain portions of the proposed reserved forest. Notwithstanding such provisions in the Act, the classification of the forest did have an adverse bearing on the rights and access of the tribes. The laws relating to forests and forest produce were later consolidated in the Indian Forest Act of 1927, which is in force till today though there was an attempt to amend it in 2019. The proposed bill was shelved due to severe objections from varied ends. The 1927 Act does refer to the rights and claims of the forest dwellers as clearly as the Act of 1878. It also makes reference to the Forest Settlement Officer with a responsibility to record the rights of earlier owners and claimants (Kulkarni, 1983). Before we examine the bearing, the Forest Act had on tribes/forest dwellers, it is important to take note of an aspect of the British administration in India. Till 1833 British India was governed by what was called Regulations and, not Acts. Regulation X of 1822 introduced the notion of a Non-Regulated System for purpose of administration. This meant that the areas identified as remote and difficult would be administered somewhat differently. That is, the executive could govern the areas agreeably to the principles and spirit of the existing regulations, subject of course to restrictions and modifications, as thought fit by the Governor-General in Council (Misra 2012). Following the regulation of 1822, British India was placed under two distinct systems of administration referred to as regulation and non-regulation tracts. The latter was referred to by different names such as agency tracts, scheduled districts, backward tracts, excluded and partially excluded areas at different times. These areas are mostly inhabited by tribal peoples. In the areas so described, the regulations and later Acts were generally not applicable. If at all they were extended, they were to be done with such modification/amendments as the Governor-General/Governor thought it to be fit. Hence, it is not clear if the Forest Act of 1865, 1878, and finally 1927 were applicable in these areas and if so, with what amendments.

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Notwithstanding this, it is important to examine the implications the Act had on tribes/forest dwellers who inhabited the areas predominantly, if not exclusively. The operation of the Act did lead to the transfer of the rights of control and management from the people to the government. This led to the extinguishing of the unrestricted rights of the people in the forest taken over by the government. With the steady increase of forest land under the reserved and protected forest, more and more forest dwellers may have come under the ambit of the state management of the forest resources resulting in some restriction on their traditional rights. There is hardly any doubt that the Act did lead to a restriction on rights enjoyed. All the same, the Act did make provision for records of rights and claims over land and forest produce. However, it is not clear as to the extent these provisions got translated into reality, as there is little quantitative and qualitative data on the aspects. Interestingly, it is the lack of records that became the bane of the forest dwellers in post-independence India. This will be dealt with at some length in the latter part of the discussion. The state management of forests not only had a negative bearing on tribes as well as the forest resources. The colonial forest policy was oriented more towards revenue and profit than to conservation at least until the turn of the twentieth century. Since the revenue from the land was the main source of income for the support of the expanding colonial administration, the colonial policy promoted land reclamation of the forest for cultivation. The expansion of roads and railways and mineral exploitation combined with industries that assumed an important form of economic activity at a somewhat later stage of the colonial rule had a huge bearing on the destruction of the forest resources.

3.2 Post-independence India The post-independence India did not usher in freedom for the forest-dependent tribes as the colonial framework of forest administration did not change. Rather, it got further deeply entrenched with unprecedented consequences on their lives. As discussed above, the colonial forest policy and the Act did have an adverse impact on tribes. However, the full brunt of the policies was not acutely felt until much later in the post-independence period. Under the colonial period, despite the expropriation of the forest from tribes, the forest policy and Act did make some provisions for a record of rights and claims. Further, there was some leeway for tribes, as their implementation was not as stringent as it came to assume in post-independent India. Tribes still enjoyed relative access to the forest for cultivation and other necessities of life such as food, shelter, firewood, grazing of cattle, etc. That the situation of the tribes worsened can be inferred from the restrictions added in the New Forest Policy of 1952. As per the policy, there was now the withdrawal of concession on the release of the forest for cultivation, withdrawal of facility of free grazing, weaning away tribal from shifting cultivation, etc. Further, there was an emphasis on increasing the area under forest as well as on stringent regulation, policing and revenue earning. The policy also aimed to maintain one-third of the country’s land area under forest.

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The enthusiasm to achieve this objective led to the claiming of even the treeless land with the village community as forest land to be brought under the jurisdiction of the Forest Department. Through a process such as these, thousands of square kilometres of common and community lands were brought under the control of the state. An important point to note here is that a large chunk of tribes lived in princely states during the colonial period. Following their integration into the union of India, the forest including the commons was brought under state control and management thereby depriving the rights of tribes enjoyed over the forests. Interestingly, while on the one hand there had been a concern to increase land under forest in the new policy; there had also been an emphasis on the utilisation of forest for national needs and maximisation of revenue. National needs entailed the development of infrastructure, acceleration of industrial and agricultural growth, and mineral exploitation. The private accumulation of profit by the Forest Department in collusion with contractors has been the other important factor. This is not to say that tribals have had no hand in it. The loss of livelihood either due to displacement or other reasons has constrained many of them to cut trees and sell them in the market as a part of their survival strategy. All these played havoc on the existing forest resources. Paradoxically, most of the development projects in post-independence India have taken place in tribal inhabited areas, which comprised large tracts of forest lands. In short, it hardly needs any reiteration that the destruction of forest resources has been caused more by development projects and state revenue demands than the needs of tribal. Not only that but also even benefits of such developments have not accrued to tribals. On the contrary, they have been thrown off from the land and forest that had been their life support system for centuries. There was no adequate compensation given to the tribals, what to talk of rehabilitation, for the land they were forced to part with for the sake of national development. That tribals have paid a heavy price on account of these developments is evident from the fact that while they comprised only 7.5% of the total population, they constituted 40% of the displaced population by 1991 (Planning Commission, 2001). And yet a section of the environmentalists and conservationists tend to accuse, tribal people of putting forest wealth at stake. Prominent among these NGOs are the Wildlife First and Nature Conservation Society (NCS) and Tiger Research and Conservation Trust (TRACT). They had filed an application in the Supreme Court in January 2008 in which they pleaded for reconsideration of the rights granted to tribes and other forest dwellers under the Act referred above. They had sought to curb their rights in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries (Shrivastava, 2014). What is even more intriguing is that forest resources despite being under state control and management have undergone serious depletion all through the decades. In fact, in the thirty years since the declaration of policy in 1952, 4.3 million ha of forest land was diverted to the non-forest purpose (Kashyap, 1990). Since the 1970s, a host of new laws relating to forest and forest resources has been enacted. Of these laws, the Wild Life Protection Act (WLPA) 1972 was the earliest. The Act provides for the protection of wild animals, birds, and plants leading to the setting up of national parks in different parts of India. At the time of the enactment of the Act, there were only 4 such parks. However, there are now 101 national parks.

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They cover an area of 40,564.00 km constituting 1.23% of the geographical area of the country (National Wildlife Database, December 2019). The next law to be enacted was the Forest Conservation Act 1980 which was passed to check deforestation. It aimed to restrict the transfer of forest land for non-forest purposes. The enactment of the Act meant that the state control and management of the forest resources have not improved the conservation of the forest in any way better. Rather, the process has been reversed. Hence to provide impetus to the protection and conservation of forests, the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980 was enacted. The Act forbids measures such as de-reservation of forest lands, use of forest lands for non-forest purposes, clearing of forest trees, etc. by state governments or other authorities without the prior approval of the Union Government. The Act was effective in controlling the indiscreet diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes. In fact, the rate of such diversion has fallen to a modest 16,500 ha per year from the earlier figure of about 1.5 lakh ha per year since the enactment of the Act in 1980 (Kashyap, 1990, p. 316). The other Acts to follow were the Environmental Protection Act 1986 and the Biodiversity Protection Act 2003. The former aimed at protecting and improving the environmental quality, controlling and reducing pollution from all sources, and prohibiting or restricting the setting up and/or operation of any industrial operations on environmental grounds. The latter is aimed at the protection and maintenance of biodiversity. In between, the National Forest Policy 1988 was enunciated. It aimed at environmental stability, maintenance of ecological balance and atmospheric equilibrium. These were considered vital for the sustenance of all lifeforms. Further, the economic benefit was subservient to the key concern of environmental stability and ecological balance. The policy was refreshing in the sense that it provided for certain rights and concessions to tribes and other forest-dwelling communities.

4 Exclusion, Violence and Restoration Most of the measures prescribed in the post-independence period had an adverse implication on tribes. One of the most serious implications was the dispossession of rights over land and the displacement from the territory they inhabited. Under the Forest Act of 1927, more and more forest areas were brought under the state control and management through the declaration of such areas as reserved and protected forests leading thereby to denial or curtailment of rights. Further, the diversion of forest land for development projects of various types led to their dispossession of land and displacement from the territory. The Conservation Act in this sense was in the right direction and need of the hour. It was instrumental in preventing the depletion of forest cover and resources. Subsequently, the New Forest Policy adopted by India in 1988, for the first time acknowledged the symbiotic relationship of the tribals with forests and the rights and privileges they traditionally enjoyed over the forest. The policy hence envisaged protection of the interest of the tribals (Verma, 1990). The National Policy 1988 even makes provision for regularising what it calls tribal encroachments, and it takes 1980 as the cut-off year. As a follow-up, the

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Ministry of Environment and Forest (MOEF) issued several circulars, which either aimed at regularisation of so-called encroachers or resolution of disputed claims but the progress made in this regard at the ground level was insignificant. Due to the indifference and negligence of the Forest Department towards regularisation, the tribes had to pay heavy prices since 2002. This has its genesis in the way forest conservation came to be envisioned and executed by the court. The Supreme Court’s series of judicial pronouncements on the Public Interest Litigation filed by T. N. Godavarman reflected it. Since the court had extended the sweep of the petition to forests in the entire country, its orders had far-reaching implications on the millions of tribes and other forest dwellers who and their ancestors had been living in the forest for centuries. The court order declared the millions of tribal forest dwellers as illegal occupants on their own lands. The judicial pronouncements on the case had extended the ambit of the 1980 Act even to lands yet to be finally notified under the Indian Forest Act and also to all lands conforming to the dictionary definition of forests irrespective of ownership. The pronouncements had even stayed regularisation of eligible pre-1980 so-called encroachers (Sarin, 2005). As a part of the enforcement of the court order, the Ministry of Environment and Forest (GOI)) embarked on a drive of mass eviction of tribal and other forest dwellers from lands that they have been occupying but have been declared as forest by the forest department. There were 131 Wildlife reserves in 1975. This increased to around 572 in 1999. It covered approximately 156,000 km2 which constitute 4.7% of India’s land area. In a survey conducted in the mid-1980s, it was estimated that 69% of India’s wildlife reserves were inhabited by local human communities. Their population was estimated at 4.5 million. In an almost similar percentage of wildlife reserves, local livestock was partly grazed. And 57% were subjected to the collection of non-timber forest products. These people were increasingly looked upon as ‘encroachers’ (Bose, 2010, p. 7). Following the Supreme Court order, the Ministry of Environment and Forest issued an order on 3 May 2002 to all states and Union Territories stating that approximately 12.50 lakh ha of forest land is under encroachment and all encroachment which are not eligible as per guidelines issued by the Ministry on 18 September 1990, should be summarily evicted in a time-bound manner, no later than 30 September 2002 (Bijoy, 2017, p. 78). This led to a country-wide crackdown by the Forest Department. The eviction was carried out from 1.52 lakh ha of forest land between May 2002 to March 2004 out of a total of 13.43 ha of encroachment, of which over 6.65 lakh ha had already been regularised by then. Approximately, about 300,000 forest-dwelling households had been forcefully evicted and deprived of their livelihood during this period. Houses, crops and food were destroyed by the forest officials. Some women were raped and men were shot at and killed. Standing crops and hundreds of villages were destroyed (ibid: 1764). As it is, tribes have been facing oppression at the hands of the Forest Department for decades in varied forms, but the scale and form experienced between 2002 and 2004 was unprecedented and unparalleled in different parts of India. While the Forest Department went on a rampage, evicting the forest dwellers from forest areas in several parts of the country from 2002 onwards, diversion of forest

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lands for non-forest lands, which the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 prohibited except with the concurrence of the central government went up. Diversion increased from 1331.7 ha in 1981 to 33,079.496 ha in the first quarter of 2004 alone. From 2002 to 19 April 2006, when rampant eviction was taking place, 305,266.39 ha of forest area were diverted for non-forestry purposes. Of the total of 1,133,123.93 ha diverted from 1980 to March 2006, 51% (573,164 ha) was done from 1 January 2001 to 19 April 2006 (Bijoy, 2008). Further, along with the increase in forest land and its diversion, the forest land under the Protected Area regime too has steadily increased. Between 1970 and 2017, the National Parks increased from 5 in 1970 to 98 in 2007 (3,821,972 ha) and further to 103 covering 4,050,013 ha. The Wildlife Sanctuaries increased from 62 in 1970 to 510 in 2007 (12,054,395 ha) and further to 543 covering 11,891,771 ha (ibid: 85). It is at this backdrop that approximately 150 different grassroots organisations of tribes/Adivasis and other forest dwellers came together. They were diverse in their size and extent of reach, understanding and capabilities. Yet they shared in common the agenda of resisting the eviction. Their state federation along with the national front of Adivasi organisations such as Bharat Jan Andolan and National Front of Tribal Self Rule came together in the latter half of 2002 and formed a coalition named Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD) (Bijoy, 2008, p. 79). At the core of CSD was the National Front of Tribal Self Rule whose experiences of political engagement with political parties, parliamentarians, lawyers and lawmakers came as a viable asset (ibid). It is this campaign that eventually led to the enactment of the Scheduled Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act 2006 by the government of India. The act is one of the most radical legislation of post-independence India. It takes cognizance of injustice suffered by tribal communities and other traditional forest dwellers from the second half of the nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century. The Act aims to undo this historical injustice by recognising their rights on forest land and restoring them the same that the colonial state had usurped and bequeathed to the post-independence Indian state. With the enactment of the Scheduled Tribe and Other Forest Dwellers Act 2006, the question of historical injustice was addressed and the rights that were taken away from them were restored. Yet this legal right requires to be translated into reality through due process of claim making and supportive evidence. Unfortunately, this has been far from smooth. The obstacles are being experienced at different layers of implementing bodies. These range from the Ministry at the top to the different levels of forest bureaucracy especially those where claims are made, scrutinised and approved or rejected. The obstacles and resistance to recognition are evident in the large-scale rejection of claims on frivolous grounds. At the same time, the Ministry that matters the most has been far from enthusiastic in the implementation of the act. Besides, there are NGOs, referred to earlier in the discussion who have kept on challenging the legality of the Act on some ground or the other. This has led to the Supreme Court order of eviction from forest lands in all those cases that have been found rejected. Over a million were on the verge of being thrown away from their land due to rejection of their claims. Anyone familiar with the working of the laws and institutions in tribal areas would not be surprised at the massive scale

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of rejection. The order has stayed following the protests at various levels and by organisations. The Forest Department and its officials along with urban and elitist conservationists have been hostile to the Act from the time of the framing of this Act to the framing of the rules. Hence, civil society working with tribes was well aware of the fact that the implementation of the Act will be a difficult task. The fear has now been proven. In fact, there have been numerous complaints regarding the manner in which the Act is being implemented. The process for recognition of the claims goes through three levels. The Gram Sabha recommends, which then goes to sub-divisional level authority, which after verifying sends it to the district level authority consisting exclusively of officials including forest. It is here that the rejection takes place. Rejection does not always mean that the applicant’s case lacks merit. The rejections are often arbitrary, against the recommendations of the Gram Sabha (village assembly), and driven by lobbies who want to hand over the forests to private parties and businesses. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs itself has made the observation that claims have been rejected on frivolous objections. Huge numbers of appeals are pending against the rejection, and no inquiry has been done. Section 4 (5) of the Forest Rights Act specifies that no one can be evicted without proper procedure, but authorities systematically flouted the procedures and were responsible for the violation and arbitrary rejection of appeals. In several cases, the claims have been rejected based on flawed methodologies that violate FRA Rules. Often rejections are made based on just satellite maps, though as per the rule they are to be supported by ground surveys. Therefore, rights legally won and restored remain yet to be translated into reality.

References Bijoy, C. R. (2008). Forest rights struggle: The adivasis now await a settlement. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(12), 1755–1773. Bijoy, C. R. (2017). Forest rights struggle: The making of the law and the decade after. Law Environment and Development Journal, 13(2), 75–92. Bose, I. (2010). How did the Indian Forest Rights Act, 2006, emerge? IPPG Discussion Paper, www.ippg.org.ok. Accessed August 15, 2020. Bosu-Mullick, S. (1993). Jharkhand movement: A historical analysis. In M. Miri (Ed.), Continuity and change in tribal society (pp. 1–29). Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. Ekka, A. (2011). Status of adivasis/indigenous peoples-land series 4. Aakar Books. Fernandes, W. (1993). Forests and tribals: Informal economy, dependence and management traditions. In M. Miri (Ed.), Continuity and change in tribal society (pp. 48–69). Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. Government of India. (2001). Report of the Steering Committee on empowerment of the scheduled tribes for the tenth five year plan. Planning Commission, Delhi. Government of India. (2006). The scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers Act 2006. https://tribal.nic.in/fra.aspx. Guha, R. (2005). Tribal Pursuits. Hindustan Times, Delhi, June 16. Kashyap, S. C. (Ed.). (1990). National policy studies. Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd. Kujur, A. A. (1989). The Oraon habitat: A study in cultural geography. The daughters of St Anne.

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Kulkarni, S. (1983). The forest policy and forest bill: A critique and suggestions for change. In W. Fernandes & S. Kulkarni (Eds.), Towards a new forest policy, people’s rights and environmental needs (pp. 88–101). India Social Institute. Misra, B.P. (1976). A positive approach to the problem of shifting cultivation in eastern India and a few suggestions to the policy makers. In B. Datta-Ray (Ed.), Shifting cultivation in north-east India (pp. 80–91). North East Indian Council for Social Science Research. Misra, B.P. (2012). Keynote address: National Seminar on ‘Governance, Socio-economic Disparity and Unrest in the ‘Scheduled Areas’ of India’. Tata Institute of Social Sciences, 22–24 November. Mukerji, A. K. (2001). Forest policy reforms in India—Evolution of the joint forest management approach. Food and Agricultural Organisation. Access from https://www.fao.org/3/XII/0729-C1. htm#fn1. Munda, R. D. (1992). In search of tribal homeland. In B. Chaudhari (Ed.), Ethnopolitics and identity crisis (pp. 377–86). Inter-India Publications. Raghavaiah, V. R. (1979). Tribal revolts in chronological order: 1778–1971. In A.R. Desai. (Ed.), Peasant struggles in India (pp. 12–26). Oxford University Press. Sarin, M. (2005). Scheduled tribes bill 2005: A comment. Economic and Political Weekly., 40(21), 2131–2134. Shah, M. (2005). Governance reform for India’s forests. The Hindu, Delhi, May 20. Shiva, V., Sharatchandra, H. C., & Bandopadhyay, J. (1983). The challenge of social forestry. In W. Fernandes & S. Kulkarni (Eds.), Towards a new forest policy, people’s rights and environmental needs (pp. 48–75). India Social Institute. Shrivastava, K. S. (2014). Wildlife NGO group gets flak for seeking curbs on forest rights of indigenous people. Down to Earth, 11 April. Singh, K.S. (2002). Birsa Munda and His Movement, 1872-1901. A Study of a millenarian movement in Chotanagpur, Seagull Books, Kolkata. Verma, R. C. (1990). Indian tribes through the ages. Publications Division. Xaxa, V. (1998). Cultural dimension of ecology: A case study of the Oraons. In B. Saraswathi (Ed.), The cultural dimension of ecology (pp. 125–128). Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. Xaxa, V. (2008). State, society, and tribes: Issues in post-colonial India. Pearson Longman. Xaxa, V. (2020). Tribes in India: Why exclusion persists. In S. Patel (Ed.), Exploring sociabilities of contemporary India: New perspectives (pp. 77–97). Orient Blackswan.

Chapter 3

Triple Oppression and Exclusion: Muslim Refugee Women in the USA Huma Ahmed-Ghosh

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore (Statue of Liberty New York, USA).

Abstract The Trump administration in the USA took on an anti-immigration and anti-refugee stance. Refugees were seen as a potential threat to this country; the very country that is at war in the Middle East and the cause for the largest ever refugee crisis in history. In this chapter, I will deconstruct the concept of the ‘refugee woman’ through ethnographic research on Middle Eastern women in San Diego, California. I will also address issues related to refugee women’s challenges in raising their children, looking for employment, coping with men in the family, and their cultural adjustment crisis. Muslim women are easily recognizable because they are headscarved and victimized through harassment, and marginalization in the USA. These refugee women, poised at the intersection of Islamophobia, gender discrimination and poverty are triply oppressed in the USA and negotiate their spaces with skill, adaption and sometimes hopelessness. Would a policy shift with the new administration improve the situation for refugees?

1 Introduction The USA has historically taken in the largest number of refugees1 since the last six to seven decades. It has a reputation for its inclusive policies to immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees that made it a global leader. But recent years, through the Trump administration (2016–2020), have seen a dramatic downturn with the lowest H. Ahmed-Ghosh (B) Department of Women’s Studies, San Diego State University, San Diego, USA e-mail: [email protected] 1

In this chapter I will use the term refugee as a technical term to distinguish between migrant and asylum seekers. I do want to point out though that this word is value loaded with negativity for this demographic in the USA as they experience backlash from the majority community who see them as unskilled, illiterate and burden on the US economy. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_3

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numbers (15,000 for 2021) ever of immigrants and refugees being allowed into the USA. In the span of a month of being sworn in as President (January 2021), Joe Biden has already announced that he will raise the ceiling of entering refugees to 125,00 over the span of a year (https://www.rescue.org/article/first-100-days-howpresident-biden-can-support-refugees-and-asylum-seekers). While this is very welcome news and will contribute to an inclusive policy aimed at remedying global disruptions and animosities toward the USA, the damage done over the last four years will render this declaration a challenge that may take much longer to implement than envisioned. The system has seen a decimation of refugee agencies, funding and personnel, and COVID-19 will definitely delay entrance of refugees and immigrants because of tougher vetting procedures. In this chapter, I will briefly discuss US refugee policies through the last few political administrations, to contextualize the impact of such policies on Muslim refugee women. Here, I will discuss the politics of state-sponsored inclusion and exclusion that reverberates in national level policies to prohibit certain groups of people entering the USA by perpetuating an anti-Muslim and therefore an antirefugee rhetoric and reality. To quote Dobson et al. (2021). We give with one hand the discourse of humanity, peace, and inclusion and with the other hand, competitive individualism is expressed in practice in schools and other institutions where refugees must compete for scarce resources and more easily experience failure and exclusion. There is in such a case a disjuncture between the language of inclusion, the policy, the rhetoric, the communication strategy - and the practice, existential experience, and short, medium and longer-term consequences of exclusion (https://www.tandofline.com/doi/full/ 10.1080/13603116.2019.1678804).

Muslim refugee women from the Middle East in the USA are a good case study of such discrepancies and beg the question, what does “inclusion” mean for the diasporic population in the USA? Refugee women in the USA have the unique and unfortunate experience of being refugees in a country that is at war with their very own countries. This compounds their complex relationship with their adopted country in terms of cultural and economic adjustment. Coming from honor based-societies, these women are subjected to gender-based discriminations within their own cultures, and in the USA, further victimized because they are Muslims. The loss of economic status further aggravates their familial lives in a foreign land. Thus, these women, poised at the intersection of Islamophobia, gender discrimination, and poverty are triply oppressed in the USA and they are “socially and politically” excluded in a system that is antagonistic to Islam. Loss of home, culture, family, and national identity results in a disjointed and disrupted assimilation to the USA.

2 San Diego Refugees and Refugee Policy My analysis and conclusions are based on the ethnographic research I conducted in San Diego among refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. I have been conducting a community-based course at my University since 2016. Simultaneously, I conducted interviews of refugee women from numerous countries. In addition, I have been

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focusing on research in the Afghan and Iraqi communities for three years and among Syrian refugee women in the last one year. All interviewees are women who accessed mental health resources, employment services, English language lessons, domestic violence counseling and legal services at non-government organizations set up by refugees for their communities. The age-group ranged from 19 to 40 years. For this chapter, I have focused on responses of six women whose responses while personal do reflect the voices of many other refugee women living in such circumstances. For a nation the USA, prides itself on providing shelter to immigrants and refugees, and promoting multiculturalism. Albeit, almost two hundred and forty-four years ago, with the forcible displacement of American Indians, the Europeans and British first built this nation as the flourishing entity it is now through a constant stream of immigrants. Unfortunately, the USA has today become a nation of intolerance, closed borders, ominous wall builders and harboring discriminatory practices against people seen as ‘different.’ Historically, immigration policies in the USA have been very complicated and a roller-coaster ride for many immigrants, limiting family members, then allowing them, limiting certain communities, ethnicities and races, etc. However, the USA always reflected policy implications that favor labor. From agriculture, industrialization, railroads and to information technology, the USA has adapted, created and restricted immigration based on national need. As pointed out by Fairchild (2004), the immigration policies of inclusion referred to the two landmark Acts: the Immigration Act of 1924, which made national origin the basis for admission into the United States, and the Immigration Act of 1965, which eliminated the national origin systems. The first refugee policy was the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. This policy gave mainly those fleeing World War II shelter by admitting 400,000 people over a four-year period. Initially, this Act prevented Jews fleeing Germany and the holocaust from entering the USA. Then President, Harry S. Truman, was deeply troubled by this and later altered the Act in 1950 to allow Jews to enter the country. President Truman (1948, updated 2019) declared, It is with very great pleasure that I have today signed H.R. 4567, which amends the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. The improvements embodied in H.R. 4567 now bring the American principles of fair play and generosity to our displaced persons program.

As is apparent, USA has set the bar high as a country that welcomes immigrants and refugees with open arms, but recent years (2016–2020) have been regressive to such inclusionary policies. Wars and conflicts in different parts of the world over the past few decades have seen the number of refugees and asylum seekers surge exponentially. This has led to the need for developed nations to open their doors to higher numbers of refugees. The USA had the distinction of providing ‘refuge each year to more people than all other nations combined’. But the Trump administration has drastically reduced the maximum number of refugees that can enter the USA. As is mentioned in many reports, the US government has imposed new security vetting procedures on refugees before they can be admitted into the country, which has greatly lengthened waiting times and left many refugees in dangerous situations for prolonged periods. Under President Obama’s term in office in 2016, he had expressed a commitment to resettle a larger number of refugees globally, with

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110,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled in the USA. However, these commitments were halted and revised after President Trump’s election and swearing-in in January 2017, halving the figure of global refugees to be resettled in the USA as well as halting the refugee resettlement process altogether for the Syrian refugees. Trump halved the 2017 refugee admissions ceiling from 110,000 set under the Obama administration to 50,000. The admissions ceiling was lowered to 45,000 in 2018 (with fewer than 50 percent admitted) and again to 30,000 in 2019. The refugee program did resume but with the exception of nationals from 11 countries (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen) who were subject to an additional 90-day travel ban. By the end of 2017, the US government had resettled about 33,000 refugees, while other nations collectively resettled a total of 69,000. The Trump administration in the USA took on an anti-immigration and anti-refugee stance. Refugees are seen as a potential threat to USA; the very country that is at war in the Middle East and the cause for the largest ever refugee crisis in history. The resettlement process of refugees anywhere in the world is part of the social, political, economic and historical landscape of the countries involved in this process, unfortunately reflecting reverberations of hostilities, animosities and friendships as reflected through these processes of human demographic shifts and mobilities. The refugee crisis is a global issue that has deepened the chasm between the North and the South. Most of the conflicts in the refugee sending nations are results of direct western occupations/wars and/or dominant political interferences. Therefore, it is ironic that the USA, that has unabashedly contributed to the refugee crisis has now turned its back on them and has ‘used’ them to play out its purported theory of a “clash of civilization.” Recently, ‘It [the USA] has treated refugees as a burden and potential threat to our nation, rather than as a source of strength, renewal, and inspiration’ (Kerwin, 2018, p. 215). According to Kerwin (2018), refugees are economically contributing members to USA society at a higher rate than long-termbased communities in the country. In 2016, the median household income of refugees was $43,000, much higher than the working-class Americans. Their participation in the labor force exceeds that of the total USA population by five percent. Refugees are more likely to be skilled workers as compared to non-refugee immigrants. Though majority of the refugees arrive in the USA without any financial resources, do not speak English, and have major adjustment issues to the USA, they integrate faster than other immigrants, get an education and contribute to the labor force and economy in impressive numbers. Historically, ‘The US refugee program constitutes one of the most successful humanitarian programs in US history. Since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, the US has resettled more than 3 million refugees’ (Kerwin, 2018, p. 207). Today, the country stands in total contradiction to the very inclusive policies toward immigrants that the nation has aspired for over the centuries. In recent years, the refugee problem has been one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. According to the UNHCR, refugees are defined and protected under international law. The 1951 Refugee Convention2 document defines a refugee as, ‘someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to 2

https://www.unhcr.org/4ca34be29.pdf (accessed on 10.11.2020).

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a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.’ It has been noted that most of the refugees largely came from conflict ridden regions of the world. By the end of 2017, there were 25.4 million refugee men, women and children registered from across the world. In mid-2020, there are 26.3 million refugees. The number of Muslim refugees admitted to the USA in the first half of fiscal 2018 has dropped from the previous year more than any other religious group, falling to nearly 1800 compared with the roughly 22,900 admitted in all of fiscal 2017, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of US State Department data (Krogstad & Gonzlez-Barrera, updated 2019). The low point in Muslim admissions was set in the year after the September 11 terrorist attacks. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/03/the-numberof-refugees-admitted-to-the-u-s-has-fallen-especially-among-muslims. Today, the nation is gripped in Islamophobia due to political and media representations of Muslims globally. This is reflected in the refugee policies of the nation and plays out in the realities of Muslim lives in the USA.

3 Islamophobia Islamophobia is the fear of Muslims (read as terrorists) that gained popular use after 9/11. It is politically manipulated and manufactured irrational fear of Muslims and the faith of Islam to create prejudice and distrust by a majority non-Muslim polity. It is a form of racism that discriminates against all Muslims, ultimately leading to a besieged mentality that Muslims themselves internalize. Under the Trump administration Executive Order 13,769, ‘Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States’ was evoked to enforce the ‘Muslim Ban.’ This Order banned Muslims from seven countries to enter the USA: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. This ban is interesting given that the USA has not experienced any terrorist attacks from immigrants/refugees from these countries. The following is a statement from Muslim Advocates Public Advocacy Director Scott Simpson (2020). ‘The FBI’s hate crime data for 2019 shows that far too many families and communities were targeted by hate last year.’ According to the agency, 2019 saw more hate crimes than any year since 2008. Further, according to the Justice Department of the USA,3 The Civil Rights Division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and United States Attorney’s offices have investigated over 800 incidents since 9/11 involving violence, threats, vandalism and arson against Arab-Americans, Muslims, Sikhs, South-Asian Americans and other individuals perceived to be of Middle Eastern origin. The incidents have consisted of telephone, internet, mail, and face-to-face threats; minor assaults as well as assaults with dangerous weapons and assaults resulting in serious injury and death; and vandalism, shootings, arson and bombings directed at homes, businesses, and places of worship.

3

https://www.justice.gov/crt/combating-post-911-discriminatory-backlash-6 24.07.2020).

(accessed

on

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Such a rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes have adversely impacted the refugee community too through the limiting of their numbers and through continued violence against them. They are thus subjected to exclusionary laws and practices in the USA. The refugees are marginalized and seen as ‘terrorists,’ a term that even Trump used in one of his inflammatory speeches a few years ago. Gorman and Culcasi (2020) in their research on refugees in West Virginia examined ‘the convergence of anti-refugee sentiment and Islamophobia as expressed through alarmist claims of “invasion” and “colonization”’. There is a much-heightened sense of “othering” discourses and exclusionary practices targeting Muslims in the USA in the Trump era according to the above authors. Gorman and Culcasi (2020, p. 1) in the same article further stated that, “Claims of invasion and colonization function powerfully …. “Other Islamic Bomb,” which frames Muslim women’s fertility as the vehicle of the invasion and colonization.’ The theme of hyperfertility of Muslim women as a conspiracy for the community to take over the world is not just part of western/Christian rhetoric but is rampant in Hindu/India too. According to Pew Research Centre (2019), many cases of discrimination have been filed in the Supreme Court on behalf of refugees being targeted because of their faith, Islam, and therefore restricting travel restrictions from certain countries but fortunately the Supreme Court did not entertain the request for such restrictions and dismissed the cases targeting Muslim refugees. Agrawal et al. (2019) in their research on Muslims post-9/11found that they faced violence that ‘spanned across various forms—mental, physical, verbal and structural’ (p. 31). The research also revealed that biased and discriminatory behaviors against Muslims was widespread including, ‘schools, college campuses, airport, workplaces, malls and in the community—by individuals across age and ethnic backgrounds’ (p. 31). According to their research: The media coverage of the 2016 presidential election and the widespread anti-Islam rhetoric made respondents feel unsafe. “Children identified as Muslims were bullied and discriminated by fellow students and teachers, including those from other communities of color, and were ignored post-election by friends at school”. One of the respondents claimed, “she’s interesting because she went from, you know I’m a Muslim right – back then, to now she’s like, well – I’m not ‘that kind of Muslim’ […] and I think she’s tried to distance herself from Islam in general (a South-East Asian female 25–35 years, social activist”, p. 31).

Islamophobia plays out in different ways for refugees. The incident of 9/11 was a global event even though it happened in the USA that saw a uniformly orchestrated backlash against Muslims in countries where they were the minority. In the USA especially, where the incidence occurred, Islamophobia was conflated with centuries-old animosity of Christians against Muslims, wars in the Middle East for oil, but projected as bringing rights, freedom and democracy to the Muslim world by condemning Islam as a religion of jihad and terrorism. Every Muslim man was seen as a terrorist and Muslim woman as oppressed and abused by Muslim men who needed to be rescued by westerners! For refugees from the predominantly Muslim world, coming to the USA was a mixed bag. First, they were coming to a country that was at war with their own country and second, they were coming to a country where Islamophobia is highly rampant and plays out differently for the different genders.

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4 Gendered Experiences of Muslim Refugees Valji et al. (2003) talk about the particular issues related to the erasure of women as refugees. Historically, not only have refugees been seen as male by default, but women have also previously faced more problems being recognized as refugees [and individuals in their own right] and that ‘refugee women and children were only recognized as a family package’ (61). This has typically led to the provision of gender-blind services and, lack of sensitivity and awareness of the needs of women. Authors Yasmine and Moughalian (2016) comment on the overwhelming focus of governments, agencies and officials on the Syrian war and the trauma when dealing with Syrian refugees, with little consideration given to the quality of educational, health and other services that are provided to them in their host countries. They talk about a continued threat of daily violence from a reluctant host community which include healthcare practitioners, landlords, police officers, employers and others. In the absence of a support network, child rearing responsibility falls even heavier on their shoulders. Some of these women lost their spouses and male family members in the war becoming even more vulnerable in the eyes of the host community. The authors continue that the obstacles to assimilation could be a range of varying factors including cultural adjustments, recurring presence of trauma and PTSD in daily life, getting used to different systems of transport, laws and regulations, different healthcare and schooling facilities and protocols, speaking or knowing poor English, making it hard for these men and women to join schools, employment and go about their day-to-day work. One of the main problems of forced migration is loss of status due to lack of recognition of education, employment, culture and economic resources one had back home. This comes with a lack of control and knowledge on how to create them in a foreign land. Resettlement becomes an issue dictated by the receiving country. Such disempowering experiences affects men and women differently among the refugees. For Muslim men, loss of status and a sense of emasculation brings with it other problems that play out in the domestic sphere. As I (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2015: 129) have noted previously, As refugee men, especially from son-centered countries where they are entitled from birth being born male, the loss of status and stature in this new country leads to changing behavioral patterns and interpersonal relationships within the newly formed family structure. Afghan men start experiencing racism and Islamophobia since they are seen as recent refugees and recognizable through beards as Muslims, and some through their brown skin and accents. This is problematic for many men because besides coming from gender-entitled backgrounds in Afghanistan, they also come from economically and socially privileged backgrounds.

This is further compounded by their lack of participation in the protection of their homeland from foreign invasions. Migrating to the USA has also added to their guilt and inability to fight for their country (Afghanistan) against the occupiers (USA). While living in the USA, Afghan men have to confront the masculinist discourse of the West which emasculates the Afghan man by projecting the deteriorating status of women in Afghanistan constantly in the media, thus implying that the Afghan men

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are not capable of taking care of their women and hence the USA went to war to ‘liberate women.’

5 Refugee Women’s Experiences: Fallout of Exclusionary Policies As Ozkaleli (2018: 18) points out, The refugee label turns a human into a one-dimensional person; it conceptually separates her from the place where she originally belonged and displaces her into a space unknown to her, a space that belongs to another. She is thrown into it by force.

This woman is a homogenized being referred to as a refugee, left to be defined by all as an outsider in need of charity based on the biases, politics and interpretations of such a being by the majority community. She is left to lead a fragmented and disrupted life in a country and community that is totally foreign and hostile to her. Home is a distant land to her that will never be visited but will always be the place she dreams of and wants to return to. Her whole existence as a refugee is fueled by the need to survive and by that unachievable dream of return. It is in the trope of return that lies her resilience to survive the brave new world and its animosity toward her. When coming to the USA, the refugees suddenly have a new political identity of ‘refugee,’ and that carries its own political and social connotations where their performance as citizens and other’s expectations of them are defined by an otherness they are not familiar with. The term refugee becomes their ‘title’! And as women, they bear the cross of a nation that is in the past but whose honor and prestige they need to carry forever. San Diego has the distinction of sheltering the largest number of refugees in the state. It started with the hosting of refugees since the end of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s numbering around 85,000 (Aguilera, 2017). There are two specific neighborhoods in San Diego where majority of the Middle Eastern and African refugees reside. For refugees, living in their ethnic enclaves provide them safe spaces they are seeking after traumatic transfer to the USA. For many refugees, the USA is their third-country destination, a situation that is foisted on them as they were forced to flee a home country that they did not want to leave. These neighborhoods then become the hub for socializing, community centers, mosques, local shops and simultaneously also spaces for reinforcing traditional and religious norms and cultures that insulate them from the ‘outside world.’ These spaces in turn also reinforce gender hierarchies of their home countries as they live among those communities. Unfortunately, this gendering is rendered invisible in most refugee policy making and services provided to the community. Refugee women in the USA have the unique and unfortunate experiences of being refugees in a country, as already mentioned, that is at war with their very own countries. This scenario complicates their convoluted relationship with their adopted country in terms of emotional and cultural adjustment, especially when raising their

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children in the USA. This, combined with the current Islamophobia and economic struggles create the triple oppression they experience as refugees. As I mentioned in an earlier article (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2015: 123), Though refugees and displaced persons may encounter similar obstacles in flight and during displacement, they are not a homogenous group. As presumed caregivers, women travel with children or other family members in need of assistance causing them to prioritize others’ needs over their own.

The above analysis heightens women’s dependencies on their spouses, while also physically and psychologically dealing with their husband’s loss of status in the larger western society. Refugee women’s voices are usually absent or silenced given that they form the bulk of the refugees and are many times the backbone of the refugee communities in the USA. Here I will address some of the issues related to refugee women’s challenges faced in raising their children, looking for employment, coping with men in the family, and their cultural adjustment crisis as garnered from interviews with Afghan, Syrian, and Iraqi women refugees. Coming from honorbased societies, these women are subjected to gender-based discriminations within their own cultures and are seen as guardians of their religion in a country that is hostile to it. Within the USA, they are further victimized for wearing headscarves, which clearly mark them as Muslims. There is added pressure on them to maintain and inculcate cultural and religious norms in their children, something that was imbibed more naturally in their home country. For many, the religious strictures and cultural expectations imposed by their community, especially the menfolk, are very demanding and an exaggerated version of what it was back-home. Since they are in a foreign culture and feel intimidated by its foreignness that is many times seen as threatening to their religion, women are expected to become the gate keepers and primary transmitters of their cultural values.

6 Domestic Violence For newly arrived refugees, within the new confines of their ethnic enclaves the disruptions caused by fleeing their homes, lead to breakdown of familial structures and supports, unemployment and ruptures all sense of normalcy leading to frustration and belligerent gender relationships within the household. This leads to an increase in domestic violence, abandonment of families, polygamy and depression. Since these refugees are coming from Islamic and honor-based societies where masculinity and patriarchy is defined through ‘protection and providing’ for their families, for Muslim refugee men the loss of the ability to protect and provide as spelt out in their culture and religion leads to domestic violence because of a heightened sense of helplessness and severe decline in confidence. A fallout of racial and religious discrimination of Middle Eastern and Asian refugees in the USA results in frustrations in the larger society being expressed through increased domestic violence. As usual, women and children are at the receiving end of such trauma. While reporting domestic violence

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can be difficult for any woman, their immigration status can make the decision even more difficult. Many refugee women are compelled to tolerate violence for the fear that their spouses may be deported back to the conflict-stricken countries they have fled. Though refugees have visas allowing them to be in the USA, before they become citizens they can be deported if they are convicted of certain crimes, including domestic violence charges. Therefore, reporting of domestic violence by women is very low. Dilkhwaz Ahmed, Executive Director of License to Freedom, a refugee nonprofit that supports domestic violence survivors in San Diego in numerous personal conversations narrates that many Iraqis stigmatize women who act against domestic violence and blame these women if their husbands are deported back to Iraq or sent to prison in the USA. Ahmed in personal communications with me and in her lectures to my students at my University (2016–2020) explains how most refugee men are not aware of the consequences of domestic violence in the USA. Since it is part of their ‘culture’ and there are no consequences for such violence in their home countries, men are surprised that they can be imprisoned for such acts in the USA. Once in the USA, refugee NGOs educate men on the laws and customs of the host country (domestic violence is the highest killer of women in the USA and globally, not just confined to refugees) and women on the services that exist. According to Ahmed, most Iraqi, Kurdish, Afghan and Syrian women internalize their ‘victim’ status and accept the abuse assigning it to culture, economic dependencies and honor of the intact family. She recounted a story of one of the Iraqi survivors of domestic violence that the organization helped, ‘Her parents are angry that she left her husband. She still feels the community pressure, but she also feels a new peace.’ According to a domestic violence survivor, ‘This is the first year in our lives we feel safe and happy, you should not be silent like I was. Fourteen years of my life I wasted in violence.’ Conflict and displacements have heightened vulnerability of women and children who face a multitude of issues such as rape, sex trafficking, early marriages, malnutrition, maternal deaths, access to poor or no healthcare, shelter, and other basic and urgent needs. My involvement with the NGO has shown that domestic violence has dramatically increased during the Covid-19 pandemic among the refugee community in San Diego, reflecting a global trend. For refugees too, most men are losing their jobs and confined to their homes along with children who are home-schooling. Space is limited in their homes, as are resources, and coupled with loss of status and heightened frustration, domestic violence is on the rise among the refugee communities in San Diego. This is in addition to lack of mobility due to the Corona virus and lack of health services, access to vaccines and social services. In the San Diego refugee community, at least one restraining order is being filed a day by a refugee woman and the cases of domestic violence has tripled. This leads to further trauma for women who are left to take care of their children, have no place to go and are forced to endure the abusive environment at home.

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7 Mothering in the Diaspora In this section, I will briefly reflect on how lived experiences of Muslim refugee women are different from the intentions of inclusionary policies. The narratives here reflect the gap in practicing and preaching inclusivity. The social and cultural environment of the majority excludes, makes invisible, and at times, discriminates against minorities, immigrants and refugees. The exclusionary policies of the previous regime (2016–2020) laid the groundwork for Islamophobia, which impacted women differently than men. Being head-scarved and hijabi rendered Muslim women more visible as Muslims that in turn led to them being confined to their homes and neighborhoods for fear of being attacked and discriminated against in public. This gap is apparent in ‘mothering’ which is an additional burden to refugee women’s lived experiences in the USA. A dilemma for most refugee women is how to mother in the diaspora that can keep the family away from ‘corrupt’ Western ways and consciously reject ‘American’ values which they see as debasing to their own values and corrupting of children especially girls/women, and yet provide their children with all the advantages living in the USA has to offer educationally and professionally. As one respondent told me, ‘American values are anti-family, anti-Islam and there is no morality.’ ‘American values’ for these women are associated with being licentious and having no family values. Lack of family values means disrespect for and disobeying the elderly and parents, lack of filial piety and being licentious means dressing indecently (especially girls), rejection of gender segregation, dating, pre-marital sex, divorce, consumption of drugs and alcohol, etc. In my article on mothering in the diaspora (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2015) especially for Afghan refugees, one learns about the complexities and contradictions these mothers have to deal with living in the USA especially since they are fleeing Afghanistan to become refugees in the very country that continues to occupy their home country. By evoking the concept of ‘home’ one is able to gauge their experiences of migration to the USA. There remains a belief and constant desire to ‘return.’ This leads to a ‘temporariness’ in their thinking toward total acceptance of their new reality, rendering adjustment to the USA very difficult. One of the major setbacks for Afghan refugees, specifically women as mothers, is the breakdown in the kinship system. I am aware that there are as many disadvantages for women who live in extended households as there are advantages, but from the interviews it was apparent that in a foreign land, the lack of those familial and social networking support systems did place burdens on mothers (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2015, p. 130). On their arrival to the USA, due to Islamophobia, religiosity has also imbued their lives with a new meaning. It is a cultural crutch that they lean on to negotiate their transitioning status while adapting to their new social environment. The local mosque has arisen as a contributor to creation of the ‘home.’ It symbolizes for them the cultural familiarity that they grew up with and is used primarily by recent immigrants as a community space to meet their people. It also provides Islamic and cultural classes to Afghan-American children. It has become the ‘watering hole’ for new immigrants who are provided services by the community (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2015).

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In the diaspora, Afghan mothers carry the burden of being good Muslims, and raising good Muslim and Afghan children while preserving the cultural integrity and honor of the family, clan and country which is defined through the ‘purity’ of their women. For these women, an individual identity is defined only through its enhancement of the collective, a collective that continues to value masculinity and patriarchy that is struggling in the diaspora to retain its traditions and gendered hierarchies (ibid). Survival as an individual is rooted in the survival of the group and therefore living in ethnic enclaves provides them safe spaces they are comfortable with. Ironically, community living can get problematic too because women are then at risk of gossip! Everyone is in everyone’s business and any perceived transgression from the norm is seen as a reflection of inadequate mothering. These women see American culture as toxic that leads to intergenerational issues which are compounded among the refugee community, by putting the burden on mothers and daughters to keep intact (figuratively and literally) family honor. Middle Eastern and Asian cultures, irrespective of religion, place stricter controls on their women. While the refugee women adopt more religious symbols like veiling, limited mobility, etc. to maintain their faith and culture, they do this also to transmit similar customs and norms to their children—they are the role-models they want their children to emulate and aspire to, especially their daughters. In line with their traditions, their conservatism is tested when daughters want to date, go to gyms, work in retail stores and even just hang out with friends into the evenings. Marriage within the community is of prime importance, preferably arranged—creating an intergeneration crisis. The second generation wants to choose their own partners. As Sarah, a 19 year old, college-attending Afghan student explained to me, I would like to marry an Afghan to please my parents, but I do not meet enough educated Afghan boys in the University. I have never dated anyone yet because my parents will be upset. Once I get a job and move out of the house, I hope to date. I want to get a job first.

Sarah was very cognizant of her parents’ expectations of her and felt that while she was economically dependent on her parents, she needed to respect their wishes. As is always the case, the rules and standards for her brothers were very different. Sarah did elaborate that the possibility of marrying a non-Afghan existed since, ‘Afghan men are very traditional and still want to live with their parents.’ Sarah dreams of having her own home with freedoms that are denied to her mother. Similar views were expressed by Mariam, a 22-year-old recently graduated college student, who felt that Syrian families are traditional too, but she did say that her parents would approve of any man she wants to marry as long as he converted to Islam. From my interviews it emerged that while in the USA, most refugees are deemed uniformly ‘Middle Eastern,’ their ethnic, regional and sectarian identities are very strictly adhered to. This was reflected in whom the women could marry and whom they could not. If the woman ‘strayed off,’ it was seen as the mother’s fault (not being strict enough with her daughters) and also seen as too much Americanization of the family! An attribute to American culture was very visible in my interviews when I brought up the issue of same-sex relationships and transgenderism. Just a brief mention here in relation to LGBTQ issues, all the younger (18–22 years old) respondents I interviewed for

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another project were ‘open-minded’ about LGBTQ issues and two out of the 24 interviewed had also ‘come out’ to their families but to adverse consequences. Each one expressed the same sentiment about ostracization from their communities and rejection from parents. For mothers, the main dilemma is that they are expected to conform to ultratraditional norms and bring up children accordingly, while in reality the children see themselves as ‘American’ and are not willing to follow traditional cultural norms that challenge their Americanness. This Americanness is imbibed from schools, friends, as well as social media and TV. Both Sarah and Mariam validated their need to assimilate into the American culture as they attended school to make friends and be seen as ‘cool’. Their biggest struggle with their parents was clothing—especially the headscarf. As was confirmed by other Muslim refugee girls, leaving and entering the house involved head covering with the headscarf promptly being tucked into their bags when they arrived at their schools and universities. Interestingly, besides wanting to assimilate, Sarah pointed out the lack of sensitivity on the part of students, teachers and staff to cultural differences contributing further to conflictual adjustment processes on their part. In many instances, through my research with the refugee communities in San Diego over the last four years, I have heard students and their parents complain about discrimination and mistreatment of Muslim students in schools because they are referred to as ‘refugees’ implying that these children are ‘charity cases’ and ‘sponging’ off the system, thus being treated either with ‘pity’ or an ‘impatience’ creating in students low self-esteem and a perpetual foreignness that can be traumatic for them. Paradoxically, while refugee families aspire for success of their children and a level of assimilation that will enhance those ambitions, they are not able to come to terms with differences in cultural practices that they see as threatening and challenging to their own lifestyles. These parents, unfortunately, do not have the skills to negotiate the educational and other institutions that form barriers to the family’s well-being. Very few avenues exist in the city and county to assist them too. Added cultural burdens on women along with economic hardship for many refugee women has led to depression and a sense of failure and isolation. Shahin, a 40-year-old refugee woman from Syria, arrived with her husband and four children in San Diego three years ago. She has been struggling with depression ever since her arrival because she is totally unable to navigate the system. Her children are 10–18 years old and unable to cope with school, and her husband who owned a grocery store and a house back home is unable to find any employment in San Diego. Both struggle with the English language. She bemoaned, My life is much harder here than it was back home. I have left my family and home and live like a beggar here. My children are also suffering from depression because they do not understand anything in school.

For Shahin, living off the minimum financial support from the city has meant living in cramped quarters, one meal a day, and constant struggles with survival and conflicts with her husband. Her husband is afraid to get a low paying job because that would affect his status with the city which would then withdraw the little support the

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family gets. Their older son, the only employed member of the family, works for an ethnic grocery store and receives his salary in cash. Theirs is a glaring example of the gap between policies and realities of people’s lives.

8 Economic Disparities Another obstacle that heightened Muslim refugee women’s isolation, dependencies, and desperateness was their lack of access to jobs they were qualified for back home. Naima Mohammad is a 34-year-old Syrian refugee who was working in Turkey and Syria before she moved to the USA. As her nursing qualification from Syria is not recognized, she is being deprived of a decent job. Her inability to continue work in the USA affects many aspects of her life including her financial status, chances of meeting Americans and constructing a support system, thus limiting her mobility and making her increasingly reliant on the meager assistance provided by the government that greatly affects her overall quality of life in the new country. To work as a nurse, Naima had to start her training as an undergraduate student which she cannot financially afford to do. This loss in her class status further exacerbates her feeling of alienation and depression in the USA. There are innumerable stories of highly qualified refugee women (and men) who are doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers, nurses, etc. who held well-paid positions in their home countries, but are now working in fast-food restaurants, as security guards, have opened small grocery and liquor stores, and as Uber taxi drivers. For many of the highly qualified professional women, staying home to take care of the family and conforming to traditional roles has led to higher frustrations. According to Shanaz, 36, who migrated from Afghanistan 12 years ago, ‘Muslim refugee women are seen as a combination of illiterate and servile.’ She came as a refugee via Pakistan and has an MBA from a university in Pakistan. She is fluent in English. Every time she applies for a job, she is invited to interview. On seeing her veiled (not burqa but a hijab), the company hesitates to hire her. She has been repeatedly asked whether she could remove her headscarf when she came to work. When she declines, she is not offered the job which is illegal, but the company makes a big deal that in client-oriented jobs her presence would be intimidating. Shanaz works at a retail store as a saleswoman. For Afroz, 35, from Afghanistan, coming to the USA as a refugee meant giving up her dream of becoming an engineer. She has a B.Tech degree from Kabul University and worked for four years in a construction company in Kabul. After six years of living in a refugee camp in Pakistan, Afroz finally arrived in San Diego. Eager to start working here, she has repeatedly been rebuffed because her degree is not from a University in the USA. She now works as a receptionist in a car dealership and has plans of saving enough money to go back to the University. For some refugee women though, moving to the USA despite the hardship they had to endure has still provided opportunities and avenues to further their independence and employability. A couple of women from Afghanistan informed me that they are taking advantage of English classes offered by the city and are going out to work as

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caregivers and as workers in grocery stores and other retail outlets. These women confessed that ‘back home’ they were not allowed to work at all. Some of them have taken courses in cosmetology and other professions and opened their own parlors, etc. Some have opted to cater ethnic food and start day-care centers for small children in their homes. They were grateful to be in the USA where their families could live in freedom and educate their children to be what they want to be, albeit with cultural clashes. On the one hand, the sense of social and political exclusion is very palpable in refugee communities because they feel unwelcome, excluded from mainstream society and looked upon suspiciously. On the other hand, these alienating feelings are further compounded by a conflicted sense of ‘gratefulness’ for being allowed into the USA—due to its inclusive policies of humanitarianism! Dobson et al. (2021) extend the definition of social exclusion to include overall well-being of refugees as integral to their successful integration into US society. They succinctly point out that, Social exclusion is a multidimensional phenomenon not limited to material deprivation, and poverty is an important dimension of exclusion, albeit only one dimension. Accordingly, social inclusion processes involve more than improving access to economic resources. It might include qualitative and subjective measures of wellbeing and belonging. Thus understood, social inclusion is defined as the process of improving the terms of participation in society, particularly for refugees who are disadvantaged, through enhancing opportunities, access to resources, authentic experiences of belonging and wellbeing and voicing respect for human rights. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13603116.2019.1678804)

9 Concluding Remarks Mathema and Carratala (2020) in their report for the Center of American Progress have five recommendations to ‘overhaul the resettlement system’. First, agencies should think beyond the federal model and include more community groups in the resettlement process. Second, reforms should be made to stabilize annual refugee flows so that these numbers are independent of changes in administration and thereby allow resettlement agencies to better plan ahead. Third, the program should bring the focus back to the integration of refugees along with achieving economic selfsufficiency. Fourth, agencies should strive to raise awareness about the program to build public support among communities and policymakers. And finally, all stakeholders must be involved in the rebuilding process so that agencies and others affected by the program have a say on how to rebuild it. To these recommendations, I would like to add one more—immigration and refugee inclusion policies should not be politicized. Using immigration to play global politics is playing with human lives whose circumstances more often than not are a result of US-led conflicts and interests. Inclusiveness is also about creating a society that is welcoming to ‘foreigners’ through an imparting of education, policies and societal environment that embraces humanitarianism. In this chapter, I have laid out Muslim refugee women’s lived realities to highlight the inconsistencies that exist in policy-making which in turn lead us to ask some questions. The main question

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remains: As refugees, how do Muslim women’s bodies act as a site for tradition and culture and as a site for resistance? How do they contest and negotiate their gendered roles within the family and community and the larger US society? These women’s identities are poised at the juncture of race, gender, class, religion and region. Their lived experiences as refugees in the USA are impacted by each of these identity markers, rendering them vulnerable to prejudices at each level. They are in the USA because of inclusionary policies that reach out to one and all globally but become subject to exclusionary policies and reactions that continue to mark them as different, foreigners and unwelcome citizens. The triple jeopardy for Muslim refugee women of Islamophobia, gender-biased cultural expectations and downward spiral in social class intersect to create a multilayered identity that they have to negotiate and strategize to maintain their family and endure the realities of their new lives. Visible markers of their religion and culture do not encourage or enhance this adjustment, but their faith in their religion is their pillar of strength that assists in coping with any adversity they might experience through forming challenging collectives in their neighborhoods. The USA is a vastly diverse society, and the pretense of multiculturalism can become a reality for many. It is in this hope that refugees plant their feet and ensure that the next generation will not be referred to as ‘refugees’, they will be seen as ‘legitimate’ citizens contributing to the economy and ultimately to a better life for their parents. For refugee women, living in the USA it is like walking a tightrope; while they crave individual expression and freedom, they also seek community security and support to face their brave new world. Their preservation instinct is thus multilayered. Will the current Biden administration make their lives easier and more tolerable? Only time will tell.

References Aguilera, E. (2017). San Diego welcomes more refugees than any other California county. https://bakersfield.com/news/san-diego-welcomes-more-refugees-than-any-other-califo rnia-county/article_d57589fa-6e51-11e7-ae84-6fbf88589d0c.html Agrawal, P., Yousra, Y., Pasha, O., Ali, S. H., Ziad, H., & Hyder, A. A. (2019). Interpersonal stranger violence and American Muslims: An exploratory study of lived experiences and coping strategies. Global Bioethics, 30(1), 28–42. Ahmed-Ghosh, H. (2015). Being a woman, a Muslim, and Afghan in the USA: Dilemmas of displacement. In O. Espin & A. L. Dottolo (Eds.), Gendered journeys: Women, migration, and feminist psychology (pp. 123–141). Palgrave Macmillan. Dobson, S., Agrusti, G., & Pinto, M. (2021). Supporting the inclusion of refugees: Policies, theories and actions. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 25(1), 1–6. Fairchild, A. L. (2004). Policies of inclusion: Immigrants, disease, dependency, and American immigration policy at the dawn and dusk of the 20th century. American Journal of Public Health, 94(4), 528–539. Gorman, C., & Culcasi, K. (2020). Invasion and colonization: Islamophobia and anti-refugee sentiment in West Virginia. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 39(1), 1–16. Kerwin, D. (2018). The US refugee resettlement program—A return to first principles: How refugees help to define, strengthen, and revitalize the United States. Journal of Migration and Human Security, 6(3), 2015–2025.

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Krogstad, J. M., & Gonzlez-Barrera. A. (2019). Key facts about US immigration policies and Trump’s proposed change. US State Department: Pew Research Center. Mathema, S., & Carratala, S. (2020). Rebuilding the U.S. refugee program for the 21st Century: A new vision to create a more resilient refugee program. Center of American Progress. Ozkaleli, U. (2018). Displaced selves, dislocated emotions and transforming identities: Syrian refugee women reinventing selves. Women’s Studies International Forum, 70, 17–23. Pew Research Center. (2019). A closer look at how religious restrictions have risen around the world. pewforum.org. Simpson, S. (2020). Muslim advocates: 2019 FBI data undercounts hate crimes. https://muslimadv ocates.org/2020/11/muslim-advocates-2019-fbi-data-undercounts-hate-crimes/ Truman Institute Library. (1948, updated 2019). Displaced persons Act of 1948. https://www.tru manlibraryinstitute.org/the-displaced-persons-act-of-1948/ UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics Valji, N., de la Hunt, L. A., & Helen, M. (2003). Where are the women? Gender discrimination in refugee policies and practices. Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 55, 61–72. Yasmine, R., & Moughalian, C. (2016). Systemic violence against Syrian refugee women and the myth of effective intrapersonal interventions. Reproductive Health Matters, 24(47), 27–35.

Chapter 4

The Everyday Fault Lines of Inclusion and Exclusion in Delhi: Of Othering, Counter Voices and a Politics of Belonging Bobby Luthra Sinha Abstract Notwithstanding newer forces and impulses of migration and mobility in the contemporary era, states have demonstrated a sustained monopoly of control over national and international migrants, while negotiating the regular aftermaths of relocation and dislocation. Powerful sovereign states continue to have the prerogative to admit, restrict or deny mobility within their borders and territories. On the basis of a shared memory, political ethnography and participatory interactions with the West African migrants and North-east Indian communities in Delhi, I analyse available literature and data sources to demonstrate how people and citizens not only replicate state-inspired models of inclusion and exclusion, but also learn to counter overt as well as covert methods and models of ‘othering’ when need be. I argue that such a growing citizen/local–migrant dynamics typically unfolds an ethnographic time and space of migration hubs, which become the interface of many inter-subjectivities and everyday encounters between diverse communities and groups. I also argue that if a place exerts and exhibits its space and time on its locals, citizens and migrants, they equally enmesh and define it with their claims, counter claims and solidarities-cum stories of survival. Thus, a place very much belongs to all those who happen to be there or come to settle down in it.

B. L. Sinha (B) Chief Researcher, Adiwasi Samta Manch (ASM), Chhattisgarh, India Deputy Director, Centre for Asian, African and Latin American Studies (CAALAS), Institute of Social Sciences, Delhi, India Co-Chair, Scientific Commission of Migration, International Union of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences (IUAES), Delhi, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_4

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1 Introduction and a Reflection: Is this Really the Delhi, that ‘I Thought I Knew’? I start by sharing an experience which aroused my academic interest in themes connected to migration and its resultant politics of integration and dislocation, including the making and unmaking of identities in host cities or hubs of migration. Years ago, in 1992, while completing my master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Delhi, I befriended a couple from Nigeria. The young man and woman were roughly my age, maybe even a few years older, but all of us were co-incidentally living in the same colony, in an area situated in the North-west of Delhi. Besides, of course, we were peers in the Department of Political Science at the University of Delhi (henceforth DU). The couple used to stay around a kilometre away from my house. We ran into each other often at the DU. Then, on and off, during my post-dinner walks around my house, occasionally, I saw the two of them. Walking up and down the same tree-lined street behind my house, on which I came out for my night walks, they would be laughing and walking along with a little boy by their side. Gradually, our relationship blossomed from much more than an exchange of courteous smiles or a rushed, ‘hello’ between classes and courses in the busy north campus of the DU. We would inadvertently meet at night on the same street and soon started timing our walks and discussing so much together: Nigeria, India, political science, politics and society. Of course, we grew fond of each other, and they would often invite me to a tea-time discussion in their house, wherein we would prepare for our final exams together. At times, they spoke of incidents and attitudes that made them feel ‘othered’ in the neighbourhood and in the university. I would join in to analyse this, and a few other anomalies that ailed my society, while they shared similar accounts from back home and we would all feel philosophically and humanitarianly connected. However, they would always tell me that despite the hiccups, they certainly had more good memories than bad to carry back home when they finally left India. It was in Delhi that the couple had met while pursuing their BA (Hons) in Political Science, fell in love, got married and had become proud parents. Besides their teachers, friends and their families made them feel so much at home.

1.1 Vignette: A ‘Heart to Heart’ with a West African Family in Delhi (May, 1993)—Lasting Memories In May 1993, when our exams got over, my Nigerian friends Joseph and Adeola stayed on, waiting to collect their MA (Masters) results and degrees before they finally returned home. During the long summer break, we would meet often at pot lunches, at my house or theirs. Our house became a regular hang-out destination for other students from West Africa, though mainly Nigerians. During one such gathering, Joseph and Adeola’s five-year-old son, Chinua who was by now very attached to me, came up to me and asked me, ‘Auntie, what does, ‘Kalu’ mean?’.

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‘Yes Bobby, also tell us what ‘Ganja’ means’, chipped in Joseph. They began telling me how the young children in the street with whom Chinua used to play with would sometimes bully him by calling him ‘Kalu’ and ‘Ganja’ and laugh at him. I was stunned and shocked and so were they when I told them that ‘Kalu’ meant someone who is black and ‘Ganja’ means bald. But obviously, these terms of reference the way they were hurled at their son in the street seemed more derogatory to them, than descriptive in their usage. There was an uneasy silence. Thereafter, followed an outpour of incidents and stories where both the parents too had been addressed, looked at and treated shabbily, derogatorily or discriminatorily by a few Delhites, just on the basis of their colour, appearance and perceived differences in a day-to-day context. That day in 1993, I came face to face with another Delhi, a Delhi that I barely recognised. Was it really my Delhi, the city I belonged to and grew up in? I will return to this question at the end of my chapter.

1.2 Vignette II: Listening to Students from North-East and a Train Journey to Delhi (December 1993)–Newer Bonds ‘On a cold December morning, back in 1992, I started a train journey with a group of friends to an Eastern Indian city. We were going to attend a wedding of a close friend and planned spending a week at her house helping out in the functions. Three girls in our group were students from Arunachal Pradesh, a state in North-east India. Once the wedding was over, we all were scheduled to return to Delhi. Fifth of December 1992 was the much awaited wedding night which was hectic and the rituals carried out till wee hours of the morning. Although politically the situation was tense, we had assumed that everything would settle down. However, while returning to our hostess’s home, tired yet excited, there was a damper. We were told that something terrible has happened: the Babri Masjid had been demolished and the town seemed tense, with conspicuous police and para-military presence on the streets. By 5 am in the morning of 6 December 1992, curfew had been imposed in the city. Movement was restricted, and the train that we were supposed to take back home to Delhi the next day stood cancelled and so it remained till 13 December 1992 when we all could finally travel back. During the unforeseen tense and extended stay, we the students from Delhi became close to each other and shared newer bonds. Each day, the girls from Arunachal Pradesh would regale me with stories of their state and its natural beauty and how much they missed it. I would tell them how much I envied them because Delhi, the place to which I belong, felt like a concrete jungle cluttered and—so polluted—(even back then)’. In one of our discussion sessions, my friends from Arunachal Pradesh confided how much ill at ease they sometimes felt in Delhi, not because of its lack of green covers or clear skies, but the attitude of some people. Often in some market place or the other, they would have an incident or two, when men would ogle at them or call

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them ‘Chinkie’ (referring derogatorily to the shape of their eyes) or tease them by rudely saying the word ‘momos’ (a kind of a dumpling eaten in many parts of Northeast India). During those days as we compulsorily stayed back, our conversation not only remained restricted to communalism in India, in light of the demolition of the Muslim place of worship—the Babri Masjid, but also the context started to expand keeping in view my friends’ narratives about and experiences on the streets of Delhi. We would often talk of Delhi as having a labyrinth of discrimination, patriarchy as well as racism perhaps hideously and deeply embedded in its soul! We stood at a cross-roads of conceptions. We were forced to look at Delhi from the point of view of our differing experiences and origins. I shared my friends’ disappointment. However, as we boarded the train back home, all of us were excited to return to the challenge of Delhi. We were ready to forgive it, and for at that time, the discrimination-related social challenges of the students of North-east India in Delhi were not as stark as they stand today, especially since the past couple of years now. Alongside, as Delhi’s diversity has grown over the years, it counts on migrants not only, from Indian cities and other neighbouring countries but also, on a steady arrival of West African migrants. These groups and communities now feel othered in the same way as the students and professionals of North-east India in the city. Using my reflections and comprehension of the Delhi of 1990s, in the succeeding section of this chapter, I take issues of othering in the social landscape of Delhi and explain how I use reflexivity as a method to enhance data collection and analysis, besides other relevant anthropological tools and approaches.

2 Themes, Concepts and Methodology 2.1 Themes This chapter will bring to light experiences and insights from two communities of migrants in Delhi—the international as well as the internal. West Africans have been visiting India and staying over as students and skilled or semi-skilled professionals (Kawoosa, 2019). The twenty-first century has seen a rising trend of migration from the African continent to India, both documented and of those who stay on without papers. Owing to this, the actual number of migrants remains unclear. Nonetheless, Africans constitute a conspicuous visibility into India’s social landscape and their encounters with the local people and places as representative entities have not been devoid of fractious exchanges and racial tensions. Social ‘landscape’ is meant as a value laden metaphor. In recent cultural geography, the tendency to conceive of landscape itself as natural and given has been strongly contested. Social landscapes are, hence, seen as culturally constituted through a set of historically specific material and discursive practices (Barnes & Duncan, 1992). The discursive experiences and encounters shared by African migrants in Delhi’s social landscape are a case in point. Africans living in the city have been negotiating the rise in discriminatory

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practices by locals such as name-calling, segregation, harassment, aggression and assault. In this respect, the chief complaints of many migrant students, jobseekers and workers range from unsolicited touching, being stared at, suspected and looked down upon or considered ‘too Westernised’. Migrants from North-east India in Delhi too face similar situations. North-easterners in mainland Indian cities such as Delhi have often had to deal with an outsider tag they did not relish, in the capital of their own country. Not only this, many students and regular migrants from northeast feel that they come face to face with hate crimes and racial discrimination in Delhi (BBC, 2014: February 11). Scholars have long observed a tendency within human societies to organise and collectively define themselves along dimensions of difference and sameness. Whether in India or other countries and societies, studies since the 1950s demonstrate the tendency of people to identify with whom they are grouped, no matter how real, stark, arbitrary or even silly the group boundaries may be and to judge members of their own group as superior and maybe better for the society, country or nation. Studies dividing students into completely fabricated groups lead to consistently different perceptions of in-group and out-group members.1 Therefore, whether these migrants hail from distant lands or they belong closer to home, both groups continue to grapple with disparagement while attempting to remain involved in the city’s socio-cultural milieu. The social landscape of Delhi, in return, may be quiet incomplete without the social footprints of migrants. For one, the city discovers itself, in hitherto unknown ways through othering. Othering may be described as a layered process: (a) that which entails not only discovering, but also mirroring as well as negotiating commonalties and unique attributes of sociocultural belonging, identities and ways of being in presence of an identified ‘other’; (b) othering may also be used to discriminate or oppress and finally; (c) othering may provoke various responses for instance making of clubs, communities groups in search of safety and security and also resistance or protest for rights of peaceful coexistence where feasible. Othering-based identities and actions can influence many an everyday context, including violence and peace-time associations centric to geography, culture, citizenhood (or lack of it), land and circumstances (Baumann, 1999; Hinton, 2002). In a nutshell, othering is never an easy process to enact experience or be understood. It pre-supposes the presence and lack of many a structures and people’s agencies in order to sufficiently describe a context-cum circumstances and learn from them. Is the making of othering-based circumstances effectively countered or resisted and how are lines of assimilation drawn between such discursive layers in Delhi? Needless to say, these migrants encounter and experience Delhi in a multitude of ways. Two different sets of migrants live through varied consequences and implications of othering owing to the diversity in their status and belonging. Through interviews and field work among students and differently skilled migrants from Africa and North-east India in Delhi, this chapter seeks to compare the agency 1

In one well-known example, a teacher divided a classroom into blue- and brown-eyed students and told the class that brown-eyed students were less intelligent, leading to much anguish and insight. See Stephen G. Bloom, ‘Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes: The Experiment That Shocked the Nation and Turned a Town Against Its Most Famous Daughter’, The University of Iowa, 22 April 2005, accessed 16 February 2015. http://www.uiowa.edu/~poroi/seminars/2004-5/bloom/poroi_paper.pdf.

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of the migrants in different situations. The three central questions that it ponders upon, therefore, are a corollary of one other: (a) how safe as well as how ‘othered’ do these migrants feel in Delhi? (b) what are the processes through which migrants construct their own limit to social integration and assimilation choices with respect to those that they perceives as, ‘others’? and (c) how do the socio-political terrains of inclusion and exclusion shape up the politics of claims, counter claims, resistance and solidarities in the city? Answers to the questions posed above can help in critically analysing whether migrants are able to achieve their larger purpose behind travelling/relocating, working and studying in Delhi? Or, is the city out of sync with its ‘glocal’ role and onus?

2.2 Concepts Migration theories in general have undergone a conceptual metamorphosis since the late twentieth century. At the beginning of the 1990s (Massey et al., 1993), a debate arose about the out datedness and falling relevance of previous theories of migration. Anthropologists Linda Bash, Nina Glick Schiller and Cristina Szanton became the pioneers of transnational studies (Glick et al., 1995). Earlier conceptions of migration understood it as a static occurrence, wherein citizens leave one nation state to immigrate permanently to another. In contrast, the phenomenon of transnationalism has changed this understanding by questioning people’s one way and once and for all movement from one place to another. Contemporary studies (Söderström et al., 2013) connect mobility with migration and break with the classical optic of fixity. These studies further emphasise that alongside a new mobile view of society and social science, new methods are necessary to deal with the fleeting, ephemeral, multiple and sensory aspects of contemporary global society (Büscher & Urry, 2009). Migration centres and hubs where both internal as well as international motilities have tended to unfold with equal vigour often become destination where itinerant, fleeting and sensory aspects present changing ways and modes of looking at the other. This is not to say that there are no local, inherently othered groups that are already present or made stooges and focal points of politics. Political strategies informed by othering are hardly unique to the USA or even other democracies. Aristotle and other ancient Greeks warned of ‘demagogues’—leaders who used rhetoric to incite fear for political gain. My study focuses on the ‘migrant’ other who comes onto the social landscape for a select, local, national or transnational purpose and in the process gains a focal visibility. Delhi has emerged as the second highest population of interstate migrants in India, according to 2011 census data on migration released recently (Kawoosa, 2019). The data shows that while the city trails only to Maharashtra, it continues to be an attractive destination for inter-state migrants with marriage, education and work or business driving the influx. On the international front, Delhi has been one of the traditional hubs for migration from within neighbouring South Asian countries, owing to certain geopolitical and socio-political affinities, preferences as well as opportunities (Luthra Sinha, 2015). This is a scenario not just in Delhi but

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also in many cities in India, a country which was once upon a time characterised as a relatively immobile society (Davis, 1951).

2.3 Methodology Following the anthropological approach of in-depth interviews, observations, interactions including immersion and participation on the ground, I use political ethnography to build on data. While analysing and interpreting data, just as conducting field work, I came face to face with reflexivity of thought and personal experiences of the migrants’ notion of Delhi. In this sense, the city, per se, becomes the bastion of mutual reflexivity of migrants and natives learning how to make and unmake itself in accordance with changing times. Reflexivity in ethnographic writing is highly connected to emotional dimensions of the researcher’s experience in the field and can be influenced by moral and ethical tensions. Devereux (1967) underlined the importance of taking into consideration fears and irritations of the researcher as main starting point in the process of data analysis. Reflective writing and analyses examine an event, memory or observation. Instead of viewing others, this is a reflexive study of self as the other. Migrants can seldom easily be portrayed by anthropologists as ‘the suffering subjects’ (Faust & Pfeifer, 2019) that are ‘living in pain, in poverty or under conditions of violence or oppression’ (Robbins, 2013). Ellis (2004) defines auto-ethnography as, ‘research, writing, story and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social and political’ (p. xix). Auto-ethnography is a research method that uses a researcher’s personal experience to describe and critique cultural beliefs, practices and experiences. It acknowledges and values a researcher’s relationships with others … shows ‘people in the process of figuring out what to do, how to live and the meaning of their struggles’ (Adams, et al., 2015). Here, a brief word of how auto-ethnography differs from ethnography as auto-ethnography embraces and foregrounds the researcher’s subjectivity rather than attempting to limit it, as in empirical research. While ethnography tends to be understood as a qualitative method in the social sciences that describes human social phenomena based on fieldwork, auto-ethnographers are themselves the primary participant/subject of the research in the process of writing personal stories and narratives. Auto-ethnography ‘as a form of ethnography’, Ellis (2004, p. 31) writes, is ‘part auto or self and part ethno or culture’ and ‘something different from both of them, greater than its parts’. However, as Ellingson and Ellis (2008. p. 449) put it, it solely depends upon the way the author privileges their data and findings how much their work is an auto-ethnography or an ethnography. This chapter in sharing two vignettes at the start focuses on auto-ethnography. Additionally, autoethnography has been used to define past-reflections on personal experiences of migrants in Delhi. Specifically, it draws on eight weeks of field work between two sets of migrants in Delhi (namely students from the north-east in a premier University in Delhi and the city’s West African population) and aims at uncovering the role of agency in

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processes of othering, identity formation and their sense of security. ‘Self’, ‘other’ and safety in the city over a shared space and time lead us to contours of a comparative ethnography. For ethnographers, research that focuses on various kinds of migration as a watering hole in a given context creates knowledge of how the global intersects with the local in the experiences of individual agents (Amselle, 2002; Appadurai, 1991; Burawoy, 2000; Gille & Riain, 2002; Gupta & Ferguson, 1997; Marcus, 1995). I follow the view that the ‘field’ of ethnographic inquiry is not simply a geographic place waiting to be entered, but rather a comparative conceptual space whose boundaries are constantly negotiated and constructed by the ethnographer and members (Emerson, 2001; Gupta & Ferguson, 1997) and subjects of study. Employing the circular actor-oriented emic evaluation approach (EEA), the findings and interpretations are based on a qualitative research on migrants as agents of othering and being othered. The EEA involves a three-pronged strategy of actor analyses, discourse analysis and practice analysis. It employs anthropological methods such as semistructured interviews, open-ended interviews, focus group discussions, participation, observation and data analysis. A total number of ten interviews each were conducted across the three focus groups, individual participants and key informants from various communities. To document the ethnographic present of the individual agents and follow these involved actors in their everyday contexts, I selected localities where either the migrants have come to study (such as the students from the NE India in the JNU campus of Delhi) or live in clusters (such as in the Khirki Extension of South Delhi where West Africans live in large numbers). Views, opinions, perceptions, practices and experiences of some members of these groups were collected and analysed through field work in Delhi.

3 Migration as a Context for ‘Defensive and Offensive Othering’ Through my study, I present the view how migrants and locals mix together and make a specific ethnographic present where othering may be done in a variety of ways, as well as be practised consciously or unconsciously or where ‘we’ becomes ‘them’ and ‘they’ becomes ‘us’ over and over again. The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of othering, according to Powel and Menendian (2018). I extend this notion to analyse how othering per se does not become a problem unless contexts of defensive and offensive inclusions and exclusions start forming around it. Migration is a trigger for many such contexts. If the flare up of identities is understood as a natural social phenomenon entailed in mobility of peoples as well as ideas, issues around othering can acquire a humanistic solution seeking. In some parts of the world, where politics and policy lean towards what has been described by some as ‘minority appeasement’, the privileged majority says it feels cornered too. My field work experiences and reflections indicate that stress and strain that migrants and locals experience when the mainstream population of a particular region, city,

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space and time accepts the self as ‘native as contracted to the outsider-others. May get embroiled in a shared time and space of a city such as Delhi has much to do with what can be called a ‘defensive and offensive othering’. Offensive and defensive otherings are not a new phenomenon, as there are mainstream groups and communities all over the world who may react in a defensive manner which then lays the ground for their responses towards ironically not the dispossessed but perhaps the ‘organised other’. Men may feel threatened by feminists, whites by people of colour, just as certain Hindus may feel jeopardised by Muslims and Christians. Nationalists could feel alienated by liberals, business conglomerates may react to fears provoked by the organised working class, and warmongers feel threatened by peaceniks. But, what about those who are in the centre stage of this othering, i.e. the assumed or the feared other? Precisely, whom does this compartmentalisation leave out? Whose fear is more valid or less real? Surely, the fear of losing one’s life is greater than the fear of losing one’s privilege, but does that make the fight for what is perceived as one’s preserve any less ardent? We know how the scales are tipped when there is a confrontation or issues of sharing of resources between forces such as capitalism, white supremacy, natives/citizens, Brahmanism and humanism and the othered peoples. And, what happens when the tables are turned or the turf is switched? Where must our sympathies lie as researchers and ethnographers who interpret the field? Or, must we progress without attachments and a matter of fact approach to native-migrant problematic? Here, I wish to point out that even though it might be useful to denote the so-called outsider-others as internal migrants in juxtaposition to locals, yet it is more practical to understand this, from a direct ethnographic perspective from the field. Those who practise othering, even though it is against citizens of their own country, consider these internal migrants as strong local stakeholders because of being ‘native’ to the place in consideration or at least first to have arrived there. By using the ‘native and ‘migrant’ or ‘citizen’ and ‘non-citizen’ migrants as terms of reference, it is the mind-set that I wish to bring forward for comprehending how identities are constructed, march around and play on the ground. Here, compiling a few findings through reflective auto-ethnography helped me visualise this from a humanitarian perspective. The perceived other as per my findings could be both the dominant and/or the non-mainstream depending upon self-perception, even though evidence-based dispossession may happen to just one of those groups. Studies reveal that individuals in high residential density areas were less likely to know their neighbours, had lower levels of bridging trust and were less involved in the community’s activities (Muzayanah et al., 2020). So, while the migrants may not operate with the same set of privileges, know-how, social networks, in a city as Delhi, some natives too may feel left out when they compare themselves to the other with whom they now share their space and time. It is evidenced that in dense urban areas, those newer to city may completely miss out on assured ‘social capital’ as the older, established residents and communities may enjoy which may equally be the reality of the natives/older inhabitants of the cities, whether migrants or not, (ibid). Hence, this lays the ground of both an offensive as well as a defensive othering. A mirror effect which binds the other to the othered cities even though they have thriving socio-political life ends up creating contexts replete with lack of

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trust, mutual isolation, hatred, side-lining and at times extreme violent attitudes and behaviours. When and who become identifiable as the other depends upon a number of conditions that simultaneously trigger a politics of inclusion as well as exclusion by creating bridges and gaps in the way people associate with each other. Groupbased identities are central to each of these conflicts of othering and belongingness, but in ways that elude simplistic explanations. It is not just religion or ethnicity alone that explains each conflict, but often the overlay of multiple identities with specific cultural, geographic and political histories and grievances that may be rekindled under certain conditions. Migration is one such condition which naturally promotes a politics of identities and ideation on who we are (in reference to the other) and how we fit (or do not) in a certain context. Specifically, group-based identities allow a subject to construct boundaries of self/us and other/them, which then become a trigger for inclusion and exclusion in everyday social life (Keen, 2006; Sampson, 2012). Othering composes of a set of dynamics, processes and structures that engender marginality and persistent inequality across any of the full range of human differences based on group identities. Dimensions of othering include, but are not limited to, religion, sex, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status (class), disability, sexual orientation and skin tone. Although the axes of difference that undergird these expressions of othering vary considerably and are deeply contextual, they contain a similar set of underlying dynamics (Powell & Menendian, 2018). According to Gülerce (2014), the social construction of group boundaries is also the social construction of the self. He defines othering as ‘an un/conscious and primarily projective misidentification with an attempt to organise all of the disowned, or non-self-experience, and history under a equally illusory unified or cohesive category’ (p. 245). Gülerce essentially argues that ‘othering’ and ‘selfing’ are flip sides of the same coin in Western thought and psychology. Employing such a perspective allows us to understand that many groups who other and feel othered may in fact be searching for a simple quest for security, whether as insider or outsider both. Such a quest to be successful would involve humanising the self as much the other where negative representations and stereotypes are challenged and rejected at both ends. It is a process by which the most marginalised groups are brought into the centre of our concern by working on the actual and symbolic the belongingness to space and time history, politics and societies (Powell & Menendian, 2018).

4 West Africans and People from the North-East India in Delhi: Why the Difference? Pamziuliu Gonmei, an Assistant Professor of English at Delhi University (DU), analyses that when he first moved to Delhi (six) years ago, he was extremely conscious of the way people looked at and treated him differently. It took him time to get used to it. But, since the pandemic broke out in 2020, people’s racism has become more pronounced in Delhi (Sirur, 2020). A student from north-east who did not wish to be named confides how when he went to buy shoes in South Delhi’s Vasant Kunj

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market, two to three people entered coughed on his face mask and said ‘corona’ between their coughs (ibid). But in many such instances, the offensively othered migrants refrain from showing any reaction as they feel threatened, especially if they are alone. Over the past decade, African migrants in Delhi have been negotiating the rise in discriminatory practices such as name-calling, segregation, harassment, aggression and assault. In this respect, the chief complaints of many migrant students, jobseekers and workers range from unsolicited touching, being stared at, suspected and looked down upon or considered ‘too Westernised’. Migrant students from North-east India in Delhi too face similar situations. Narratives and discourses of the involved actors form a window to the process of othering. This chapter argues that othering is a double-edged process that not only concerns identity formation and identity mobilisation between the self and the other but is also directly related to the migrants’ sense of security and safety in the city, as a space between the national (local) and the international (global). International migration and domestic migration frequently evince the same processes of decoupling of locality and culture that trans-nationalists proclaim as evidence of new ways of being.

4.1 Comparative Ethnography and the Field: Delhi The field as a dynamic whole of changing identities and the ‘field’ of ethnographic inquiry is not simply a geographic place waiting to be entered, but rather a conceptual space whose boundaries are constantly negotiated and constructed by the ethnographer and members (Emerson, 2001; Gupta & Ferguson, 1997) and subjects of study. My interpretations and field data relate to the following findings: (a)

Regional as Juxtaposed to Spontaneous Othering

(b)

Students of north-east in Delhi face regional othering related to the contours of a mixed migration students, professionals, differently skilled migrants and spouses temporary as well as long term. Certainty with respect to nationality, documents, citizen status in their respective countries (Interview at JNU July 3, 2018) was analysed, and ‘Delhites can sometimes be very judgmental and annoyingly prying. But with some precaution, we can make our way here!’. Temporary Migration with an Aim

(c)

In Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), there are few hundred students from the north-east (NE). Studying in Delhi is a matter of prestige, and their degrees especially from JNU can get them good jobs back home. Within the JNU campus, the students from NE generally feel safe and also have a common association for students from their region in the campus, celebrate festivals and get their food from restaurants that cater to their palate. Delhi view Symbols of Regional Identity as Threatening Difference in looks, dressing styles, languages and culture is a stark reality for ‘us’ as well as ‘them’ in the way people from NE India are seen. Students and

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(d)

working women face harassment at the hands of landlords. From public transport to public gaze, they are made to feel ‘different’ which is sometimes very scary, so they restrict their schedules and movement and keep to themselves (Bhardwaj, 2017; Yamunam, 2017). Possibilities of Voice Projection

(e)

‘Delhi requires certain skills and precautions which we convey to all from the NE when they here. Yet, we move with confidence here, as India is our country. We get our degrees. However, Delhi can be an alienating experience. Many times, we do get into situations where we exercise our option to ease social tensions, but more silently and in known circles rather than through dialogues in larger forums. We learn how to live with it slowly out but our folks back home remain perpetually worried. Sometimes, we too feel insecure and unsafe here’ (Interview at JNU July 4, 2018). ‘Spontaneous Othering’ and Possibilities of ‘Voice Projection’ Students from the NE face a ‘spontaneous othering’. Food joints, markets and tuck shops operated by locals have begun to cater to their everyday needs, and they have the freedom and resources to run small-scale enterprises. Rented apartments and houses in many localities such as Khirki Extensions and other areas in South Delhi contribute to a support system for both the landlords and tenants. West Africans prefer to live close to each other. Just as the students of NE in JNU feel conscious of their time schedule, attires, hairstyle and moving alone in Delhi, the West Africans too experience the same apprehensions. West Africans are integrated into the rhythm of life in Delhi but feel insecure owing to the perpetual ‘spontaneous othering’ that they remain vulnerable to and become victims of.

5 Concluding Thoughts Othering as a process unfolding upon as much as emanating from different communities in juxtaposition to each other may have same dynamics but very different impacts on each other. Migrants in Delhi get othered and resort to mutual ‘othering’ in pretty much the same ways across different groups although reasons for mutual discrimination such as the NE or international migrants from West Africa in Delhi experience varying amounts of insecurity but do have the possibility to speak, though not with a collective voice or bargaining point. In its impact, however, the process of othering constructs different challenges across the communities in comparison. These impacts have much to do with, not only how the concerned communities feel about their status and identities, but also how they are made to feel by the mainstream citizens who could be dominant or upcoming groups. Usually, the politics of the time has a role to play in establishing discriminatory practices, power positions and imaginations and discourses. Finally, the terrains of othering contain the seeds of resistance and a potential for mobilisation and politics of protest in Delhi. As a city,

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Delhi has shown remarkable adaptability to domestic and international migrations. However, certain incidents of violence and victimisation of migrants are not unheard of and on and off raise alarm in the city. Appadurai (2013) calls on anthropologists to be ‘mediators, facilitators and promoters of the ethics of possibility which can offer a more inclusive platform for improving the planetary quality of life and can accommodate a plurality of visions of the ‘good life” (pp. 299–300). To return to the question, I asked in the first part of my chapter—Was it really my city? Protective towards me as a citizen, native or so I assumed and yet revealed a harsh and discriminatory terrain to the unfamiliar other? Deep down, I felt mixed emotions in 1993. A sense of shame mixed with search for reasons to be proud of my city became my quest in that redefining moment. I found plenty on both the themes and so did my friends while struggling with this question. Yet, in this search for answers, I saw Delhi differently and so did my migrant friends. Our perceptions too became an important, reflective as well as experiential part of our mutual association and learning. Counting on a perceptive terrain of both kinds of migrants ‘the Indian and the non-Indian other’ and foregrounding local comprehensions rooted in past spaces and time, I was able to objectively devise a research plan for the present chapter. The research for the current work too places between 2018 and 2019. I also articulated and shared my reflections to understand the lives of migrants in contemporary Delhi by applying auto-ethnographical insights from past at one of the annual Congresses of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences, held in Brazil in a panel I convened in 2018. My presentation was well received, and returning to the very terrain where my reflective journey had started decades ago, I understood that the city has a political core which belongs to many simultaneously to the natives as well as to those that the city welcomes and rejects as outsiders and/or foreigners. All began to form its inner reflective, formative and ideational core. When people associate with it, whether permanently or transiently, they not only redefine this core, but also become a part of it, leaving their own stamp on its history, politics, space and time. Depending on how diverse incoming groups associate with it, whether they claim the city as one of their many spaces and times filling it in with counter voices and resistance politics, or traverse through it, willingly or unwillingly as outsiders are questions whose answers unfold over time. But, the city never remains the same after such encounters. The city as a representative entity becomes as much a part of the migrant sense of belongingness which is an amalgam of dilemmas, struggles, stalemates as well as integrative experiences, as much as it is for the citizens and natives. It can no longer differentiate its name and its image from those that it others and aspires to side-line. Any imagination of analysis on the city, such as Delhi , will have to factor in voices and politics of all who live in it and build various kinds of solidarities and encounter around their life. Even if Delhi rejects or others them (whether as national or international migrants), these migrants have a right to claim it as their own because the city remains intrinsically linked to their right to life and dignity. These dignities are derived from standards of the Indian Constitution and from all the human rights obligations that apply to the country. However, if Delhi was to belittle its own aura and role and targets migrants and minorities to exaggeratedly bolster divisive notions of a ‘dominant us’ versus a ‘migrant them’, it may soon be

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out of sync with its global role and onus as a migration hub. This analysis expresses the hope that a country such as India which places fundamental value on diversity must not only learn but keep relearning and revising its association with ‘unity in diversity’ employing contemporary insights on belongingness. Usually, large societies remain heterogeneous despite centuries of formulations and reformulations the world over. In India, owing to the length and breadth of its heterogeneity, ‘unity in diversity’ that has been an organising principle of constitutional and fundamental rights may seem threatened from time to time (Gore, 1996). Considering the intrinsic diversity of India’s constituent populations, there seems little secure options other than peaceful co-existence.

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Gülerce, A. (2014). Selfing as, with, and without othering: Dialogical (im)possibilities with dialogical self theory. Culture and Psychology, 20(2), 244–255. Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (Eds.). (1997). Anthroplogical locations: Boundaries and grounds of a field science. University of California Press. Hinton, A. L. (2002). The dark side of modernity: Toward an anthropology of genocide. In A. L. Hinton (Ed.), Annihilating difference: The anthropology of genocide (pp. 6–12). University of California Press. Keen, S. (2006). A theory of narrative empathy. Narrative, 14(3), 207–236. https://doi.org/10.1353/ nar.2006.0015 Kawoosa, V. M. (2019). Delhi has the highest share of Inter-state migrants. In Hindustan Times (July 28). Luthra Sinha, B. (2015). Cross border migration as the flip side of patriarchy, poverty and development in India and Nepal. The Oriental Anthropologist, 15(2), 363–387. Marcus, G. E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multisited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95–117. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.an.24.100 195.000523 Massey, D. S., Joaquin, A., & Graeme, H. (1993). Theories of international migration: A review and appraisal. Population and Development Review, 19(3), 431–466. Muzayanah, I. F. U., Suahasil, N., Benedictus, R. M., & Djoni, H. (2020). Is there social capital in cities? The association of urban form and social capital formation in the metropolitan cities of Indonesia. International Journal of Urban Sciences, 24(4), 532–556. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 12265934.2020.1730934 Powell, J. A., & Menendian, S. (2018, August 28). The problem of othering and belongingtowards inclusiveness and belonging. In Othering and belonging: Expanding the circle of human concern. Online: https://www.otheringandbelonging.org/the-problem-of-othering/. Retrieved 15 Nov 2020. Robbins, J. (2013). Beyond the suffering subject: Toward an anthropology of the good. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19(3), 447–462. Sampson, R. J. (2012). Moving and the neighborhood glass ceiling. Science, 337, 1464–1465. https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/33010406 Schiller, N. G., Basch, L., & Blanc, C. (1995). From immigrant to transmigrant: Theorizing transnational migration. Anthropology Quarterly, Roy 1, 48–63. Sirur, S. (2020, March 25). ‘Beaten, abused, spat on’: People from Northeast endure racist slurs amid coronavirus panic. In The Print. https://theprint.in/india/beaten-abused-spat-on-people-from-nor theast-endure-racist-slurs-amid-coronavirus-panic/387716/. Retrieved 15 Nov 2020. Söderström, O., Randeria, S., Ruedin, D., D’Amato, G., & Panese, F. (Eds.). (2013). Critical mobilities. Routledge. Yamunan, S. (2017). The daily fix: As Africans are attacked 40 km from Delhi, India must confront its racism problem, in, Scroll.in, Mar 29, 2017. Online at: https://scroll.in/article/833115/thedaily-fix-as-africans-are-attacked-40-km-from-delhi-india-must-confront-its-racism-problem. Accessed 29 Nov 2020.

Chapter 5

Globalisation and Social Polarisation: Spatial Repercussions of Global Labour Flows of Domestic Workers in Singapore Shahed Khan

Abstract It is not uncommon to see ‘hordes’ of foreigners, mostly women, overwhelming shopping malls like Lucky Plaza in Singapore on a Sunday. These women represent the global labour force generated in response to the globalisation of the economy. They are ‘foreign domestic workers’(FDW) personifying ‘labour export’ from countries with lower GNP and/or from cities ranked lower in the global city hierarchy. This chapter looks at globalisation and the movement of labour that it perpetuates across international borders. It seeks to highlight injustice and social exclusion that come with overseas employment opportunities the global economy creates for domestic workers from poorer regions. In doing so, the chapter focuses on the spatial manifestations of the phenomenon that lead to social polarisation within the city. From an urban planning and urban governance perspective, the chapter presents the struggle of the FDW community in terms of acquiring access to urban spaces and facilities that meet their needs to socialize. It identifies the urban governance challenges their presence in large numbers pose to the city as the FDWs claim their right to the city.

1 Introduction Lucky Plaza is a fairly non-descript shopping mall situated on Orchard Road, Singapore, built in early 1980s. It is referred to as ‘Little Philippines’ because on Sundays, Lucky Plaza becomes very busy, jam-packed with Filipino female migrant domestic workers. In the mall, there are businesses that offer popular goods and customised services to suit their specific needs and tastes: cafes serving affordable food; retail stores selling fashion accessories, clothes and shoes; hairdressers; and beauty parlours. What catches attention other than the predominance of a particular demographic is the preponderance of remittance services among shops. There are also many parcel delivery services—with some offering ready-made parcel boxes with prepaid S. Khan (B) Cutrin University, Perth, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_5

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postage, filled with a mix of popular gifts items, ready to purchase and send back home to the Philippines in a single transaction. The average Filipina patron frequents the mall to do shopping, use personal grooming services, send gifts and remittances back home to the Philippines and to also hang out and socialise with friends. With the mall bursting at its seams to accommodate the large crowds, it is but natural for the patrons of the mall to gravitate in and around the mall, spilling out on to the pavements outside the building. Lucky Plaza and its surrounds have thus served for over a decade as a de facto cultural centre, coming alive on Sundays when foreign domestic workers (FDW) from the Philippines congregate in and around it for shopping, beauty care, snacking and picnicking, etc. (https://stateofbuildings.sg/places/ lucky-plaza). This chapter is inspired by first-hand observations of FDWs’ assertion of their right to the city in Singapore and Hong Kong by occupying public places, while the author was leading groups of Australian university students studying urban planning issues in Asian global cities. A couple of years later, in December 2019, the media reported a car crashing into a group of Filipino FDWs picnicking on the pavement, killing two and injuring four women. The tragic incident, among other things, highlighted safety issues associated with built environments not designed for the function they perform. The Lucky Plaza syndrome needs to be understood in the context of globalisation and the international flows of labour it facilitates, and its manifestation in the presence of foreign domestic workers (FDWs). This has prompted a selective review of extant literature on the plight of FDWs. Secondary data collected through the review identified a wide range of issues and debates on topics such as the status of FDWs as either beneficiaries of employment opportunities or victims of globalisation; the international distribution of productive and reproductive labour facilitated by globalisation; denial of migrant contract workers’ rights and human rights in global cities; and the prevalence of various forms of abuse, violence, torture and human rights violation faced by FDWs. What struck the author, however, was the absence of studies on the spatial manifestations of these issues—so blatantly visible—in global cities like Singapore and Hong Kong. This chapter, focusing on Filipino FDWs in Singapore, describes the phenomena leading up to the congregation of FDWs in global cities and the forms of discrimination and exclusion they face as they negotiate the socio-economic, institutional and spatial constraints to claim their right to the city. Where required, passing reference to the case of Hong Kong is made to place certain matters into perspective. The chapter thus seeks to establish the city’s responsibility to provide a safe and liveable built environment for all its residents, regardless of their work or residency status.

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2 The Foreign Domestic Worker (FDW) Phenomenon In the 1970s, before Lucky Plaza became the popular congregation space, Filipino domestic workers used to gather on their day off at a vacant lot behind Orchard MRT station, the site now occupied by Ion Orchard shopping mall (The Star, 06 Jan 2020). For the Filipino community, the vacant land, nicknamed ‘Gulong Park’, was a place for picnics and socialisation. As the number of shops selling Filipino food and products in Lucky Plaza picked up, it started attracting large numbers of Filipino domestic workers to the area. With a constantly increasing flow of Filipino domestic workers into Singapore over the years, the clientele of Lucky Plaza has been ever expanding. As reported in the media, the management of Lucky Plaza estimated in the late 1990s that the Sunday crowd swelled up to 10,000 visitors. The management claimed the overwhelming numbers were a threat to public safety, potentially blocking access to walkways, escalators and fire escapes. There are reports that in 1998, Lucky Plaza management chased away Filipino domestic workers, accusing them of vandalising the building. The management issued a circular in that regard to shop owners, emphasising the necessity of a ‘clean up’. One of the patrons recalled, ‘We used to gather inside the mall. But we were accused of overcrowding the mall and were chased out’ (The Star, 06 Jan 2020). The wider Filipino community in Singapore seized the opportunity to set up makeshift stalls outside the mall, specifically targeting the Filipino domestic workers. In effect, ‘The sidewalks were turned into a mini flea market on weekends’ (The Star, 06 Jan 2020). The flea market that popped up provided a significant competition to Lucky Plaza, taking away some business and causing a drop in patronage. Some smaller tenants hurt by the competition complained and convinced the management to gradually woo back the clientele of Filipino domestic workers. Currently, while Lucky Plaza serves as a congregation site for the Filipino community, other similar sites have come up in Singapore for other nationalities. For example, the City Plaza in Paya Lebar is emerging as the prime congregation place for Indonesians, while the Peninsula Plaza on Northbridge Road is emerging for migrant workers from Myanmar (The Strait Times, 16 Dec 2013). To put things into context, one could refer to the same phenomenon in Hong Kong, where it can be observed on a much larger scale. The congregation of FDWs cannot be contained in one or even a handful of shopping malls and their surrounds. On Sundays, the entire Hong Kong Central area is seen overflowing with FDWs. Tens of thousands of women occupy vacant spaces in front of 5-star hotels, banks and luxury brand storefronts and open spaces around the CBD’s connected buildings and pedestrian skywalks. Plastic bags, tents and cardboard sheets transform vacant spaces within the public domain into temporary venues for social interaction. FDWs could be seen having picnics, getting haircuts, holding protests or even dancing. Again, the most visible ones are Filipina domestic workers even though other nationality groups such as Indonesians are also noticeable. The Filipino community, congregating in Hong Kong’s public spaces on Sundays ever since 1980s, transform the streets into a noisy and colourful ‘Little Manila’ (Guardian, March 10, 2017).

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2.1 Regulating Overcrowding or Discrimination by Stereotyping? The Lucky Plaza management’s attempted ‘clean up’ of the mall in 1998 may have represented the popular sentiment of the local citizens. The management justified its actions as safety measures taken in the interest of the wider society. The overcrowded conditions within the mall were seen as improper, and the FDWs were made to conform to the norms by the management. It could be argued, however, that the management’s actions were prompted to an extent by racial and class discrimination, stirred by the visible presence of foreigners in large numbers. From a Gramscian perspective, this could be seen as the hegemony of the management backed by state regulations, while the reaction by the Filipino FDWs seen as an act of counterhegemony, facilitated by the larger Filipino community in Singapore. The prevalence of discrimination and social exclusion occasionally surfaces in media reports that suggest low-skilled migrants in Singapore are sometimes not welcomed in public places that they patronise. The fact that FDWs are easily categorised as a particular demographic comprising foreigners could also prompt locals to stereotyping, subconsciously labelling them as an ‘underclass’. There are not only reports in local media of domestic workers being asked to leave shopping malls, but also prohibiting them from using swimming pools and barbeque facilities in some condominiums. A locally based academic describes the situation as one ‘where migrant workers have to negotiate with different stakeholders (mall tenants, local patrons, businesses) who see them as individuals who need to be kept watch on or prohibited from public spaces. This does little for integration and only creates segregationist sentiments.’ (Kaur-Gill quoted in The Star, 06 January 2020).

2.2 Claiming the Right to the City? On their day off, Filipino FDWs often spill out of Lucky Plaza and encroach on nearby pavements, some crossing over to nearby spaces around Wisma Atria or Orchard MRT station. The pavements are temporarily transformed into picnic spots and spaces to relax and socialise in. The sight it presents often attracts some negative publicity resulting in letters to the editor of dailies, complaining about the nuisance that these foreigners create on the streets with their loud music, singing and dancing. It could be argued that the 2019 fatal car accident did not only raise issues about public safety concerns but also about inconvenience caused to local citizens by the presence of FDWs. The fact that FDWs gravitate to the mall and occupy pavements for socialisation could be rationalised from their perspective. Combining visits to the mall and socialising there offer considerable savings for FDWs in transport costs, in terms of fare, travel time, and travel fatigue. These cost savings are crucial for workers whose wages are very low by local standards and who get very little time off work.

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The situation points to the lack of alternative, affordable and conveniently accessible places for Filipino FDWs to go to socialise and relax in. From the city administration’s perspective, increasing numbers of the FDW demographic creates a growing demand for public spaces (or third places using Oldenburg’s (1997) terminology) wherein to socialise. These places need to be convenient, affordable and accessible physically, socially as well as psychologically. The 2019 fatal traffic accident serves as a grim reminder of the city’s neglect of migrant workers’ rights to adequate urban spaces and their safety. It should help focus discussion on whether or not the ‘right to the city’ (Lefebvre, 1968) applies to members of the migrant labour force vital to the functioning of global cities. The FDW’s right to the city assumes further significance in light of the New Urban Agenda (NUA) 2016 of UN-Habitat, the officially designated United Nations organisation to deal with cities and urbanisation (EAROPH, 2018) and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) number 11 (UN-SDGKP, 2018). The question to explore is whether or not temporary migrant workers such as FDWs who do not have citizenship deserve the same level of protection as other residents of the city. Both NUA and SDGs are recent universally adopted policy documents aimed at dealing with urban issues within the globalised economy. It would be reasonable to expect these policies to be cognisant of the sustained global flows of migrant labour that result in the presence of large numbers of non-citizens who should also have a right to the city.

3 Filipino FDWs—Domestic Workers Par Excellence A simple question arises: Why are there so many Filipino FDWs in Singapore as manifest in the Lucky Plaza? According to Parennas (2015), women from the Philippines engaged in domestic or care work overseas are generally considered as ‘domestic workers par excellence’ (p. 3), personifying the FDW labour force more than any other ethnic or national group. ‘A culture of emigration is pervasive in the Philippines’ and the majority of women migrant workers serve as ‘domestic workers like nannies, housecleaners, and caregivers for the elderly’ (ibid, p. 2). There is a large number of FDWs, almost exclusively women, originating from the Philippines, employed in many countries, including the Middle East, South-east Asia, Europe. Singapore figures as one of their major destinations. Their employability as FDW could be attributed to a variety of reasons, including their good familiarity with the English language and cultural disposition. In traditional Filipino households, it is expected that daughters rather than sons will care for their parents in old age. (Parrenas, 2015, p. 32). Regarding their language capability, a maid recruitment agency in Singapore states, ‘Most Filipino domestic helpers can speak good English, good enough to understand your instructions and good enough to speak to you. An average Filipino can speak and write standard English by the age of 12.’. It goes on to describe general characteristics of a Filipino maid as being ‘resilient, warm and friendly’, ‘very versatile’ and able to ‘handle difficult tasks’

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(www.edengracemaids.com). However, the impact of a deliberate national marketing strategy to promote overseas employment for Filipinos should not be underestimated. From the Philippines’ national strategic development perspective, FDWs are seen as a valuable national asset or labour resource that can be exported. The Philippines government has sought to capitalise on this labour export to earn revenue in the form of their remittances for national economic development through engagement with the globalised economy.

3.1 Migrant Labour Export from the Philippines to Singapore The Philippines government embarked on an elaborate and sustained national labour export policy since the 1970s to strategically facilitate migrant worker flows, setting up institutions like the Overseas Employment Program (OEP) in 1972 and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) in 1982 (Gibson et al., 2001). Relevant government agencies regularly carry out marketing missions and negotiate MOUs with potential migrant labour recipient countries (Parennas, 2015). The deliberate strategic efforts have set up a flow of contract migrant workers out of the Philippines. These workers were initially predominantly males, employed in the construction sector or shipping. In 1970s, the annual export of migrant labour figured at around 50,000 per annum. There has been a steady increase in the number of migrant workers departing Philippines each year since the 1970s, with the number of departures in 2009 topping one million (Gibson et al., 2001). During the mid-1980s, ‘nearly half of Filipino contract workers were women (Eviota, 1992). Initially, they worked as ‘medical workers, secretaries, clerks, and teachers, then eventually as domestic help and sex workers (Rosca, 1985, p. 526)’ (Chang & Ling, 2010, p. 38). By 2010, the number of migrant domestic workers, i.e. FDWs, had similarly crossed 100,000 (Parennas, 2015). A contributing factor to the rise in women migrant labour could be explained by the gender bias in the job market in the Philippines. Due to occupational segregation of women in ‘feminine’ jobs, women in the Philippines earn less, have higher unemployment rates and are financially constrained (Human Development Network, 2010 in Parrenas, 2015, p. 33). This could explain why in the Philippines, women account for up to a staggering 92% share of all unskilled service sector overseas migrant workers (Briones, 2009, p. 206). There are male migrant workers as well, providing low-skilled menial services for low wages. They are usually employed in the male-dominant migrant workforce comprising construction workers, security guards and janitorial staff. In the case of domestic work employment, however, POEA statistics reveal an overwhelmingly predominance of women, with 103,630 women versus 2,245 men reported in 2010 (Parennas, 2015). This suggests a miniscule percentage (0.02%) of male domestic workers.

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Meanwhile in 1988, the then Philippine President Cory Aquino coined the term ‘national heroes’ for overseas workers, as she addressed a group of foreign domestic workers (FDW) in Hong Kong, thereby reinforcing a ‘nationalist’ discourse. These accolade and recognition reflect the size of annual remittances amounting to billions of dollars sent by contract workers deployed overseas. It is a major source of foreign currency earnings for the Philippines, larger in magnitude than foreign direct investment coming into the country (Gibson et al., 2001, pp. 367–368). Singapore, one of the South-east Asian FDWs destinations alongside Malaysia and Brunei, represents a third-tier destination in Sociologist Anju Mary Paul’s (2011) four-tier hierarchy of destinations for Filipino domestic workers. For reference, Hong Kong is classified higher as a second tier while the UAE is a lower fourth-tier destination (Parennas, 2015). Labour migration standards for domestic workers in Singapore are more or less at par with other destination countries in the Asian region. According to information compiled by Parrenas (2015), these can be summarised as below: • • • • • • •

Mandatory live-in employment Practically, no flexibility to change employers No residency cap, as long as employment is extended No labour (workers’ rights) protection No pathway to permanent residency No right to family reunification State policy on pregnancy is deportation.

3.2 Positive Role Played by FDWs FDWs do not only benefit the national economy of their country of origin, as the Philippine government’s nationalist discourse emphasises, but also the destination countries’ economy where they work. Ironically, their significant contribution to destination economy notwithstanding, FDWs face various forms of discrimination being seen as the lowest category of migrant labour in the context of global flows of labour. Over the years, sustained high volume flows of FDWs from countries like the Philippines to countries like Singapore prove the flows are mutually beneficial. In Singapore, the number of FDWs increased more than tenfold from 20,000 in 1987 to around 230,000 (www.mom.gov.sg; Wong & Rigg, 2011, in Anjara et al., 2017). A media report suggests this total includes around 70,000 Filipinos, with around 1000 Filipino domestic workers arriving in Singapore each month (The Strait Times, 19 Jan 2015). The abundant inflow of FDWs has helped Singapore’s national economy in many ways. The easy affordability of FDWs in Singapore enables many local women, not only those highly skilled, to pursue employment outside the home. Tan (2010) reports that FDWs in Singapore helped raise ‘the income of local low-skilled Singaporean workers by 3.9%, and contributed to a 1.2% boost in the overall income of the economy. … FDWs also helped reduce the wage gap between high-skilled and lowskilled workers.’. This would suggest that the joining of the workforce by low-skilled

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local women has led to the professionalisation of the workforce, thereby reducing the polarisation effect (Tan, 2010, p. 107). A study from Hong Kong similarly reports how FDWs helped boost the economy in the destination country by providing domestic services at low cost that ‘released many women from their domestic responsibilities so that they could pursue their careers’. This is evidenced by the phenomenal rise in the numbers of FDW from 1% of the workforce in 1982 to 7% in 2001 (Lee et al., 2007, p. 23).

4 Globalisation and International Division of Reproductive Labour The Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) of the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) defines domestic work as ‘work performed in or for a household or households’ and defines domestic worker as ‘any person engaged in domestic work within an employment relationship’ (www.ilo.org/global). These typically translate into jobs like nannies, housecleaners and caregivers for the elderly. Parrenas (2015) refers to these tasks related to household chores as reproductive labour because they represent ‘labor needed to sustain the productive labor force’. It includes handling of tasks such as ‘household chores; the care of elders, adults, and youth; the socialization of children; and the maintenance of social ties in the family’. (p. 29). Parrenas (2015) further notes that historically, women of privileged class have purchased reproductive labour as a commodity, establishing two classes of women. While the hiring of other women workers to carry out reproductive labour or care labour has a long historic tradition, the current phenomenon of movement of foreign domestic worker (FDW) overseas is closely associated with globalisation, global restructuring and the creation of global cities. Globalisation has perpetuated global flows of domestic workers across international borders on a massive scale, ever since the 1970s and 1980s. As such, this FDW phenomenon must be understood as part of globalisation.

4.1 Regulating Global Labour Flows of Domestic Workers Globalisation creates economic opportunities by enabling not only the flow of products and technology but also by facilitating international division of labour through labour flows across the globe. In the process, it gives rise to the creation of global cities (Sassen, 1988) that constantly compete with other cities to attract the ‘transnational elite’, i.e. the most skilled and sought after workforce from across the globe, offering high salaries, attractive lifestyles and a liveable built environment. Chang and Ling (2010) describe this phenomenon as ‘technomuscular’ capitalism, comprising male dominated processes that incorporate technologically driven ‘aggressive market

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competition’ attracting the ‘global elite’. This is complemented by a ‘regime of labor intimacy’ that creates a ‘more explicitly sexualized, racialized and class-based’ workforce, including FDWs (ibid). The ‘transnational elite’ that represents ‘high-income gentrification of the workforce’ (Tai, 2006) adopts lifestyles that require an expanded low-wage low-skilled labour force of service sector workers to serve and support them as cleaners, security guards and domestic workers. In the words of Chang and Ling (2010), the ‘regime of labour intimacy’ is created by ‘technomuscular capitalism’ that needs it to serve its needs. Immigration policies of destination countries capitalise on ‘imbalances in the spatial distribution of labor, capital and natural resources’ (Briones, 2009, p. 44). Technomuscular capitalism triggers immigration policies that Muus (2003) describes as supply based, longer term and aiming for migrants’ socio-economic integration into the society. Regime of labor intimacy, meanwhile, triggers immigration policies aiming to fix existing job shortages on short-term basis with no consideration of workers’ economic integration, but rather ensuring the services remain affordable in the local employment market. A comparison of expected salaries for domestic work in Philippines and Singapore helps put things into context. A Filipino domestic worker outside Manila region would expect a salary of around Peso 1500 (AUD 43) per month. Within the Manila region, the expected salary would be around Peso 3000 (AUD 86) per month. Only in the posh neighbourhoods of Manila, such as Makati, the domestic worker could expect up to Peso 5000 (AUD 144) per month (www.justlanded.com). The Filipino FDW in Singapore, meanwhile, would expect a monthly salary of around Singaporean $580 (AUD 565) and higher if she has previous experience as FDW (www. dollarsandsense.sg). It is therefore natural for women from developing countries to find it attractive to take jobs that are essentially low paying jobs in the more advanced economies.

4.2 Globalisation and Polarisation—A Neoliberalistic Perspective Sassen (1991), who popularised the term ‘global city’, argued that economic restructuring associated with formation of major global cities also sets off the processes of ‘social polarisation’. She describes social polarisation as the expansion of service occupations at the high end as well as the low level services, with shrinkage of the manufacturing sector representing middle level jobs. In order to facilitate the two complementary processes of globalisation discussed above, global restructuring is required. From the neoclassical and neoliberal perspectives, global restructuring may be explained as adjustments required in dealing with newly created opportunities for economic gains and new challenges that emerge due to changes in the job market. However, one of the most commonly cited negative effects of globalisation

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is the social and economic polarisation it is believed to create in cities due to global restructuring policies adopted by national governments. Pyle and Ward (2003) note that various forms of global restructuring use terms like ‘liberalisation’ and ‘free markets’ that allude to setting up of competitive markets, equal opportunities, with minimal government involvement, where all are guaranteed similar opportunities. In reality, global restructuring has not resulted from ‘free market’ strategies, but ‘from deliberate interventions by governments pressured by institutions such as MNCs, the IMF, or the World Trade Organization (WTO)’ driven by concerns with profits or payment of loans (Pyle & Ward, 2003, p. 464). Governments find themselves promoting or suppressing certain regulatory policies to facilitate the processes that they believe enable the local economy to engage in and benefit from the global economy. The resulting global restructuring policies by governments thus often generate negative processes within the local economy that create unemployment, de-unionisation and increasing income disparities.

4.3 Joining the Low-Skilled Contract Workforce For local Singaporeans, the cost of employing FDW to support their lifestyles is quite low in relation to their overall costs of living. Government policies seek to maintain these conditions by exploiting differences in cost of labour in the FDWs’ home countries through specific immigration policies, while controlling FDWs wages in Singapore through restructuring workplace legislation. Government policies thus aim to ensure ready availability of FDWs to take up reproductive labour for low wages, making it feasible for their employers to join the global city’s productive labour force, thereby contributing to the professionalisation of the workforce. According to Hugo’s (2009) typology of temporary labour migration prevalent across the Asia-Pacific region, as ‘low-skilled contract temporary migration’, FDWs have the lowest potential to obtain permanent resident (PR) status in destination countries. They are also seen as having very limited rights overall, fairing the worst compared to others, and placed at the very bottom against each of the attributes measured. They have no prospect of bringing over their families to join them. As they enter the labour market, taking up low-skilled and low paying jobs, FDWs face discrimination on a number of fronts. They are discriminated against because they belong to the lowest-income strata in both their home and destination countries. While in European countries where anti-discrimination laws largely prevent direct discrimination, Kofman (2003) reports that even indirect discrimination compounded by the perception of domestic work tends to label FDW and their skills as inferior, and they are seen as ‘unskilled and only fit for this kind of work’ (p. 8). FDWs are also exposed to any existing biases and forms of discrimination related to gender and race prevalent in destination countries. In places like Singapore and Hong Kong where anti-discrimination legislation is relatively weak, cultural perceptions of domestic chores as well as connecting FDW to those engaged in negatively perceived occupations such as prostitution through ethnic prototyping further add to

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such discrimination and negativity. Briones (2009) points out that ‘Migrant women domestic workers are ‘classed’ not only as unskilled or low-skilled workers, but they are also viewed as foreigners or outsiders’ (p. 40).

5 Limited Legal Protection and Human Rights A Human Rights Watch report focusing on the plight of FDWs in Singapore states: In a country well-known for strictly enforcing laws to promote order and efficiency, the failure to provide adequate and equal protection to an entire class of workers is an anomaly and undermines the rule of law (HRW, 2005).

While Singapore’s Employment Act covers migrant workers holding work permits, it excludes FDWs. In case of FDWs, their work permit is tied to a specific employer, preventing the worker from changing employers by entering the local employment market independently. ‘The contractual approach taken to the FDWs obtaining legal permission to work in Singapore further relegates the concerns of justice and fairness, moral rights, and access to political membership’ (Tan, 109). Some of these concerns are taken up but only marginally treated and discussed in terms of guidelines for employers. The main emphasis appears to be on specifying rights and responsibilities in employment, especially clarifying the FDWs are ‘transient workers, with no expectations of full citizenship’ (Tan, 2010, p. 109). There is a two-year, period of employment, extendable at the employer’s discretion. Employment is tied to the specific employer, who could unilaterally terminate the contract. In such eventuality, the FDW usually has no choice but to return to their home country (Tan, 2010). There is a further requirement for employers to submit a SGD 5000 security bond for each FDW hired. This policy may have been meant to ensure that employers take care to comply with the conditions of FDW’s employment at the risk of losing the bond. Unfortunately, the bond requirement is generally perceived in a way that tends to negatively impact working and living conditions of FDWs. Employers feel obligated to ‘excessively regulate the lives of their FDWs in order to engender good behavior’ to avoid having to forfeit the security bond (Tan, 2010, pp. 11–12). These include some drastic measures such as forcibly retaining the FDW’s passports, denying time off work or rest days.

5.1 Limited Scope for Defiance High rates of abuse and violence cited by human rights-based NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Social Alert have prompted NGOs take up public awareness, seeking to influence government policies by promoting human rights. The situation

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has prompted feminist structural studies that tend to describe FDWs as ‘export– import traded commodities’, highlighting the precarious nature of their employment sector in destination countries (Briones, 2009, p. 5). Over the years, many NGOs have organised transnational networks of activists advocating justice for domestic workers, regardless of FDW’s citizenship status in their country of employment. However, their progress is limited because even democratic states find human rights more difficult to legitimate than citizenship, and these policies may run counter to each other (Briones, 2009, p. 43). This, perhaps, could explain that while some European receiving countries may offer better prospects for FDW by allowing a pathway to citizenship, their abusive treatment remains widespread, as reported by Kofman (2003). The prospects of migrant contract workers asserting their human rights through acts of resistance are determined by prevalent structures of power as well as the characteristics of that occupant group. Chang and Ling (2010) note many critics including ‘Gramscian globalists’ tend to romanticise everyday resistance, ignoring ‘the complex structures of power in which acts of resistance are embedded’ (p. 36). The structures of power notwithstanding and the characteristics of the occupational group itself tend to discourage FDWs from performing acts of resistance. For example, the struggles of female-dominated FDWs around claiming back the Lucky Plaza and its surrounds (described at the start of this chapter) were low-key acts of defiance. The more recent fatal traffic accident causing the death of two FDWs in front of Lucky Plaza also did not translate into any act of resistance against city authorities, with the fatal accident attracting relatively little coverage in the media. In sharp contrast, however, another episode around a construction worker’s death in a traffic accident on 8 December 2013 in Little India in Singapore received extensive media coverage. The sporadic incident had gone violent when a group of male foreign construction workers confronted the police over the death of their fellow worker. The ‘Little India riot’ story was extensively covered and followed up in The Straits Times, the most widely read newspaper in Singapore (Kaur et al., 2016).

5.2 Live-In Requirement and Reluctance to Legislate Within Home Workplace Live-in requirement for FDWs, common in receiving countries like Singapore, leads to numerous obstacles in the way of protecting their rights. While describing a ‘triple burden’ of discrimination for FDWs, along ethnic, socio-economic and gender lines, Gibson et al. (2001) note that situating domestic workers’ workplace within ‘private households only serves to demonstrate the penetrating capacity of capitalism in the contemporary moment’ (p. 370). In Singapore, the legally ‘designated workplace of a FDW is her employer’s home. FDWs are also required by law to reside at the homes of their employers’ (Tan, 2010, p. 108). It is contended that the live-in requirement for FDW is not simply a continuation of cultural practices, but also a calculated strategic

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policy responding to the imperative of minimising costs of domestic work. The ‘livein’ arrangement removes the cost of accommodation from the calculations for both the employer and the FDW. Were the live-in requirement removed, employers would have to pay increased wages to FDWs as the cost of accommodation would eventually need to come out of what FDW could earn as wages. In addition to keeping FDWs’ wages affordable, the live-in requirement negatively affects the plight of FDWs along multiple dimensions. The very fact that domestic work is carried out inside private homes with no distinct workplace contributes to the low status associated with the profession. It trivialises the perception of the work carried out and hence the workers. There is a tendency to downplay the significance of labour carried out by women in general that ‘creates the perception and reifies the stereotype that housework is not real work that contributes to the country’s economy’ (Tan, 2010, p. 108). This is despite the major contribution FDWs make to facilitate the professionalisation of destination countries like Singapore. Governments provide various justifications to impose the live-in requirement for FDWs. In Hong Kong, for example, the rationale provided to impose ‘live-in’ requirement was the protection of the local workforce. The ‘live-in’ rule legislated in 2003 was challenged in 2018 but upheld by the Hong Kong High Court. The 2018 ruling recognised the rule’s validity as a measure seeking to ensure stability and orderliness of the labour market and to maximise opportunities for local employment by preventing illegal employment by foreigners.1 Meanwhile, in Singapore, the Ministry of Manpower (MoM) justifies the condition for FDW to be employed at the employer’s home address due to the nature of the work—household chores—that need to be carried out inside private homes (www.mom.gov.sg). Tan (2010) asserts that because FDW’s work is home-bound, i.e. carried out in a private and apolitical domain, it ‘results in the disproportionate limitation on their ability to openly assert their ‘rights’ in the public realm’ (p. 101). A home is not seen as a formal setting for structured work performed in a strict employee–employer relationship. Thus, it is also not seen as a place for the domestic worker to assert rights as ‘an insistence on [human] rights in an intimate setting like the domestic household is seen as setting the stage for confrontation and disharmony’ (p. 108). There seems to be widespread gender discrimination promoting a social expectation from FDWs to be ‘accommodating’. Referring to Singapore government’s narrative of promoting ‘traditional Asian value system’ and the upholding of community interests over individual interests, Tan (2010) states, ‘In a paternalistic, consensusseeking polity, the ideal of harmony has gained traction with the Singaporean political elite vis-a-vis the goals of good governance’ (p. 108). In short, the nature of the work and the workplace combine to put the FDW in a position wherein she is expected not to strictly assert her basic rights. This point is further highlighted by the fact that while Singapore’s Employment Act covers other migrant contract workers or work permit holders, it excludes FDWs. 1

In Hong Kong, while FDWs were common since early 1970s, the ‘live-in’ rule was legislated only in 2003. The death of an abused FDW in 2018 led to an unsuccessful legal challenge to the live-in requirement (Siu 2018).

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The FDWs are thus not afforded explicit ‘state-sanctioned rights with regard to standard employment conditions such as wages, regular time off, and have no guarantees regarding working conditions’. In effect, FDWs are denied the right to demand decent working conditions, a balanced lifestyle and a dignified existence. The legislation, instead, provides guidance only for employers. The lack of commitment to insist even on such guidance can be evidenced by the absence of any strict requirement to have a written contract in place. The MoM justifies this by stating that it would be impractical to regulate specific aspects of domestic work and enforce the Employment Act. The reasons it cites for the exclusion are that FDWs ‘work in a home environment’ and the ‘habits of households vary’ (Tan, 2010, p. 111). It is interesting to note that MoM guidelines for employers suggest, but do not require, the employer to provide a separate room for FDW to sleep in, as long as ‘adequate space and privacy’ are provided (www.mom.gov.sg). This is despite the numerous cases reporting unacceptable living conditions and their negative impacts on the health and safety of FDWs cited in Human Rights Watch reports over the years. Some of these reports cite harassment and even assault. One could conclude, therefore, that preserving the ‘sanctity’ of home takes priority over the state’s responsibility to ensure workers’ safety in their workplace. Over recent years, the Ministry of Manpower is seen to be attempting to improve the working conditions of FDWs. The rights of FDWs to fair treatment and fair employment conditions are being described, softly, through various forms of information dissemination. MoM websites explain employers’ obligations, such as providing a day off per week. However, these obligations are not mandatory and serve only as guidelines, because of the informal nature of both work and the workplace.

6 Spatial Demands of Intimate Labour in a Global City The globalisation of the economy has generally accentuated north–south polarisation, with the Global North housing control bases and command posts and the Global South adopting dependent globalisation. This has required global restructuring of economies and adoption of supporting regulation regimes by governments in the Global South. Many see the restructuring as being dictated by private corporate interests, at cost to less resourceful citizens, who face increased socio-economic polarisation. Against this backdrop, the United Nations mobilised initiatives to address glaring economic and social polarisation between and among the rich and poor nations. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), initiated in 2000 to eradicate poverty from the world, were replaced in 2015 by United Nation’s set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The set includes SDG11, titled ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities’, commonly referred to as the ‘urban’ goal. The urban goal, SDG11, is focused on making ‘cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. By extension, this goal dealing with issues of inclusiveness and safety should focus on improving

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the living conditions of the large numbers of urban poor largely comprising immigrants, whether they originate from surrounding rural regions or from overseas. Complementing the SDG initiative, the UN Habitat III conference in 2016 released the New Urban Agenda (NUA), a document focusing on how to frame and implement an agenda for sustainable urbanisation (UN-HABITAT, 2016). Watson (2016) notes that the realisation of NUA answers the call of many planners around the world arguing for national governments to take serious interest in cities and planning. The NUA is seen as providing an incentive and opportunity for governments across the world to collectively focus on resolving the current urban crisis. The SDGs emphasise the value of stronger states and regulatory mechanisms, and civil society. Meanwhile, the goals of the new urban agenda seem to promote an increased role of cities in driving change, while emphasising the positive role that urbanisation can play in addressing poverty. In promoting inclusivity through the social function of land/settlements, it not only promotes the right to adequate housing and equal access to public goods and services, but also the right to access quality public spaces, as it seeks to ensure livelihoods and decent empowering work for city residents. It is far from clear, however, whether or not these initiatives go far enough to address the urban reality created due to the steady global flow of low-skilled labour. Neither SDG11 nor NUA seem to specifically recognise the fact that international migration is resulting in overseas migrants joining the ranks of the urban poor and adding to the social polarisation in global cities. The rights to the city should be promoted for overseas migrants on short term employment, including FDWs that are temporarily domiciled in the city as a consequence of globalisation.

6.1 Why not Adopt ‘Right to the City’? As the draft of the NUA was being finalised, there was sustained push by some sections to include ‘Right to the City’ into the narrative. While ‘right to the city’ per se was not included, NUA did adopt phrases like ‘our shared vision’ and ‘cities for all’ to highlight the value of inclusivity. Henri Lefebvre introduced the ‘right to the city’ idea back in 1968, perhaps influencing the resolution of the first UN-Habitat forum (1976) that advocated for the rights of ‘squatters’ to maintain their residency in the city. In recent years, many groups seeking to reclaim the city for all citizens, including marginal groups, are adopting ‘right to the city’ as a slogan. As such, it has become a rallying call for addressing inequalities within cities. UN organisations (mainly UN-Habitat) as well many NGO forums have adopted the right to the city over the past few decades in promoting universal human rights. It has been used to shape ‘urban policies that promote justice, sustainability, and inclusion in cities’ (Purcell, 2013). Purcell (2013) notes, however, that Lefebvre’s vision for a city is radical and goes beyond simply encouraging government agencies to adopt human rights in planning and urban governance. It envisions ‘a city in which users manage urban

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space for themselves, beyond the control of both the state and capitalism’ (Purcell, 2013). While such discourse would be compatible with either government agencies, or international development agencies or the private sector, one must understand that within the city, space is a social product. As Lefebvre (1991) explains, social spaces are socially produced. Minority groups will try to influence spaces to better suit their needs and ‘own’ the space, turning it into a place by attaching meaning to it.

6.2 Social Production of Space The association of Lucky Plaza with Filipino FDWs, and the interaction between the two, provides a glimpse into the status of the FDW group within the city’s built environment. In his seminal work, The Production of Space (1991), Henri Lefebvre describes space as a social product. Socially created space is a social product that could be seen as a ‘tool of thought and action’ as well as ‘a means of control, and hence of domination, of power’ (1991, p. 26). In other words, the spaces created in the city manifest the social processes and practices that prevail. The desire to control the means of producing space is an ongoing class struggle that unfolds on a daily basis between city administrators and ethnic minority groups whose demands on urban spaces and their use remain unfulfilled. Lefebvre’s theories help to describe the ethnic conflicts that may exist within cities (Werbner, 2001). One of the three moments in the social production of spaces described by Lefebvre (1991) is ‘spatial practices’ that can be described as the ‘lived material world’ or the ‘experience’ McCann (1999). Spatial practices essentially define the ground reality of the built form in terms of how it is used. Ethnic clusters that emerge in a city have the potential to claim a location and use it as a space for the production and consumption of culture-specific goods and services for migrant communities, creating a highly specialised and niche markets in the process. They claim space, carving it out from the city, and dedicating it to carry out specific functions and cater to certain clientele. In other words, they patronise and influence certain bits of urban space and ‘own’ it as their place. In the case of the Lucky Plaza, we can see these processes happening but in a more ephemeral setting, and the claim of ownership made on the space by Filipino FDWs is very temporary, lasting only for short durations of time. The Lucky Plaza and its surrounds provided the settings wherein the power struggle between the ethnic minority and the majority or dominant groups was played out. There was a struggle to claim the space, in and around Lucky Plaza and to transform it, not by erecting structures of any degree of permanence, but by the mere presence of a particular demographic and certain products and services customised for that demographic. The struggle over the use of the space could thus be seen as the Filipina FDWs’ demand for products, services and cultural experiences. This reflects Lefebvre’s (1991) reference to an ongoing struggle of production of social space to better serve economic and cultural needs of the users.

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6.3 An Urban Development Agenda to Facilitate Globalisation? Neoliberalism is promoting a new theorisation of cities as spatial and functional entities in the era of globalisation (Barnett & Parnell, 2016 in Watson, 2016). In recent years, international development agencies and banks, like the IMF and World Bank, have refocused the discourse on cities as ‘engines of growth’. This has further inspired cities to seek to improve their liveability and quality of life credentials, especially as each city competes with others to attract global capital. This competition has been intensified by the technomuscular globalisation (Chang & Ling, 2010) that pitches cities into competition with each other, to increase their magnetism, i.e. their ability to attract resources, including human resources, especially, the extremely mobile ‘transnational’ elite. Strategic marketing sees competing cities make serious investments in hard branding themselves through the creation of ‘global’ and ‘world class’ projects with iconic structures and frequent hosting of ‘mega’ sports and cultural events. Cities thus constantly seek to improve their image as attractive destinations not only in terms of economic strength and hard urban infrastructure, but also soft infrastructure and quality of life that relates to liveability of cities. While liveability is measured along various dimensions, there is a significant emphasis on the availability of housing, quality public places and access to nature and cultural facilities, offering a choice of desirable and healthy lifestyles. In this context, cities strive to provide sufficient public open spaces to support active and passive forms of recreation and biodiversity that serve as ‘third places’. The ‘third place’ is a concept coined by Ray Oldenburg in 1997. The other complementing globalisation referred to, by Chang and Ling (2010), as regime of labour intimacy, on the other hand, does not seem to affect the urban development agenda in terms of ensuring the city’s liveability. This aspect of globalisation that deals with low-skilled and low-wage migrant workers like FDWs places very little, if any, pressure on urban planners or city administrators to cater to their needs or demands. These are easily ignored along with those of the rest of the urban poor. Occasionally, there may be recognition of ethnic clustering of migrant labourers that a city may subject to beautification or ‘disneyfication’ to cash in on as a token of cultural diversity to boost a city’s global ranking. Few and far in between, there could also be rare efforts made to regularise the provision of migrant housing for construction workers. The FDWs, however, do not benefit even from such responses by the city to ethnic clusters, due to their live-in requirement. In this section, we make the case for the city to ensure the provision of urban spaces to meet the needs of FDWs. In Singapore, as apparent from observing the phenomenon associated with Lucky Plaza, there is a severe scarcity of ‘third places’ for FDWs. The fact that their demand for ‘third places’ remains unfulfilled has deep implications for urban planners and city administrators.

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6.4 What is a Third Place? Oldenburg (1997) defined third places as simply informal places for public gathering. ‘The phrase ‘third places’ derives from considering our homes to be the ‘first’ places in our lives, and our workplaces the ‘second” (Oldenburg, 1997, p. 6). In his seminal publication ‘The Great Good Place’ (1986), he coined the phrase ‘third place’ while critiquing the widely prevalent suburban development in USA. He felt residential areas, in their emphasis on privacy, were designed to ‘protect’ us from the community rather than to ‘engage’ with it. The patterns of the built environment worked to isolate people within their homes, with people either remaining within the privacy of their homes (the first place) or driving far distances to their place of work (second place). This situation highlighted the need for and significance of ‘third places’ where people could gather informally. In present-day Singapore, FDWs are similarly, but to a much higher degree, isolated in the homes (of their employers) with no interaction with the community. Oldenburg, a sociologist, promoted the need for ‘third places’ to describe a place that is not the home and/or workplace, where one can relax and spend time. He argued a relaxed and fulfilling daily life needs to have a ‘balance in three realms of experience. One is domestic, a second is gainful or productive, and the third is inclusively sociable, offering both the basis of community and the celebration of it’ (Oldenburg, 1989, p. 14). Decades later, Oldenburg’s (1989) idea of third places gained traction among planners and urban designers interested in creating liveable cities that offer balanced lifestyles, enabling cities to improve their rankings in various city indices, such as Economists Intelligence Unit’s ‘global liveability index’. Third places, as Oldenburg (1989) portrays them, are characterised as being ‘low profile, neutral, inclusive, accessible, accommodating, filled with regulars, conversational, and playful’ (Memarovic, 2014, p. 1). The third place could thus take on many forms: for example, they could be commercial establishments like cafe, bar or beauty salon; a public facility like the library or simply open spaces like parks, public plazas or vacant lots. It is essentially a welcoming space where one could socialise with others with minimum effort. Third places, to be effective, need to be easily accessible. This relates to physical access in terms of physical distance and travel times required to get there. They must also be psychologically and culturally accessible, i.e. it should not be intimidating or places where one would feel out of place. The better third place would allow users to be themselves without being overly concerned about their attire or presentation, or being stressed about maintaining protocol or social norms. Fitting in or blending in should be easy and effortless in third places. Access of course needs to be seen together with affordability. The use of venue must be easy to afford with sufficient frequency. Affordability is a relative term, determined by travel costs, cost of using the venue such as venue fee, cover charge or the cost of food and drinks to consume there and so forth. Availability also relates to the time one could spare to frequent such facilities. This brings into the equation costs (and opportunity costs) of work-free time spent at the venue, as well as time spent on getting to and from the first and/or the second place.

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6.5 Doubling up of First and Second Places As live-in employees, there is no distinction between their ‘first’ and ‘second’ places, making it difficult for them to have a balanced life. As they share space with the employer household during extended working hours, their second place often does not offer them an organised workplace to carry out tasks in a structured and efficient manner. As the homes, where reproductive tasks are carried out, are not specifically designed to accommodate dedicated domestic workers, inefficiency and related stress should be expected. Also, unlike formal workplaces, there is no standard building code requirement for installing occupational health and safety measures. Inadequacy of the home design to accommodate a dedicated domestic worker on top of the resident household could lead to inefficiency at work and cause tension. The situation in the case of ‘first place’ is much more alarming as domestic workers’ access to personal, private space is severely limited. There are widespread reports of FDWs not being given a private room to sleep in. Many are made to share sleeping arrangements with members of the household, or sleep in common spaces like kitchen or corridors, with no privacy. In worst cases, this lack of personal, secure place even exposes them to sexual assault. The live-in requirement erodes FDW’s right to the privacy of ‘first place’. However, because this is seen as a ‘temporary’ working arrangement that the worker willingly enters into, it is not seen as a violation of the ‘housing right’. Normally, going to the place of work involves a change of one’s settings, surroundings and/or people to interact with. This change provides some variety and relief that helps towards bringing a balance in one’s daily life. This opportunity is not available for FDW to experience, as the place of residence and the place of work are the same. The situation is made worse by having very little time off work. The live-in requirement for FDW in Singapore leads to the doubling up of the ‘first place’ as also the ‘second place’, using Oldenburg’s (1989) terminology. This doubling up not only causes tremendous stress in their daily life, but also prevents their empowerment through collective action. The live-in requirement disperses FDWs’ residential locations, preventing them from forming ethnic clusters, whereby they could de facto influence the shaping of their first and second places. At the same time, not having a common workplace as a place of assembly deprives FDWs from developing workplace solidarity. This deprivation is reinforced by immigration rules and the fact that FDWs are left outside the ambit of the Employment Act, denying them access to political assembly or unionisation. With stressful living and working conditions, low affordability, long work hours and usually only one day off in a week, the significance of having ‘third places’ to bring in some sense of balance in the daily lives of FDRs becomes paramount. The Lucky Plaza in Singapore serves as one such ‘third place’ for Filipina domestic workers. Its significance therefore cannot be exaggerated, and its overflowing capacity should be seen as an urgent call for urban planners and city administrators to facilitate the provision of more ‘third places’.

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7 Concluding Remarks This chapter focused on Filipino FDWs, a large underclass of migrant workforce that globalisation has created and their plight in Singapore, the destination city where they are employed. Government agencies in Singapore should protect the human rights of its citizens, including temporary residents, notwithstanding any racial and gender biases prevalent within the society. The informal nature of their work and workplace should not justify denying FDWs the protection existing labour laws provide other workers against gender or racial discrimination in the workplace. FDWs are not simply products of globalisation and international distribution of reproductive labour, but they are significant contributors to the global economy. The Philippines government’s nationalistic discourse labels them ‘national heroes’ recognising the scale of their remittances. Local Singaporean women who employ FDWs to cover their reproductive labour tasks so they could join the global city’s workforce could recognise FDWs as liberators. Policymakers should note that as FDWs are missed out in statistical records, they hide the social polarisation created by globalisation by absorbing substantial expansion in menial, low status jobs that are sexualised and racialised. While reducing the visibility of polarisation, FDWs also facilitate ‘professionalisation’ (as suggested by Hamnett, 1994) to occur within the Singaporean economy by offering reproductive services for low wages.

7.1 When ‘Home’ Becomes the ‘Workplace’ It is apparent that the live-in requirement at the employers’ home seems to be at the heart of many problems FDWs face. Admittedly, the very nature of the job requires the place of work to be the home, and the job description to be flexible could justify the government policy of enforcing the live-in condition for FDWs. It does not, however, absolve the government from its duty to protect their human rights. Government agencies must ensure that the live-in requirement does not simply facilitate the regime of labour intimacy by keeping the cost of employing FDWs affordable for Singaporeans. Policymakers tend to shy away from regulating working conditions as the home is seen as a sensitive workplace, while the dispersed FDWs without legally protected worker’s rights or the right for political engagement are unable to press for workplace reform. The impasse could be broken only if pressure is brought on the government to change its mind-set through the wider society. In the short term, the current MoM guidelines regarding FDW employment could be transformed into statutorily enforceable regulations. In the longer term, the city administration could require home designs to provide adequate accommodation and efficient workspace for live-in domestic workers.

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The Lucky Plaza shopping mall plays a significant role in the lives of Filipino FDWs in Singapore who throng there on their day off to attend to a myriad of consumerist activities, personal chores and socialising. In the process, they give meaning to the space within and around the building. With shops selling products and services specifically catering to their tastes and price range, approachable store attendants and familiar looking fellow shoppers, the Lucky Plaza assumes meaning and is thus ‘owned’ by Filipino FDWs. The Filipino FDW community has thus undertaken social production of space, transforming Lucky Plaza and its surrounds into their third place. They extend their stay beyond attending to their chores, spending time there to relax and socialise with their friends. Witnessing the Lucky Plaza phenomenon makes it easy to realise the importance of accessible third places especially for FDWs whose first and second places are compromised. Poorly regulated and inefficiently designed living quarters and workspace only amplify the need for third places to serve as retreats from stressful daily routines. The provision of accessible ‘third places’ for FDWs to occasionally relax and socialise in, therefore, needs to be seen as a means to ensure some sense of balance in their lives. Affordability of frequenting and accessing facilities in the third place needs to be a major concern as FDWs have relatively low wages with reference to the destination economy and its cost of living. Their affordability is further reduced due to the remittances they send to families back home. The Lucky Plaza phenomenon in Singapore makes an effective case for the need and demand for adequate third places for Singapore’s underclass. This needs to be understood in terms of spatial demands made by a large group of the urban poor in the overall context of their right to the city in the shape of urban spaces. United Nations initiatives of SDG11 and NUA attempt to involve national governments in delivering safe and sustainable cities for all—not only citizens but also temporary contract workers, the city needs to maintain its status as global city.

7.2 An Urban Planning Challenge While the provision and regulation of first and second places of FDWs fall under the responsibility of the employer, the provision and maintenance of adequate third places would clearly be the responsibility of the city. The case is to be made to advocate the right to the city of all FDW communities in global cities. SDG11 and NUA should expand the urban agenda to require global cities to ensure a sufficient supply of accessible and affordable third places for FDW communities. The challenge to be tackled then would be to ensure that such specifically designed third places do not turn into ghettos, i.e. places patronised by the most marginalised urban poor and avoided by others. Care would need to be taken to control the size and quality of such spaces so they could be integrated into larger multifunctional public spaces with a broader and diverse patronage. Learning from past negative experiences of providing large-scale public housing projects at cities’ periphery, the

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city should perhaps strive to create a network of smaller-scale third places spread across the city. There are calls for ‘a paradigm shift in policy approaches from the protection of human rights, to the assertion of human rights’ aligned with calls for FDWs’ right to earn their livelihoods globally respected and for them to be ‘recognized as valuable workers doing ‘proper work” (Briones, 2009, p. 7). United Nations and international development agencies should work to ensure that FDWs’ rights to the city are also recognised and translated into the urban agenda. Cities should be held responsible to provide adequate, accessible and affordable urban spaces that their urban poor communities could adopt. This would amount to recognition of spatial rights of urban poor communities in the city. Global cities that contribute to the creation of sizeable communities of urban poor with substandard living places should provide urban spaces that serve as extensions of their housing and cater to their social welfare. For FDWs, the provision of adequate first and second places, i.e. home and workplace, could continue to be the responsibility of the employer. There should be a regime in place where prospective employers need to prove availability of minimum requirements for space provisions within their homes to adequately accommodate the domestic worker. Meanwhile, it should be seen as the city administration’s responsibility to support and promote the creation of adequate third places. These places need to be affordable and conveniently located from the FDWs’ perspective. These third places could simply be individual open spaces or accessible venues with some supporting commercial facilities, or they could be integrated into various public or private development projects. Third place projects could be conceived as collaborative initiatives taken up by the city and NGOs, employing various models of public private partnership (PPP). Segments of the larger developments could be designed so they could be dedicated to serve as third places for FDWs at specific times. The NGOs could be tasked with identifying culturally appropriate, accessible and affordable locations for FDWs of various national or ethnic origins, considering specific needs and locational contexts of each community. The potential role for private sector investment could be explored in terms of global corporations’ developer contribution to the city as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR). The nexus for the developers’ contribution or CSR to such projects is easy to establish because the presence of FDWs can be seen as a consequence if not a requirement of the transnational elite the private corporations actively recruit.

References Anjara, S. G., Nellums, L. B., Bonetto, C. (2017). Stress, health and quality of life of female migrant domestic workers in Singapore: A cross-sectional study. BMC Women’s Health, 17(98). Open Access https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-017-0442-7 Barnett, C., & Parnell, S. (2016). Ideas, implementation and indicators: Epistemologies of the post-2015 urban agenda. Environment and Urbanization 28(1), 87–98. Briones, L. (2009). Empowering migrant women: Why agency and rights are not enough. Routledge.

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Websites https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=f9f24bbe-1a18-4326-bf26-3885a2fa8876& subId=564473 https://dollarsandsense.sg/2019-edition-much-cost-hire-maid-singapore/ https://stateofbuildings.sg/places/lucky-plaza https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/wages/minimum-wages/domestic-workers/WCMS_438263/ lang--en/index.htm https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/10/sunday-sit-in-inside-hong-kong-weekly-dom estic-worker-resistance http://www.edengracemaids.com http://www.justlanded.com United Nations—sustainable development goals knowledge platform 2018. Singapore voluntary national review 2018. Accessed at: (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/memberstates/ singapore) United Nations, Department of economic and social affairs sustainable development. https://sdgs. un.org/goals/goal11 UN-Habitat website: https://unhabitat.org/about-us/new-urban-agenda

Chapter 6

Witch Hunts in India: The Nexus with Forms of Exclusion Govind Kelkar, Sarika Sinha, and Dev Nathan

Abstract This chapter deals with witch hunts, mainly of women, as extreme exclusion. Based on 115 case studies in five states of India, we show the various forms of exclusion of women, often old and unsupported. Witch accusations usually follow illness or some other misfortune. Accused of using supernatural power to cause harm, exclusions range from seizure of land, and forms of levelling of those thought to have illicitly become better off. Exclusion is also from political positions and spiritual knowledge. The ultimate exclusion is death. The chapter also deals with the way in which the state and administration have tried to curb witch hunts, often ineffectually. The witch finders are key actors in the witch persecution process and their influence, based on cultural beliefs of women using supernatural powers to cause harm, needs to be curtailed. In order to end witch hunts, the chapter points to the importance of insisting on evidence of supposed supernatural powers and the fostering of alternative ways of thinking about illness and misfortune. Current norms in these communities need to be changed. In agrarian societies undergoing transformation, it is necessary for the state to both provide effective medical services and forms of social security.

G. Kelkar (B) · D. Nathan GenDev Centre for Research and Innovation, Gurgaon, Haryana, India S. Sinha ActionAid, Associations, New Delhi, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_6

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1 Introduction This chapter looks at witch persecution or witch hunts, particularly of women, as an extreme form of exclusion. We first look at the manner in which witch hunts link with and even create forms of social exclusion. The empirical bases of the analysis are case studies of witch hunts in eight districts of five states of India, carried out between October and December 2020. After outlining the methodology of the field study, we present its main findings. This is followed by an analysis of the main forms of exclusion—the manner in which illness and other misfortunes are used to build a narrative of women using supernatural powers to cause misfortune; economic exclusion, through seizing of land and levelling of those somewhat better off, including the case of strangers thought to be getting rich through extracting human blood; the denial of women’s access to spiritual knowledge and the labelling of their unconventional religious practices as witchcraft; political exclusion through attacking women who assert their agency and rights; the resulting live as social outcasts, with the ultimate exclusion of death through murder. In all this, the important role of the witch finder is analysed, his role in identifying the supposed witch and even giving directions for her torture. We then turn to what has been done by the law, police, administration and courts to curb witch hunts. Exclusion through witch hunts creates durable inequalities of gender, which are an obstacle to inclusive development (World Bank, 2013). Following from this analysis of witch hunts as creating and reinforcing social exclusion, our objective in this paper is to point the way to overcoming witch hunts as a necessary condition for more gender inclusive development among indigenous and rural communities. The conclusion considers the path that could be taken to end witch hunts. In this chapter, we show that witch hunts both create and reinforce the exclusion of (mainly) women in indigenous and rural societies from various activities, ritual, economic, political and social, in their communities. This is a form of exclusion within communities, rather than between communities, as often discussed with regard to indigenous peoples in India, e.g. in Nathan and Xaxa (2012). Dealing with it requires both legal action to curb witch hunts, and changes in gender norms. The norms regarding exclusion of women from various aspects of community life need to be transformed within a community. Such transformation of norms is more likely to take place when there are larger numbers of women, with supporting men, to challenge the old norms. When the new, inclusive norms are accepted by the community, witch hunts would come to an end, and there would be more inclusive, gender-equal development.

2 Witch Hunts as Exclusionary Practices The focus of this study is on witch hunts, i.e. the identification, persecution and even killing of mainly women, as supposed witches, as a form of exclusion. The definition of a witch is ‘one who causes harm to others by mystical means’ (Needham, 1978);

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later in 2004, modified to ‘a person who uses non-physical means to cause misfortune or injury to other humans’ (Hutton, 2004). These definitions imply that there are people who use mystical or supernatural means to cause harm to others. Therefore, they suggest a justified belief in witchcraft used to cause harm to others through supernatural or mystical means. What is important to note is that such a social belief results in a discourse that creates a reality that is manifested in practices of witch persecution or witch hunting. Based on a recent study, we would like to define a witch as ‘a person who is perceived to cause harm by supernatural means’ (Kelkar & Nathan, 2020). In reality, people may not actually possess such occult power to cause harm to others. But they are thought to both possess and use occult powers to cause harm. Our concentration in this chapter is not on supposed witchcraft as such, but on witch hunts and the social and gender exclusion that is created by witch hunts. There are two aspects to the articulation of witch hunts as exclusion. First, is that witch hunts are a form or persecution for transgressing gendered norms of exclusion from certain forms of knowledge, particularly ritual or sacred knowledge. Second, is that persecution as supposed witches itself creates forms of social exclusion. Forms of exclusion can be created by witch hunts across many spheres of society. They are in the sphere of knowledge, such as ritual or religious knowledge; economic matters, such as in exclusion from the ownership of land or from the benefits of accumulation; political and leadership areas, as in denying women’s agency; and broadly social, as in social boycott and expulsions from the village community. In witch hunts, exclusion can also take the most extreme form, as through killing. In many ways, witch hunts create the exclusion of women as full members of the concerned communities. Before detailing the ways in which witch hunts work to create these exclusions, we will set out the nature of the empirical studies of witch hunts which the analysis draws on.

3 Methodology The fieldwork was conducted from October to December 2020 in eight districts of five states in India: Goalpara district in Assam; East Khasi Hills in Meghalaya; two districts, Ranchi and Khunti, in Jharkhand; Alirajpur in Madhya Pradesh; and three districts, Ganjam, Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj, in Odisha. The study team included both women and men, who have been engaged in research and praxis opposing the persecution of women as witches in their communities. The research tools that were used in the fieldwork included: Focus group discussions (FGDs) to capture the views, perspectives and vulnerabilities of women related to witch branding, and killing; case studies of violation of rights and forms of witch violence in different cultural practices; media reports; local police records of witch hunts; interviews with state government officials, the women’s commissions at the state level, civil society organisations, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) as well as with key informants and other stakeholders, including ojhas (the witch finders), village heads, women’s groups, police officers, district magistrates, revenue officers, lawyers who are known to take witch related cases, school teachers, local health workers, women

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Table 1 Witch persecution/killing in selected eight districts of India (based on cases that occurred between 2015 and 2020) State

District

Madhya Pradesh

Alirajpur

Odisha

Ganjam, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj

Total number of case studies

Women

Men

5

5

0

34

21

13

Assam

Goalpara

33

30

3

Meghalaya

East Khasi Hills

13

2

11

Jharkhand

Ranchi, Khunti

30

26

4

Total

8 districts

115

84

31

Source ActionAid field study

or men known for progressive ideas; and informal discussions with local leaders. As part of the research study, an analysis of secondary sources was undertaken through collecting information from various published materials, materials in the public domain and websites of government agencies, academic institutions, research centres and individual researchers. In the orientation for the field researchers, we questioned the dominant notion of strong objectivity in conventional research practice. Instead, the orientation training infused the idea of feminist standpoint analysis based on lived experiences of those who survived witch violence in their unjust social order. Such research findings can be more relevant to producing knowledge that can be used for building a human rights centred social system (Harding & Hintikka, 2004). We also discussed situational analysis, inspired by Haraway ‘Concept of Situated Knowledges’ (1991) foregrounding the mode of analysis which makes witch violence more visible and making the silences of the alleged witches speak by the situation of the enquiry. Further, we discussed how ojhas (the witch finders) use human and non-human ritualistic practices to identify and torture women, and men who came in support of the pre-identified women. With regard to research ethics, our field work was conducted with care and respect for the interviewees, keeping confidential information gathered from survivors of witch violence. Oral and written consent was taken prior to conducting an interview and group discussions. In drafting the report or putting sensitive information in the public domain, we maintained anonymity. The research team conducted a total of 115 case studies and noted the persecution and killings of 84 women and 31 men (Table 1). In three case studies, five women were attacked and killed as a group in Jharkhand.

4 Overall Pattern of Violence Against Supposed Witches Research has shown that women and girls in the Scheduled Tribes (an official term used for indigenous people in India) face a higher prevalence of violence, labour

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exploitation, and harmful practices such as harassment and persecution as witches than other women and girls in the country (DHS, 2005–2006). In several cases, we also noted that intra-caste and inter-caste feuds were settled by branding weaker households as witch keepers. In such cases, the ojhas were generally compensated for their services by the dominant caste household or individual. The survivors of the poor households lacked required funds for the court procedure and seek justice. Moreover, the poor survivors did not receive much support from the police and local administration. The dominant households generally coming from a caste group continued with the practice of witch branding showed legal disinterest towards the Dalits or the Scheduled Castes. The persecution and hunting of witches in an associational living is not confined only to one caste vis-a-vis another caste, but rather, the caste system as a state of mind poisons the relations of the Dalits with the state functionaries in police and judiciary. Three of the five states in our study, Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam, have prevention of witch practices acts to punish and deter the persecution of so-called witches. But it is not clear if there is a decline in witch persecution incidents, and how effective these laws have been. Reportedly these laws are rather ‘lame’ or ineffective in implementation (PLD, 2014).

5 Forms of Exclusion in Witch Persecution and Hunting Our field investigation shows that the identity of a woman who is likely to be identified as a witch is generally known in the village. We thought, therefore, it was necessary to understand the driving factors in persecution and hunting of supposed witches. The accounts of persecution and hunting were narrated by the victims themselves or by their survivors. Social exclusion, through some form of boycott or marginalisation, is common to all the persecutions under witch hunts. We now deal with the manner in which witch persecutions intersect with the different forms of exclusions. Table 2 Table 2 Forms of exclusion in witch persecutions in Indian case studies Forms of exclusion 1. Knowledge, including ritual and unconventional religious practices

Number of cases 17

2. Economic 2.1 Land

17

2.2 Against doing better (jealousy)

11

2.3 Strangers in the village

12

3. Political 3.1 Women’s agency and assertion of rights

09

4. Social, including causing illness

49

Total Source Authors’ analysis of field data of ActionAid study

115

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summarises the field data of factors in witch hunts, classifying them by the forms of exclusion involved. These exclusions range from the background factor of causing illness, which is used to identify a woman, sometimes a man, as using supernatural powers to create evil, to more proximate factors such as economic exclusion, e.g. from land, or political exclusion, e.g. from asserting agency or holding office.

5.1 Supposed Reasons for Exclusion: Illness and Misfortune In the background of witch hunts is the occurrence of illness and other misfortune happening in the community. In subsistence economy of indigenous peoples, there is little development of healthcare facilities. Any minor or major illness is seen as an act of misfortune, caused by supernatural powers, an act of a witch. In the absence of an adequate healthcare system, the default social understanding of illness is as caused by an evil intention or mischief of some witch. The affected family or individual consults the ojha, and he is likely to identify an elderly, unsupported woman who is said to have used her witchcraft power to cause such illness or death. In our study of 115 cases, 41 women (and men) were accused of causing illness and deaths in the local areas. In a very inhuman, brutal way she would be tortured or killed to free the community from further spread of disease or death. In this sequence of events, the identification of the person supposedly causing illness is carried out by the male witch finder, called ojha or badwa in local languages.

Box 1 Mitti (name changed) lives with her husband and children in a village in Alirajpur district, Madhya Pradesh. She was living next to her brother-in-law and his family in their ancestral home. The brother-in-law’s daughter fell sick and did not show any sign of improvement. The brother-in-law took the daughter to a local ojha, instead of taking the girl to the doctor. The girl’s condition deteriorated further. Seeing this, the brother-in-law and his wife started blaming Mitti for the girl’s illness, fighting with Mitti and her husband and forcing them to leave the house. Mitti, with her husband, now live in a separate house; and she is constantly heckled as a witch by her sister-in-law and others in the village. She was unable to take any legal action due to the absence of any legal mechanism to protect her from this harassment of being branded a witch in the community. Source Research team of Madhya Pradesh

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5.2 Seizing Land Land is the key factor of production in indigenous and rural communities that were studied. Except for Meghalaya, with its matrilineal system, all the other states practice patrilineal descent; land is passed from father to son or sons. Women do not get any share of land. As widows, women can have varying rights in land, from maintenance to managing rights in land. After the death of the widow, if there are no sons, the land will pass on to the husband’s nearest male relatives, such as the brother-inlaw or nephew. Seizing land from widows was noted as a major cause of women’s persecution and witch hunts of elderly and widowed women in our research sites. The connection between the attempts to deny women land rights and witch persecution was made in Kelkar and Nathan in 1991. It has since been brought up in many studies, including those conducted over the past several years by Partners in Law and Development (PLD, 2012, 2014) and in various newspaper reports. In the seizure of land and other properties, it is not women who are breaking rules of control and management of land. It is the male relatives who are breaking these rules in trying to quickly acquire control over land and properties from single/widowed/unsupported women. This seems to be an attempt to establish a stronger form of patriarchy, one where women have no property rights and where even maintenance is at the will of men. Along with this, it is also an attempt to increase economic growth of the lineage or extended family. After the death of the husband and with no sons, the surviving widow is not a part of the lineage. In our case studies, we noted that many cases of witch violence have a background of struggles over land, particularly the attempts of relatives on the male side to take over land held by widows or unsupported women.

5.3 Levelling Through Witch Hunts In the traditional indigenous and rural societies, the families had reciprocal redistributive mechanisms of feasting which ensured that surpluses were not accumulated, preventing the rise of permanent distinctions within the village. In case any such accumulation did take place, more deliberate actions of forced feasting were undertaken to ensure that permanent class distinctions did not get set. We can see such examples of redistributive mechanisms among the Munda in Jharkhand, but there are similar institutions of redistribution among other indigenous and rural communities too, such as Khasi of Meghalaya, which ensured that at the village level, only the families of Lyngdoh (the priest) were better off than the rest. However, with the growth of the market economy during the colonial period, inequalities seem to have grown and led to jealousy. Jealousy was stated as a factor in witch accusations right in the 1850s (Mallick, 2017). Jealousy, as seen now, can be related to any kind of difference, such as of having more food, cattle, or fields, or children doing better in school, or migrant daughter working in metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Gurugram who sends some money home to buy consumables related to urban life. As the study

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of Khasi society suggests, ‘The idea of jealousy over riches is something that has been stated by many community members … the greed for wealth is directly associated with the worship of ‘U Thlen’ (the serpent), who is fed on human blood’. Furthermore, the well-off persons are often looked at with suspicion as ‘others’ in the village, with the supposition that they have acquired wealth through unfair and suspicious means. The Khasi principle of righteousness ‘kamaiiakahok’ says that one needs to earn ‘as much as one needs, not as much as one wants’. (Field notes in Meghalaya, December 2020.) Thus, who are better off are already identified as ‘others’ and further excluded through the rituals of finding the person/s who are getting rich by feeding human blood to the serpent. Among the matrilineal Khasi, our case studies showed that men were often the persons identified as accumulating wealth through illicit means. Men can only have personally acquired wealth, while inherited wealth belongs to women. Personally acquired wealth then seems an illegitimate form of accumulation, qualifying the men to be excluded from the community. Women too are subject to this form of exclusion, but our case studies show more men being subjected to exclusion because of accumulation. This is something that requires further investigation.

5.4 Exclusion: Strangers as Better Off The recent market-based economic changes, reinforced by patriarchal socio-political systems, have transformed the earlier village-based morality, leading to a breakdown of traditional norms, and bringing forth reactions to a breakdown of norms. In this situation, we have observed an identification of those from outside the village as strangers, and thus deserving to be excluded. In the case of Meghalaya, for example, we came across several cases where a person from outside the village, if seen visiting the village, was attacked for his supposed witchcraft activities. The village children or adults would see him as a ‘men-ai-ksuid’ (witch) or a ‘menshonoh’ (worshipper of the serpent, ‘U Thlen’), who has presumably come to collect human blood for ‘U Thlen’. In the process, the person would be attacked by the villagers. During the fieldwork in East Khasi Hills of Meghalaya in October–November 2020, our research team noted persons or families who are well off are often looked on as the ‘others’ in the village. Similarly, strangers are often looked at with suspicion since they do not belong to the community.

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6 Exclusion from Spiritual Knowledge

Box 2 Bah Trey is a businessman at Mawryngkang, near Pongkung. In 2013, he and his family was accused of practising witchcraft when one of their workers was accused of chasing a cowherd, from Domsohpian village, who was apparently ‘not well in the head’. Consequently, the worker was physically assaulted by some family members of the accuser. The situation escalated and the family of the cowherd along with many other villagers from Mawryngkang and nearby villages flocked to his house and set the house on fire along with a couple of cars that the family owned and some that they had hired for their business ventures. His family was threatened by the 300 strong crowd which accused them of hiring workers to chase the cowherd. Some of the crowd were their own workers; one, in particular, worked at their shop. Their house was torched because the crowd believed that they harboured a ‘U Thlen’ and burning the house would burn the ‘Thlen’. The eldest daughter called the police during the incident after which an FIR was filed. However, the case did not reach the court and those arrested by the police faced three months imprisonment. Source Research team of Meghalaya Knowledge in indigenous societies (as in others too) can be divided into two categories, one of production and the other of ritual. Ritual knowledge is both more difficult to acquire and is accorded a higher social valuation than production knowledge. Women are excluded from higher ritual knowledge. Transgression of this exclusion is punished by denunciation and persecution as witches. Thus, the creation and enforcement of this exclusion from knowledge creates a durable inequality, more so between women and men. This knowledge-based inequality is a critical step in the formation of patriarchy, which is the domination of men in all major spheres of social life, the economic, political and ritual spheres (Kelkar & Nathan, 2020). Among the Munda, Santhal and other patrilineal indigenous societies in India women are not supposed to know the clan spirits. A woman who is observed openly praying can often be suspected of praying to the clan spirits for special powers. This is used to secure good fortune for herself or her family. She is expected to play a service role, e.g. cleaning the place of worship, and cooking for the spirit worship occasions, but not to participate in praying to the spirits, and keeping herself away when a man is praying to the clan spirits. Along with exclusion from full participation in traditional rituals, there is also, at times, a stigmatisation of adoption of other religious practices. An attempt of a woman to chant to a Hindu god or, in some, conversion to Christianity can result in her being declared a witch and thus deserving punishment in terms of physical torture or being driven out of the community. In some cases, a hefty fine or serious penalty has to be paid before she is allowed to live in her village or in her household.

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In the ActionAid study, studies there were 17 cases of women being declared witches because of their adoption of unconventional religious practices, such as chanting the names of Hindu gods.

Box 3 Patti Rabha (name changed) with her husband and four children lived in a village in Goalpara district, Assam. She had set up a small temple of Shiva and Parvati (Hindu gods) in her house. This was not a normal practice among the villagers, and they used to hold her in suspicion. One day in July 2006, someone left a dead snake in front of her house, which her husband picked up and threw away. This was seen as Patti’s engaging with witchcraft, a witch who worshipped the god Shiva with snake encircling his neck. Next day, an old man died for which Patti was held responsible. People came thronging into her house and destroyed the temple and the house including plants and trees. Her hands were tied, and she was badly beaten by the villagers. Ina meeting organised the same day, a decision was made to bury Patti alive. Petrified Patti fled the village with the help of some friends as she saw such an incident happening in the village earlier. Source Research team of Assam

6.1 Political Exclusion: Women’s Agency/Assertion of Rights Women are excluded from village councils, even among the matrilineal Khasi. This political exclusion is also manifested in attacking women who assert their political and other rights in witch hunts. In the ActionAid field studies, there were 9 out of 115 cases in which women were persecuted for being independent and/or assertive. While women are expected to work hard for the well-being of the household or family, they are also expected to remain obedient, subordinate and follow the decisions taken by the household head (mostly men). Within a patriarchal social system, if a woman asserts her independence or rights over resources, she can be branded a witch. Such branding followed by persecution and torture is meant to prevent women from asserting their independence and securing their rights. The 33% reservation of seats in local government (Panchayat) provides women with opportunities of political expression. This, however, is something that is not allowed in indigenous village governance structures. Even in matrilineal Meghalaya, women are not included as members of the village assembly, ‘Dorbar Shnong’. Women’s assertion of their independence and rights can also be in the form of their expressive participation in prayers or worship rituals. Assertion of independence in both social or religious matters can be grounds for witch persecution.

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Box 4 A smart, bold and a dynamic person, especially if it happens to be a female, is more likely to be accused as a witch. Kamla Rabha (name changed), from a village in Assam is an expert weaver and who used to earn good amount by selling clothes. This was envied by some neighbours. She was seen a very bold person and would speak on the face if see saw any misdeeds in the village. Her husband was perceived relatively weak, with limited intelligent. Her smartness was not appreciated by her in-laws too. One day her sister-in-law suffered from vomiting and diarrhoea. Kamla demanded that as a cure a black chicken should be sacrificed. This was regarded as evidence that she was a witch, more so because she was generally disliked for being very bold and strident. It was suggested that a ritual should be organised taking Kamla as the witch. But as the health condition of the patient did not improve, Kamla was accused and a group of persons led by her brother-in-law searched for evidence in Kamla’s house. She was even striped to see if she hid any evidence in her body. Fortunately for her, before more torture, Assam Mahila Samata Society (AMSS) was informed, and her case was settled. Source Research team Assam

6.2 The Outcome of Exclusion Through Witch Hunts: Living as Social Outcasts In many cases in India, the survivors of witch violence have been forced to live as outcasts. During our fieldwork in Jharkhand in 2017, we met 13 women and 1 man who narrated tearful stories of their torture and brutalised persecution. Women, on marriage, move to their marital homes, leaving behind their social connections in their natal villages. In fact, married women are expected to keep minimal relations with their natal families. Those doing more than this can be denounced as witches, as seen in the study by Bleie (1985). When they are attacked as supposed witches, they are usually unable to turn to their natal families for support. This means that they are either forced to live on the margins of the villages or to move to urban slums. Some examples of social exclusion are given below. In cases from Madhya Pradesh, Benedict Damor, founder of Adivasi Chetna, pointed out that in some cases, women are forced to parade naked or publicly bathed naked. After such shaming, the women find it better to leave the village. In a case among the Rabha in Assam, a persecuted woman tried to return to her natal village, but she was not allowed by the residents, since she had been declared a witch in her marital village. In another case among the Rabha in Goalpara, when a woman was threatened with being buried alive, her only escape was to flee the village. These are not isolated incidents. Women accused of

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being witches are forced to leave the marital village. In a sense, they never become full members of the clan in their marital village and, upon marriage, are forced to minimise contact with their natal village. This social exclusion is manifested in their being driven out of villages or forced to live being socially shunned where they are accused of being witches. In a case in Malawi, Africa, even when a woman was acquitted in court of being a witch, she still had to give up her good job and even leave the town (Kelkar & Nathan, 2020). There are social boycotts of these women. The threat of witch persecution can be used to dissuade women from seeking leadership positions, or in otherwise exercising their agency. They and their families are often driven out of the village. This has happened not just among indigenous peoples in central India, but also, for instance, among the Dai in Yunnan, China (Nathan et al., 1998), where there are whole villages populated exclusively by descendants of families driven out as keepers of evil spirits.

6.3 Murder: The Final Exclusion The final exclusion is death and that is the fate of many accused of being witches. There are witch hunt murders in India and Africa. For India, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) (2015 and 2016) shows that a total of 2468 murders were committed between 2001 and 2016, where witch persecution was recorded as the motive. In 2016, 134 persons were killed for supposedly practising witchcraft and were accused of causing illness or deaths of an individual or harming a family, or a community. From 2017 onwards, NCRB does not have specific data on killings due to witch persecution or killings of alleged witches. It is to be noted that NCRB data is likely to be an underestimate of the real figures on witch persecution and witch killings. Some cases of such killings may be recorded as due to land disputes or other conflicts, thus reducing the numbers of killings due to witch persecution. Further, the cases of witch killings do not show other forms of persecution of supposed witches, whether the branding of women as witches, or, their torture though various brutal forms and the threats women face in their communities. It is only after a woman who is branded as a witch is killed that she would find a place in police records. This view was reported to us by ASHA, a Ranchi based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) active in opposing persecution of supposed witches. ASHA estimates that about 100,000 women have been branded as witches in Jharkhand, giving an average of three witch accusations per village in Jharkhand’s 32,000 villages (ASHA report as quoted in Kelkar & Nathan, 2020: 46).

7 Men as Witches Some men are also attacked as witches. They are usually branded as witches for three reasons: (1) when a man is seen to oppose the witch accusation against his

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partner or wife, in particular, at a time when she is tortured or likely to be killed; (2) when the household has accumulated wealth or resources and refused to relate to the community members on equal terms in community gatherings, feasting and dancing, or he is seen as considering himself above others; and (3) when a man is seen as engaging in accumulation through exploiting others. In traditional Khasi society of Meghalaya, accumulation is directly associated with worship of ‘U Thlen’ (the serpent), who feeds itself with human blood. The well-off persons are socially considered as ‘others’ in the community and like ‘strangers’ visiting the community for their own greedy interests. They are considered to have exploited villagers to feed the ‘U Thlen’ for their wealth. They are often in a negative relationship between ‘us’, the clan-based community, and ‘others’. These well-off ‘other’ are unwelcome and unknown ‘strangers’ and are also in a negative relationship with the community and have refused to share ‘surplus food’ and accumulated resources. For the community to remain a cohesive Khasi society, they are thought to deserve to be eliminated like visiting strangers, who are usually looked upon with suspicion and are often pushed out from the village, while some are killed or tortured. Interestingly, in the matrilineal Khasi’ society of Meghalaya, a larger number of men (11 of 13 cases) were accused of practising witchcraft and even more strange, men were both accusers and accused. It is to be noted that in this matrilineal system, land and lineage are the women’s domain, but decision-making in the ‘Dorbar Shnong’ (the village assembly of males) and in other such structures of governance are the male domain. We have seen that witch hunts are part of the process of creating or maintaining social exclusion. Exclusion of women from higher knowledge, from ownership of economic assets, chiefly land, and from political participation all create what we termed a durable inequality. Transgression of the boundaries, such as through acquiring higher knowledge or claiming rights to land and political leadership, are met with witch hunts. Thus, witch hunts in these indigenous societies are a method of enforcing the boundaries that create forms of social exclusion. We now turn to what has been done to reduce the persecution of women (and some men) as witches.

8 Dealing with Exclusion: Role of Law In India, there is no national level legislation that penalises witch hunting and the state-level laws are too weak to act as potential deterrents. But the various provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1860 are used to register offences and cases. The different sections invoked in such cases are Sec. 302, which deals with murder; Sec. 307, attempt to murder; Sec. 323 hurt; Sec. 376 for rape; and Sec. 354 which deals with the curiously termed ‘outraging the modesty of a woman’. The gendered nature of the crime of witch persecution is only brought out through charges in Section 376 for rape and Sec. 354 for sexual harassment of some kind. Some states have come up with laws to specifically tackle the problem of witch hunting. Bihar was the first to pass the ‘Prevention of Witch (Dayan) Practices Act’ in 1999. Since this was the then-unified Bihar, it also applied to what is now Jharkhand. But when the state of

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Jharkhand was formed it passed its own ‘Anti-Witchcraft Act’ in 2001. Sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 of this Act deal with punishment for denouncing a person as a witch and causing any damage to them. Section 7 deals with the procedure for trial. In Odisha and Assam, civil society and women activists took the initiative to press for anti-witch persecution laws, which were passed in 2013 and 2015, respectively. All these acts prescribe various types of punishment, including prison terms and fines, for labelling someone a witch, causing her harm, and so on. But the punishment in these Acts is less than in corresponding sections of the IPC. For instance, the Jharkhand Act prescribes a maximum sentence of four months simple imprisonment for causing ‘physical and mental harm’, which is lower than the sentence provided under IPC. The existence of a law against witch persecution certainly serves to draw attention to the existence of the practice and the necessity of eradicating it. These laws, however weak, have resulted in creating a fear of legal punitive action among the ojhas or badwas. However, there was also a case in Jharkhand where a woman who was being accused of practising witchcraft went to the ojha and threatened to take him to court if he confirmed her a witch. ‘This threat of legal action worked and the ojha did not declare her a witch’ (Kelkar & Nathan, 2020: 214). This shows that proactive actions of the state in a situation where a law has been enacted, women who live in fear of being declared a witch or driven out of the community can take action to save themselves. The ojhas are no longer as powerful as they used to be in the years prior to anti-witch laws. But, since the punishment provisions are quite meagre, even less than those under corresponding sections of the IPC, it is doubtful if they serve as deterrents. This is not an argument against stricter punishment but meant to point out the inadequacy of dealing with witch persecution only as a legal matter. The strong belief systems behind witch accusations and the social belief surrounding witch persecution need to be dealt with, along with a more effective legal and punitive system.

9 Police and Administration We deal with the police and administration together since it is their task to implement the laws and provide protection to those who are under threat of their human rights being violated. The police are the first officials of the state who the victims and their families approach, either on apprehending danger or after the event. In both Odisha and Assam, there seems to be a high incidence of victims or their relatives approaching the police This is different from the case of Jharkhand where the incidence of approaching the police is somewhat lower. There are many pressures from the community not to approach the police (PLD, 2012: 7). Such pressures are likely to be exerted in all areas, but they seem to be more effective in Jharkhand than in other study states. Of course, it could also be that in Jharkhand, compared to Assam and Odisha, the alleged witches and their families are themselves less inclined to approach the police, believing that these are internal matters that should be settled within the community. The police too seem to take a similar attitude of indifference.

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Where there is not a murder involved, they suggest a compromise. As pointed out in PLD (2012), it is not at community forums that compromises are suggested or arrived at, but at the police stations. Until a murder takes place, this seems to be the preferred option of the police. Discussions with the police and other officials reveal that the police and administration consider witch persecution a matter of indigenous people’s belief. That is correct as far as it goes, but such an understanding should not militate against official action on receiving complaints of harassment, abuse, or torture. Many officials themselves harbour these beliefs. For instance, at a meeting in Nandurbar in Maharashtra, the Deputy Collector was reported to have made a ten-minute speech on who is a witch, her appearance, what she does, etc. With such beliefs being held by the officials whose job, it is to protect the victims whose rights have been violated, it should come as no surprise that police are found to ‘lack the will to implement the laws and undertake vigorous investigation’ (PLD, 2012). Most of the case studies (Kelkar & Nathan, 2020; PLD, 2012, 2014) show that the police usually intervene only when a murder takes place. Murder is a crime that the police cannot ignore, and the police are forced to file an FIR and follow up with investigation and a case. But the frequent failure of the police to intervene earlier, when warned of someone being branded as a witch, is a high threshold of legal neglect. Where there are actual violations of rights, as through naming a person a witch or assaulting the person, there is no intervention by the police and administration. Such branding violates Sec. 504 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) ‘intentional insult to provoke breach of peace’; and Sec. 506 ‘criminal intimidation’. Offences under both these sections carry prison sentence of 2–7 years. We also saw in cases in Assam and Odisha that when police intervened at an early stage of witch accusation or persecution, it did help to forestall escalation into murder.

10 Court Cases When cases come up before the courts, there are further problems. Influenced by social belief about witchcraft, in many cases, witnesses do not come forward to testify. The alleged witch has a fear of having to continue living within a community. The close kinship relationship between survivors and perpetrators makes it difficult for witnesses to come forward in public testimony. It is not just a matter of community involvement. It is also the power relations within the community, with the ojha or other such persons belonging to the more powerful within the community. In addition, the majority support to the accusation also makes it difficult for progressive dissenters to come forward. The witnesses that do come forward are those who are closely related to the victims. And, the testimonies of such family members as witnesses are frequently rejected by the courts (PLD, 2014), obviously suspecting bias among the witnesses. This, however, ignores the important point that only close family members are likely to go against community opinion in appearing as witnesses. After all these hurdles to being found guilty, judges could end up being lenient in sentencing because of the strong indigenous beliefs involved. One judge in Odisha found this to be a

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mitigating factor. ‘Superstitious belief that he was morally justified in committing the murder’ was made the mitigating factor for a lenient sentence (Cornell, 2014).

11 Curbing Influence of Witch Finders The authority of the ojha or badwa (the witch findesr and traditional healer) is embedded in the institutional structure of indigenous and rural societies. For the local people, he interprets formal rules, unwritten social and economic rules, formal social conventions, gender norms and behaviour, shared beliefs about the cause and cure of disease, as well as the means of enforcement to limit their individual behaviour. In a Focus-Group-Discussion in a village in Mayurbhanj in Odisha (18 October 2020), the ojha was defined as ‘… those individuals who are supposed to have some magical power or healing capacities. People believe that they can save others from witchcraft. The ojhas are usually responsible for branding an individual as a witch’. The ojha or badwa plays a key role in identifying witches and in advising the people how to free themselves from supposed witch attacks. In an interview with our research team in Madhya Pradesh, a badwa of Sadwa block said that ‘witches are shape shifters and can turn into a dog, buffalo or any other animal to harm people. Whoever the witch casts an evil eye on can get stomach ache, itchy eyes, body rashes, or fever’. Furthermore, some panchayat members believe that ‘both women and men can be witches, but it is mostly women. When a witch passes by you, you can feel a chill in your body, they can also cause instant headache and illness. A badwa can find out who is the witch, if witch has caused his/her death. Sometimes it is necessary to kill the witch, so she does not cause more deaths’ (research team’s interview in a village in Alirajpur district of Madhya Pradesh). In a majority of the cases, the village ojha has a critical role in identifying a person as a witch. Prior to the state-level witch prevention law, the ojha would be consulted to identify a witch, most likely an old and unsupported woman, who is supposed to have caused illness or some misfortune to the family or community. In recent years, two factors have decreased the influence of ojhas: the witch prevention acts in several states and an increase in healthcare facilities in rural areas. Nonetheless, given the fact of poor health care in indigenous and rural areas and marginal implementation of the witch prevention laws, the ojha still holds influence on the villages, acting as a healer and witch finder. What the above shows is that besides legal steps it is necessary to deal with the powerful ojhas as witch finders. Their influence needs to be reduced. That, however, also depends on reducing the role of the cultural beliefs of misfortune being caused by women’s supernatural powers.

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12 The Path Forward: How Do We End Witch Hunts? In recent years, two positions have emerged to deal with the witch persecution and hunting. The first, the need for a central or national law with effective and enforceable mechanisms; and the second, there is belief in witchcraft through which harm is caused to others, but persecution and killing of women (and men) has to be stopped. We see the first position, though needed but is likely to have limited results, and the second can result in ambiguities, as seen in the case of several countries in Africa. At a general level, we have pointed to three actions regarding the decline and eventual end of witch persecution and hunting: (1) effective state mechanisms against persecution and killing of witches; (2) change in patriarchal mind-sets and attitudes towards witch persecution and hunting; and (3) the demand for concrete evidence of witchcraft and building community support to dismantle the authority and power of ojhas, badwas and the like. A review of European history indicates four changes, in particular, that had a bearing on the decline of witch persecution and prosecution: (1) introduction of legal safeguards, including legal assistance in the treatment of alleged witches, with resulting effects on ‘judicial scepticism’, leading to a fundamental doubt whether the witchcraft practice even existed; (2) change in thinking regarding witchcraft practice, as a result of expansion of the rational, scientific and secular education that denied the reality of the witchcraft practice and the possibility of its crime; (3) improved standard of living and the rise in available and effective medicine; and (4) change from rurality to urban environments, where communities came to be continuously in a state of flux, with less intimate and collective community and shared group knowledge, providing a pathway for increasingly interrupted traditions and beliefs, thus weakening the grounds for accusation of misfortunes or maleficium (Davis, 2008; Levack, 2008). Socio-economic structural transformations are gendered processes, embedding in them the malcontents of modernity of targeting women as witches. It is to be noted that women have played an important influential role in challenging masculine prerogatives. For example, the most diminished categories of social relationship are the status of ‘head of the family’ generally held by men, which has declined in the developing world and the power to provide can no longer be exercised (Mbembe, 2006). With women’s greater involvement in agriculture and unorganised sectors in the developing economies, there is greater economic emergence for women. Research on women’s roles in agricultural production and in the unorganised sector shows that men’s position and power to provide for the family can no longer be held as masculine prerogatives. The legal and norms-based inequality in feminist economic analysis raises questions about men’s role as decision-makers and owners of land and property within the family and outside in the wider society. Some policy efforts to change this type of gender inequality (for example, The Hindu Succession Amendment Act, 2005) are limited by social norms and cultural systems. These barriers need to be changed with a multipronged approach: (1) The state-instituted measures for women’s unmediated rights to productive assets land and property; and (2) providing economic incentives for change in misogyny in social norms and individual attitudes, like zero-stamp

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duties in case of land and property transfers in women’s names; and (3) along with these, the state and central governments need to institute universal forms of social security, like provision for education (including higher and technical education), health care, and nutrition as well as freedom from gender-based violence within the domestic sphere, workplaces and in public spaces. What needs to be understood and advocated that these universal forms of social security are not deductions from productive investments. The state provision for universal forms of social security measures and women’s freedom from gendered mobility are productivity enhancing measures. An earlier research (Kelkar & Nathan, 2020) and our field research show that the socio-economic context of indigenous and rural societies in India has changed from a non-accumulative to an accumulative economy. In the current economic transformation, we notice a paradox of a rise in hegemonic masculinity and women’s increased struggles against this hegemonic masculinity. Rather than carrying witch persecution and hunting to oppose the system of accumulation, a better option would be the stateinstituted enforceable measures for new forms of rights-based approach to embrace dignity and equality of women. We noted that witch prevention laws in several states of the country, have brought some change in the earlier fearless persecution and hunting of women as witches. Both the ojhas and the community or familial actors engaged in witch hunting have a sense of fear about legal punitive action by police. This sense of fear about being engaged in an illicit activity, with some additional measures, can act as a deterrent to witch persecution and hunting. There is a need for stringent laws, including a central national law against witch persecution. An effective implementation of the national/central law can change reportedly hesitant and timid action by police and social scepticism, leading to a fundamental change in norms about the existence of witches and witchcraft practice. Any legal change by itself may not work in ending the violence against supposed witches. Two simultaneous policy measures are required to minimise and eventually end the practice of belief in witchcraft and the justification of violence related to such a belief. First, decentralised healthcare facilities in rural and indigenous areas. In nineteenth century in central India (now the state of Chhattisgarh), cholera was thought to be caused by witches (see Macdonald, 2004: 22–23). Later, people came to understand that cholera is related to unclean water and it can be treated with oral rehydration. This ended the ‘cholera witches’ phenomenon, though belief in witches took other forms, including fever and general illness with its potential threat to death of children and adults. Second, a policy change in the belief about the existence of witches and witchcraft practice is also needed. Norms related to such a belief can change. They can change with political measures to promote indigenous and rural women’s engagement with elevated socio-political tasks and roles. It is important to recognise that a structure of gender norms has internal dynamics of change, undermining the present patterns in gender roles. Some mediating factors in this potential change can be access and use of technology, such as mobile phones, television and forces of gender-specific democratisation brought about by the women’s movement that campaign against the notion of persons acquiring evil powers and organising discussions by local, genderresponsive, women’s groups on good examples of resistance against the witch belief,

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of women who successfully fought against being branded/persecuted as a witch There are examples, such as Chutni Devi in Jharkhand and Birubala Rabha in Assam, who were recently honoured with ‘Padmashri’ award for their work with the alleged witches as well as Haribai of Rajasthan who successfully fought against the castebased group of grabbers of her land and now lives in her village with dignity and right in her house and land (Kelkar & Nathan, 2020). A combination of all these examples is likely to diminish and eventually end the belief in witches and witchcraft. Recently, in a High Court case in 2018, the belief in witchcraft was considered as a mitigating circumstance in case of witch hunts. Likewise, in South Africa too, courts have reduced sentences on the ground of the perpetrators’ belief in witchcraft (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1999). As we understand, there is one legal system and the varied cultural ideas of justice. Admittedly, the cultural ideas of justice may not all be uniform. Survivors of witch hunts may have different idea of culture-based justice from the perpetrators of witch violence. We think, however, that it is necessary to be careful with the use of belief or culture as mitigating circumstance. What about the case of ‘Sati’ (widow burning) or more recent ‘honour killing’ of women, who get married against the traditional norms of their family or community? It would be difficult to argue that beliefs of a particular culture should be accepted as mitigating circumstances. The role of the state in providing unmediated productive assets and resource-based equality and dignity to indigenous and rural women, social security, and freedom from fear of violence in domestic and public spaces are crucial in the attempt to overcome witch persecution and witch hunts. More important, however, is the withering away of beliefs in witchcraft through legal changes and by instituting policy and practice of changing misogyny in social norms and of dignity to women in individual and collective attitudes. Acknowledgements This chapter is based on a larger report conducted for ActionAid, Associations, India and Kessel University, Germany.

References Bleie, T. (1985). The cultural construction and the social organization of gender: The case of Oraon marriage and witchcraft. Ch. Michelsen Institute. Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (1999). Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: Notes from the South African post-colony. American Ethnologist, 26(2), 279–303. Cornell International Human Rights Clinic. (2014). International law memorandum: Jharkhand’s obligation to prevent witch-hunting. Retrieved from http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/ClinicalPrograms/international-human-rights/upload/-1-Witch-Hunt-Brief-2.pdf Davis, O. (2008). Urbanisation and the decline of witchcraft: An examination of London (1997). In D. Oldridge (Ed.), The witchcraft reader (pp. 353–366). Routledge. Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). (2006). India 2005–06. Government of India. Haraway, D. (1991). A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the late twentieth century. In D. Haraway (Ed.), Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature (pp. 149–181). Routledge.

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Harding, S., & Hintikka, M. B. (Eds.). (2004). The feminist standpoint reader: Intellectual and political controversies. Routledge. Hutton, R. (2004). Anthropological and historical approaches to witchcraft: Potential for a new collaboration? The Historical Journal, 47(2), 413–534. Kelkar, G., & Nathan, D. (1991). Gender and tribe. Kali for Women. Kelkar, G., & Nathan, D. (2020). Witch hunts culture, patriarchy and structural transformation. Cambridge University Press. Levack, B. P. (2008). The decline of witch prosecutions (1999). In D. Oldridge (Ed.), The witchcraft reader (pp. 341–348). Routledge. Macdonald, H. (2004). Resolution and rupture: The paradox of violence in witch accusations in Chhattisgarh, India (Ph.D. dissertation). School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London. Mallick, A. (2017). Santal women and the rebellion of 1855 in colonial India. ANTYAJAA: Indian Journal of Women and Social Change, 2(1), 11–23. Mbembe, A. (2006). Politics as a form of expenditure. In J. Comaroff & J. Comaroff (Eds.), Law and disorder in the postcolony (pp. 273–298). The University of Chicago Press. Nathan, D., Kelkar, G., & Yu, X. (1998). Women as witches: Struggles to change gender relations. Economic and Political Weekly, 38(44), 59–69. Nathan, D., & Xaxa, V. (Eds.). (2012). Social exclusion and adverse inclusion: Deprivation and development of adivasis in India. Oxford University Press. National Crime Records Bureau. (2015 and 2016). India crime statistics. Retrieved February 02, 2021, from www.ncrb.in Needham, R. (1978). Primordial characters. University Press of Virginia. Partners for Law in Development (PLD). (2012). Targeting of women as witches: Trends, prevalence and the law in northern, western, eastern and north-eastern regions of India. Retrieved July 20, 2013, from pldindia.org Partners for Law in Development (PLD). (2014). Contemporary practices of witch hunting: A report on social trends and interface with law. New Delhi. World Bank. (2013). Inclusion matters: The foundation for shared prosperity. The World Bank.

Part II

Inclusionary Policy Outcomes

Chapter 7

MGNREGS in Odisha: Social Inclusion and Exclusion Challenges Supriya Pattanayak

Abstract Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), enacted in 2005, is the Indian Government’s response to the constitutionally manifested right to work and means to promote livelihood security by creating durable assets in India’s rural areas. It provides 100 days of guaranteed work to any person who demands the same. The potential of social protection programs to go beyond the safety net-centred application and leading to social inclusion, empowerment and meeting larger sustainable development goals is increasingly recognised. Therefore, it requires a commitment to change that is gradual and incremental. MGNREGS in the state of Odisha has failed to include and led to exclusion of those who most require it, the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, persons living below the poverty line and especially women across these categories. This chapter is based on an empirical study conducted in four districts of Odisha, Bolangir, Kalahandi, Nuapada and Baragarh. The chapter demonstrates the challenges to social inclusion and exclusion that are reinforced by both state and non-state policies and actors. Further, it highlights that due to the limitations of the program, distress migration as a strategy is adopted by many to augment their income as livelihood options are limited in these geographies.

1 Introduction Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is the central government’s response to the constitutionally manifested right to work and means to promote livelihood security by creating durable assets in India’s rural areas (Roy & Day, 2010), thus strengthening the livelihood resource base of the rural poor. The promulgation of the MGNREGA in 2005, and the scheme that followed, MGNREGS, was meant to guarantee 100 days of employment to any individual from a rural household who demands work (Datar, 2007; Jacob & Varghese, 2006). The MGNREGS wages were meant to provide sustained stimulation to the S. Pattanayak (B) Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_7

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agrarian economy and help alleviate the hardship faced by people who had limited resources and opportunities (GoI, 2012). The works under MGNREGS were targeted towards a set of stipulated rural development activities like water and soil conservation, afforestation, flood control, developing and maintaining community assets like community land, watershed development, road connectivity, construction and repair of embankments, digging of new tanks/ponds, construction of percolation tanks, check dams, etc. (GoI, 2008). It is the worlds’ largest employment guarantee scheme (Vanitha et al., 2012) and public works program that provides a social security net to 15% of the country’s population (World Bank, 2015). The MGNREGS was introduced in 200 districts in 2005–06 and was extended to the entire country covering 619 districts in 2009–10. The unique features of the Act are transparency, accountability measures and provisions for social audits. The Act, in addition to payment of statutory wages, has a provision of payment of unemployment allowance also to a jobseeker who is not provided employment within 15 days of his/her request date. The funding for this scheme is shared between the central and state governments. While MGNREGS can be envisaged as a social protection program to necessarily ensure that nobody who seeks employment is excluded, the literature abounds with examples of varied results (both inclusion and exclusion) across different states, attributed largely to the commitment of the local leadership at the village council level, the level of institutional preparedness and governance capacities (Reddy et al., 2010). They further note that the states which effectively integrated MGNREGS works with local planning gained much in terms of employment generation and asset creation for the poorest. A number of evaluations (Dey & Bedi, 2010; Drèze & Khera, 2009; ISWSD, 2007) have pointed out that in many states, there have been delays in the payment of wages, thus leading to people losing faith. However, job creation (Johnson, 2009), better wages for labourers in lieu of payment of prescribed wages (Banerjee, 2011; Carswell & de Neve, 2014; Jandu, 2010), the improvement in wages leading to an increase in consumption of both food and non-food consumables in some states like Andhra Pradesh (Liu & Deininger, 2010; Ravi & Engler, 2009), rise in household savings (Awasthi et al., 2011) indicate better outcomes for people in rural areas and have overall led to inclusion. Specifically, Mehrotra (2008), Jeyarajan (2011) and Azam (2011) have indicated that higher participation of socially marginalised communities is reflected in several field-based studies, thus clearly highlighting the inclusionary potential of MGNREGS. This chapter draws on data from a study on ‘Managing Distress Migration and Enhancing Resilience through Climate Appropriate Interventions under MGNREGS in Western Odisha’ carried out in 2018–19. The main aim of the study was to understand the extent to which climate change has induced distress migration despite the presence of social protection programs like MGNREGS in the area. The study adopted both qualitative and quantitative approaches including participatory approaches, individual migrant household surveys and focus group discussions in sample villages. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools like social maps, wealth ranking, seasonal maps and time trends were utilised. A total of 600 households from 24 Gram Panchayats of 12 Blocks in the four districts of Nuapada, Bolangir,

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Kalahandi and Bargarh of Odisha constituted the sample. In addition, 36 focus group discussions involving 325 self-help group members were conducted. Further, a survey questionnaire was designed, administered and analysed which constituted the quantitative data. Data was collected by investigators from four partner NGOs who had prior experience in the use of PRA Tools, conducting FGDs and use of questionnaires. Secondary data was also accessed from the official website of MGNREGA, Ministry of Rural Development, Govt of India (https://nrega.nic.in), National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), and Centre for Monitoring of the Indian Economy (CMIE). Some of the challenges faced in data collection from the perspective of inclusion, was that single tribe villages meant greater participation; where there were villages comprising of both Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households, we found that persons from Scheduled Tribes were less likely to actively participate. Most often, only older women participated in FGDs and interviews, social norms meant that younger women would not attend individual interactions/meetings in the presence of older men. For the purposes of this chapter, the data has been viewed through the lens of inclusion and exclusion. While recognising that there have been several benefits of the MGNREGS program to various stakeholders, this chapter attempts to demonstrate the processes of social inclusion and exclusion that are reinforced by both state and non-state policies and actors. Further, contrary to the intentions of the Government of India, the analysis highlights distress migration to be a strategy adopted by many to augment their income as livelihood options are limited. This chapter aims to interrogate whether MGNREGS has been an effective social protection program and asserts that due to its limitations, distress migration has become an adaptive mechanism while at the same time being an outcome of social exclusion. Therefore, it requires a commitment to change that is gradual and incremental. The chapter begins with a theoretical discussion on MGNREGS, Social Protection and Social Exclusion, followed by an introduction to MGNREGS in Odisha and by the analytical framework for the study. The four subsequent sections, discuss the economic context and exclusion, socio-cultural context and exclusion, political context and exclusion and institutional context and exclusion and how addressing them can lead to a social protection policy that is truly transformative. The last section provides some concluding observations.

2 MGNREGS, Social Protection and Social Exclusion There is increasing recognition of the potential of social protection programs to go beyond the safety net-centred application—focused on meeting people’s basic needs in an inclusive manner—and leading to social inclusion, empowerment and larger sustainable development goals. Further, as Sabates-Wheeler and Devereux (2008) suggest, social protection also addresses the ‘non-economic’ and/or ‘social vulnerabilities’ created by structural inequalities and inadequate rights, which is true of MGNREGS as it is a demand-driven program. In as much as MGNREGS promotes investments in human capital, enhancing the future income earning capacity and the

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creation of durable assets leading to long-term economic security, it makes it a very popular program. Several studies highlight the benefits accrued to people due to the implementation of MGNREGS. One of the arguments posed here is whether MGNREGS has served effectively as a social protection program. A social exclusion lens is best suited for this analysis. For this, it is firstly important to understand what social protection means. Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler (2004) define social protection as ‘all public and private initiatives that provide income or consumption transfers to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks and enhance the social status and rights of the marginalised, with the overall objective of reducing the economic and social vulnerability of poor, vulnerable and marginalised groups’ (p. iii). Similarly, Babajanian and Hagen-Zanker (2012) refer to social protection as ‘publicly mandated policies and programs to address risk and vulnerability among poor and near poor households’ (p. 1). UNICEF’s (2012) Social Protection Strategic Framework maintains that social protection must support actions that tackle social exclusion in accessing services and achieving an adequate standard of living. The World Bank (2012) emphasises social protection as enhancing ‘opportunity’ by building human capital and assets and allowing individuals to make productive maintenance. The question is how can human capital and assets be built when the contexts are so adverse and the conditions so inadequate. Likewise, it is equally important to understand social exclusion. In the social policy and social development literature, social exclusion has been used to conceptualise human deprivation and establish the mechanisms that produce and reproduce it (Babajanian & Hagen-Zanker, 2012). Millar (2007, p. 3) defines social exclusion as ‘the inability of people to participate, which implies that there are several dimensions to it, including not only the material but also the social and political’. Likewise, Silver (2007, p. 1) refers to social exclusion as a dynamic process that ‘precludes full participation in the normatively prescribed activities of a given society and denies access to information, resources, sociality, recognition, and identity, eroding self-respect and reducing capabilities to achieve personal goals’. Bhalla and Lapeyre (1997, cited in Bhalla & Luo, 2013, p. 21), note that ‘the different dimensions of exclusion can be grouped into two main categories of (a) distribution, pertaining to economic exclusion, poverty and deprivation and (b) relations, pertaining to its social and political aspects’. The interaction between these two aspects challenge the conventional focus of exclusion, that of poverty. Based on various studies on social exclusion, one can conclude that exclusion is not merely a synonym of poverty, but it is multidimensional, relative and structural. The framework provided in the chapter attempts to explain social protection within specific economic, social-cultural, political and institutional contexts that affects people’s well-being and how MGNREGS addresses different dimensions of deprivation, their underlying causes and the attempts to bring about transformative change that is gradual and incremental leading to equity, social justice and empowerment. In using social exclusion for the purposes of social protection analysis, Babajanian and Hagen-Zanker (2012) propose two components of social exclusion as being deprivation outcomes and deprivation processes. By deprivation outcomes, they mean

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the extent of economic and social disadvantage that people experience in different livelihood dimensions, that is, from incomes, essential services and participation, including social (social interactions and ceremonial events) and political (participation in the public sphere). To determine the deprivation processes, they note, it is more challenging and can be done by unbundling the drivers that contribute to different forms of deprivation. These may be vulnerabilities related to the life course at an individual level or discriminatory norms and practices at the group and societal level. In analysing the outcomes, it can be noted that access to some key dimensions of well-being are mediated through incomes; income exclusion leads to several other exclusions, such as from services. However, exclusion from services can also be the result of inequitable social policies. Where MGNREGS is concerned, we note that in the four selected study districts of Odisha, access to waged employment has enabled inclusion along some dimensions of well-being, it has meant adequate food, better health care and education for some, but it has been inadequate in fostering social capital for many and as a result, it has led to distress migration. The analysis of processes of deprivation indicates that individual and social factors that limit the ability to generate income or access essential services and take part in social life may not be all important. Sometimes, social protection can improve livelihood outcomes which may not be sustained over a period of time as the structural factors at the root cause of income deprivation have not been addressed. For example, Satpathy et al. (2020) argue that the level of both statutory minimum wages and MGNREGS wages are very low in India, and several implementation bottlenecks inhibit them from delivering results of the program. For wage policies to be effective, wage levels and their adequacy along with full implementation to uphold the entitlements of people are of paramount importance.

2.1 MGNREGS in Odisha Odisha located on the Eastern coast of India has 30 districts, 314 Blocks and 6798 Gram Panchayats. As of 2020, the incidence of multidimensional poverty in India has significantly reduced from 54.7% in 2005 to 27.9% in 2015–16. Although the percentage of persons below poverty line in Odisha is 35.69 (which is not the lowest), the poverty line based on consumption is Rs. 695/- per month in rural areas, which is the lowest in the country (RBI, 2020). In Odisha, MGNREGS (2020–21) generated about 2082 lakh person days of employment and Rs. 350 lakhs direct benefit transactions (DBT) have been transacted. Further, a total of 25.75 lakh assets have been created till date, and 37.05 lakh households have benefited from MGNREGS in the state in 2020–21 (https://nrega. nic.in). Additionally, the data indicates that the average number of person days generated has substantially increased in the state over the years (773.42 lakhs in 2016–17 to 2082.4 lakhs in 2020–21), the average days of employment provided per household (38.08 in 2016–17 to 55.51 in 2020–21) and the average wage rate has also

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been steadily rising (171.51 in 2016–17 to 221 in 2020–21). The total number of households who have completed 100 days of wage employment has also increased over the same period. However, of the 37 lakh total households that worked under MGNREGS in 2020–21, only about 10% of the households completed 100 days of wage employment. The same trend is also seen in the four project districts (https:// nrega.nic.in). Table 1 shows the performance of MGNREGS on various parameters in the four study districts. In the year 2020–21, one notices a steep rise in all parameters, and this can be attributed to the COVID 19 pandemic and the returning migrants in search of work at home.

3 Analytical Framework The analytical framework presented in Fig. 1 indicates that transformative social protection to ensure social inclusion must support equity, social justice and empowerment by addressing structural change and including progressive policies. This can be achieved by taking into account economic, socio-cultural, political and institutional factors. Exclusion has occurred in the community (a) from lack of access to incomes and credit, (b) from inability to participate in the political process, that is, participation in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programs that facilitates public policy that is relevant to peoples’ lives and livelihoods, and (c) from limited ownership of assets.

3.1 Economic Context and Exclusion Of the 30 districts in the state, in 26 districts, more than 90% of agricultural households belonged to the small farmer category. In the four districts identified for the study, more than 80% of households own less than 2 ha of land. In Nuapada, 94.30% of households belong to small farmer category followed by Bolangir (92%), Bargarh (88.7%) and Kalahandi (80.5%) (NSSO, 2013). This unequal distribution of resources has led to increasing hostility, resentment and alienation among those excluded. The inability to access credit due to the lack of collaterals has led to further disadvantage and exclusion. We migrate because we do not benefit from a program like MGNREGS which is meant to help the poor. It makes us angry that we do not get the work when we want it or get payment on time for work done. We also cannot access any loans from banks or middle men as we do not own any land or other assets, only when we migrate, we get advances for our labour. Respondent, Khalkhali village, Bolangir district (source primary data)

Table 2 indicates the person days of work generated by social categories, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and women in the four districts and Odisha as a whole for the year 2020–21. It is evident that the focus has been in the generation of work for the categories of Scheduled Tribes and women, and the Scheduled Castes have

Average days of employment provided per household

Average wage rate per day per Total no of HHs completed person (Rs.) 100 days of wage employment

% payments generated within 15 days

47.51

33.14

Kalahandi 100.01

56.67

2082.4

Bargarh

ODISHA

Source https://nrega.nic.in

1113.89

24.95

53.63

Nuapada

59.48

124.43

829.88

17.77

28.52

15.81

40.5

55.51

49.01

54.7

61.85

61.86

47.9

41.42

42.7

46.75

49.74

38.64

28.72

28.53

36.64

41.17

221

257.31

263

299.28

261.19

186.99

197.59

204.84

220.98

202.96

179.74

181.85

181.93

181.58

181.86

417,924

11,930

23,059

17,769

38,804

160,729

2338

3672

4450

9151

47,227

751

976

698

2905

98.94

97.83

97.25

96.07

98.78

98.28

95.97

98.25

88.95

99.31

99.82

99.87

99.86

99.88

99.93

2020–21 2019–20 2018–19 2020–21 2019–20 2018–19 2020–21 2019–20 2018–19 2020–21 2019–20 2018–19 2020–21 2019–20 2018–19

No of person days generated (in lakhs)

Bolangir

Districts

Table 1 MGNREGS performance in the sample districts

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S. Pattanayak Exclusion from Incomes and Credit Economic

Socio-cultural

Non-availability of livelihood

Burden of exclusion by virtue

opportunities during lean seasons

of gender, caste/ class/ tribal

Non-availability/ inadequate

status, disability

(timeliness, remuneration)

Life course vulnerabilities

availability of Wage Labor (on

Inability of extended family to

demand)

support

Difficulty in access to credit

Strong migration channels

Lack of asset base to help during emergencies Reliability of the livelihood source Political Facilitating

public

Institutional policy

Participation

in

implementation,

monitoring

-

planning, and

evaluation of programs

programs

support during

of

institution

informal for

support

social (for

credit) like active SHGs and/or other community groups.

Ability to exercise one’s rights Inadequate

Lack

Transformative social protection to ensure Inclusion must support Equity, dignity and worth, Structural change and progressive policies

from

time of

Lack of accountability to and of Govt.

PRIs

need

Exclusion from participation

(timeliness, adequacy, accessibility, Exclusion from ownership of assets

terms of support)

Fig. 1 Analytical framework—contexts underpinning social exclusion Table 2 Person days of work generated by social categories 2020–21

SC person days % as of total person days

ST person days % as of total person days

Women person days % as of total person days

Bolangir

14.1

21.88

41.42

Nuapada

11.52

38.64

44.59

Kalahandi

16.95

34.51

42.86

Baragarh

15.71

23.57

37.4

Odisha

13.85

35.07

44.69

Source https://nrega.nic.in

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been woefully excluded. The total person days generated for Odisha for the same period was 2082.4 lakhs. NSSO unit level data (2013) reveals that there is a huge disparity between the rich and the poor. While the bottom 25% of its population has a monthly per capita consumption expenditure (MPCE) of only Rs. 659.00, it is Rs. 96,200.00 for the top 25% of the population comprising of the richest households of the state. These districts also have a high concentration of Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste populations. Approximately, 35% of households do not have job cards. Despite social protection programs like MGNREGS, distress migration and high poverty rates persist in these districts. In assessing the poverty levels in the four districts, it was observed that on an average, 76.2% households have been issued ration cards for purchase of food grains at a subsidised rate, of which the Kalahandi district had the highest number of below poverty line (BPL) cards issued. The respondents from the four districts of Odisha highlight the following issues about the program: over 90% of households mentioned non-availability/insufficient opportunities for wage labour in local job market; over 70% of households mentioned that they had insufficient income to manage their daily expenses; irregular payments, only 14% reported receiving fortnightly payments; high variations in wages reported, from less than Rs. 100/- to more than Rs. 175/- per day; issues in the process of generating demand for wage work, demand versus shelf of projects (provision of work), and finally, it was computed that on an average, 21.40 days of employment were generated per household which was significantly different from government data. There is not enough wage work available locally and there are frequent droughts in this region. These government programs hardly help us when we need them the most. What option do we have than to migrate to the Brick kilns of AP (Andhra Pradesh). Respondent, Kandumunda village, Nuapada district (source primary data) We get around 20 days of work per household. That helps us to some extent, but the payment is irregular. If payment was done on a weekly basis it would have helped us. Mostly road work has been done in our area. Respondent, Chanutmal Village, Bolangir district (source primary data)

The above statements indicate how people have been excluded in these districts. The responses in this study are quite contrary to the official data as indicated in Table 1. The survey indicated that the average wage from MGNREGS was Rs. 174.26 which is more or less similar to official data (Rs. 179.74) of 2018–19. In 2018–19, the average wage from MGNREGS in Odisha was Rs. 179.74 while in 2020–21, the average wage is Rs. 221. The survey data regarding wage rates was closely aligned to the official data for all the four districts as indicated in Table 1. When reporting on issues related to natural resource management (NRM), it was evidenced that 23% households reported that they were beneficiaries of water harvesting systems, whereas 11.7% households reported to have benefitted from plantations. However, it was seen that the quality of infrastructure constructed was poor and this was due to poor technical inputs.

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The Water Harvesting Structure constructed in our village in 2016 was erroneously located on the roadside and did not capture the natural flow from the nearby hills, thus only 4 families benefited from it. What a waste of resources. Respondent, Kalchikachar village, Bolangir district (source primary data)

The respondents also highlighted that there was inadequate community participation and de-valuing of local/traditional knowledge. A pond was constructed under MGNREGS and some of us are benefiting, but it does not have sufficient water for all households of the village. If it was deeper, then it could have retained more water for longer, but our suggestion is never sought or heard. Respondent, Badibahal village, Bargarh district (source primary data)

53% households also reported to have benefited through wage labour in road construction alone. However, there were also reports that these works were not carried out properly. The wage works allocated for the local community are carried out through contractors and machinery. At least if we migrate we get some work and wages. Respondent, Arashkupa Village, Kalahandi district (source primary data)

These findings clearly highlight how the program failed in expanding the resource base for the poor and excluded, and even where it did, the quality was poor. Overall, the data related to NRM works undertaken by MGNREGS, indicated that NRM works had not resulted in arresting distress migration. Further, it was noted that where farm, non-farm, or off farm-based livelihood asset creation was undertaken, it was completely inadequate. As migration is also a phenomena of exclusion or vice versa, the relationship between MGNREGS and migration was also studied. For the purposes of this study, distress migration was understood as migration for survival due to economic and social hardships often without any choice of an alternative livelihood option locally. People resorted to migration also because the livelihood options available to them were not reliable and sustainable. The respondents noted that distress migration occurs when there is ‘insufficient income’, which meant that they were economically excluded. In the study villages, it was observed that this invariably led to social exclusion, that these were persons who were engaged in menial tasks, if anything; they were not specifically involved in community activities, especially in mixed group activities including self-help groups. All these led to a low self-worth among those excluded.

3.2 Socio-Cultural Context and Exclusion It is commonly observed that gender gaps in the labour market persist across the globe. When women do gain employment, they are often underemployed, in informal or in unpaid work. Women’s situation in the labour market is further complicated by

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social norms and expectations as well as household and care responsibilities which keeps them among the poorest (Awad, 2017). In order to redress the above issue, the MGNREGS stipulates that priority should be given to women, mandating that a minimum of one-third of the beneficiaries are to be women who have registered and have requested for work (Schedule II, Section 6 of MGNREGA). Further, the state is obliged to ensure certain worksite facilities to enhance women workers’ participation. The Act also stipulates payment of equal wages to male and female workers. Wage earnings of workers are to be paid directly to the person concerned either through bank or post office savings account. It is noted that MGNREGA has opened up a new opportunity for women workers. For many women, MGNREGS has created opportunities for employment and earning a wage. From the focus group discussions, it was observed that MGNREGA had positive effects on women’s control over household decisions, their bargaining power was enhanced within the household, and they were able to ensure higher expenditure than before on girls education and health. However, the wages they received were not equal to that of men. Earning some money has made a difference. We can spend it on ourselves, we can buy some cosmetic and fancy items. We can also give some change to our children when they go to school. We can supplement the family income so that in times of difficulty, such as illness, we are able to meet some of the needs of the family. Respondent, Kotamal village, Nuapada district (source primary data)

Further, work under MGNREGS is physically demanding manual work and is referred to in the literature as ‘employment of last resort’ (Wray, 2007). Women, sometimes, were unwilling to engage in such hard manual labour, often at some distance from their homes. Discussions also revealed that social norms played a key role in women remaining away from MGNREGS work, where bulk of the care work still was the domain of women and more so when intersecting with caste and economic status. We are willing to do any work but what is offered is too far, it is difficult for us to finish the chores at home and then go to work. Sometimes we do not want to go to the work sites because the older men in the family are going, and we are not supposed to expose ourselves in their presence. Respondent, Chapria village, Kalahandi district (source primary data)

Whereas working women are found to be more likely to manage money, contribute to household decisions on purchase of goods, move more freely outside of the home and are better able to accumulate personal assets, an extremely mixed picture emerged in the study area. In the households studied, more so the scheduled tribe households, we found that women had still not explored the world beyond their communities. Therefore, the notion of empowerment by gaining ‘access to the public sphere’ (Dutta, 2000) or ‘increase in self-worth’ (Sudarshan, 2014) … in our terms, for these women was limited.

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We have never left our villages, never felt the need to, we grow the food we eat and weave the clothes we wear. We depend on the forests for a lot of our needs. Now that the forest resources are depleted, the need for work outside has arisen. Respondent, Jhitki village, Nuapada district (source primary data)

Kabeer’s (2008) view of empowerment as relating to various dimensions of change that lead to an enhanced sense of self-worth and social identity, a capacity to exercise strategic control over resources and lives, that contribute to a more just distribution of power and possibilities, in the home and in society, has informed this study. Women noted that they were often driven to MGNREGS work out of sheer necessity. They found that they had little ability to bargain where incomes were concerned but also recognised that the nature of the work was unskilled; they further reported that they had no voice and no protection; overall the working conditions were unfavourable— this was not empowering. What option do we have, we are not educated (sic) and we have no skills (sic), we can only work for NREGS for whatever money we get. Its back breaking work, often in the sweltering heat, but we have no choice now. Respondent, Sulesuru village, Kalahandi district (source primary data)

An important factor for women being disadvantaged was the lack of support from extended family and community. When the reproductive tasks continued to escalate, and the available household resources declined, then the dependence on extended family and community gets enhanced. When most of the community is in a similar state, as we found in our sample of Scheduled Caste and Tribe households, it was difficult for women to secure the support they were seeking and the combined impact of all these factors often led to migration. As more and more people in our community are unable to meet their needs, they are mostly engaged in meeting the needs of their immediate family. So where previously we could leave our children for a while with extended family members, when we had to go about our work, now it is no longer possible. We could also rely on them for some immediate monetary support or just to share our feelings, but now nobody has anything in excess or the time. Respondent, Durtijharia village, Bargarh district (source primary data)

From the empirical observations presented above, it can be concluded that one of the key reasons for the failure in the achievement of gender equality is the deeply entrenched and interlocking factors that perpetuate women’s disadvantage. It can be observed that limited access to income has contributed to their lack of private and public decision making. Gender stereotypes mean that women perform majority of the unpaid care work thus limiting their opportunities in life, be it education or paid work.

3.3 Political Context and Exclusion The Act empowers ordinary people to play an active role in the implementation of MGNREGS through Gram Sabhas, social audits, participatory planning and other

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means. Discussions and observations with sample households indicated that there was little to mention when it came to participation especially in the political context. Most of the respondents were unaware that there was meant to be a shelf of projects based on a micro plan (for a watershed) that was developed in a participatory manner and even fewer were aware that they could work on the development of their own land and receive wages for the same. We were not consulted where and when the work should be implemented in our village. There was no planning done and sites were randomly chosen to please some powerful people in the village. Therefore, those who needed to benefit from the works the most, did not do so. Respondent, Chingrasara village, Nuapada district (source primary data)

It is needless to reinforce that peoples’ participation in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programs ever since it was propounded by Chambers (1983) has been implemented in a limited fashion. Dheeraja et al. (2013) in their study on factors facilitating participation of women in MGNREGS across states, have noted that inter-state variations in the share of women in employment have been increasing. Studies have further indicated that there is an inherent creative tension between the adoption of a participatory approach and its use to advance public policy goals (Bruges & Smith, 2008). Ahuja (2010) while quoting Shehan ‘… despite the demand-driven intent of the program, workers had little control over when they could work, for how long, and what types of works would move forward’, laments the failure of the participatory process in MGNREGS due to the absence of trained facilitators and the process being undertaken in the peak agriculture season. While Varghese (2016) waxes eloquence about the participatory processes of MGNREGS, he still notes that training is required at several levels and information dissemination is key to its success. Further, the ability of direct stakeholders to exercise their rights across many aspects of the program was compromised for a variety of reasons. We did not feel safe and secure in the presence of only men, our job cards were often taken away by middle men with no explanation and many of us did not receive payment in our accounts. We did not get adequate support from the government officials in that work was not available when most needed and payments were never timely. We were also never told about the provisions such as creches to be made at the worksite. Respondent, Bhonara village, Kalahandi district (source primary data)

This indicates that the ability of women particularly to exercise their rights was intricately connected with their awareness about the program. Eventually, it meant that women were not empowered as daily living was still a struggle.

3.4 Institutional Context and Exclusion Self-help groups (SHG), as part of the convergence efforts of government, aims to empower women through financial inclusion. However, the data from the field

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was wide-ranging. While some women reported that they benefited from SHGs, there were others who said that they were excluded from being members of selfhelp groups. The case study below illustrates what benefits can accrue from SHG membership. Kaikei approached the local government officer for a farm pond, which was approved. She, along with her family dug a pond and also received wages for it from NREGS. She further availed a loan of Rs. 3000/- from the SHG for vegetable cultivation. The farm pond and the loan from SHG opened new doors for income for her during the lean season providing her an alternative to distress migration. Additionally, she also used the pond for pisciculture which earned her additional income. She has since repaid the loan. Her future plans were to establish an onion storage unit, vermi compost unit and a Goatery shed. Case study, Sunapur village of Nuapada district, source primary data

In contrast, despite all efforts by government and other stakeholders, the intractability of exclusion was evident with some women not being able to pay the monthly savings pre-determined by the group, which made them poor candidates for seeking/receiving credit. In the long run, the evidence does not suggest a transformative impact of either MGNREGS or the SHGs in terms of altering the ‘cycle of disadvantage’ (Fredman et al., 2016; Solution Exchange for the Work and Employment Community 2011). The Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) are meant to play a significant role in the implementation of MGNREGS. Where local institutions like PRIs, SHGs, NGOs and CBOs are lacking in vibrancy and a delivery mechanism unresponsive to the needs of the people, it is unlikely that real empowerment can occur. Several discussions on the UN Solutions Exchange (Solution Exchange for the Work and Employment Community, 2011) promoted that District Perspective Plan should be prepared in a participatory mode so that women can also be involved in the preparation of village/Gram Panchayat development plans. In this process, selection of works can be linked to development priorities of Gram Panchayat and gender concerns can also be addressed. However, such efforts by PRIs are hardly happening with respect to MGNREGS.

4 Social Exclusion, Distress Migration and Inclusion It is both gathered from the literature and observed from the field that there were successes and failures in the implementation of MGNREGS. Local solutions with the support of NGOs were observed in some study villages. The case study below indicates that belonging to a particular social category means exclusion and distress migration, but, due to the collaboration between the state, community and civil society organisation, optimal operationalisation of works under the MGNREGS could be achieved, thus arresting distress migration. In Satchuan, a Scheduled Tribe village of Bolangir district, where out-migration was the rule, the village community along with a NGO, established a Job-Seekers’ Committee, whose role was to raise awareness amongst the households on the scope and opportunities of MGNREGA. The NGO facilitated the members to interact with the local government

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officials to demand work. The households migrating declined from 55 in the year prior to this intervention of a total of 97 households, to 36 households in the first year following the intervention, to 16 households in the second year and from the third year on not a single household migrated. Further, the committee could ensure anywhere between 100–200 days of work for the households who sought work. They were able to actively participate in the micro plan preparation and get several water harvesting structures from different departments of government to irrigate 135 acres supporting 80 households, thus ensuring convergence of various schemes. This brought together the Community, the Civil Society Organization and the representatives of the local government to ensure the proper functioning of the program thus leading to a decline in households migrating. Case study, source primary data

Scheduled Tribe individuals comprised 40.8% of the population of migrant households surveyed, followed by 29.1% from Other Backward Classes and 28.1% from the Scheduled Castes. Only 2% of the migrant households surveyed belonged to the general category. It is evident that there is a close relationship between social categories and migration, where there is a greater likelihood of Scheduled Tribe individuals migrating than individuals from other groups. It is well documented that from time immemorial, the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes have been disadvantaged due to the structural inequalities. The caste Hindus are still dominant and continue to subjugate and oppress the Scheduled Tribes and castes and persons of other backward castes, thus leading to exclusion that is sometimes overt and sometimes subtle. This is further complicated by financial and social disadvantage experienced by most of them. These groups are not only income and asset poor, but are also socially excluded and excluded from policy interventions. Needless to say, women were especially disadvantaged, being responsible for all the unpaid work; holding more precarious jobs than men, if they did at all, earned lower wages and had fewer social benefits. The migration experience was also often negative for women, but was perceived as inevitable by them in view of the deprivation faced by women and their families due to exclusion. The challenges of MGNREGS narrated by respondents are summarised below (1) proper targeting not done, that is all the provisions under the Act were not effectively implemented, insufficient days of work provided (often unavailable when most needed); therefore, income is inadequate, and payment was not made on time; (2) there was inadequate livelihood asset creation, supply chain and enabling systems and institutions in place to smoothen the functioning of MGNREGS, that is, existing village level institutions were not responding to the program activities; (3) convergence with other programs for creating sustainable livelihoods is not clearly visible; (4) there was no attempt to shift from waged employment to self-employment. Having highlighted all the above issues, it is important to recognise that the picture emerging regarding MGNREGS and exclusion along various parameters is a mixed one. We also observed that migration while being an adaptive livelihood strategy is also a factor that contributes to exclusion. While some advances are evident, several ruptures are seen on the borderlines. From the issues outlined above, we note that there are several impediments to inclusion. Other than the historical marginalisation and structural inequalities, the corruption in the implementation of the program often means

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that people who need the protection provided by such programs are the most disregarded. Further, the top-down approach and state apathy in promoting social and political inclusion and accommodating difference means that exclusion is reinforced and exacerbated. It is often suggested in the literature that exclusion is intractable; however, it can be observed from the study that planners and implementers would prefer exclusion to be intractable, as their minds remain colonised to a hegemonic Western knowledge system and practice.

5 Concluding Observations It is important to note that MGNREGS could be an effective social protection program by enabling people to improve their incomes; thus in many cases, addressing various vulnerabilities occurring during the life course. However, the growing distress migration in the study area of Odisha clearly indicates how social exclusion continues and is strengthened despite these very provisions of social protection, due to the structural factors at the root of income deprivation not being addressed. Within the provisions of the scheme, some aspects such as non and off farm activities, which could lead to alternate livelihood options and durable assets thus altering the life course of individuals and households were not emphasised. These livelihood options would be especially important for the beneficiaries that were asset poor. Additionally, a livelihood attained through skill enhancement leading to employment was often not considered. Therefore, MGNREGS lost a lot of ground in preventing distress migration. Certain provisions and processes within MGNREGS that have inadvertently led to exclusion have been outlined throughout the chapter. The Odisha study also found that where 100 days of work, extending up to 200 days, were assured, distress migration declined. It was also observed that the work undertaken often was piece meal, and therefore, an area saturation approach starting with clusters (integrated natural resource management), by identifying and focusing on the most deprived areas in the first instance, could be adopted to systematically eliminate all forms of exclusion. In the final analysis, the interactive four-dimensional model of transformative equality pioneered by Fredman (2011, as cited in Fredman et al., 2016) provides a helpful framework for inclusion and attaining substantive equality, that is, to (1) break the cycle of disadvantage, (2) promote respect for dignity and worth, (3) accommodate difference by achieving structural change, and (4) promote political and social inclusion. Breaking the cycle of disadvantage implies putting in place measures to redress the imbalance faced by individuals and groups that have suffered because of their personal characteristics (in this instance, the Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste status overlapped by poverty). Similarly, promoting respect for dignity and worth would imply recognising the harm caused to individuals and groups by harassment, humiliation, stereotyping, prejudice, stigma and negative social attitudes, which at times are unintended. Clearly, one of the responses to the above issues is structural change which involves the redistribution of power and resources

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and change in the societal institutional structures that perpetuate subordination of women and other marginalised groups. Ensuring minimum wages to improve quality of life for all categories of beneficiaries in MGNREGS is one such potential outcome that can lead to structural change. From the study, it is evident that women face greater disadvantage and deprivation, more so from within particular social categories like the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes. The fourth dimension of Fredman’s framework requires the inclusion of the Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste households, and especially women, in the decision making processes. A program such as MGNREGS while having made great strides in addressing issues of sustainable livelihoods is still a long way from being truly protective of the excluded. Social protection in order to be transformative and inclusive must incorporate Fredman’s four dimensions of transformatory equality. Acknowledgements This chapter is based on a study that was commissioned by the Infrastructure for Climate Resilient Growth (ICRG) in India, a Technical Assistance (TA) Program supported by UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to improve the design and implementation of works under MGNREGs, safeguarding previous investments. The funding received from ICRG is gratefully acknowledged. The support of colleagues, Dr. Smita Mishra Panda, Dr. Bibhunandini Das and Ms. Payal Nayak in the conduct of the study is also thankfully acknowledged. The opinions expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the views of ICRG or DFID.

References Ahuja, A. (2010). How participatory is work planning under MNREGA? https://www.ideasfori ndia.in/topics/governance/how-participatory-is-work-planning-under-mnrega.html Awad, A. B. (2017). Foreword. In F. B. de Mattos & S. Dasgupta (Eds.), MGNREGA, paid work and women’s empowerment (Working paper no. 230). ILO. Awasthi, P. K., Rathi, D., & Raghuwanshi, N. K. (2011). MGNREGA and its impact on distress migration: Some facts and emerging issues. Agricultural Economics Research Review, 24, 557. Azam, M. (2011). The impact of Indian job guarantee scheme on labour market outcomes: Evidence from a natural experiment. Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1941959 Babajanian, B., & Hagen-Zanker, J. (2012). Social protection and social exclusion: An analytical framework to assess the links. ODI Background Note, 1–12. Banerjee, K. (2011). The employment guarantee scheme in India. Amandial, No. 21. Bhalla, A., & Lapeyre, F. (1997). Social exclusion: Towards an analytical and operational framework. Development and Change, 28, 413–433. Bhalla, A. S., & Luo, D. (2013). Poverty and exclusion of minorities in China and India. Palgrave Macmillan. Bruges, M., & Smith, W. (2008). Participatory approaches for sustainable agriculture: A contradiction in terms. Agriculture and Human Values, 25(1), 13–23. Carswell, G., & De Neve, G. (2014). MGNREGA in Tamil Nadu: A story of success and transformation? Journal of Agrarian Change, 14(4), 564–585. Chambers, R. (1983). Rural development: Putting the last first. Routledge. Datar, C. (2007). Failure of national rural employment guarantee scheme in Maharashtra. Economic and Political Weekly, 42(34), 3454–3457.

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Devereux, S., & Sabates-Wheeler, R. (2004). Transformative social protection. IDS Working Paper, Brighton: University of Sussex. Dey, S., & Bedi, A. S. (2010). The national rural employment guarantee scheme in Birbhum. Economic and Political Weekly, 45(41), 19–25. Dheeraja, C., Madhuri, N. V., & Daimari, A. (2013). Research study on factors facilitating participation of women in Mahatma Gandhi NREGS. National Institute of Rural Development. Drèze, J., & Khera, R. (2009). The battle for employment guarantee. Frontline, 26(01), 3–16. Dutta, M. (2000). Women’s employment and its effects on Bengali households of Shillong, India. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 31(2), 217–229. Fredman, S., Kuosmanen, J., & Campbell, M. (2016). Transformative equality: Making the sustainable development goals work for women. Ethics and International Affairs, 30(2), 177–187. GOI. (Government of India). (2008). The National Employment Guarantee Act 2005, operational guidelines. Ministry of Rural Development. GOI. (Government of India). (2012). MGNREGA sameeksha: An anthology of research studies on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005), 2006–2012. Orient Blackswan. ISWSD (Indian School of Women’s Studies Development). (2007). Impact of national rural employment guarantee scheme on the living and working conditions of women in rural India (Survey report). Jacob, A., & Varghese, R. (2006). Reasonable beginning in Palakkad, Kerala. Economic and Political Weekly, 41(48), 4943–4945. Jandu, N. (2010). Employment guarantee and women’s employment in rural India (Working paper). Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. Available at http://knowledge.NREGS.net/ 837/ Jeyarajan, J. (2011). Women and pro-poor policies in rural Tamil Nadu: An examination of practices and responses. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(43), 64–74. Johnson, D. (2009). Does NREGS help rural poor to cope with bad weather? (CMF working paper no. 32). Center for Micro Finance, Institute of Financial Management and Research. Kabeer, N. (2008). Paid work, women’s empowerment and gender justice: RPC pathways on women’s empowerment (Working paper no. 3). IDS Sussex. Liu, Y., & Deininger, K. (2010). Poverty impacts of India’s national rural guarantee scheme: Evidence from Andhra Pradesh. Paper presented at Agriculture and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting (unpublished). Mehrotra, S. (2008). NREG two years on: Where do we go from here? Economic and Political Weekly, 43(31), 27–35. Millar, J. (2007). Social exclusion and social policy research: Defining exclusion. In D. Abrams, D. Christian, & D. Gordon (Eds.), Multidisciplinary handbook of social exclusion research (pp. 1– 16). Wiley. NSSO. (National Sample Survey Office). (2013). Key indicators of employment and unemployment in India 2011–12 (Report no. NSS KI (68/10)). National Sample Survey Office, Government of India. Ravi, S., & Engler, M. (2009). Workfare in low income countries: An effective way to fight poverty? Case of India’s NREGS (unpublished manuscript). Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1336837 RBI. (Reserve Bank of India). (2020). Handbook of statistics on Indian states. Reddy, D. N., Tankha, R., Upendranath, C., & Sharma, A. N. (2010). National rural employment guarantee as social protection. IDS Bulletin, 41(4), 63–76. Roy, A., & Day, N. (2010). MGNREGA: Breaking new ground. The Hindu Magazine. Sabates-Wheeler, R., & Devereux, S. (2008). Transformative social protection: The currency of social justice. In A. Barrientos & D. Hulme (Eds.), Social protection for the poor and poorest: Concepts, policies and politics (pp. 64–84). Palgrave Macmillan. Satpathy, A., Estupinan, X., & Malick, B. K. (2020). Wage code and rules—Will they improve the effectiveness of minimum wage policy in India? Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pap ers.cfm?abstract_id=3680034

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Silver, H. (2007). The process of social exclusion: The dynamics of an evolving concept (CPRC working paper 95). Chronic Poverty Research Centre. Solution Exchange for the Work and Employment Community. (2011). Ensuring women exercise the right to work. ftp://ftp.fao.org/.../Consolidated%20reply%20NREGA%20and%20NRM.pdf Sudarshan, R. (2014). Enabling women’s work (ILO Asia Pacific working paper series). Bangkok. UNICEF. (2012). Social protection strategic framework. Vanitha, S. M., Murthy, P., & Mysore, C. (2012). MGNREGA of India: Worlds largest employment guarantee programme. Lambert Academic Publishing. Varghese, S. (2016). Participatory processes under MGNREGA: Strengthening grass-roots democracy. NewsReach. https://www.pradan.net/sampark/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/ParticipatoryProcesses-under-MGNREGA-Strengthening-Grass-roots-Democracy-By-Sibin-Varghese.pdf World Bank. (2012). Resilience, equity and opportunity. The world bank’s social protection and labor strategy 2012–2022. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Available at: http://www.siteresou rces.worldbank.org/SOCIALPROTECTION/Resources/280558-1274453001167/7089867-127 9223745454/7253917-1291314603217/SPL_Strategy_2012-22_FINAL.pdf. World Bank. (2015). The state of social safety nets 2015. Wray, L. (2007). The employer of last report programme: Could it work for developing countries? ILO.

Chapter 8

Tragedy to the Commons and Outcomes of Blue Growth: Comparative Study on the Politicised Environment of Aquaculture J. Jeffrey Immanuel and N. C. Narayanan Abstract One of the key policy messages of the Blue Growth Initiative is to explore alternate sources of food security and decent work such as aquaculture through inclusive and participatory approach, but the artisanal fishers in India and around the globe have strongly resisted the initiative. In order to understand this resistance and the consequent social exclusion of fishers, we critically unravel systemic structural issues that differentiate capture fisheries from culture fisheries, which is just one of the several manifestations of the Blue Growth policy. We do so by identifying different forms of capital as proposed by Bourdieu and reframing commons as a form of social capital through our comparative empirical analysis of two contrasting case villages in the state of Tamil Nadu. We show that the currently dominating international discourses on the Blue Growth and ocean commons, though intended to be inclusive on paper are hegemonic and attempts to weaken the small-scale fisher fraternity by appropriating their source of power: social capital (commons) through ‘ocean grabbing’, thereby setting off a ‘Tragedy to the Commons’. We suggest, how the Blue Growth policy can be reimagined, to make it structurally inclusive for the artisanal fishers, rather than mere superficial claims on paper.

J. Jeffrey Immanuel (B) Department of Geography, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA N. C. Narayanan IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_8

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1 Introduction You will never find a single fisher from any of the surrounding villages owning/working in a shrimp farm along the coast. Shrimp farming has been banned in our panchayat and we are bound to our ‘Ur kattupadu’ (customary village rules). If we still work, we will be ostracized from our village but any fisher with self-respect would never want to work with arms folded to a shrimp farm owner because they destroy our traditional fishing livelihoods. —an artisanal fisher from Naicker Kuppam, Nagaipatinam (Interview 09/02/2019)

Livelihood and entrepreneurial opportunities for the coastal communities and food security for its growing population are the major grounds on which the aquaculture industry is being promoted in India (George & Sinha, 1976; Government of India, 2017, 2019, 2020), but the statement above reveals quite a different picture of what has transpired on the ground in Tamil Nadu, India. The shrimp industry contributes to more than 70% of India’s 7 billion dollar annual seafood export (MPEDA, 2020a). Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu contribute to 81.33% of the total shrimp aquaculture production in India as of 2017– 18 (MPEDA, 2020b), but in all of these three states, there were no shrimp farms until the late 80s (Krishnan & Birthal, 2002). The industry was actively promoted by the state policies and multilateral agencies from the 70s as ways and means of addressing food security and loss of livelihoods for the fishers due to the dwindling natural fish stocks (FAO, 1976; George & Sinha, 1976; Srivastava et al., 1987). Large parcels of coastal commons that were assumed to be derelict and unfit for agriculture were leased out for aquaculture (ibid.), but majority of the beneficiaries who profited from such policy incentives were the rich affluent entrepreneurs from the nearby towns and distant cities and not the local fishers. The outcome was that it burgeoned as an export-oriented extractive industry, trading more than 80% of its total shrimp production (capture + culture), making India the largest exporter of shrimp globally (Televisory, 2019). The saviour narrative of the aquaculture industry continues to this day in the international discourses of multilateral agencies who have been the key proponents of the industry. Blue Growth (EU, 2014; FAO, 2014, 2016), Blue Economy (World Bank, 2017), Blue Revolution (O’Shea et al., 2019) and Blue Finance (UNEP, 2018) are different concepts that have been on the rise in the global discourse on oceans following the Earth summit in 2012, the adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 and the UN Oceans Conference in 2017, but they are all one and the same in their mission and vision. They aim at tapping the untapped economic potential of the oceans through creation of newer markets to serve the world’s growing population1 (coincidently defined as ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ in management parlance (Kim & Mauborgne, 2004)). Empirically, this chapter is focused on aquaculture, which is just one of the several manifestations of the Blue Growth policies, but conceptually it aims to contribute to the underlying social exclusion of the artisanal fishers that such inclusionary policies continue to perpetuate through its outcomes. 1

As portrayed in every single policy document of the multilateral agencies advocating aquaculture.

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One of the key policy messages of the Blue Growth Initiative (BGI) is to explore alternate sources of food security and decent work such as aquaculture to foster sustainable fisheries management through inclusive and participatory approach (FAO, 2016). Global fisher movements like the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) and the World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers (WFF) have strongly critiqued against the terms of their inclusion in such multilateral agencies’ partnership-participation process (WFF & WFFP, 2017). They claim that the ‘participation’ process at its core increasingly gives recognition and space for the private sector to inform processes and decisions of international agencies and allows for significant corporate funding for their programs (ibid.). Such powerful BGI partners push policy agendas that are suited to their pecuniary narratives of oceans as ‘good business’ and ‘natural capital’ while the idea of oceans for ‘small-scale fisher livelihoods’ is marginalised to the fringes of such discussion and participation process (Barbesgaard, 2018). But what do they mean by oceans for ‘small-scale fisher livelihoods’? Why have the artisanal fishers so vehemently resisted the Blue Growth and aquaculture industry? Why haven’t they tapped on the economic potential of Blue Economy and aquaculture? Wasn’t the industry supposed to provide an alternate livelihood for the fishers amidst the declining fish stocks and climate crisis? Weren’t they supposed to be at the centre of these inclusionary policy measures? Why and what has excluded them from the process? What is different in culture fisheries (aquaculture) that is not characteristic of capture fisheries? After all, they both produce fish (seafood). One way to approach the above varied questions is to underline the socioecological crises that have emerged with the increase in aquaculture farms and the consequent marginalisation and exclusion of artisanal fishers and their livelihoods. Several empirical studies globally (Abdullah et al., 2017; Anh et al., 2010; CruzTorres, 2000; Páez-Osuna et al., 1998) and also in India (Belton et al., 2017; Jayanthi et al., 2018, 2019; Mukul, 1994; Nayak, 2017) have documented the same at different regional scales, highlighting issues such as landlessness, encroachments of coastal commons, restricted access of the coast to artisanal fishers, salinity intrusion, land degradation, abandonment of lands, flooding, loss of livelihoods, etc. Another way is to take up the approach that we engage with, in the argument of this paper, to go beyond these different outcomes of crisis and critically unravel the systemic structural issues that differentiate culture fisheries from capture fisheries. This then helps us discern why certain narratives of the ocean environments dominating the policy discourses, though framed to be inclusive on paper, tend to systemically exclude or other the artisanal fishers in its outcomes. In order to do that, in this study we compare and contrast between two case villages of Perunthottam—an agrarian village and Idindhakarai—a fishing village in Tamil Nadu, their history in appropriation of land for aquaculture and their resistance towards the industry. The resistance in the fishing village had gathered enough strength to successfully topple the capital accumulating regimes of aquaculture, while the resistance in the agrarian village has been suppressed and compelled to come to terms with the oppression, over the years through several means. The differences in the outcomes of these two resistance movements in the two case villages enable us

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to understand and interpret the structural issues that perpetuate the exclusion of the fishers and their livelihoods through critical analysis of the power relations between the different grassroots actors.

2 Theoretical Framing and Research Design 2.1 The Forms of Capital and Its Relevance to Aquaculture Sociologist Bourdieu argues that it is ‘impossible to account for the structure and functioning of the social world unless one reintroduces capital in all its form and not solely in the one recognized by economic theory’ (Bourdieu, 2018). Therefore, we employ his lens of different forms of capital—economic (money, land), cultural (caste) and social (resources and relationships) (ibid.) and the mechanisms through which one is converted to the other, primarily to build an analysis of the unequal power relations between the different grassroots actors (Poder, 2011). First, we explicate and visualise the unequal power relations between the different actors by delineating their spatial and temporal patterns of control and resistance (Bryant & Bailey, 2005), and then we identify their source of power by recognising the different forms of capital in play and the ways in which they reproduce themselves. Identifying different forms of capital becomes relevant to our analysis with respect to the aquaculture industry because it helps us in differentiating culture fisheries from capture fisheries. Though aquaculture is similar to capture fisheries in producing fish as food, they differ from each other in several important ways. One of FAO’s earliest definitions of aquaculture conceives it to be an aquatic equivalent of agriculture (FAO, 1998). It is more associated with agriculture because of the crop ownership and private enclosures involved—private economic capital, but year on year, the data for culture fisheries are reported along with the mainstream capture fisheries. Also if aquaculture is equated to agriculture, then artisanal fisheries using nets, hooks and traps would be the aquatic equivalent to hunter gathering on land. This juxtaposition immediately contrasts between the two different types of fisheries—capture and culture as similar to the contrast between agriculture and hunter gathering on land.

2.2 (Re)Framing Commons as Economic Capital to Commons as Social Capital The Indian capture fisheries and fishers were largely characterised as primitive, ignorant, unorganised and ill-equipped by the National Planning Committee in 1946 (Kurien, 1985) and restricted to a particular community to suggest a social rigidity that would prevent economic efficiency, growth and development (Karnad, 2017). This framing along with the narratives of wild fish stocks as a declining natural

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resource and the Malthusian narrative of exploding population in almost every public discourse of the sea prompted for solutions that ‘maximize the economic use of the scarce resource’ (Srivastava et al., 1987) through efficient technologies and private property ownership. The belief largely originates from Garret Hardin’s infamous, ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, that unless open access natural resources are strictly in the domain of private or state property, their fate is inevitable ruin and always results in resource depletion (Hardin, 1968). Unfortunately in a world that revolves solely around economic capital, this narrative has been used and abused to justify the enclosure and erasure of many well-functioning commons (Gibson-Graham et al., 2016). Hardin’s theory of collective action portrays an image of atomised, selfish and fully rational individuals, but this universal selfishness assumption has been rejected by several empirical researches conducted in the field (Ostrom & Ahn, 2009). A closer look at the actions of low-income communities who depend on natural resources for their daily livelihoods has bought to the fore a more positive view about human disposition for caring and nurturing for common resources found in nature (Kurien, 2007). Examining the actions of the actors has shifted the process of understanding commons as a static resource to an active process of ‘commoning’ (Karnad, 2017; Linebaugh, 2008) that describes ethical, non-capitalist practices that maintain ecology, resources and relationships or networks in a manner that is different from capitalism (Gibson-Graham et al., 2016). We define commons as ‘social systems formed by three basic interconnected elements: (1) a commonwealth, that is a set of resources held in common and governed by (2) a community of commoners who also (3) engage in the praxis of commoning, or doing in common, which reproduces their lives in common and that of their common wealth’ (Angelis, 2019). Therefore, we recognise the resource, the actor and their action together as co-constituting commons without individualising the one from the other. This is strikingly distinct from the capital-centric framing of commons as a scarce/open access/unmanaged economic and natural resource which necessitates enclosure, commodification and privatisation through neoliberal policies (St. Martin, 2005). In relevance to Bourdieu’s call for recognising different forms of capital, this reframing of commons helps us in our analysis to effectively locate and identify practices of communities that collectively manage the commons as ways of investing in their ‘social capital’ of the commons. The resource, the action and the actor together build what Ostrom lists as different forms of social capital: trustworthiness, networks, and formal and informal rules and institutions, etc. (Ostrom & Ahn, 2009). The formulation of commons and commoning as expressing relationships between humans and between humans and the world around is best exemplified by historian Linebaugh in his book, ‘The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All’ (Linebaugh, 2008). He writes, To speak of the commons as if it were a natural resource is misleading at best and dangerous at worst—the commons is an activity and, if anything, it expresses relationships in society that are inseparable from relations to nature. It might be better to keep the word as a verb, an activity, rather than as a noun, a substantive.

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Recognising these different activities of commoning along with the commons and the community as social capital that enhances collective action becomes important to understand the process of social exclusion of the artisanal fishers. In the framing of commons as economic capital, these processes are reduced to mere incentives embedded in social structures of interaction in Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of Commons’ (Ostrom & Ahn, 2009) to be appropriated and exploited for efficient use by individual private players. Through our empirical analysis, we show otherwise that the attempt to privatise the commons through inclusionary policy measures such as the Blue Growth excludes the resource from the actor and their actions and sets off a ‘Tragedy to the Commons’.

3 Methodology The research that informs this paper follows a comparative study design (Bryman, 2012) with multisited collective cases focusing on the issue of aquaculture and its history in each of the cases. Reconnaissance field visits were conducted in several villages before purposefully sampling the two villages of Perunthottam and Idindhakarai that best suit our analysis in answering the research questions. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in the two case villages during the month of February in 2019, and data was collected in a cross-sectional design format through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with key informants from the different villages. The individual interviewees within each of the cases were selected based on snow ball sampling. The interview guides were largely unstructured and inductive with a prepared list of themes to gather data on. The interviews were carried out in the natural settings of the interviewee and followed a conversational style in the local language (Tamil). People were never gathered for the purposes of research, but the researcher went to places where people gathered to keep the discussions as natural as possible, thereby limiting the influence of the researcher on the social realities of the participants. Such gatherings are especially common in the fishing villages of Tamil Nadu where a group of fishers could always be found mending their nets or playing cards by the afternoon sun at some common place in the village. We recognise this act as a process of ‘commoning’ and as a way of investing in the assets of social capital that builds trustworthiness and networks. GIS mapping was also carried out to map the aquaculture farms in the study villages and to identify spatial and temporal changes over time. The qualitative socio-economic data was then transcribed and the findings from the FGDs, in-depth interviews and GIS mapping were triangulated to eliminate any rival explanations.

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4 Stories of Power, Control and Resistances 4.1 Background: The History, Geography and the Local Context of the Study Villages Before Aquaculture The first village, Perunthottam, is located in the Kaveri delta region of Nagaipatinam district, the region known as the rice bowl of Tamil Nadu. The village was known to have flourished with lush green fields and continuous seasons of paddy cultivation and hence the name Perunthottam, which literally translates to ‘Big Fields’ in the Tamil language. Along with paddy, other crops such as sesame, cotton, groundnut and pulses were also grown in the region. The village is located within 2–3 km from the coast separated by the two fishing hamlets of Savadi Kuppam and Naicker Kuppam (Fig. 1). ‘Kuppam’ in Tamil literature is the word used for denoting fishing hamlets, but its usage has become derogatory over the years (Kolappan, 2016). The first time while asking for directions to reach Naicker Kuppam, a person from the Perunthottam village, he mistook me for a tourist wanting to visit the beach and directed me to take a different route that doesn’t go via the fishing hamlet and added, ‘You are new here and from the city, they are very bad, do not go there’. This has not happened once but several times with varying levels of defamation while visiting different fishing villages during my fieldwork. Such narratives are also reflected in the discourse of treating artisanal fishers as primitive, ignorant and

Fig. 1 Study areas—Perunthottam, Naicker Kuppam, Savadi Kuppam. Image Source Google Earth

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Fig. 2 Study area—Idindhakarai. Image Source Google Earth

ill-equipped in the state documents (Kurien, 1985), through studies on prevalence of alcoholism and domestic violence (Coulthard et al., 2020), etc., and in general, fishers as people who lack civility.2 This discourse is important as we understand the power relations of the two fishing hamlets with the agrarian village. The three villages put together have a total population of 3212 with 1618 from Perunthottam and 1595 from the two fishing hamlets (Government of India, 2011). The second village, Idindhakarai, is a large fishing village (Fig. 2), with a standalone population of 3501 (Government of India, 2011) in the Tuticorin district of Tamil Nadu. The village was previously known as ‘Vidindhakarai’, meaning, ‘the shore where the sun rose’. It is believed that this was the place where the sun rose when Lord Ram was returning after rescuing Sita from the Sri Lankan islands in the Hindu mythology, but the place has been renamed off late to Idindhakarai, meaning, “The broken shore”. This is because a part of the shore has eroded and appears as if it has been artificially gouged. While sea fishing has been the major occupation of the village, it also has a large number of young people working in the merchant navy and as labourers in the gulf. Some families from the village also own large areas of agricultural land which was once used for cultivating cotton, pulses, horse gram, palm trees, etc., but has completely been halted now due to lack of water for agriculture. 2

Personal experiences while conducting ethnographic field work in fishing villages have been otherwise.

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4.2 The Effect of Changing Climate Conditions Both the study villages located along the coast have been affected with the intrusion of salinity in their hinterland water resources. With changing rainfall patterns in the early 70s, the practice of agriculture had gradually started decreasing in both the areas. One of the interviewees in Perunthottam recollects how their family had lost all their crops due to erratic rainfall in the late 70s for two continuous years and had to stop cultivation henceforth because of their heavy losses. The interviewee was in particular referring to the 1977 cyclone along the east coast in India that left around 15,000 people homeless in the Nagaipatinam district (Lewis, 1979). With erratic rainfall and not enough freshwater from the Kaveri River flowing through its tributary in Perunthottam, salinity from the sea had intruded further into the agricultural lands along the coast, thereby rendering it impossible for cultivation. Hardly two seasons of cultivation are undertaken profitably in Perunthottam now with many of the villagers migrating to the nearby cities for labour work. Agriculture along the coast in both the study areas became vulnerable to the sporadic changes in the environment, and since Idindhakarai was a fishing village, this did not affect their major source of income unlike in Perunthottam.

4.3 Caste, Access, Power and Control—Contrasting Social Structure of the Villages 4.3.1

Perunthottam: Land as a Source of Power and Economic Capital

The Perunthottam village is highly heterogeneous yet segregated like any other agrarian village, with people from different castes and religion living together in the same village but in different streets, each street having a separate head of its own. The different castes of people from the Perunthottam village are shown in Table 1. Caste-based conflicts and killings were once common in the village (relatively less common now). The people in the fishing hamlets adjacent to Perunthottam were from the same BC fishing community, but they did not have much interaction with the people from the agrarian village (as they were from “Kuppam”) and were often rendered voiceless and marginalised along the margins of the coast. Table 1 Different caste categories in Perunthottam village Forward Caste (FC)

Backward Caste (BC)

Scheduled Caste (SC)

Brahmins

Vanniyars

Hindu Dravidar/Dalits

Saiva Pillai

Idayars Chettiars

Source Compiled by the authors

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All the agricultural lands in Perunthottam were once owned by the Brahmins of the village, people from the highest caste in the power hierarchy of the caste system.3 In the early 60s, the Brahmins in the village started selling their lands and migrating towards nearby towns and cities in search for better opportunities. The famous Indian cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin’s family are Brahmins from the village, who are said to have migrated during this period and have recently constructed a temple in the village. There are hardly any Brahmins in the village now except for two to three families who are in charge of the different temples in the village. They sold their lands to the Vanniyars, who are the next higher caste in the village, in terms of the caste power dynamics, though the village had more number of people from the Scheduled Castes (SC).4 During the late 1970s, Krishnammal Jaganathan and Sankralingam Jaganathan, a Gandhian couple entered the villages in Nagaipatinam and started the Land for the Tiller’s Freedom (LAFTI) movement in 1981 (Rigby, 1987). S. Jaganathan was part of the freedom movement and had spent three and a half years in the prison before independence. He was with Vinoba Bhave from 1950 to 1952 and inspired by his Bhoodan movement in the north, started the LAFTI movement in Tamil Nadu. It is said that they would go from door to door to all the houses of the people from the higher castes, requesting them to give away lands for free to the tillers who were from the lower castes (Dalits). They had also helped a lot of children from the lower castes to join schools, and therefore, several older people in the village from the Dalit community continue to revere them as Gods. A few of them even asked me to convey their regards to them if I were to ever meet them in the cities in the future, as our interactions regarding the topic reminded them of the couple. S. Jaganathan had passed away a few years ago, and Krishnammal Jaganathan is believed to have settled in the USA with her family. Their organisation LAFTI is still working with the villages in the locality but not with the same amount of activism as before as conveyed by one of the key informants. Unfortunately, much of the lands that were distributed under these campaigns to the tillers were infertile, the ones that were intruded with salinity along the coast. The tillers who invested in cultivating these lands reaped more losses than profits due to the sporadic environmental changes of the 70s. It was the hegemony of this systemic caste oppression that further economically marginalised the Dalits to be vulnerable to the vagaries of the changing climate. Redistribution of land which was intended to redistribute power to the weaker sections further weakened their position within the institutionalised caste system. Therefore, access to land as an economic capital may not always empower but can also be used to weaken the marginalised.

3

I use “higher caste”, “lower caste”, “forward caste”, "backward caste", and “scheduled caste” as historically contingent and discursively and materially constructed categories to explicate power relations in caste hierarchies and not to reify them as universal inevitable structures. 4 43% of the total population according to Census 2011 (Government of India, 2011).

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Idindhakarai: Commons, Commoning and Community of Commoners

On the other hand, the agricultural lands in Idindhakarai were situated away from the residential areas and were more or less well distributed among the villagers. Since agriculture was not the major source of income, land was not considered as a source of power, as in the case of the agrarian village. Moreover, the people in the village were all from the same Catholic fisher folk community except for 10– 15 SC families living away from the village. They work as sweepers and help in labour work at the fish landing centre in the village, but caste did not exist as a form of ‘graded inequality’ (Thorat & Madheswaran, 2018) which was the case in the agrarian village. Therefore, Idindhakarai was more or less homogeneous in its composition and distribution of power, with very limited possibilities for hegemonic discrimination within its social structure. The governance in Idindhakarai is managed by the ‘Ur Panchayat’ (Non-state panchayat) that is made up of an elders’ council—‘Ur Thalaivars’ and the tax payers—the ‘Varikaarars’. For generations, it has been a said rule and understanding between the police and the Idindhakarai villagers that they would not enter the village unless they were called for by the elders’ council. Law and order issues are usually governed by the council itself and if any villagers were found to break the ‘Ur Kattupadu’ (local customary laws), they would have to pay a hefty fine to the village funds. Therefore, the village has had a strong autonomous power for local governance within themselves. The elders’ council is elected democratically by the tax payers, which includes only male members of the village who have been given the right to fish. The right to fish or what is called as ‘Vari’ is given to every able male member of the village once the person turns 18, and all the members have to compulsorily pay taxes to the ‘Ur Panchayat’ every month. The tax money is then collected and used for organising village festivals and meeting other village needs, etc. Each fisher is also part of a local patrilineage group that is called a ‘Pangaali’ group (Bavinck, 2001), and the different groups take turns to fish during different times of the month on specific fishing grounds. The decisions on the turns and the allocation of fishing grounds called as ‘Jamaath’ happens once every year during one of the monthly ‘Ur Panchayat’ meetings. The ‘Jamaath’ or the turn is also sometimes split within the ‘Pangaali’ group itself when the number of ‘Varikaarars’ within a group increases. Therefore, a member in the ‘Pangaali’ group might get his turn to fish only once every two times when his ‘Jamaath’ comes. This is an interesting way in which the fishers preserve their commons, that even if the population of the village increases, they do not over exploit their resources but maintain the same level of fishing. The gears (nets, hooks and traps), the crafts (boats) and the catch are also shared equitably among the different members of a ‘Pangaali’ group. The shores of Idindhakarai have also been a protective hub for environmental protests for the surrounding villages. The protests against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant that is visible from the village along the coast have been continuously staged here for the last 20 years as the protestors were covered from the entry of the

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police force inside the Idindhakarai village. A simple Google search of the protests would bring up images from the Kudankulam nuclear power plant protests when it was at its peak in 2012 along the beaches of Idindhakarai, where huge numbers of police personnel had to be deployed to handle (manhandle) the protestors (Economic Times, 2012). So here we see two contrasting villages, subjected to similar effects of sporadic environmental changes since the early 70s along the coast. One was divided among itself based on caste and considered land as a source of power and economic capital. The external NGO attempted to alter the power dynamics in the village by redistributing the land, but in the process unintentionally subjected the marginalised Dalits to further economic marginalisation. The other was a strong locally governed community of commoners, where land was not the source of power and every aspect of their lives and livelihood was shared among the community, which we recognise as social capital for our analysis.

4.4 Onset of Aquaculture: Lineage of Multilateral and State Interventions, Appropriation of Land and Loss of Control There were no traditional forms of aquaculture present in either of these villages. During the seventies and eighties, with the increasing pressure on the natural shrimp stocks due to excessive trawling (Kurien, 1985) and the possible consequent decrease in export earnings, the Indian government began to devote its attention towards aquaculture as an alternate source for shrimp. Several All India Coordinated Research Projects (AICRP), National Aquaculture Development Plan (NADP) and training and extension programs were launched by the state partnering with the technical research institutes like the Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute (CIFRI) and Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI), etc., receiving technical knowhows and funding from multilateral agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Development Project (UNDP), Swedish International Development Authority, etc. (Immanuel, 2021). The International consultancies and the different research projects encouraged and trained private entrepreneurs with the capacity to invest on large farms for converting the traditional brackish water shrimping grounds and paddy farms to intensive shrimp cultivation to ‘maximize the economic use of the scarce resource’ (Chalayondeja & Saraya, 1982; Srivastava et al., 1987) and as a result, increase export for the country and income for the coastal communities. With the benefit of such training programs from research institutes like CMFRI in Kochi in the 80s, different entrepreneurs from Kerala entered both our study villages in Tamil Nadu in the early 90s. Since the lands were unproductive and ingested with salinity, they were able to convince the small parcel Dalit land holders in Perunthottam to sell their lands along the coast without much effort. A total of about 140 acres had been sold to the Bask company shrimp farmers (S. Jagannath vs Union Of India &

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Ors, 1996) and with the money, some of the villagers built their own houses in the village (including one of the key informants who now lives in that house) or migrated to the towns and cities looking for alternate livelihood options. Therefore, it was a gradual process of selling lands and migrating to the cities as a mode of climbing up their respective livelihood pathways—first the Brahmins in the 60s, Vanniyars in the 70s and finally the SC people in the 90s—a clear flow of capital from caste (cultural) to land (economic) to currency (economic) and then using the currency (economic) to migrate to the cities in search for knowledge capital (cultural) and class capital (cultural). This mechanism also shows how caste disguises itself in the form of academic titles and class with its conversion from one form of cultural capital to the other through generations. Similarly in Idindhakarai, a group of 4–5 partners from Kerala in 1995 bought a relatively smaller land area of about 34 acres belonging to about a group of about 10–11 people from the village. They built ponds for about 10 acres, but cultivated only for 0.5 acres. None of the people who sold their lands left the village like in Perunthottam—clearly indicating that their capital was not associated with land as economic capital but the rich social capital of the commons.

4.4.1

The Socio-Ecological Crisis at Perunthottam

Within the first cycle of cultivation, the saline seawater intruded further into the agricultural lands of the higher caste people whose lands were away from the coast and closer to the village’s freshwater lake on the inside (refer old shrimp farms on Fig. 3). The agricultural lands of the SC people were just within 150 m from the old shrimp farms of the Bask company (S. Jagannath vs Union Of India & Ors, 1996). The shrimp farmers had dug huge bore wells that contaminated the ground water of the village and were reported to use water required for nearly two years of paddy cultivation for just one season of shrimp (ibid.). Some people said that a particular bore well even caught fire while digging and was said to have been burning continuously for 2–3 days. S. Jaganathan, from the LAFTI movement along with his wife organised widespread rallies, demonstrations and hunger strikes against the shrimp farms in the entire district through their organisation. They were able to mobilise large number of people, especially the tillers who they had worked for previously. They also had the support of the higher caste people in the village and the adjacent fishing hamlets of Naicker Kuppam and Savadi Kuppam because their ground water sources and livelihoods were also being affected. Stories of protestors being treated miserably by the shrimp farmers and jailed by the police force were narrated by the people in the village. Many people were sent to prison for staging peaceful protests in the entire Nagaipatinam district. S. Jaganathan had also filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against the shrimp farmers in the Supreme Court in the early 90s. This case went on to become a major turning point in the history of environment versus aquaculture conflicts in India, the judgement of which ordered for the demolition of all the shrimp farms along the entire Indian

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Fig. 3 GIS map of Perunthottam village—delineating spatial and temporal patterns of oppression. Source Author

coast (S. Jagannath vs Union Of India & Ors, 1996). The protests gradually subsided with the shrimp farmers abandoning their lands and returning to Kerala in 1997. Meanwhile, another entrepreneur under the name of Bismi farms, from a nearby town, had also bought a parallel piece of land of about 40 acres from the villagers as documented in the judgement of the Supreme Court. While the previous farm was about 500 m from the sea, the new farm was within a distance of 25 m. In another couple of years after the shutdown of the previous Bask farms, despite the Supreme Court ban, Bismi farms started its operations leasing/buying more piece of land around the previous 40 acres from the government. Currently, the size of the farm is about 185 acres (calculated from GIS), and this land is a little away from the agricultural lands of the higher caste people but closer to the salt-affected lands of the SC people and the fishing hamlets near the sea (refer current shrimp farms, higher caste agricultural lands and SC Lands on Fig. 3). On the one hand, the judiciary mandated the demolition of intensive aquaculture farms along the coast, while on the other, the State was continuing to lease out its land for shrimp farming. Since the state owned these lands, even though people protested again, they were not able to gather momentum like before, especially because of the lack of support from the higher caste people as the shrimp farms did not affect their lands anymore.

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Stories of Forgotten and Suppressed Resistances

Twenty-five years later with a generation passing by, people in the Perunthottam village have almost forgotten the resistance and have learnt to adapt with their new realities. A glance at the map in Fig. 3 reveals that the shrimp farms have also diverted and appropriated the water that was supposed to reach the agricultural lands of the lower caste people (refer to rivers and canals on Fig. 3). They now use rain-fed farm ponds to water their farms, whereas the agricultural lands of the higher caste people have a well-built canal system that is cut out and maintained every year. This reveals the deep entrenchment of the caste-based hegemony in the agrarian society, which has now been further reinforced by the aquaculture industry leading to a permanent exclusion of the marginalised. Some of the SC people from the village whose families had protested earlier have now even been temporarily employed in the farms and most of them have ceased their paddy cultivation. Many of them also seasonally migrate to the cities for labour even though they own lands (but unproductive for agriculture) in the village. The shrimp farmer now does not let anybody from the outside to his farm, especially people from NGOs and other activists who try to enquire details regarding the farm. I was denied access to interview the farmer after being made to wait for an hour, only for the farmer to arrive in his car from his house in the nearby town to let me know that, ‘for you this is a research project, for me this is business, now you may leave’ (Interview 09/02/2019), in English. The shrimp farmer keeps any form of resistance under check through exhibition of placatory acts like building water tanks, sponsoring temple festivals and other charity. It is said that he never denies money to people who go to him for help from the village. The farmer has even been recognised and awarded the ‘Innovative Aquaculturist Award’ in 2015 by the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) (2016). Over the last 20 years, he has expanded his shrimp farms, transformed his barbed wire fence to compound walls and has also built an aquaculture feed mill and accommodation for the labourers who migrate from other states within the farm campus. The focus group discussions conducted in the adjacent fishing hamlets reveal that the farmer continues to release effluents directly into the streams where they park their crafts. The fisher folk complained that they no longer use the traditional nets which they laid near the shore and now have to go further inside the sea for fishing. Interestingly, none of the people from the fishing village are allowed to work in the shrimp farm according to an order issued within the village by the traditional village council as the shrimp farmers were considered to be destroying their traditional livelihoods. Anyone who works for the farmer would be deemed to be a traitor and kept away from the village. The fishers showed signs of resistance to the shrimp farm even after all these years (more than 20 years), but they have not able to gather support from the people of Perunthottam. They feel that the people from the agrarian village have been bought for money by the shrimp farmer while the agrarian village continues to have no ties with the fishing village despite being neighbours geographically. These are two interesting contrasting situations within the same case that has emerged here:

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• The resistance thriving in the 90s with the support from the NGOs and the higher caste people in the village and • The resistance of the weaker sections being suppressed now due to their relative weakness in the power equations in the area surrounding the shrimp farms. The Perunthottam village which was once at the forefront of protests against the shrimp farms has now come to terms with its new reality.

4.4.3

The Resistance and Overthrow in Idindhakarai

With stories of similar background, the Kerala entrepreneurs started cultivating in a small 0.5 acre pond. The one who maintained the shrimp farm was a fish trader from Idindhakarai village itself. He reported that the ‘Kerala party’ from Thodupuzha came to Idindhakarai with aquaculture manuals teaching him how to cultivate and maintain the farm while they returned back to Kerala. They were also able to turn significant profits in the first two cycles of cultivation but similar problems of salinity intrusion contaminated the ground water of the village. The fisher folks requested the person who maintained the farm to stop cultivating, but the farmers back in Kerala did not oblige to the request of the fishers. After a few days of protests and talks within the village, some of the fisher folks released a predatory lobster into the shrimp farm overnight, which killed all the tiger shrimps in the water, thereby inflicting a huge loss for the shrimp farmer. The farmers then had to abandon the land and since then never “dared” to return back to the village as reported by the villagers, even though they still own the land. The remains of the farm still exist in the village filling up with water during the monsoons and serve as a pond for children to fish in the area. A fisherman from Idindhakarai proudly said, ‘nobody can come inside our village without our permission, not only in ours but in any of the seashore villages in the south’ (Interview 25/02/2019). Majority of the fishing villages in the southern coast of Tamil Nadu belong to the same fishing community, and he boasts of a strong feeling of power, strength, trust, network and unity among them, who share their common wealth of the sea and the seashore. This is not to glorify the caste system they follow but to recognise the differences in the practices of caste as a graded form of inequality and hegemony in an agrarian village, as a means to appropriate private economic capital as opposed to the practices of caste as a community, as a form of commons, as a way of commoning in the fishing village, as a means to build their common social capital. The differences in the social contexts and the different forms of capitals in play between the two case villages enabled the outcome of the resistance to succeed in one of the case villages while it was suppressed in the other, despite similar ecological contexts of sporadic environmental changes and salinated lands. The fisher population has shown more resistance in both these cases and in general to the aquaculture industry. They have resisted so much that they are deemed to be traitors if found working for the shrimp farmers. This is because the fishing

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societies never derived power from the ownership of private land or water like in the agrarian societies and have shown little interest in appropriation of individually owned private property. They have strongly invested in the accumulation of social capital—commons over the years and derive their power from the same. The sharing of fishing gears and crafts among the ‘Pangaali’ groups, the equitable allocation of fishing grounds through the ‘Jamaath’, the strong local governance of the ‘Ur Panchayat’, the sharing of the catch equally among the group no matter who owns the craft or the gear, all of these are practices of commoning by the community to protect their commons.5 This is quite the opposite in the agrarian villages, where people from different castes reside in separate streets with different leaders and fight for land, water and property even within the same families. Therefore, the appropriation of land by the shrimp farmers in the agrarian village was a disguised form of appropriation of power that weakened their resistance movements, while the appropriation of land in the fishing village did not affect their source of power accumulated in the social capital that was rather used to empower their resistance.

5 Discussion The recognition of different forms of capital (Bourdieu, 2018) and the redefinition of ‘commons’ as an inseparable amalgamation of the resource, actor and their actions (Angelis, 2019) help us elucidate the non-capitalist ways of preserving the coastal commons by the small-scale fishers. These practices have been starkly contrasting in its structure from the state interventions to promote aquaculture as an export-oriented industry in the country by attracting more private investments into the sector, under the banner of resource efficiency of the commons (George & Sinha, 1976; Srivastava et al., 1987). Our empirical analysis reveals the possible structural disruptions and the contestations that can occur with the increasing attempt to privatise the oceans. The questions we asked at the beginning of this chapter, why have the fishers resisted the Blue Economy? How do the Blue Growth policies exclude the artisanal fishers? Though intended to be inclusive on paper, these structural differences in the way ocean commons are being imagined by the fishers as opposed to the international transnational agencies and the state, exploit and appropriate power disguised in the form of social capital of the artisanal fishers. Our analysis of the power relations between the different resistances with dissimilar end results reveals that not all grassroots actors are inherently weak (e.g. Idindhakarai fishers) but made weak by the oppressive capitalist system and exacerbated by the existing social structures by appropriating their source of power (e.g. Perunthottam tillers). From this insight, we can derive that the current capitalist discourse on the oceans attempts to weaken the small-scale fisher fraternity by appropriating their source of power: social capital (commons) and marginalising other diverse non-capitalist ways of performing the 5

Not to be fully romanticized because of their failure to recognize and protect the rights of women fishers, many of whom are engaged in pre-harvest and post-harvest activities (Menon et al., 2018).

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economy. It appropriates the resource, the actor and the actions, thereby alienating one from the other which would actually then set off a ‘Tragedy to the Commons’, as was the case with the socio-ecological disasters of the aquaculture industry. After invading the inland waters, the capital (economic) accumulating regimes are now shifting towards settling down in private farms with enclosures in the uncharted territory of the oceans. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)’s ‘Sustainable Blue Finance Initiative’ funded by the European Commission and the European Investment Bank estimates the current annual economic value of the Blue Economy (includes shipping, fishing, aquaculture and coastal tourism) to be around $2.5 trillion, to attract more private investments into the sector (UNEP, 2018). The World Bank’s active Blue Economy portfolio as of 2018 was around $5 billion with further $1.65 billion in the pipeline (World Bank, 2018). The Nature Conservancy, a US-based transnational Environmental NGO in partnership with a New Yorkbased investment firm, ‘Encourage Capital’ released a report titled, ‘Towards a Blue Revolution: Catalysing Private Investment in Sustainable Aquaculture Productions Systems.’ The report estimated that by 2030, an additional $150–300 billion in capital investment would be required to expand production infrastructure capacity to meet the projected demand growth in the aquaculture sector (O’Shea et al., 2019). The currently dominating international discourses on the oceans and aquaculture such as the ones described above revolving around private economic capital strictly go against the non-capitalist common property regimes revolving around social capital as those of the small-scale fishers seen in Idindhakarai. The comparison of equating culture fisheries versus capture fisheries on the waters to agriculture versus hunter gathering on land further problematises the current capitalist imagination of the culture fisheries industry and the consequent exclusion of the artisanal fishers. Doerr highlights that the challenges for terrestrial food sovereignty via land grabbing are equally relevant for seafood sovereignty and ‘ocean grabbing’ (Barbesgaard, 2016, 2018, 2019; Bennett et al., 2015; Buxton et al., 2014) with the emergence of a corporate seafood regime (Doerr, 2016). Several empirical studies have already pointed out the threat of accumulation by some at the perceived expense of ‘the community’ to the moral economies of the small-scale fisheries (Menon et al., 2018). What say would a grassroots actor like an artisanal fishing community from Idindhakarai, who would be stripped off their source of power and livelihood would have in such hegemonic discourses at the international level in a so called ‘inclusion and participation process’?

6 Conclusion Culture fisheries (aquaculture/mariculture) as an industry have the potential to completely transform the way humans interact with the seascapes forever in the future. While we underline the issues in the structural differences between capture

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fisheries and culture fisheries through this paper, we want to clarify that culture fisheries or the Blue Growth policies as such are not the cause for exclusion of the fishers but the political economy of the dispossessing capitalist structure in which the industry and the policies are currently being promoted. Climate change is real, and the consequent loss of artisanal fisher livelihoods could have devastating impacts on the social capital of the artisanal fishers and the overall food security. Therefore, the question should be how can culture fisheries be reimagined? How can Blue Growth be reimagined? Can culture fisheries be encouraged as a form of commons, as ways of building social capital? Can local food diversity be taken into account rather than promoting mono-cropping of shrimps for export? Can Blue Growth be encouraged as a form of commons? Can the Blue Economy be performed through non-capitalist ways that does not alienate the commons from the commoners and their practices of commoning? Can the Blue Economy be centred around social capital rather than sole focus on economic capital? Can multilateral agencies like FAO, World Bank, UNDP along with the State invest in the social capital of the fishers by equipping them to practice aquaculture as commons rather than enticing economic capital from large private corporations? Or does the loss of corporate funding hamper the very functioning of the UN institutions? After all, culture fisheries as social capital can also produce fish, but without ‘accumulation by dispossession’ or ‘ocean grabbing’ or simply put, without excluding the artisanal fishers. Acknowledgements The research that informs this paper was conducted when Jeffrey was a student at the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA), IIT Bombay. The authors would like to specially thank Professors Subodh Wagle, Pankaj Seksharia and Shishir Kumar Jha from IIT Bombay and Professor Vijay Bhaskar from Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) for their valuable comments and inputs during the formulation and implementation of the research. The authors are also grateful to all the interviewees from the study villages who participated in the research and for the people (Miss. Dhavamani, WODAM Trust from Perunthottam and Mr. Prasad, a fisher from Idindhakarai) who provided for food and accommodation during the fieldwork at the villages. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

References Abdullah, A. N., Myers, B., Stacey, N., Zander, K. K., & Garnett, S. T. (2017). The impact of the expansion of shrimp aquaculture on livelihoods in coastal Bangladesh. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 19(5), 2093–2114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-016-9824-5 Angelis, M. D. (2019). Commons. In A. Kothari, A. Salleh, A. Escobar, F. Demaria, & A. Alberto (Eds.), Pluriverse: A post-development dictionary (pp. 124–126). Tulika Books. Anh, P. T., Kroeze, C., Bush, S. R., & Mol, A. P. J. (2010). Water pollution by intensive brackish shrimp farming in south-east Vietnam: Causes and options for control. Agricultural Water Management. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2010.01.018 Barbesgaard, M. (2018). Blue growth: Savior or ocean grabbing? Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(1), 130–149. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2017.1377186

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Chapter 9

When Welfare Goes Hand in Hand with Social and Economic Exclusion in Québec, Canada Éric Gagnon Poulin

Abstract Since the adoption of the ‘Act to combat poverty and social exclusion’ in 2002, the Government of Québec had to present action plans ‘[…] to combat poverty, prevent its causes, reduce its effects on individuals and families, counter social exclusion and strive towards a poverty-free Québec’ (Act to combat poverty and social exclusion, CQLR c L-7. Gouvernement du Québec, 2002). This chapter comes back on the main transformations of social assistance in Québec; a welfare model that was often held up as an example for its universal and inclusive foundation. Although, since the end of the 1970s, along with the financialisation of the economy and the growing influence of the neoliberal ideology in ‘developed’ economies, the state gradually redirected the responsibility towards individuals, focusing on employment programs and thereby creating welfare categories. Mainly by interviewing people who lived below the low-income line, this chapter highlights the impact of the neoliberal ideology on the corporatisation of the welfare assistance in Québec, making individuals responsible for their conditions without considering the socio-economic factors and other structural mechanisms that produce and reproduce poverty in our societies.

1 Introduction In the last four and a half decades, we have seen many changes in the ‘Western’ post-war welfare state—a social contract that helped the parties reach a basic quality of life and encouraged a better work ethic. In most cases, one job was enough to sustain an entire family; that is increasingly less common these days. We have only to consider the 2018 US hospitality workers’ strike slogan: ‘one job should be enough’ (AFL-CIO, 2018). As Cooper and Whyte (2017) explain, the children of this generation coming from the poorest households will fare much worse than children of the previous generation. Current adult generations already fare worse than their parent’s generation, especially with respect to housing, job security, pensions and personal É. G. Poulin (B) University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_9

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debt. Concomitant with the proliferation of precarious jobs and the rollback of the welfare states in the mid-1970s is the spread of employment incentives designed to ‘include’ the unemployed and welfare recipients in the labour market—‘from welfare to work’—regardless of the working conditions or their abilities. These policies will increase through time and become mandatory for gaining access to social assistance and certain services. The amount given to the ‘employable’ recipients will also decrease, to ‘motivate’ recipients to reintegrate into the labour market. This new social contract will affect many countries, and starting with the USA and the UK, a number ‘[…] of policy turn initiated by Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberal discourses and policy models spread and were adopted in a variety of institutional contexts’ (Cahill & Konings, 2017). The doctrine also influenced stronger welfare states, like Canada, that follow the path of meritocracy. ‘The period from the late 1980s until the first years of the twenty-first century can be seen as the era when neoliberalism became hegemonic, embedded in everyday practices and the routine norms and processes of policymaking’ (ibid), obviously including social assistance programs. In this chapter, I focus on the case of the only French-speaking majority province in the Canadian federation—Québec and its 8.5 million inhabitants—a nation that pioneered the elaboration of the welfare model in Canada, especially after the release of the Boucher Report (1963) which promoted universal access to social assistance, regardless of the origin of this need. Despite these good intentions, it took only a few years after the adoption of the first Social Assistance Act (1970) to appreciate the counterpart logic in government assistance programs. Indeed, from the mid-1970s until now, ever-growing bureaucratic measures and intrusive mechanisms for monitoring social assistance have contributed to the process of desocialisation and exclusion, even if these same programs are justified in the name of inclusion. Nonetheless, the state continues to promote its activation (or workfare) model, designed to ‘activate’ aid recipients towards joining the labour market—thus, leaving behind social assistance—and to tighten the associated coercive measures and reinforce the dichotomy in the collective psyche between ‘deserving’ and ‘non-deserving’ recipients. That said, there is no evidence that these employability measures are helping people to get out of poverty sustainably, especially in an increasingly deregulated and unstable labour market. Neither the government nor the labour market ‘specialists’ (e.g. Employers’ Council, chambers of commerce) can demonstrate in the long term a correlation between employment incentives and reducing the number of people living below the low-income line. To defend the effectiveness of its model, the state rather relies on the decrease in unemployment and social assistance rates (the proportion of people receiving financial assistance from social assistance programs). Based on ethnographic fieldwork to collect data through in-person and group interviews, the results that this chapter presents question the effectiveness of the activation model in its current form in Québec. After explaining my methodology, the workfare context in the province and the latest government action plan to reduce poverty, I will present the testimony of people who were forced to participate in employment programs since the adoption of Act 112 to combat poverty and social exclusion (2002) and the action plans that followed. The objective is to provide an overview of their experiences and trajectories and to illustrate whether and how these employment incentives contribute

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to improving their socio-economic conditions through time—not only during the program but in the years following.

2 Methodology Although this chapter focuses on the case of Québec, my fieldwork was on a smaller scale. I researched in the area of Chaudière-Appalaches, in the centre south of the province, to select my informants for four main reasons: (1) before this investigation, I was involved as a project manager in an awareness campaign on poverty and social exclusion, which made me conscious of the important socio-economic disparities within the population; (2) that experience gave way to a first research project in the region, concerning public and official discourses on poverty and its impact on people experiencing it (2014–2018); (3) this area is characterised as one with ‘full employment and the lowest unemployment rate’; (4) ironically, Chaudière-Appalaches has the highest number of workers using food banks each month. Consequently, these statistics undermine the social contract and make it an excellent starting point from which to question the workfare model within Québec’s political economy—a model that foisted on aid recipients an increasingly visible counterpart logic or a ‘contract of reciprocity’ (Morel, 2002), respect for which required employment or training to reintegrate them into the labour market to ‘deserve’ social assistance. I identified 55 informants in rural and urban areas. They were mainly people who experienced one of the government employment incentives but also beneficiaries with a ‘severely limited capacity’ for employment. They enable us to appreciate the differences in the programs (explained further), identify when and why a person is considered ‘ablebodied’ and better understand the workfare mechanism. I chose to proceed with participant observation and conducting open and semi-structured interviews. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, these were in-person, one-to-one and group interviews that became online interviews afterwards. I also identified professionals involved in the fight against poverty, working for advocacy groups and community-based organisations that offer services to or defend the rights of low-income individuals and families. These interviews, generally recorded, are the main source of qualitative data for this research. I also analysed the government action plans to reduce poverty and social exclusion, with particular attention to the last one (2017–2023), because it concerns the latest social assistance reform that reinforces Québec’s workfare model. Finally, I compared my ethnographic material to official statistics, mainly from the Centre d’étude sur la pauvreté et l’exclusion1 (CEPE—Centre for Studies on Poverty and Exclusion, my translation), statistics Canada and L’Institut de la statistique du Québec.

1

The Centre d’étude sur la pauvreté et l’exclusion (CEPE) is a research center on poverty and social exclusion.

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3 Context: Off Social Assistance, Out of Poverty? Even though Québec was the first North American nation to adopt an Act to combat poverty and social exclusion (Act 112),2 that initiative did not stop the state’s neoliberal agenda. Its main objective was ‘[...] to progressively make Québec [by 2013] one of the industrialised nations having the least number of people living in poverty, according to recognised methods for making international comparisons [...]’(MESSF, 2004). Never reached, that objective was postponed to 2023, as I will explain further. Until now, three action plans have been released (2004–2009, 2010–2015, 2017– 2023) to present measures and concrete actions for achieving this important goal. If the state failed to do so, it was probably not due to a lack of will but most likely because of its very understanding of poverty, its causes and potential solutions. In other words, notwithstanding the good intention of Act 112, the neoliberal ideology keeps shaping the government’s policies on the fight against poverty, making individuals responsible for their socio-economic conditions, without considering structural changes that would reduce systemic poverty (such as the redistribution of wealth or regulation of the labour market). ‘In a neoliberal-managerial way, poverty then becomes an individualised problem, as do the ‘solutions’ to get out of it: in poverty governance today, performance systems are shrouded by free-market images of autonomy, innovation and efficiency. They are rarely analysed as disciplinary regimes, yet this is precisely what they are. Indeed, the technologies of discipline that govern case managers are cut from the same neoliberal cloth as the systems designed for their clients. Both rest on incentives for right behaviour and penalties for non-compliance; both aim to reshape the motivation of targets so that they will pursue preferred ends as self-regulating subjects; neither control behaviour completely enough to forestall subversion’ (Soss et al. 2011 in Brodkin & Marston, 2013). In a nutshell, Québec has two social assistance programs, based on three welfare categories: (1) social solidarity for people with severely limited capacity for employment and (2) social assistance for people with temporarily limited capacity for employment and people considered ‘fit’ for work. A provincial government department administers both: the Ministère de l’Emploi, du Travail et de la Solidarité sociale (MTESS—Department of Employment, Labour and Social Solidarity3 ). The social solidarity program is more generous at $1,099/month,4 and a recipient with the permanent constraining condition recognised in a medical report is less subject to bureaucratic controls and 2 After a long mobilisation, led by the Collectif pour un Québec sans pauvreté (Collective for a Québec Without Poverty, my translation) at the end of the 1990s, the National Assembly unanimously adopted an Act to combat poverty and social exclusion (Québec, 2002) ‘[...] to guide the government and Québec society as a whole towards a process of planning and implementing actions to combat poverty and counter social exclusion and strive towards a poverty-free society’ (Québec, 2002). It states that under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, every human being has the right to live with dignity and respect, and that ‘[...] poverty and social exclusion may constitute constraints for the protection and enforcement of this human dignity’ (Québec, 2002). 3 My translation. Québec’s provincial departments or agencies are not translated into English. 4 All amounts are in Canadian dollars.

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verification. This program is also a little more flexible concerning what a beneficiary can own; for example $200/month is exempted work income and $2,500 in liquid assets and properties (house and land); up to a maximum value of $223,695 are allowed5 (MTESS, 2020a; Québec, 2020). On the other hand, the social assistance program is highly conditional and subjects to many intrusive administrative procedures and constant pressure on its beneficiaries to reintegrate into the labour market. This program is less generous at $690/month, with more restrictions related to the recipient’s possessions—for instance $200/month exempted work income and $1500 in liquid assets are allowed, and they can own a residence (house and land) up to a maximum value of $158,026 (MTESS, 2020b; Québec, 2020). The recipients of this program are those that the state’s employment incentives and the workfare model discussed in this chapter mainly target. From the first to the last action plan to reduce poverty, elements of the state’s neoliberal understanding of poverty are relatively easy to identify, which might have corroborated its failed attempt to make Québec one of the nations with the least number of people living in poverty by 2013. For example at the end of the first action plan, the MTESS claimed that the assistance rate was an ‘indicator’ of poverty: ‘the scope of poverty-reduction efforts is also measured by other indicators. The assistance rate, that is the proportion of people receiving financial assistance from the social assistance program concerning the entire population of Québec under the age of 65 is one of them’(MESS, 2010). This belief is highly problematic, particularly in a context where one of the main objectives of the department, as its strategic plans clearly state, is to reduce the number of welfare recipients by encouraging them to reintegrate into the labour market (MTESS, 2015), as has been documented in other parts of the world, starting with Canada’s neighbouring country, no matter the working conditions: ‘[i]n the case of the US welfare-to-work policy, performance measures created incentives to place welfare recipients in jobs. But, because the measurement scheme... did not distinguish jobs providing security and prospects of upwards mobility from insecure, dead-end McJobs, caseworkers required to meet quotas had an incentive to press individuals into those jobs most readily available. And ... ‘bad jobs’ were the most available— that is lower-wage jobs characterised by high turn-over, unstable work hours and insecurity’ (Brodkin & Marston, 2013). Most of the time, ways to reduce the assistance rate—that is making social assistance increasingly less accessible to people by introducing new administrative procedures and new rules or forcing applicants to enrol in an employment program that does not meet their interests nor their strengths and, most importantly, does not guarantee stable and well-paid work—have nothing to do with fighting poverty. Less than a year before the 2018 provincial elections, the Government of Philippe Couillard launched the third poverty-reduction plan. Its subtitle is both evocative and misleading: ‘A Basic Income for a Fairer Society’. It suggests the eventual establishment of a basic income but a conditional one, far from the concept of a guaranteed minimum income (GMI). In any case, the same government had rejected it a few months before. Once again, the neoliberal vision is at the heart of this third action plan and confirms the ever-growing meritocratic 5

Amounts for independent adults or single parents.

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orientation of the social assistance programs the liberal government adopted and reinforced. First, Premier Couillard claims that his government has put Québec’s public finances back on track, and it now has the means to reinvest in social programs. It must be recalled that at that time, his party had been in power for the past 15 years, except an 18-month interlude that would have ransacked the state’s economy. In his introductory text, the Premier writes, ‘A strong economy supports social progress. To ensure that all Quebecers have an equal chance to succeed and develop their full potential, the Gouvernement du Québec’s6 main priority must therefore be to manage our public finances soundly and grow the economy in every region. In this way, we hope to give our society the means to introduce measures that raise Quebecers’ standard of living and make it possible to pursue our social development’ (MTESS, 2017). Faithful to the rhetoric of his party, he reaffirms that social progress requires a strong economy, and success depends on employability. He stresses that ‘[t]he labour market is in flux: and that we must respond in kind and assist the less fortunate in their search for employment, which remains the best way to get out of poverty’ (ibid) —thereby, preaching a more ‘flexible’ workforce. Here, one notes that the categorisation of the welfare recipients between ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’ for employment is prominent in this document, even if those categories have been criticised several times since the first action plan (and well before): with this third action plan to fight poverty and social exclusion, we will go further still. Our objective is to lift 100,000 people out of poverty by 2023. Although this is an ambitious goal, we have the means to attain it or even surpass it. ‘With this plan, Québec becomes something of a trailblazer by increasing the disposable income of individuals who are unable, by their means or with help from existing support measures, to find a job. By introducing a basic income for people with a severely limited capacity for employment, we are taking a new approach to the fight against poverty and social exclusion. We will also boost employment incentives like the work premium for those making the transition from social assistance to employment’ (MTESS, 2017). From the outset, we understand that this basic income is only for people with a ‘severely limited capacity’ for employment, so it is not a universal allowance, as suggested by the Minister of Employment and Social Solidarity, François Blais. Also, several conditions will apply to people who could benefit from it, as I will explain below. We will see that these conditions also create a new welfare category. The Premier recalls that the main objective of this plan is to ‘[...] lift 100,000 people out of poverty by 2023’ (ibid), a goal that is impossible to achieve according to the measures and conditions this document introduces, for several obvious reasons that the following paragraphs explain. M. Couillard also recalls the unachieved goal of the previous action plans, to make Québec among the industrialised nations with the fewest people living below the low-income line by 2013, postponed here to 2023. ‘With this action plan and the participation of leading government, economic and social stakeholders, we are confident that Québec will soon be one of the industrialised nations with the fewest people living in poverty’ (MTESS, 2017). ‘Soon’ meant at the end of the plan. The expectations of the population, advocacy groups and community-based organisations 6

Often written in French, even in official English publications, to underline Québec’s French fact.

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concerned about the fight against poverty are all-important before the publication of such an action plan. However, despite strong opposition and public disagreement by former colleagues (nearly, 300 university professors), the Minister imposed a new social assistance reform with the adoption of Bill 70, renamed Act 25, requiring first-time welfare recipients considered ‘fit’ for work to enrol in an employment program, Objectif emploi (Objective Employment); otherwise, their financial assistance could be reduced from $633 to $409 per month (Gazette officielle du Québec, 2017, 3047). This opposed Act 112 to combat poverty, Article 15.2, which introduced a ‘[...] minimum benefit principle, a threshold below which benefits cannot be reduced because of the application of administrative penalties [...]’ (Québec, 2002, cL-7, 15.2). Such reforms can have socio-economic impacts on the less fortunate for years to come: ‘[t]he violent consequences of these welfare reforms manifest in loss of financial income, increased drug use, eviction, homelessness and working in the informal and illegal economy. But, the violence does not stop there, and the effects of these welfare changes are drawn out over time, creating deeper, more internal violent thoughts’ (Cooper & Whyte, 2017). In other words, these reforms will not only affect the less fortunate but social cohesion as well, as their application tends to create more insecurity, social exclusion and inequality. That said, people living alone and households without children receiving social aid did not benefit as much from the previous action plans. Again, in the introduction of the third one, Mr. Blais suggests that his government is aware of the situation and is willing to fix it: ‘[t]he 43 concrete measures and actions it sets out will enable to better assist a segment of the population that is economically disadvantaged, particularly single people and couples without children, who are more likely to find themselves in vulnerable situations. To that end, it will bring about a gradual increase in their disposable income, invest in social housing and encourage the social participation of low-income individuals and families’ (MTESS, 2017). The above statement suggests that the plan will take actions to improve the living conditions of individuals and childless couples, including those considered ‘fit’ for work, as recommended by the Centre d’étude sur la pauvreté et l’exclusion, the Collectif pour un Québec sans pauvreté 7 and many other organisations before the publication of this third plan. However, when we take a closer look at the document, we realise that these measures do not concern the social assistance program (for people ‘without limited capacity’ and ‘temporary limited capacity’ for employment), only the social solidarity program (for people with ‘severely limited capacity’ for employment). This is why the very title and the first two introductory texts are misleading. Instead of directly stating that the state will increase the income of people with ‘severe constraints’, the action plan suggests universality and inclusion, that is aiming to improve the income of all welfare recipients living alone and couples without children, regardless of their welfare category or status. These pretences 7

The Collectif pour un Québec sans pauvreté (Collective for a Québec Without Poverty) is an advocacy organisation defending the rights of people living in ‘poverty’. The Collectif was also the organisation that led the Government of Québec to adopt a law to eliminate poverty, now Act 112 to combat poverty and social exclusion.

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are not completely false, but they are deceptive, given that 95.4% of people with disabilities, recipients of the social solidarity program, live alone or have no children (MTESS, 2017). In sum, therefore, the so-called able-bodied people are excluded from this new basic income, even if they live alone or have no children. The first part, ‘A first step toward introducing a basic income’, immediately indicates that this will be a long-term process. The objective of being among the industrialised nations with the fewest people living in poverty is reaffirmed. To do this, the government aims at the strict minimum, that is to reduce the low-income rate by 1.8 percentage points, from 10.4 to 8.6%, according to the Market Basket Measure (MBM), thus passing to the 5th world rank in 2023, according to their projections (ibid). To achieve this objective, the government proposes to lift 100,000 people out of poverty by 2023. This belief poses several problems: (1) although representative of local realities in Québec and Canada, the MBM is not an international comparison measure because it is specific to Canada; (2) all predictions presented in the document are based on the 2017 data, excluding increases of the low-income line and, consequently, the cost of living by 2023; (3) the plan evokes an ‘exit from poverty’, while the MBM is not an indicator of poverty but, rather, indicates basic-need coverage; and (4) the basic needs of a person with a disability can be far greater than the average individual considered ‘fit’ for work. Also, not all beneficiaries of the social solidarity program will be entitled to this basic income. Their eligibility ‘[...] will be tied to the period during which they receive benefits under the social solidarity program’ (MTESS, 2017) as the department attempts to integrate more recipients into the labour market, including people with severe constraints, to the extent possible. The plan states that ‘[a] basic income will be granted to adults who have severely limited capacity for employment and who have received social solidarity benefits for at least 66 of the last 72 months’(ibid), thus creating a new welfare category: recipients with a ‘severe and permanent limited capacity’ for employment. According to the document, ‘[t]his requirement will make it possible to assess the persistence of their socio-professional limitations and their ability to enter the labour market’ (MTESS, 2017). Finally, according to the plan, 84,000 people with ‘severe constraints’, i.e. 65.7% of beneficiaries of the social solidarity program were already eligible in January 2018 (ibid). For eligible recipients, there will be gradual increases in benefits, from January 2018 to January 2023. In the first year, these additional amounts represent $73 per month for a single person and $88 per month for a couple. Evidently, a couple who decides to live under the same roof has to pay a high price for their choice, a discriminatory economic constraint that is reflected in the number of people choosing to live by themselves or declaring that they will, even if they are in a relationship, as this informant on the social solidarity program explains: ‘[t]he responsibility to take care of people like me, ‘unfit for work’ [for people with severely limited capacity for employment], considered disabled, was given to the social solidarity program, but we have the same restrictions as the ones on social assistance for people with temporarily limited capacity for employment and people considered ‘fit’ for work, targeted by employment incentives. These are quite specific conditions, for example you cannot live with your partner. A life without a girlfriend, without friends ... If I share an apartment, they will cut me off. If I live with someone, if I have a girlfriend, she would be

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responsible for me, regardless of her wage. If she earns $10 an hour, she would have to take care of me. It’s total nonsense!’ (Participant 34). Eligible people will see their income increase starting in January 2018 and for the next five years. ‘The increase in benefits will ultimately represent an increase of $440 per month or $5280 per year by January 2023. This constitutes a 41.4% increase in their disposable income’ (MTESS, 2017). According to the department, this income will be enough ‘to get out’ of poverty, ‘enough to cover someone’s basic needs’ according to the MBM, or about $18,000 per year for a single person living in Montreal in 2017. Again, two problems emerge from this statement. According to the MBM, the basic needs are not adapted to the needs of people with severe constraints; ‘[t]hese projections do not take account of assumptions regarding changes in the market basket measure [...] during the period in question 2018 to 2023’ (MTESS, 2017). Therefore, neither takes into account the inevitable increase in the cost of living over the ensuing five years. In comparison, according to the MBM, five years before this action plan, the low-income line was around $15,200 for a person living alone in the Montreal region (CEPE, 2012). If the progression is similar (i.e. ±18.45%), we can expect a lowincome line around $21,320 or even more in 2023. The second part of the statement, ‘A favorable context for combatting poverty, states ‘Government policies and initiatives that help stem poverty and social exclusion have an impact on income, housing, homelessness and public transit’ (MTESS, 2017). Further in the document, we also read that social housing ‘[...] is the cornerstone underlying the many ways in which we relate to and participate in society: work, school, social life and so on (ibid). That said, since its election in 2014, this same government has implemented important public service cutbacks that have had a significant negative impact on poverty. Indeed, the observatory of the consequences of austerity measures in Québec8 reports that these cutbacks reached $4,024,027,000 in 2016, particularly affecting housing, social assistance and homelessness, employment assistance, education, health care and social services (IRIS, 2016). It also modified the eligibility for various social housing programs starting in 2014, causing the relinquishment of projects and the closure of shelters in several regions of Québec. It abolished other programs that could affect access to social housing, including such refurbishment assistance as Rénovation Québec, Réparation d’urgence, and RénoVillage, while the budgets of the home adaptation program and Accès Logis were significantly reduced by a total of $128 million between 2014 and 2016 (ibid). In the third action plan to combat poverty, a few months before the 2018 provincial elections, some of these initiatives seem to have regained their purpose and usefulness. The plan also recalls the conclusions of the Comité d’experts sur le revenu minimum garanti (Expert Committee on the Guaranteed Minimum Income). Following their recommendations, Québec rejected the idea of such a universal income, preferring to maintain the social assistance program at around 55% of the MBM, as an ‘incentive’ to work and to offer 8

My translation of: «L’Observatoire sur les conséquences des mesures d’austérité au Québec», a website monitoring the impacts of the austerity measures under the Liberal Government of Philippe Couillard. Data was collected between 2014 and 2016 by the Institut recherche et d’informations socio-économiques (IRIS).

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more to the ‘most deprived people’, those recognised as having ‘severe and permanent limited capacity’ for employment. The Committee concluded that coverage above 55% of the MBM does not encourage people without constraints to find work: ‘the Committee wants a society without poverty, but this wish can only be realised by helping poor people who can join the labour market, to educate themselves, to train themselves or more generally to better integrate themselves socially’ (Comité d’experts sur le revenu minimum garanti, 2017, my translation). Once again, this redirects the responsibility towards individuals, except for those who ‘really’ cannot work: ‘the income support system must guarantee a minimum amount of resources to enable vulnerable people to meet their immediate needs’ (Comité d’experts sur le revenu minimum garanti, 2017, my translation). The Committee calculates ‘immediate needs’ at 55% of the low-income line, based on the MBM—that is, nearly half of what used to be called the ‘poverty line’. The plan also tackles the social participation of individuals and families, as well as the mobilisation of communities to reduce poverty. The document recognises the multidimensional nature of poverty and the fact that ‘[...] living in poverty in a relatively wealthy society often means suffering a degree of marginalisation, blows to one’s self-esteem and feeling of powerlessness, injustice or exclusion. In this way, poverty is tied to inequality and social exclusion’ (MTESS, 2017). The linking of poverty to inequality is one thing, but taking action to solve this growing problem is another. Neither this plan nor the two others present anything to reduce socio-economic inequalities in any way. Worse, the state’s understanding of poverty and its conception of employability are problematic and tend to amplify these inequalities, especially when beneficiaries are pushed back into an increasingly precarious labour market.

4 Testimonies: From Welfare to Work Under this regime, as noted by de Gaulejac, ‘Some people successfully thrive, others will follow the path of wandering and precarious jobs ... and will enter the cycle of social exclusion: unemployment, income drops, family breakdowns, eviction, precarious homelessness, temporary jobs, etc.’ (de Gaulejac et al. 2015, my translation). In other words, the trajectory of the unemployed will tend to be circular; that is from a precarious job to employment insurance (if eligible9 ), to social assistance, then forced back into a precarious job. On the other hand, welfare recipients with better income tend to have more time to train, seek and find adequate employment. They can also eat well, find decent housing and stay in good physical and mental health. This way, they have a better chance to avoid falling into what my informants call

9

Employment Insurance is a Federal Program that provides benefits to individuals who lose their jobs unintentionally and are still available to work. To be eligible, beneficiaries must have accumulated a certain number of hours during the year, depending on the unemployment rate (i.e. 700 h when below 6% and 420 h when higher than 13%).

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the ‘spiral of poverty’, as illustrated by the political analyst of the Collectif pour un Québec sans pauvreté, Serge Petitclerc, interviewed in the context of this project: You are going to have someone who works, who falls into unemployment, who goes into debt, who gets on social assistance because they could not find a job. To qualify for social assistance, they have to get rid of their house if it is worth more than $158,026. Then, they live on this money for a while, may find a job in a year or two but will no longer have a house. Back to square one again. The state helps you, but you have to be completely down and left with nothing’ (2018, primary data).

This situation can become quite complex and worsen over time, especially if benefits are reduced due to administrative sanctions for non-compliance with the employment program rules that Objectif emploi prescribes, arising from the latest social assistance reform: You will fall into a vicious circle. I get more tired because I don’t eat well enough. I can’t find myself a job. I’m still running out of money. I am more and more concerned with managing my budget. It can keep me from sleeping at night. If you have children, you say to yourself, How am I going to feed my children?’ (Participant 30). Everything starts to fall apart. You can’t pay your insurance, your driving license, this and that. You are blacklisted from so and so, and then you fall. ‘Bang!’ Try to rebuild yourself a reputation after that! (Participant 3).

While these realities are known and well documented, the state sticks to its activation model and reinforces coercive measures associated with it. Kenneth Nelson reckons it is a drastic step backwards from what was experienced after the Second World War, in terms of social protections, and compares the activation model to the British Poor Law of 1884: ‘[...] one prominent objective [...] was to make relief for the undeserving and able-bodied poor so unpleasant that they stopped claiming it (Stitt, 1994). Similar principles have been applied to modern forms of social assistance’ (Nelson, 2013). Petitclerc also believes that these new rules will have a deterrent effect: ‘where it can be worrying is that Objectif emploi is a living laboratory for developing social policies. [...] Sometimes, the fear generated by these incentives means that some people will not even apply for social assistance and will manage otherwise, to the detriment of their health or in criminality; downright!’ My informants, completely strained from trying to find solutions within the rules of their program in the official labour market or within the legal framework in general, also confirm what Petitclerc fears: There is a parallel economy mainly based on barter. The most common is to trade bicycles for a computer or a computer screen for instance. But there is also petty crime: selling contraband cigarettes, weed, etc. In reality, people do this to make ends meet. The more you deprive people, the more there will be. Some people think that impoverishing people will stimulate them to work, but on the contrary, it encourages these types of activities (Participant 9). How do I make ends meet? It’s not possible ... I don’t know if I can get into trouble if I say this, but I do housekeeping, cash in hand, you know; we don’t have the choice. Otherwise, we end up at the food bank (Participant 31). I understand very well the people who work under the table, I know some and I will never say anything against it. On the legal side, there is absolutely nothing to do. So, when I

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see someone going to clean up windows or to mow a lawn for $20, I keep my mouth shut (Participant 25). On social assistance, you can’t afford anything, even if you have some side lines, you always lack something. When I was in deep shit, I used to get the newspaper and call landlords to try to get some refurbishing work in their apartments (Participant 43).

The main concern around any employment incentive is that in most cases documented during fieldwork, respectable working conditions are unfortunately not forthcoming: ‘work first is, essentially, a directive approach that assumes work is desirable on its face, regardless of whether the most readily available jobs offer reasonable prospects for economic security or rewarding forms of social engagement’ (Brodkin & Larsen, 2013 in Brodkin & Marston, 2013), as I also documented during fieldwork in Québec: After my divorce, the problems started: a bad job, a little bit of employment insurance, another bad job, it does not work ... So, I finally got one that I liked with an employment subsidy. Once the wage subsidy was over, my boss suddenly didn’t need me anymore. The whole system needs to be rethought, the job market I mean. Walmart hires you at 40 h a week but finally gives you 15 h a week at the minimum wage; people struggle and go to food banks, it’s not good! (Participant 3). Right now, the job market is like fast food, short term, go fast and skip steps (Participant 9).

If the activation model does not help most participants enroled in such programs to get a stable and well-paid job and get out of poverty for good, why does it seem to be widely accepted? Maybe because of the collective representations of the ‘poor’ and ‘poverty’ under the neoliberal model; images that some of my informants also rationalise: You are a big zero. You are suspected of not deserving it. Did you work? Did you make money under the table? How come you don’t work with the curriculum you have? [...] You are lazy, you want to be there, worse still, you take advantage of the government (Participant 3). I am in an employment program, and I receive social assistance. I can work, so I face more prejudice than a person with constraints. People say things like, ‘She is fit for work, so why is she on social assistance? We make her live, we pay everything for her!’ Yes, maybe society makes me live, but I need this right now. Without it, I would be on the street. My home costs me $466 a month, not including electricity, so I don’t have much left. Usually, I have about $150 left for food each month, that’s not much (Participant17). I don’t have a car, no driver’s licence, because I can’t afford a $1,200 driving lesson. As an orderly worker like me, it’s impossible if you don’t have a car in the area. Yes, I would like to have a job again, but sometimes it is impossible with the amounts we receive. Most of the time, you have to move from one care home to another. In Québec City, there is public transportation, which is cheaper, but here, minimum wage, no car..., it’s a bit of a dead-end (Participant 17).

While governments are constantly streamlining administrative procedures for employers recruiting people through these programs, it is the opposite for social assistance applicants, as they must face more bureaucratic procedures:

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At the beginning, it was very intrusive. A lot of letters, phone calls to check on me, if I was looking for jobs or enrolling in a program ... It never stopped until they understood that my situation was not going to change, and I finally got my ‘severe constraint’ recognized (Participant 18). Personally, the fact that the state put its nose in our bank accounts, you can’t even receive a gift without being penalized, I mean, it’s inhuman. They let you know that they give you money. I had to present my bank statement and tell them where the checks came from, even the checks from the Social Assistance Programme. Don’t I have anything else to do? Why should I defraud? Because I’m on social assistance (Participant19). It was pretty difficult until 55 years old. After that, they leave you alone. It’s humiliating, you have to be careful how you present yourself, what you say to them. Worst, they don’t even give you all the information you need. It’s a good thing that we have local organizations to help and inform us of our rights. At 55 years old, it’s the end of employment incentives. They leave you alone (Participant 43).

Although this may change in the years to come, not surprisingly, the state is now hoping for greater participation in the labour market from ‘experienced people’ (55– 64 years old), from people living with a disability; some political parties are also talking about changing the retirement age in different parts of the world. All this would enable offering an everlasting flexible workforce to meet the demands of the neoliberal labour market.

5 Conclusion Even though the social assistance programs claim to include welfare recipients and the unemployed in society, these so-called inclusionary policies often result in the opposite. Indeed, official publications on the matter, whether Act 112 to combat poverty and social exclusion or the government action plans, all assert that their main objectives are to reduce poverty and social exclusion. Although under the neoliberal ideology, reducing poverty means cutting down the number of welfare recipients, promoting social inclusion translates into forced integration into the labour market again, regardless of the working conditions and irrespective of whether they can get out of ‘poverty’. Indeed, ‘one of the most paradoxical aspects of capitalist life is how equality and inequality intertwine: capitalism is characterised by a capacity for exploitation through incorporation, for the oppression that works not through exclusion but precisely by integrating people into a framework of rights’(Cahill & Konings, 2017). This is why these programs fail to achieve their mission and create more social exclusion, as my informants expressed during fieldwork, like the following from one receiving social assistance for the second time in her life: ‘I have always fought for inclusion, but do we include the poor and poverty as an identity in our society? Is it acceptable to be poor, or should we refuse to live in poverty? When you ‘really want to include someone, you want their rights to be recognized and you help them meet their needs. You don’t just let them live in poverty’ (Participant 19). In other words, why should it be acceptable to include poverty in our societies? Why should

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a person be forced into the labour market and remain poor? The ‘contract of reciprocity’ (Morel, 2002) and the counterpart logic in the social assistance programs, discussed in the first part of this chapter, only operate in one direction in Québec and elsewhere, as Lipsky notes: ‘[…] many welfare systems around the world now require recipients of public benefits to seek and accept employment, even if it will not make them economically better off’ (Brodkin & Marston, 2013). Should the guarantee of respectable working conditions to all the welfare recipients who are pushed back into their businesses, especially when the state is complicit, not be imputable to employers? On the contrary, a large part of the population accepts these policies, especially for the ‘able-bodied’ recipients. We saw that despite Québec being the first North American nation to adopt an Act to combat poverty and social exclusion, the three action plans presented so far were constructed from a neoliberal ideology. If the third action plan (2017–2023) constitutes a considerable step forwards for recipients with a ‘severe and permanent constraint’, who will see their income increased from $12,749 in 2017 to $18,029 in 2023, we cannot claim that 100,000 of them will get out of ‘poverty’ or even cover their basic needs. This is still a step in the right direction for eligible people. On the other hand, this action plan reinforces the workfare model, consolidates welfare categories and even creates a fourth one-people with ‘severe and permanent constraints’—thus, defying the recommendations of the CEPE and the very spirit of Act 112 concerning the conditions of the recipients considered ‘fit’ for work. Indeed, even with the increase expected until 2023, recipients without constraint for employment will only cover 55% of their basic needs, according to the MBM, a threshold that the government has chosen not to exceed. Moreover, the idea that social assistance beyond 55% of the MBM does not encourage people to find work seems more ideological than scientific. Likewise, overly drastic incentives, coupled with administrative penalties, tend to encourage the reproduction of systemic poverty, particularly in the current labour market, mainly offering unstable and poorly paid odd jobs (Boismenu et al., 2004; Bonoli, 2010; Nelson, 2013). As Cahill and Konings put it: “Workfare is another plank of the neoliberal transformation of the welfare state. It refers to a more punitive approach to the provision of unemployment assistance [...] Workfare policies have been symbiotic with the growth of more precarious forms of employment, which, as we have seen, have spread substantially under neoliberalism’ (Cahill & Konings, 2017). Overall, making social assistance less accessible is naturally linked to the activation model itself and the transformation of the political economy in the last four and a half decades, even more so in the last 20 years. ‘The workfare project matters because it traverses (and impacts) the boundaries between work and the welfare state. Changes in these boundaries have profound implications for individuals who are disadvantaged by market arrangements and confronted with increasing risks in an economic landscape that demands worker flexibility, produces job instability and makes job-related benefits more difficult to secure’ (Brodkin & Marston, 2013). Serge Petitclerc, a political analyst at the Collect if pour un Québec sans pauvreté (Collective for a Québec Without Poverty), recalls that the state’s main objective remains to reduce the number of welfare recipients: ‘since the early 2000s, the number of people receiving social assistance has never stopped dropping, except perhaps in 2008 and most recently during the COVID-19

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crisis, and it started to go down again thereafter, but the number of people experiencing poverty, according to the MBM and other indicators, has not moved much. There is as much poverty as before, but there are fewer people on social assistance. What does it mean? Retired people who remain poor, workers with a typical hours, poor wages and many poor workers. Moreover, Moisson Québec food bank noted that the lowest unemployment rates are in Québec and Chaudière-Appalaches, but it is also, where we find the highest demand for food aid from workers’, says Petitclerc in an interview. We can only conclude that there are jobs out there, but the working conditions are not sufficiently good to cover, at the very least, someone’s basic needs; unfortunately, the situation is worsening. This context explains why the vast majority of my informants never reached the low-income line during and after their employment programs, and when they did, it was for a very short period (e.g. Participant 3, who was sacked after her employer lost her wage subsidy). Another indicator that proves that the workfare model that is contributing to systemic poverty is the number of people using food banks. For instance in Chaudière-Appalaches from 2006 to 2018, the demand for food aid at Moisson Beauce food bank grew by 506%, from 2,588 in 2006 to 15,690 single users in 2018, in a context of socalled full employment (Moisson, 2018). ‘As the workfare project reconfigures the welfare state boundaries and its capacity to buffer risks inherent in contemporary market economies, this project has critical importance for those who find themselves at the precarious margins of the labour market or outside it all together’ (Brodkin & Marston, 2013). Maybe it is time to seriously question the concept of ‘workforce flexibility’ and review the rules of the labour market itself, which, in most neoliberal economies, contribute to creating more poverty, exclusion and social inequalities. Funding Fonds de recherche du Québec—Société et culture (FRQSC, # 308201).

References AFL-CIO. (2018). One job should be enough. https://aflcio.org/2018/10/2/one-job-should-beenough. Accessed 04 July 2020. Boismenu, G., Dufour, P., Noël, A. (2004). Les logiques de la contrepartie dans les programmes visant les personnes sans emploi. Les Politiques sociales, 106–117. Bonoli, G. (2010). The political economy of active labour market policy. SSRN Electronic Journal https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1561186. Brodkin, E. Z., & Marston, G. (Eds.). (2013). Work and the welfare state: Street-level organizations and workfare politics. Georgetown University Press. Brodkin, E. Z., & Larson, F. (2013). The policies of workfare: At the boundaries between work and the welfare state. In E. Z. Brodkin & G. Marston (Eds.), Work and the welfare state: Street-level organizations and workfare politics (pp. 57–67). Georgetown University Press. Cahill, D., & Konings, M. (2017). Neoliberalism. John Wiley & Sons. CEPE (Centre d’étude sur la pauvreté et l’exclusion) (2012). La pauvreté, les inégalités et l’exclusion sociale au Québec état de situation 2012. Gouvernement du Québec.

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Comité d’experts sur le revenu minimum garanti. (2017). Le revenu minimum garanti : une utopie? Une inspiration pour le Québec. Gouvernement du Québec. Cooper, V., & Whyte, D. (2017). The violence of Austerity. Pluto Press. De Gaulejac, V., Blondel, F., & Taboada-Leonetti, I. (2015). La lutte des places. Paris. Éditions Desclée de Brouwer. IRIS (Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques). (2016). Observatoire des conséquences des mesures d’austérité au Québec. https://austerite.iris-recherche.qc.ca/. Accessed 21 May 2020. MESS (Ministère de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale). (2010). Plan d’action gouvernemental en matière de lutte contre la pauvreté et l’exclusion sociale 2004–2009, bilan de la cinquième année. Gouvernement du Québec. MESSF (Ministère de l’Emploi, de la Solidarité sociale et de la Famille). (2004). Reconciling freedom and social justice: a challenge for the future : government action plan to combat poverty and social exclusion. Gouvernement du Québec. Moisson, B. (2018). Évolution du nombre de personnes aidées par mois : 2006–2018. Moisson Beauce, document du conseil d’administration. Morel, S. (2002). Modèle du workfare ou modèle de l’insertion?: la transformation de l’assistance sociale au Canada et au Québec. Condition féminine Canada. MTESS (Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale). (2015). Plan stratégique 2015–2018. Gouvernement du Québec. MTESS (Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale). (2017). Government action plan to foster economic inclusion and social participation 2017–2023: A basic income for a fairer society. Gouvernement du Québec. MTESS (Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale). (2020a). New benefit amounts—Social assistance program aim for employment. Gouvernement du Québec. MTESS (Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale). (2020b). Rapport statistique sur la clientèle des programmes d’assistance sociale, janvier 2020. Gouvernement du Québec, Direction de l’analyse et de l’information de gestion. Nelson, K. (2013). Social assistance and EU poverty thresholds 1990–2008. Are European welfare systems providing just and fair protection against low income? European Sociological Review, 29(2), 386–401. Québec, (2020). Determining Your Resources. Gouvernement du Québec. https://www.quebec.ca/ en/family-and-support-for-individuals/financial-assistance/social-assistance-social-solidarity/ determining-your-resources/. Accessed 18 June 2020. Québec, (2002). Act to combat poverty and social exclusion, CQLR c L-7. Gouvernement du Québec. Québec. (2017). Gazette officielle du Québec. Gouvernement du Québec. http://www3.publications duquebec.gouv.qc.ca/gazetteofficielle.fr.html. Accessed August 06, 2020. Soss, J., Fording, R., & Schram, S. F. (2011). The organisation of discipline: From performance management to diversity and punishment. JourNal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 21, 203–232. Stitt, S. (1994). Poverty and poor relief: Concepts and reality. Avebury.

Part III

Persistent Challenges to Social Inclusion

Chapter 10

Encountering and Engaging with Modernity: Vulnerability and Exclusion of Youth in Odisha Ragnhild Lund and Smita Mishra Panda

Abstract This chapter focuses on low-income youth in Odisha, India, and their movements to work in the informal and formal sectors in the cities of Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru and Tiruppur. Many of these youth, who belong to the lower caste, poor families and indigenous communities, migrate from the Odisha countryside to receive training for work in garment factories in Bengaluru and Tiruppur. Others live in the slums of Bhubaneswar, while engaging in urban work. The chapter is based on a study that aimed at understanding how young men and women in poor and disadvantaged situations access, aspire to, prepare for and adjust to work in the city. The analysis focuses on youth movements and manoeuvrings to counter differences in the material (i.e. physical resources, economic poverty) and social structures (i.e. gender, ethnicity, caste, class) underpinning urban inequality. The outcomes of their efforts underline a particular form of gendered and relational vulnerability and exclusion. Despite comprising an important workforce in the lower segments of the Indian economy, most youth in Indian cities encounter vulnerability and exclusion, and this remains a challenge.

1 Introduction In India, urban spaces are expanding by the day, and it is estimated that, by the year 2030, 41.76% of India’s population will reside in urban areas (UNFPA, 2007). Urbanisation has led to city expansion, migration, investments in housing, roads, transportation networks and water and power infrastructures and growth in the number of ‘smart’ cities. In this way, urbanisation has become synonymous with modernisation, especially with respect to the uptake of digital technology, the creation of jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, growth in active citizenship and efforts to R. Lund Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway e-mail: [email protected] S. Mishra Panda (B) Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_10

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achieve social equality. Notwithstanding these tenets of urbanisation and modernisation, which many consider positive, these benefits are not spread equally in India, due to structural inequalities pertaining to caste, class, ethnicity, gender and a range of other social divisions. India is currently enjoying a ‘demographic dividend’, with a greater number of people in the labour force relative to those who depend on it. Presently, 65% of the Indian population is below the age of 35 years (Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, 2017). These youth, if made productive to society, could facilitate India’s growth and development. Currently, the majority (90%) of Indian workers work in the informal sector, which is characterised by unstable employment, low and irregular wages and a lack of social security. Work in the agriculture sector, which employs approximately 60% of India’s working population, is also considered informal employment. Between 2012 and 2018, India’s economy grew in line with GDP, rising from 5.46% (2012) to 6.12% (2018) (Government of India). Although India’s economy has been growing since the mid-1990s, jobs for youth have not increased to the same degree. In fact, jobless growth has led to the greater vulnerability and exclusion of youth, despite three interconnected youth trends (Jeffery & Dyson, 2017): First, there has been a rapid expansion in education, whereby the number of young people attending higher educational institutions has tripled (Kapur & Mehta, 2017). Second, there has been a sharp increase in the use of mobile phones and the Internet (Jeffrey & Doron, 2012). Third, the value of citizenship, social equality and impartial government has received increasing emphasis in the media, online and in government announcements (Dreze & Sen, 2013). Due to their only partial inclusion in these new realities, Indian youth are facing social and economic disillusionment. In its election manifesto, the current government promised to create 10 million jobs for youth. Since coming into power, it has launched several initiatives and policy measures to foster a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. Furthermore, with a view towards integrating youth in the formal sector of employment, the government has strongly pushed for investment in skills development to ensure inclusive growth in employment. However, although the Indian economy has been growing for the past few decades, it has not been able to meet the employment needs of youth. According to the World Bank (2018), jobless growth in India is a significant concern, as illustrated by the 52% employment rate in 2015. In addition, India requires more than 8 million jobs each year to maintain a constant employment rate, as its workingage population (aged 15+ years) increases by 1.3 million each month (World Bank, 2018). High rates of growth will be of no benefit to India, unless an equivalent number of jobs are created. Currently, India needs to grow at 18% to meet the demand for employment of its burgeoning youth (World Bank, 2018). Several other policies and programs specifically benefit the youth in India. For example, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was initiated by the government in 2006 to protect the unemployed in rural areas. The scheme guarantees 100 days of work per year for anyone seeking employment. However, the program has produced mixed results across the country. In Odisha, a study conducted by the second author in four Western districts (all of which

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are drought-prone) showed that, because of the failure of MGNREGS, distress migration from these districts has been a regular phenomenon (Pattanayak et al., 2020). In practice, MGNREGS is far from satisfactory, as the youth in rural areas are either unemployed or forced to migrate to urban centres in search of work. Other programs meant to protect the youth and provide them with skills, education, employment and entrepreneurial support have met with similarly limited success, due to corruption, among other reasons. The situation is particularly dismal for youth in low-income indigenous communities.1 Furthermore, it is well known that, in India, youth have differential access to quality education, which affects their future prospects. This chapter is based on a study that aimed at understanding how young women and men in vulnerable situations access, aspire to, prepare for and adjust to work in urban areas and export processing zones (EPZs). We studied three categories of youth (aged 18–25 years): youth living in a Bhubaneswar slum, youth working in garment factories in Bengaluru and Tiruppur and youth who had returned to their home villages after a spell of employment in the urban garment factories. As a result of our research, we argue that youth—especially those who migrate from rural areas, who are already marginalised due to caste, class, gender and ethnic differences—are facing new forms of vulnerability and exclusion, in spite of their educational and work opportunities. Through individual narratives of youth in different situations, we also question the impact of India’s ongoing modernisation, on the basis of the lived realities that are confining youth to secondary positions in society. The chapter is divided into six sections. Following this introduction, we present the methodology of the study on which the chapter is based. In the third section, we briefly present the conceptual underpinnings of the study, followed by a set of individual narratives of youth in different contexts. These narratives provide the basis for the analysis, which unravels different forms of youth vulnerability and exclusion. In the final section, we provide some concluding remarks.

2 Methodology The study was conducted between November 2016 and March 2018 and involved different groups of youth from the state of Odisha: (a) slum youth (female and male) in one of the biggest settlements, Kargil Basti, in the capital city of Bhubaneswar; (b) youth (female) trained at Gram Tarang (GT),2 an Odisha agency providing skills training for different trades and (c) youth (female) returnees to their home villages following work in the urban garment factories. 1

Indigenous groups/communities in India generally denote the tribes. The constitutional label is Scheduled Tribe. 2 Gram Tarang is a section 25 company functioning as a vertical at the Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha. It trains approximately 10,000 youth each year and places them in different parts of the country, predominantly in export-oriented garment factories and other agencies.

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Table 1 Youth in the different locations S. No.

Location

Nature of the interviews and observations

No. of respondents

1

Kargil Basti (slum) in Bhubaneswar (capital city), Odisha (female and male, aged 18–30 years)

Aspirations, adjustments, 63 (41 female, 21 male) opportunities and disadvantages of living in the slum and the city

2

GT Odisha trainees (female, aged 18–25 years), placed in garment factories in Bengaluru and Tiruppur (South India)

General introduction to their families in the village, previous occupations, motivations to engage in skills training at GT and expectations from GT in terms of placement Motivation to continue work in the garment factories, employment issues, cultural issues, adjustment to the city

3

Returnees (female) to the village from the factories (city)

Reasons for returning to their 40 native villages, likelihood of returning to the factories, prospects for doing meaningful work on their own

230

The study employed qualitative methods, drawing on both primary and secondary sources of information. Table 1 introduces the respondents from the three locations, including their socio-economic backgrounds and training. The primary data collection involved the following methods: 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

One hundred and fifty structured and additional unstructured interviews with key respondents from the identified youth groups, scholars working on the subject and relevant functionaries from the government and civil society. Twenty oral histories/narratives of youth (male and female) who had broken social barriers to be recognised in mainstream society. They had compelling stories to tell. Direct observation at youth festivals and community gatherings in different locations across the state. Ten focus groups involving youth in different locales, guided by a checklist of questions. The aim was to understand certain issues from the perspectives of the youth and their community. Secondary data collection via a review of the relevant literature, including books, articles and policy documents about youth, gender, EPZ factories and conceptual issues.

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All informants consented to our use of their cases to substantiate the research. We anonymised all names. In the empirical section, we present the voices of some of the youth, on the issues of vulnerability and exclusion. A study conducted in the Kargil slum by the second semester MBA students at Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha (March 2018), was also incorporated into the research, following consent for use of the data.

3 Conceptual Underpinnings Modern modes of life typically call for a major transformation of the traditional social order. However, in a country like India, with an old and rooted cultural heritage, neither modernity nor tradition is strong enough to completely erase the other (Mohanty, 2014). Both tend to coexist, and conflict is inevitable, manifesting in the social lives of the population. Social exclusion is the process whereby individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society in which they live (de Haan, 2009; Francis, 2002; Rawal, 2008; cited in Lund & Azmi, 2020). An example of individual exclusion is the exclusion of single women from meaningful work. Alternatively, social marginalisation may also occur due to ethnicity, marital status, gender or class. Even entire communities may experience social exclusion as a result of distress migration or minority status. Many scholars consider social exclusion multidimensional, on the basis that it captures the multifaceted nature of social deprivation, especially in its institutional and cultural aspects (Aasland & Fløtten, 2001; Benington, 2001; Francis, 2002; O’Reilly, 2005; Silver, 1994, 2007; cited in Lund & Azmi, 2020). These scholars broaden the notion of social exclusion to include material poverty and social disadvantages, such as access to education, health care, social care and housing. This view of exclusion is in accordance with that of Sen (2004), who argues that social exclusion must be examined in relation to its ability to provide new insights into the nature and causes of poverty and further our thinking about policies and social action to alleviate poverty. Additionally, social exclusion is context specific and can be understood from an individual or a collective perspective. From the individual perspective, social exclusion entails a lack of access to resources and opportunities. From a collective perspective, it refers to social problems that divide the majority from the minority of marginalised, unemployed or ‘aggrieved human beings’ (Sen, 2004). Lastly, social exclusion is relational, in that it involves both excluders and those who are excluded (Cameron, 2006; INCLUSO, n.d.). This raises the question: How can inclusion be attained through better policies and practices? From this perspective, exclusion and inclusion are two sides of the same coin. The drivers or risk factors that are broadly associated with social exclusion and outcomes in the context of youth include ‘childhood risks (ill-health, disability, malnutrition, neglect, abuse, lack of preschool education and socialisation), social– cultural (lack of social support/network, minority, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, race and stigmatisation), economic (poverty, employment, living conditions) and

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political risks (lack of rights, lack of voice in decision making, discrimination, inequality embedded in formal and informal institutions)’ (Pouw & Hodgkinson, 2016, p. 5) However, youth may not recognise these structural factors underpinning their exclusion and may instead blame themselves (Alston & Kent, 2009, p. 93; cited in Hodgkinson, 2016). This chapter attempts to explore how social exclusion is intrinsically linked to vulnerability and insecurity under neoliberal capitalism. Waite (2009), Azmi et al. (2016) and Cruz-del Rosario and Rigg (2019) identify vulnerability as a livelihood characterised by uncertainty and insecurity due to traditional hierarchies and social inequalities, which prevent people from accessing opportunities. Recent research on vulnerability has distinguished between inherited vulnerability (due to a low class, caste or identity) and new vulnerabilities produced by modernisation (Rigg et al., 2016). The extension of market relations for example can thus harm as well as benefit certain groups or individuals and is temporal. Different forms of vulnerability and social exclusion are context specific and nuanced according to the perspective that is taken. According to Pouw and Hodgkinson (2016, p.5), ‘the definition of “vulnerable youth” is highly contextual […] and the number maybe be growing in developing countries that experience rapid population growth without poverty reduction. Most of them reside in cities, therefore making vulnerable youth increasingly and urban phenomenon in countries including India that experience rapid urbanisation and population growth’ (Sommers, 2010; cited in Pouw & Hodgkinson, 2016). In our perspective, youth living under the poverty line and subject to exploitative labour conditions and a host of structural inequalities (related to, e.g. gender, caste, class, sexuality) experience more constraints than others. Their precarity is determined by a range of processes that extend across space and time and materialise socially, economically and culturally.

4 Vulnerability and Exclusion Among Slum Dwellers The slum of Kargil Basti is situated within an abandoned stone quarry in Bhubaneswar (capital city of Odisha). It is the second-largest slum in the city, with close to 1478 households and approximately 8340 residents. Its services are rudimentary, and poverty is visible, although there are economic differences among the residents. The crowded, 3 km slum runs between the airport and the major train line. Within it, there are ten different clusters, each with a particular identity based on the residents’ place of origin and community. All of the slum dwellers are migrants from inside and outside the state; the majority have been living in the slum for fewer than 10 years. Centurion University’s Urban Micro-Business Centre (UMBC) was set up in 2013 as an independent Section 25 company near Kargil Basti to help build livelihood opportunities in the slum, aligned with community needs. The UMBC objective is to administer skills training to the slum residents, enabling them to build sufficient entrepreneurial capability to access both self-employment and sustainable skilled

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employment. The program is recognised by the National Skill Development Corporation (Government of India) and considered one of the five most promising models for skills and livelihood development among the urban poor in India. It works as a special purpose vehicle for a public–private partnership to alleviate the social and economic conditions of Kargil Basti residents. The number of youth engaged in the UMBC program is growing, and, to date, 60 young women and men have benefited from its interventions. After obtaining skills training, the youth either find employment via UMBC or move out of the slum to pursue opportunities independently, using their new-found entrepreneurial skills. Hence, the UMBC program has changed the lives of some youth by giving them jobs, both at UMBC and on the main street, which is now lined with several small shops owned by young people. Notwithstanding this positive development, the youth in Kargil Basti seem to lack knowledge about skills development and employment options. Among our 63 interviewees (aged 18–25 years), the majority were unaware of the employment opportunities in the city. Furthermore, most had only a primary level of education, with no marketable skills. Those who were aware of the opportunities available to them found it difficult to access these opportunities due to inadequate education and skills. Men found it challenging to secure full-time employment in their preferred profession; and although there was a high demand for female domestic workers in the nearby residential colonies, young women with children found it difficult to escape the slum. Commonly, we would see young men playing cards or resting under a tree during the day. We also observed a high incidence of alcoholism, substance abuse and smoking. A typical response from the young men when asked ‘What do you do’? was: ‘Nothing. I do not work’; or ‘I do something at times, but that is nothing’. If we continued to probe, they might respond: ‘There is no job available of my choice and remuneration’. Thus, most young men did not have steady employment. The few who did were vulnerable, as they were either underemployed or partially employed, with the constant threat of being sacked. Vishnu Pal was one example. He had been living in Kargil Basti for 10 years, after migrating from Kolkata, West Bengal, with his family: I have been diagnosed with depression and am now taking antidepressants to recover. The hardest thing for me is knowing that you put your heart, soul, sweat, tears and even blood into trying to become successful after college, only to hear things like ‘You lack experience’ or ‘We decided on another candidate’ from thousands of employers. I went through five surgeries while in college and nearly failed due to endless medical procedures, but after years of being on crutches and barely making it to classes, I graduated and got my degree. Since then, I have got only one job: the graveyard shift at 24 Hour Fitness Club. Are my skills no good? Is there something wrong with my résumé? Are my recommendation letters poorly written? I spend days trying to figure out what the problem is. And the one time I did manage to get an interview out of 500 applications, I still did not get the job. As a lower-income family boy, I also cannot help but wonder whether or not that influences the decisions not to hire me, not to mention I am a muscularly built weight lifter. Are employers scared of the ‘basti [slum] boy’? Do they feel threatened that a basti boy might come in and take their job? I am hardworking and I do not want to take anyone else’s job. I just want to help my mother buy her first house. I just want to help my siblings

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get through college. I just don’t want to struggle anymore. And I truly hope my economic class is not stopping me from accomplishing that. When you have spent your whole life having to work hard and overcome struggles, you know that you have to be harder working and more dedicated than others. You have to do more, fight more, endure more. But you do it, and you succeed. I just have to ask myself every day, how much more can I do? How much more can I fight? The demoralisation from being told thousands of times that someone else is better than you, with every job you apply for, truly breaks you down at some point. I just want someone to finally think I am good enough and hardworking enough to get a job.

Vishnu’s case was a typical example of ‘deskilling’ due to low class, and possibly also low caste, which added to his vulnerability in the modern economy and led to his exclusion. His efforts at education were to no avail. Litun Tahala was 22 years old, and his family had migrated to Kargil Basti 5 years ago, from Kalapathar, Cuttack. His father was a road construction worker, his mother was a housewife, and he had two younger sisters. Litun had graduated from a local college in Bhubaneswar and played an active role in raising awareness about education in the slum. But after 2 years in the city, he was unable to find any employment. To make ends meet, he found some part-time labour work, but this did not generate regular income. Litun seemed frustrated. He told us that there were many men in his age group in the slum who were unable to find appropriate employment and had taken to drugs and alcohol; this had worsened their situation, as they were constantly in need of money. He felt that he was discriminated against as a job candidate, as he was from the slum: People make promises but they do not honour them. They expect me to pay some bribe [money] to get a job. I have been cheated even after giving a bribe. I have come to believe that I am not qualified enough and lack the right experience to get a job.

Litun’s case shows even more clearly how slum residents were excluded due to their low class. Litun had lost all hope of getting a government job, but he was working on his skills with the intention of applying for more jobs in the future. He drank when he was very frustrated but felt guilty when he spent money for this purpose. Our interviews with the young men in the slum revealed their social and economic disillusionment. Similar findings were also found by Jeffrey and Dyson (2017), who concluded that exclusion stems from a lack of salaried jobs, entrepreneurial opportunities and skills-based training, which makes it impossible for individuals to establish viable livelihoods. However, within the slum, we observed gender-based differences, as several women were able to achieve roles as micro-entrepreneurs, making papad (thin, round, crisp snacks) and selling them through middlemen in the market. Some also engaged in vegetable and fruit vending. Furthermore, many of the young women worked as domestic helpers (washing, cleaning and cooking) in residential colonies close to the slum and were able to support their families with their income. One of the young women in the slum, Meenakshi Chand, was a successful entrepreneur who had benefited from the UMBC program. Her family had migrated

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from a village in Khurda district and arrived in Kargil Basti in 1999. They owned a house in the slum. Despite her hardships, Meenakshi was able to graduate and take up the odd door-to-door sales job. Along the way, she was cheated and had to pay Rs. 300,000 back to her employer. This was a difficult period in her life, leaving her, at times, suicidal. To raise the necessary funds, her family was forced to sell off their only patch of land. In 2013, Meenakshi came into contact with the UMBC and joined as a community mobiliser. Her job involved mobilising young women for entrepreneurship development, and she was ultimately successful in mobilising 400 young women to receive sewing skills training and open bank accounts. She also managed the UMBC day-care centre: I have been lucky while working at UMBC. I got the opportunity to participate in a workshop in Melbourne (Australia) for entrepreneurship among women in low-income groups. I got the exposure of my lifetime.

When asked what had given her the most satisfaction during her time working at the UMBC, Meenakshi responded: I trained 150 women, of whom 30 went on to run some business successfully. I connected them with banks to obtain loans and open small businesses. There are five women who are now earning about Rs 25,000 per month.

For Meenakshi, the UMBC provided not only a job opportunity but also upward social mobility and respect. She not only developed as an entrepreneur, herself, but she also facilitated and created work for others. At the time of our interview, Meenakshi had left the UMBC and started her own business. She felt that the UMBC was the reason that she could achieve and move ahead in building her future. In summary, for the young slum dwellers, social exclusion was multidimensional and context specific. They were socially stigmatised due to their residence in the slum, and they found it difficult to attain employment on the ‘outside’. Additionally, the social exclusion was gender specific, as the women were more likely to find a means of living, both inside and outside the slum. The young women seemed more receptive to the modernisation reforms and adjustment programs (e.g. the UMBC program) than the young men, who seemed passive, frustrated and disillusioned about their lives in the city. It is tempting to think that their risky and vulnerable situation may become precarious in the long run.

5 Female Workers in Garment Factories Our second group of respondents comprised young women (aged 18–22 years) who had been trained by GT to operate sewing machines in garment factories in Bengaluru (Karnataka state) and Tiruppur (Tamil Nadu state). In the garment industry, the demand for skilled women is always very high, and the factories cater to both national and international markets. In our research, we visited six factories to observe the working and living conditions of the young women workers, of whom 70% belonged

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to an indigenous community in Odisha state. Most of the women trained at GT are placed in Tiruppur (at the time of our research, Thirapur employed 200 GT-trained young women). There, new women hires are given further training by the company to operate different types of machines, before they are placed on the production floor. In recent years, the rate of attrition has decreased from 60% or more in 2016 to 30% in 2018. While the garment factories also employ some GT-trained men, these represent only a small minority (approximately 30%). The factories are rife with rules and regulations around working hours, overtime (after 8 h of work), production targets, timings for women workers’ return to hostel/residential buildings, leave and other HR-related issues, including provident funds and medical insurance. In Bengaluru, we visited Prateek Apparels, where all of the GT-trained young women had been employed for fewer than 6 months. At this time, the retention rate was starting to decline. We interviewed 40 young women between the ages of 18– 23 years. Most considered their move to Bengaluru a stepping stone to something better, which they would pursue after they saved some money. They wanted to finish their high school examinations, receive nurse training or pay off family loans. The majority were homesick after they moved and needed time to adjust to their new surroundings, which were very different from their home villages. As is typical in Bengaluru, the factory had a separate housing unit for female workers, with strict regulations. The women could not go out in the evenings, and some complained of claustrophobia. However, in Tiruppur, all of the garment factories had hostels inside their premises. There, many of the young women mentioned that they greatly enjoyed living in the dormitory with their friends, whom they cooked with and took care of. Their most awaited activities were their outings on Sundays, which typically involved shopping or visits to temples or places of recreation. To the women, this represented a freedom that was highly treasured, as it was unobtainable in their home villages. Most of the women were focused on saving money. To aid in their efforts, they compromised on food quality, eating only rice and potatoes, which were the cheapest foods available. However, this deprived them of their nutritional security, leaving them physically weak and unable to cope with the demands of the factory floor. Nonetheless, most of the workers had been happy to leave their home villages and experience life in the factory. Although the money they earned was minimal, they gained social and economic freedom. Remittances were important, and most of the factory workers directly or indirectly sacrificed a lot to send money back home. In the process, they became more ambitious and developed plans for the future. Ratani mentioned: Whatever problems I face in the city, I will bear it and not leave as I want to achieve something in life. GT has given me a wonderful platform to do something for myself and my family. I do not want to lose it.

Another female worker valued the training program: Because of the GT training, I could leave the village. It was very difficult for me to convince my parents. I am happy here.

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Factory work typically implied increased economic responsibility for parents and siblings at home. This support was controversial, as it broke with the traditional roles for young women. One 19-year-old indigenous woman (Sita) from Rayagada district, Odisha, became emotional when speaking about this: My parents are very upset that I have taken the responsibility to help them financially. They keep telling me that I am so young to take so much responsibility and are always concerned about my welfare and safety.

Despite the young women’s testimonies of the benefits they had gained from the garment factories, turnover was high. However, after 2016, the rate began to come down. One of the GT coordinators we spoke to mentioned that the main reasons women gave for leaving the factory were: an ailing/dying parent, the pursuit of higher education, marriage, family problems, difficulty adjusting to the city or language, and the food and work environment. According to one informant, ‘Many women have boyfriend problems and one recently tried to commit suicide […] There have been cases of elopement by young women, especially when they get pregnant. It leads to lot of problems, especially with respect to their parents’ (personal communication with GT coordinator). The coordinator explained that some parents were not keen on the young women staying in the city over the long term, as this could risk their eligibility in the marriage market. For this reason, many women were unable to return to the factories once they went home. At the same time, the coordinator confirmed that the ‘age of marriage of young women has certainly increased with employment in garment factories’. We met with three GT-trained women: Lali Naik (indigenous group), who had been working for 2 years; Tarini Naik (indigenous group), who had been working for 9 months; and Sanjulata Mundari (indigenous group), who had been working for 1 year. The latter had gone home three times, for 15 days at a time. Each of the women received a salary of Rs. 9000, after deducting for food. They were keen to go home only during festivals, explaining: [We] don’t like home so much, as our friends are all here. The accommodation is good, with TV and other facilities in the hostel. We can send money home—in bulk, sometimes, by coming together as a group. I know some girls join other companies and then come back to this one.

Again, these quotations speak of the women’s preference to choose and enjoy their lifestyle freely. They also underline the entrepreneurial capability of some of the female workers. Importantly, the women were shedding the traditional approach to marriage according to caste and class, as practised in their home villages. They considered this old-fashioned and instead aspired to a ‘love marriage’. Lali Naik, for example, was 25-years-old. Her marriage to a driver from Sambalpur, her home village, had been arranged for January 2019. Following the wedding, she planned to buy a good sewing machine and work from home. Tarini Naik planned to go home during the Rajo festival in June and not return, as her marriage would likely be fixed at that time. Sanjulata, from Jajpur, was 20-years-old. She defied her parents and did not want to get married; instead, she went into hiding with a friend’s family in

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Balasore, bringing with her only one set of clothes. Sanjulata wanted to work in Tiruppur for 2 more years. She had previously worked for an NGO and also taught small children in an ‘Anganwadi’ (day care) in her village. Both of these experiences had led to her current position, as she described: I want to fulfil my brother’s dream of setting up a stationary shop in the village. That is why I do not want to go back. I want to save enough money for my brother […] Marriage is always in the minds of parents and we cannot change their mindset […] If we were at home, we would have been married by now. Many people in the village talk bad things about us, but we do not care.

The above narratives of the female garment workers, who were recruited to garment factories by GT, show that most of the workers were happy with their new lives, which gave them more freedom, new friends, a regular salary and new aspirations, leading them to question traditional values. In this sense, they could be considered pioneers and active players in the new market economy. However, they remained vulnerable to shifting economic situations in the globalised market for apparel, as they were low paid and isolated in their social surroundings, with few opportunities for upward social mobility. Thus, they were excluded from the benefits of India’s modernisation. Due to their gender, lower class, caste and ‘inferior/minority’ ethnic belonging, they remained secondary citizens. For these women, social inclusion and exclusion were two sides of the same coin. As O’Reilly (2005) argued, only by addressing the question of what constitutes exclusion can the question of what constitutes inclusion be explored; each question is mutually dependent on the other.

6 Village Returnees In our research, we studied young women returnees (aged 20–28 years) from garment factories in Tiruppur and Bengaluru, who had come back to their home villages in two districts of Odisha – Keonjhar and Gajapati. Both of these districts are dominated by indigenous groups, and 70% of the women we studied belonged to an indigenous community. In November 2017, some of our female informants were going back to the city. On the day we arrived in Keonjhar, 7 out of the 51 women leaving for Bengaluru for work in a garment factory were returnees. The most commonly cited reasons they gave for returning to their native villages related to family and health issues. Additionally, 20% returned to continue their education (i.e. high school, higher education or nursing training). All of our interviewees wanted to go back to the city to work, as they were not happy in their home villages. They missed the freedom they enjoyed in the city, as well as their friends (with whom they worked and lived in small groups) and regular income. All of the women had brought money home with them, earmarked for some important purpose. Hearing them speak, we realised how empowering their experience in the city had been. The women were confident and able to conduct themselves

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well. They were also capable of taking decisions for themselves. However, family pressure for them to marry at a certain age seemed to deter them from returning. Many of the women mentioned that they wanted to work, but this would not be possible once they were married. This meeting of old and new values represented a squeeze that made their future potentially vulnerable and excluded them from modern life. Marrying across caste has become more common in Indian cities, as has female participation in the job market after marriage. Shibani Naik, from an indigenous community (Bhatudi tribe) of Rutisila Village in the Ghatagan block of Keonjhar district, had been working at Sai Exports in Bengaluru for 3 years. Her parents were proud of her, as the remittances she sent them covered the educational expenses of her three younger sisters. Shibani had already decided to marry someone in the same city and from a different caste, yet belonging to her village. Her parents were happy about this. She wanted to work for another 2 years before getting married, as, once she had completed 5 years of work, she would be entitled to a gratuity worth Rs. 50,000. Our female informants also emphasised the benefits of working outside the village. Baingani Naik of Bhatudi tribe, whose daughter was working at Locust Apparel in Tiruppur, mentioned that her daughter had come to visit for a few days, then returned to the city: I am happy for my daughter Jayanti and she should not come back to the village. We do not need her money as my sons are in good jobs and can take care of themselves. They are all married and have kids. When there is a right bridegroom, Jayanti can get married.

However, most women’s parents were often in two minds. They wanted their daughters to get married and settle down, but they also wanted them to have jobs in companies in far-off cities. These sentiments often clashed, producing a cultural dilemma that both parents and daughters had to navigate. Thus, cultural connect was matched with cultural disconnect, to a problematic extent. Nalini Naik was a 27-year-old woman from an indigenous community, living close to the Naranpur GT Centre in Keonjhar district. She had two children—a son and a daughter. Prior to being placed in a company in Bengaluru, Nalini had separated from her husband, due to his immoral character. He had brought another woman home and started to treat Nalini poorly. Later on, Nalini filed for a divorce. Nalini worked in Bengaluru for only 7 months. Her mother, who was alone, wanted her to come back and train to become a nurse at the government hospital. However, this did not materialise, so Nalini’s mother instead encouraged her daughter to become a hospital cleaner, as this would give her a better salary and greater stability. At the time of our interview, Nalini was working in a nearby rubber factory earning Rs 4,500 per month. Prior to this, she had worked in a phenyl factory, earning Rs 3000 per month. Nalini’s mother said: I want her to get remarried. She is getting many proposals for marriage. Her in-laws have taken her kids away.

Nalini’s mother and maternal uncle felt that Nalini was cursed, as she had married a man of her choosing, who turned out to have poor character. Nalini seemed somewhat

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lost and distant. She told us that she would like to return to Bengaluru, but she was unsure how or when. Her mother, however, did not want Nalini to leave her alone again. Nalini told us that her other reason for returning home from Bengaluru was her nagging skin allergy, which had not improved in the city. After returning to Keonjhar, she became much better. Forty-six women had gone with Nalini to Bengaluru, and 20 of these women had come back. Most had since married: At that time in 2015, the company personnel were very strict and there was a lot of verbal abuse on the production floor. This has changed now for the better. Many women used to come back because they were reprimanded for small mistakes or for not being able to meet targets.

As she told us this, she also emphasised the advantages of factory work: In 7 months, I saved Rs 50,000. I got exposed to the city. I received life skills to understand how to work in factories and protect myself. If I go back to the factory and work for 3 more months, I will receive Rs 20,000 as a provident fund.

The narratives of the women returnees illustrate the vulnerability of these young women garment workers, with respect to work. Upon returning to their villages, they faced unemployment, societal/family control and the return of traditional gender roles. Work in the city or EPZ seemed only temporary and seldom long-term. Furthermore, working life after marriage in the village seemed confined to the home. These women were being crushed between old and new values (attempting to reconcile, e.g. family expectations with the desire to marry outside of their own culture) and new and old demands (trying to bridge, e.g. work and social obligations in the home/household). Hence, they faced new and old vulnerabilities and both individual and relational exclusion.

7 Concluding Remarks In general, youth are rarely socially excluded. However, youth in vulnerable situations frequently experience exclusion in urban settings, when seeking employment. This increases their vulnerability and, in extreme situations, makes their situation critically precarious. Access to decent employment, sustainable livelihoods and formal housing is exceedingly difficult for vulnerable youth to achieve. As the above analyses show, these youth are subject to structural constraints, even after they migrate in search of skills and employment. To date, employment protection policies have been insignificant in improving the vulnerability of rural youth in India. Our study found that youth in the low-income category struggled to achieve an everyday livelihood. Migration to a city or EPZ did not alleviate their situation, as most struggled to secure their desired full-time employment. In particular, male youth in the slum faced discrimination and differential treatment in the labour market. They were unable to negotiate their skills, education and resources and hence could not

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benefit from the opportunities created by urban expansion and growth. Instead, they tended to internalise their social exclusion and deviate, picking up habits such as drug and alcohol abuse, which proved detrimental to their health. At times, they became social outliers. However, we were able to identify a few exceptions to this general situation. In the low-income areas, young women were in more demand than their male counterparts. Female youth outside Odisha were forced to negotiate between incomeearning opportunities and cultural norms. The young women who were exposed to work in an urban environment found their aspirations transformed. They wanted more from the urban opportunities, though tradition and culture sometimes held them back. In many cases, daughters looked after their parents and siblings and tended to other household matters, by sending remittances home from the garment factories. Although skills training had opened doors for them, family, culture and social obligations could shut these doors quite abruptly. Finally, we found that individual and relational exclusion coexisted: the youth were squeezed between traditional and modern forms of work, aspirations and identity. Factory workers had limited opportunities to operate independently in the market. Few men were able to benefit from new work options such as factory work, though many young women could successfully assume these roles (hence, vulnerability was gendered). These findings suggest that the category of youth is heterogeneous, with individuals facing different forms of inclusion and exclusion, according to their caste, ethnicity, class and gender. Hence, social exclusion is relational, involving both the excluding and the excluded parties. Importantly, exclusion is intrinsically linked to vulnerability and, in extreme cases, precarity. In modern India, the new economic policies providing low-income work and poor services to minority youth are exclusionary. While urban migration (which we have not exclusively dealt with here) may provide freedom and opportunities to youth, it may also place them in a secondary position in society. Simultaneously, young city migrants may be forced to reckon with the expectations of their rural and traditional families, negotiating old and new, traditional and modern values and lifestyles. Albeit important to the modern Indian economy, these youths may encounter difficulty in escaping vulnerability and exclusion. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to the Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, for funding and supporting the fieldwork in Bengaluru and Kargil (2016), Keonjhar and Paralakhemundi (2017) and Tiruppur (2018). The second author would also like to thank Dr Annapurna Pandey and Dr Supriya Pattanayak for undertaking joint field visits in some locations. Finally, and not least, we would like to thank all the young men and women who shared their views and experiences of their challenges and achievements.

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References Aasland, A., & Fløtten, T. (2001). Ethnicity and social exclusion in Estonia and Latvia. Europe-Asia Studies, 53(7), 1023–1049. Azmi, F., Brun, C., & Lund, R. (2016). Between exclusion and political engagement: Conceptualizing young people’s everyday politics in the post-war setting of Sri Lanka. In T. Skelton, K. Stallio & S. Mills (Eds.), Politics, citizenship and rights (pp. 345–362). Springer, Berlin Benington, J. (2001). Local partnership and social exclusion in the European Union: New forms of local social governance? Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315011462 Cameron, A. (2006). Geographies of welfare and exclusion: Social inclusion and exception. Progress in Human Geography, 30(3), 396–404. Cruz-del Rosario, T., & Rigg, J. (2019). Living in an age of precarity in 21st century Asia. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 49(3), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2019.1581832 de Haan, A. (2009). “Social Exclusion”: An alternative concept for the study of deprivation research: Operationalising the concept. IDS Bulletin, 29(1), 10–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1759-5436. 1998.mp29001002.x Dreze, J., & Sen, A. (2013). An uncertain glory: India and its contradictions. Princeton University Press. Francis, P. (2002). Social capital, civil society and social exclusion. In E. Kothari & M. Minogue (Eds.), Development theory and practice: Critical perspectives (pp. 71–91). Basingstoke: Palgrave. INCLUSO. (no date). The INCLUSO manual: Introduction. http://www.incluso.org/manual/introd uction. Accessed January 2, 2019. Jeffrey, R., & Doron, A. (2012). Mobile-izing democracy, organisation and India’s first ‘mass mobile phone’ elections’. Journal of Asian Studies, 17(1), 63–80. Jeffrey, C., & Dyson, J. (2017). Doing nothing and being nothing: How hope can solve the crisis facing India’s youth. Economic and Political Weekly, 52(21), 25–27. Kapur, D., & Mehta, P.B. (Eds.) (2017). Navigating the labyrinth: Perspectives on India’s higher education. Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Lund, R., & Azmi, F. (2020). Female headship and exclusion from small-scale fishing in the Eastern Province, Sri Lanka. In R. Lund, K. Kusakabe, N. Rao, & N. Weeratunge (Eds.), Fisherfolk in Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka: Migration, gender and well-being (pp. 75–91). New Delhi: Routledge. Ministry of Statistics and Progamme Implementation. (2017). Statistical year book India, 2017. New Delhi. Mohanty, B. (2014). Paradigm of modernity in India. https://qrius.com/paradigm-modern-india/. Accessed August 28, 2018. O’Reilly, D. (2005). Social inclusion: A philosophical anthropology. Politics, 25(2), 80–88. Pattanayak, S., Panda, S. M., Das, B., & Nayak, P. (2020). Managing distress migration and enhancing resilience through climate appropriate interventions under MGNREGS in Western Odisha (India). Gedrag & Organisatie Review, 33(2), 1414–1426. Pouw, N., & Hodgkinson, K. (2016). Social exclusion of vulnerable youth—Literature review. Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research. Rawal, N. (2008). Social Inclusion and Exclusion: A review. Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, 2, 161–180. Rigg, J., Oven, K., Basyal, G.K., & Lamichane, R. (2016). Between a rock and a hard place: vulnerability and precarity in rural Nepal. Geoforum, 76. Sen, A. (2004). Elements of a theory of human rights. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 32(4), 315–356. Silver, H. (1994). Social exclusion and social solidarity: Three paradigms. International Labour Review, 133, 531–578. Silver, H. (2007). Social exclusion: Comparative analysis of Europe and Middle East youth. The Middle East Youth Initiative Working Paper, Number 1, September.https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/ papers.cfm?abstract_id=1087432. Accessed 13 October 2018.

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UNFPA. (2007). State of world population: Unleashing the potential of urban growth. United Nations. Waite, L. (2009). A place and space for a critical geography of precarity? Geography Compass. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00184.x World Bank. (2018). Jobless growth? South Asia economic focus (spring). IBRD.

Chapter 11

Exclusion of Widows and State Welfare Policies: Some Insights from Odisha Annapurna Devi Pandey and Swarnamayee Tripathy

O Goddess who abides in all creation as the embodiment of compassion. To thine grace, to thine grace, to thine grace, we bow. Devi Mahatmyam: Canto Five, The Goddess Unvanquished (Aparajita), Third Century CE.

Abstract Widows in India, many of them young, are stigmatised, neglected and marginalised. Patriarchy and male vigilantism continue to impose archaic social norms on them. The status of widows in family, community, and society ranges from indifference and social exclusion, to physical and emotional torture. They are economically deprived, socially discriminated and excluded from normative frameworks of daily life. This chapter explores the lives of destitute and societally excluded Indian widows. It examines the state’s inability to fulfil its duty of care for destitute and abandoned widows, from a holistic view of human rights. Using the lived experience of widows in a government-funded care home in Odisha, the study argues that the state’s welfare approach excludes effective policies for widows’ economic rehabilitation and empowerment, thereby denying them a life of dignity and purpose. This chapter critically analyses the state policies and initiatives, and sheds light on widows’ struggle to secure their social, legal, and constitutional, human rights and entitlements.

1 Introduction In the Hindu tradition, women are defined as the honour of the family as daughter, wife and mother. A daughter is considered subha (auspicious), and her father acquires the greatest merit by giving away his daughter (kanyadaan) in marriage. The Hindu A. D. Pandey (B) University of California, Santa Cruz, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. Tripathy Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_11

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ideal for a wife is to be blessed with suhag (married life), suta (a son) and sampath (wealth). She is considered the Griha Lakshmi (the Mother Goddess as the divine embodiment of wealth and prosperity in the house). As a mother, giving birth to a son completes the family triangle. Women are known as Shakti, the power emanating from the feminine divine. During the British Raj (1857–1947 Common Era), women as wives and mothers were portrayed as representing the inner domain (chauka, the hearth) rather than the outer domain (chauki, the public) represented by men. This dualism entered popular consciousness through the early twentieth-century writing of the reformist poet, novelist, and dramatist Rabindranath Tagore in his book Ghare Baire (The Home and the Public Domain) and later in the eponymous film by Satyajit Ray.1 This dualism also has been theorised by Partha Chatterjee (1989) in addressing women’s situation in colonial India. He suggests that the discourse of nationalism was essentially gendered in nature. It identified women as representatives of the space of ‘home’, the last citadel of traditional values. Yet as this chapter shows, little has improved in the status of widows since the compelling advocacy of the 1913 Nobel Laureate Tagore, till the present day. When a woman is widowed, patriarchal conventions render her asubha (inauspicious), shunned from the family and community affairs. She is shorn of all the symbolic markers of married life such as vermillion on the forehead, bangles and colourful attire. She is expected to submit to vegetarianism and austerity. Often, family members exclude her from the rites of passage where she previously played a prominent role such as birth, marriage, among other samskaras (purification rituals) and feasts and festivals. During and after the colonial period in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, widows were forced to shave their hair—a symbol of sexuality— and adopt widow’s whites. Scholars have chronicled how widows are widely despised in India (Jacobson and Wadley, 1986, p. 19). As in Tagore’s time, Indian widows still remain secluded and isolated under the state welfare scheme. This chapter is divided into six sections. The introduction is followed by conceptual connections which have been used as the analytical tool to understand the political economy of deprivation of widows. The third section of the chapter deals with state legal provisions for widows in India. This is followed by a section on Swadhar Homes. The fifth section provides a discussion and analysis which focuses on the widows struggle to secure their basic legal and constitutional human rights and entitlements. The last section offers some concluding remarks. The study uses data from primary and secondary sources. Primary data is drawn from two empirical studies by the authors. The life experience narratives of widows in a widows’ home (Swadhar), Puri between 2011 and 2012 form the bases for this chapter. On hearing the life altering accounts of these women’s lives from Chandrika Mohapatra, the President of Vijaya (a non-profit women’s organisation headquartered in Bhubaneswar, Odisha), extensive interviews were conducted with widows living in 1

Ghare Baire is a 1984 Indian Bengali romantic drama film by the director Satyajit Ray, based upon the novel Ghare Baire by Rabindranath Tagore. This film focuses on the woman belonging to the domestic domain (Ghare) versus the men representing the public domain (Baire).

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the Swadhar Home. Qualitative methods comprised key informant interviews, focus group discussions and informal interviews. Life histories were documented and the impact of the income generating program introduced in 2007–2008 were analysed. Life experience narratives of 35 widows were collected at the Jagannath Temple, Puri. Most of the voices introduced in this chapter are based on fieldwork conducted during 2011–2012. A certain amount of verification of the information was possible by looking at the reports on Swadhar Homes. Secondary data collection included referring to relevant literature—books, articles, state and central government policy documents on widows, gender and conceptual issues. The marginalisation of Hindu widows is reflected in more than one way in India. Rarely is the widow allowed to exercise her legal right to family property; an austere lifestyle is imposed on them by the family; she is treated as ritually and socially impure. Often, the indignity Indian widows experience begins with social ostracism of a Vidhava and ends with being termed as a witch or ‘dayan’. The National Crime Records Bureau of India reports that between 2005 and 2015, more than 2000 women were murdered, principally by men, after allegations of witchcraft. Bhanwar Meghwanshi, an activist in Rajasthan who works with women accused of being witches, notes that the most vulnerable victims are ‘women who live alone, like widows and if they have land or houses, and people are eyeing this land, people sometimes do it to grab this land’ (Ahuja, February 9, 2018). The population of single women in India reached a record high of 71.4 million in the 2011 census, nearly 12% of India’s female population, with widows comprising 60 percent.2 By 2015, India had the largest number of widows in the world, estimated at more than 46 million—nearly ten percent of the female population of marital age—with more than 15 million women living in abject poverty (The Loomba Foundation, 2017). A Report on the Status of Elderly in India (UNFPA, 2012) shows that 58.5 percent of elderly women in India are widows. In addition, India’s 2011 socio-economic caste census (SECC) revealed that of around 12.8% of rural households headed by women, 82 percent earned less than |5000 per month (Obe & Alice, 2020: 11). In 2011, the United Nations declared 23 June as the International Widow Day and called upon member nations on this occasion to address poverty and injustice faced by millions of widows and their children and dependents in their countries (UN, 2011, 2014). This has brought about paradigm shifts in the approach of researchers. Many research studies have been conducted on the socio-economic exclusion of widows and public policies to address them. Such studies have questioned the response of the state with respect to the exclusion of widows in India (Bhattacharyya & Singh, 2018; Dutta, 2013; Lombe et al., 2012). Young (2006: 201), Chair of the UK-based NGO, Widows’ Rights International (WRI), observes that ‘the mistreatment of widows is most acute in South Asia because of their lesser bargaining power in the society’. Widows are devalued in patriarchal family and society and further disadvantaged if they have small children. Poverty is not the sole catalyst for mistreatment and abandonment. Indian widows from middle 2

Government of India. Indian census, https://censusindia.gov.in/2011-Common/CensusData2011. html.

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class families are abandoned in holy cities, left to beg or effectively interned in ashrams3 established for widows (Giri, 2002). Destitute widows in holy cities of India such as Varanasi, Mathura, Vrindaban and Puri share similar struggles and challenges in the society. Widows are among the most stigmatised, neglected and marginalised groups in Indian society (Cousins, 2018). India is known as home to the ‘husbandless’ (Kamala Foundation, 2021). ‘In our country, when women become widows, they cease to exist as the social welfare system in India is practically non-existent’ observes Winnie Singh, Executive Director and Co-founder of Maitri, a civil society organisation working for widow’s well-being (cited in Kannan, 2013). ‘It is a failure not only of the government but of society at large’, notes Bhowmick (2013). Child marriage is one of the major causes of widowhood in India (Smith, 2015). In 2017, Swathi Vadlamudi, Hyderabad, India, reported that in Katryal village of over 200 families in Warangal district, Andhra Pradesh, fifty women were widowed very young—often, their husbands succumbed to alcoholism and accidents (WUNRN, 2017). Chandrasekhar and Ghose (2017: 3) state that ‘there were nearly three and a half lakh (350,000) widows under the age of 21 years in India in 2011, and more than half of them were under the legal age of marriage of 18 years’. It is alarming to note that the number of child widows increased significantly over the decade. Patriarchal norms and practices exert an unshakeable grip on these women, confining young widows to abuse-prone domesticity. Their young age makes child widows very vulnerable to discrimination, abuse, and violence. Less able to assert her inheritance rights or custody rights over her children, a young widow is powerless against rape (Obe, 2012). Sexual abuse is often codified in societal practice under the euphemistic guise of ‘widow cleansing’ or wife inheritance (Mahy et al., 2016; Parker & Creese, 2016). UNICEF (2018) suggests that while child marriage is on the decline, up to one in five girls worldwide are married as children, often, to much older men, a practice which can perpetuate the cycle in which child brides and widows themselves marry off their children in order to survive. Discrimination and abuse of widows of all ages occur across India’s cultures, religions, ethnic groups, and regions irrespective of their economic status. Attitudes towards and treatment of widows vary from relatively mild indifference and social exclusion to extreme mental, physical and sexual torture. Many studies reflect the ‘rescue’ narratives treating these women as victims of the Hindu tradition, unable to make independent choices because of structural and cultural constraints (Chen, 2001; Giri, 2002; Jensen, 2005; Nayar, 2006).

3

An ashram can be defined as a community formed primarily for the spiritual upliftment of its members, often headed by a religious leader or mystic. The intention is that widows will pray for their husbands. Refer, Young (2006, p. 202).

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2 Conceptual Connections ‘Deprivation’ is a multidimensional phenomenon, part, and parcel of social relations. It results from unrealised civil, political, economic, and cultural rights to participate equitably in society. A ‘social exclusion framework’ is primarily an analytical framework for understanding society, discrimination, and deprivation, and it exposes the problems of redistribution and recognition of differences. It states that economic disadvantage is bound up with cultural–valuational disadvantage and ultimately causes social exclusion for a social group (Fraser, 1989). This analytical tool is a critique of the welfare approach adopted by a post-colonial country like India which sees women as mere wives and mothers and passive recipients of social security assistance, rather than active participants in the process of development (Moser, 1993; Razavi & Carol, 1995). Sen (2000) explains that the idea of social exclusion tied to poverty and deprivation evolved in the Western context, particularly in France, and is pertinent to economically developing societies among the 102 countries in the two most populous continents, Asia and Africa. This analytical research tool sees gender in its political economy dimension (Kabeer, 2000; Moncrieffe, 2008; Sen, 2000). It analyses the relation between the state, society and widows as structural in which patriarchy dominates the three and imposes its presence through policymaking and implementation. Viewed in this context, the marginalisation of widows appears to arise from social and cultural constraints in a patriarchal society. Yet the actual roots of these lie in differential access to resources and power, resulting in underutilization of their productive potential, thus leading to their subordination, social exclusion, and denial of social justice. Therefore, social exclusion tied to patriarchy occurs subtly, through mobilisation of institutional biases, social closure and implementation lags (Kabeer, 2000; Stivers, 2002). For this study, we focus on the socio-economic dimensions. The neoliberal state in India replaced the welfare-driven approach by an inclusive development framework for all sections of women in society, in which widows were included under National Social Assistance Program (NSAP) in 1995. However, this approach narrowly addressed inequalities, while ignoring the structural aspects that cause inequality and perpetuate unequal power relations within the household and society. As a result, the Government of India laid down the National Policy for Women Empowerment in 2000 under which skill development was envisioned for all disadvantaged widows to provide them sustainable livelihood. Skills training was introduced by the state in the Shelter Homes for widows and destitute women as well. In spite of these empowerment efforts, widows and elderly women in India still lead a life of deprivation even today (NCW, 2010; Pande, 2020; Pandey, 2018). Coming at the dawn of the millennium, these policy shifts are part of an effort to change the prevailing societal attitude. Sen (2008) argues that neither the cultural explanation nor the economic helps us to fully understand the social exclusion of widows. They are marginalised in their family and society. But if they are economically independent, they are less disadvantaged. Their social status tied to economic deprivation makes them most vulnerable. Based

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on Sen’s argument, both cultural and economic explanations put together help us understand the discrimination of the widows in society (p. 15). Understanding and addressing the social exclusion of widows in India and a critical analysis of the public policy meant to improve the socio-economic condition of widows are both useful and significant. We argue therefore that the economic participation of the widows forms the basis of their livelihood and hence has the potential to positively affect their life chances, opening up possibilities for participation within family and society. Gupta (2012) observed that three million people—especially women, girls, lower caste and indigenous people—die in poverty in India each year. His analysis is based on the notion that the relation between the state and the poor in India is one of structural violence. His argument is that the strict enforcement of bureaucracy contributes to the state’s structural violence against the poor. Gupta and Sharma (2006) did an ethnographic study of two development programs in post-independent India. The welfare-based integrated child development services (ICDS) program was started in 1975, intended to benefit aggrieved women and children under then-prime minister Indira Gandhi’s goal of garibi hatao, the elimination of poverty. The other women’s empowerment program, the Mahila Samakhya (women speaking with equal voice), began in 1988–1989 exemplifying the concerns with empowerment and self-help characteristic of neoliberal governmentality. They concluded that a neoliberal state in India has not replaced welfare by empowerment. In actuality, women are treated as dependent clients waiting for redistribution of resources in most cases.

2.1 Widowhood and Social Exclusion Lombe et al. (2012) conducted a study of 1,700 widows and abandoned women in Tamil Nadu who lost their livelihood being affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 and found that these women were discriminated against in receiving state relief based on marital status along with caste, gender, and/or age. They additionally observed that two aspects of a microcredit program were important for the feeling of widows’ inclusiveness: use of the loan and group experience. In this study, all the widows belonged to the vulnerable group, e.g. the deserted women without any financial means which would disqualify them for a conventional microcredit loan. The financial assistance helped them earn money and established a sense of connectedness working with one another (ibid, 159). The social connection among poor women in self-help groups has long been an important feature of microcredit programs (Menon, 2007; Swain & Wallentin, 2007). ‘Kalangarai, a local Non-Governmental Organisation, revealed that after the tsunami, widowed and/or abandoned women in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu were particularly at risk of deprivation. This was due to lack of access to resources, extreme poverty before the tsunami and the discrimination they experienced in their communities’ (cited in Lombe et al. 2012: 144). Their findings suggest 68 percent of

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the women in this sample had no formal schooling and experienced alienation. Specifically, 71 percent reported being excluded from social functions, 69 percent reported discrimination and 91 percent feeling hopeless about their situation. In response, Kalangarai helped 750 widowed and/or abandoned women between December 2005 and October 2006 with microcredit loans. As part of this initiative, widows received between 3000 and 10,000 rupees each to establish or re-establish small businesses, including food stalls, fish shops, and dairy sales, as well as cultivation of vegetables and raising livestock (see Lombe et al., 2012, for a detailed description of the program). Similarly, Mohindra et al. (2012) conducted an empirical study of widows in rural Kerala, which has a tradition of matrilineal inheritance and a propensity for matriarchal approaches to societal development, in order to assess their health and vulnerability and found out that none of their respondents were remarried. The study indicates that widows suffer from high levels of material deprivation, limited job opportunities, social isolation, social exclusion, limited social mobility, and, poor physical and mental health. It had to do with having to cope with the circumstance of the death of a husband (e.g. shame, blaming, and debt) and the new responsibilities. Using a cross-sectional representative sample of 9,615 adults aged 60 years or older from seven states in diverse regions of India, Perkins et al. (2016) examined the relationship between widowhood and self-rated health, psychological distress, cognitive ability and chronic diseases. Their study suggests important gender differences in how widowhood is associated with self-rated health, psychological distress, hypertension and diabetes among older adults in India with recent and long-term widowhood predicting worse health for women, but not for men. Bhattacharyya and Singh (2018) studied 21 abandoned widows in two old-age homes in Varanasi known for the spiritual destination for the widows. They observe the suffering of the widows and emphasise financial and social support by the state. These studies suggest that the destitute widows have experienced multiple forms of socio-economic and political exclusion manifested via sociocultural practices—‘shroud of widowhood’ (Basu, 2001; Banerjee and Miller, 2008; Chen and Dreze, 1995; Nair, 1996; Yadav, 2016)—being thrown out of their homes and living at the mercy of the state and civic organisations. One of the factors common to all widows of all classes is their lack of control over property and subversion of the succession process (NCW Report, 2016). Cases of widows being branded as ‘witches’ or ’dayan’ and subjected to severe social violence are being reported in many states of North and Central India (Chandran, 2017; Khanna, 2010). Many of these victims are elderly widows who are unprotected and closely related to the accuser. In such cases, often the village panchayat, the third tier of governance is a silent and helpless spectator (Khanna, 2010). Most cases are not documented because it is difficult for a widow to reach the police station and lodge a complaint. An accusation of witchcraft is a manifestation of male-dominant vigilantism which aims to subdue women and deny them access to legal and constitutional rights. Chen and Dreze (1995) organised a nationwide workshop and a conference with 110 widows in Bangalore. They noted the overall experience of widowhood as

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mentioned by all participants despite their widely different social and regional backgrounds. First, a woman who loses her husband has to readjust the entirety of her life and work: who she lives with, how she earns her livelihood, whether she has access to her husband’s property, etc. Second, the negotiations involved in these adjustments are typically much easier if she has adult sons and/or supportive parents and brothers. Third, most widows receive little support from their in-laws. In fact, the relations with in-laws are often quite tense. Finally, most widows who participated in this workshop wished to have a house in their own name, a secure job or source of livelihood, education for their children and last but not the least a positive social image (Chen & Dreze, 1995). In 2021, what the widows were saying in 1995 remains true in our own empirical findings despite the empowerment and equity policies introduced in government legislation as the millennium began. In many instances, even eligible widows are denied their rights because of the vicious network of the state bureaucracy as mentioned by Gupta (2012). Owen and Alice (2020: p. 11) report the case of 38-year-old Kampilya of Sundarban, who was widowed when her fifty-year-old husband Nirdhar, a licenced fisherman was taken by a tiger while fishing by the Panchamukhani river. As a widow, she and her ten-year-old son were excluded from community activities in the village. Besides, she was denied the financial compensation from the forest department of the state on bureaucratic ground. Also, she did not receive life insurance as she was late in applying for it (after six months). She became a daily wage labourer and suffered abuse from individuals who had lent her money and was unable to pay back. The number of widows in India’s Sundarbans whose husbands had been killed by tigers was estimated above 3000 in 2016 (ibid). Many of them lost their economic sustenance and suffered social exclusion because of their widowhood. The experience of 45-year-old Aaoka, in South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, further illustrates the multiple obstacles faced by widows in accessing the state benefits. Aaoka lacked vital documents; she was impeded by illiteracy, language barriers, travel cost, severe bureaucratic delays in getting the death certificate, and geographical remoteness. Till date, Aaoka has not been compensated for the loss of her husband.4 There are also several instances of suicide among the widows being harassed by moneylenders in the villages of Odisha (Pandey, 2018). As discussed above, widows are subject to cultural and economic deprivation. Social mobility is a forgotten experience for a widow. The higher the caste, the more likely it is that widow remarriage is forbidden, though remarriage is legally allowed. In some states, levirate marriage is practised by which the widow is compelled by the husband’s family to marry the younger brother of her deceased husband. Rajendra Singh Bedi’s novel, Ek Chadar Maili Si, made into a film (1986), depicts a Punjabi practice whereby the younger brother weds his elder brother’s widow. This tradition

4

ActionAid Kolkata Regional Office. A Study on the Situational Status of Single Women. op.cit. See also ActionAid Kolkata Regional Office. Single, yes! But not alone—Organising and empowering single women. https://www.actionaidindia.org/story/single-yes-but-not-alone-organizing-and-emp owering-singlewomen

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is called ‘chadar daalna’. This custom still is reflected in our culture in the twentyfirst century. A Bollywood film Pagglait (2021) sheds light on this levirate marriage when a young daughter-in-law becomes a widow five months after her marriage. Even when she was offered to marry a cousin of the dead husband, she not only refused, but reclaimed her own agency and empowerment, conveying the insurance money to the in-laws. The very fact that the young widow was educated and could earn her own living was giving into a reversal of patriarchal norms, claiming her agency and autonomy. Depicting such portrayals in popular media opens the path to enduring change in societal attitudes, particularly entrenched patriarchal norms that subjugate women.

3 State Provisions for Widows: Ideal vs Reality Traditionally, a woman in a joint Hindu family had a right to be cared for by the family, but the control and ownership of property were in the hands of men. In a patrilineal system, daughters had no birthright in the family property. By the Acts of 1937, 1956, daughters and widows could inherit the self-acquired property and the husband’s share in the joint family property as number one heirs after son and daughter. The Widow Remarriage Act of 1956, however, ran afoul of patriarchal traditions and was considered a taboo. The 2005 amendments give all daughters (including those married) the same rights as sons to reside in or seek partition of the parental dwelling house. The legislation removes a discriminatory section that barred certain widows especially from higher castes from inheriting the deceased’s property upon remarriage. However, widowed daughters infrequently register claims to their paternal property. As per the statistics, only 28 percent of widows are eligible for pension. Some 40 million widows are not covered under any pension scheme (Khanna, 2010).

3.1 Widows in Rural Areas and the State Employment Scheme In 2005, India introduced a national anti-poverty program, now called the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which offered up to 100 days of unskilled manual labour per year per household on public work projects. This opportunity is skewed against widows living in a household led by men. A widow does not have an independent choice to get the benefit for unemployment and loses her employability. Being a widow makes her increasingly vulnerable in the family and with respect to the local administration. As per the legislation, all those who are eligible to work under the scheme have to register with the village panchayat (the

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third tier of governance) which will make inquiries, verify and issue job cards. The panchayats often discriminate against the widows that make them most vulnerable. The process of obtaining a ration card is susceptible to elite capture and corruption and also may implicitly exclude deserving populations through the complexity of the process (Drèze & Khera, 2010). India has implemented National Social Assistance Programs since 1995. In particular, Article 41 of the Constitution of India directs the state to provide public assistance to its citizens in case of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement. Social protection measures in India include several schemes to ensure the welfare of widows. Indira Gandhi National Old-Age Pension Scheme, introduced in 1995, is a monthly pension scheme for below the poverty line5 (BPL) widows that offer |300 per month to the widows between 60 and79 years and |500 to widows older than 80. Under the 2009 Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme (IGNWPS), a widow between 40 and 64 years would get |200 pension by the state. Under the 1995 National Family Benefit Scheme, the widow gets |20,000 in the case of the demise of the breadwinner of a household. Antyodaya Anna Yojana, 2000 of the Government of India provides subsidised food to millions of the poorest families including widows. A person with BPL status and a ration card6 is ensured food assistance, and this scheme varies across states in India. There has been a serious discrepancy in issuing the BPL identity card. Asri (2017) observes that the possession of the BPL ration card as the primary determinant to pension has its own weaknesses. Widows are the least informed and hardly have any connection with the local issuing authority. As a result, they end up without an approved identity and are deprived of any pension. The State Commission for Women in Rajasthan had written to the Chief Minister pointing out that government offices in many districts ask widows to submit an affidavit stating that they are single and would not remarry in order to disburse the pension amount (UN Women, 2014). A study of widows in Puri, sponsored by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, reports that only 40.8% of the total respondents mentioned that they are receiving two hundred rupees under Madhu Babu Pension Yojana, while 58% said that they are not getting any pension. None of the women who have left their villages to come to Puri (non-domicile) are receiving pension even if some of them are living there for more than fifteen to twenty years (NCW, 2016: 23).

3.2 Widows in and Around the Jagannath Temple Interaction with the widows around the Jagannath Temple at Puri revealed that they were unable to get widow pension allowance without proof of identity or residence. Without any formal education, they are forced to engage in unskilled labour. For 5

BPL indicates economic status, by which an individual is declared as poor and avails certain special benefits from the Government. 6 A ration card is an identification document for the poor to get food grains through the public distribution system of the state in India.

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those from higher caste, being abandoned, they have stayed in the ‘mathas’ (religious Ashrams) doing menial chores. ‘The widows staying in private mess/ashrams/mathas seem to be in a very difficult situation as they do not know from where they will arrange for their next meal’ (NCW, 2016:24). Gundicha Devi, an abandoned widow from Jagatsinghpur district, living in Puri expressed her miseries after her husband’s death. She shared that being deprived of her family property she had to come to Puri for a livelihood. She did not have any BPL identity card or ration card as they were in her husband’s name and was with her son. She said, I am staying the whole day in the temple, living at the mercy of the devotees. My son has driven me out of the house. At night, I sleep in my daughter’s house in this town and in the morning, I come to the temple because my son-in-law may object to my staying in his house. (personal communication with the author).

From the above responses, it is observed that administrative processes create ceaseless complexities and challenges for widows. The formal framework of inclusion exhibits its limitations, and this becomes ground for exclusion for widows. These women not only lack the legal knowledge, but also access to networks to get their ID card and the means to pay bribes to effectively mobilise their demands. This is also in line with the research conducted by Clark (2019) interviewing 47 abandoned elderly women, older than 60 living in old-age homes in Bangalore; she found that many of these abandoned women were widows. She observed that the experiences of these women are shaped and constrained by India’s increasing class, caste and gender divide along with dysfunctional public health system and inadequate safety net, among other reasons. They had no other support than being left in philanthropic homes. They missed their family and felt wronged by them. Many widows took shelter in government-aided homes because of neglect and abuse in their adult children’s hands (Pandey, 2018). In cities like Vrindaban, there are Bhajan ashrams for abandoned widows where they get meagre wages for doing daily chores, and other menial activities around the place. These women being forced out of their homes, lack employable skills and as a result, are dependent on Bhajan ashrams and begging for their survival.

4 Swadhar Home—Pain and Panacea The Government of India introduced Shelter Homes for the abandoned, dejected and destitute homeless widows. The Short Stay Homes Scheme was launched in 1969 to provide temporary accommodation (up to six months), maintenance and rehabilitation services to women suddenly rendered homeless due to family discord or crime. Women who have been forced into prostitution, sex trafficking and/or survivors of sexual assault and victims of maladjustment were eligible to stay in such homes. Swadhar Home Scheme was introduced in 2001–2002 as a national level model to facilitate a longer stay for suffering women up to five years. It was

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introduced as an innovative rehabilitation center for widows and women (affected by domestic violence, sexual harassment, disabilities, and distress) including the aged. The state introduced this innovative Swadhar Scheme in caring for these women by way of inculcating human values to take care of the needy and disadvantaged in life and promoting social justice. Studies observe that widows in India have failed to navigate multiple public agencies to get their social securities, whether pension or compensation or legal rights, which in turn have perpetuated their vulnerability and social exclusion (Dreze & Khera, 2010). In 2006, Mrs. Chandrika Mohapatra, a social activist, started Vijaya, a Swadhar shelter for widows and destitute women being deserted by their families in Odisha. The Swadhar Home at Puri houses a wide range of women. A common narrative emerges that they had no husbands, depended on family, and have come there after being mistreated. They are all very energetic and talented but have no scope to support themselves. Under the Government of India scheme for Training and Employment Program (STEP), these widows learn to make incense sticks, candles, paper bags and other household goods which may not be profit making. Besides, the state does not have any scheme to provide higher education to the widows and help them with enhancing their aptitude and economic independence. Young (2006:203) observes that ‘one of the key findings of all those working with widows’ groups is the fact that the economic and social marginalisation of widows involves a huge waste of skills and resources’. Our study, however, affirms that widows could make significant contributions, because many widows are young and are eager to prove themselves. Giri (2002) observes that in India, 34 percent of rural widows are under 50 years of age and hence can be gainfully engaged in some employment after obtaining the requisite skills. Since July 2006, more than 150 widowed and aged destitute people have found shelter in Vijaya home. However, the number at times goes beyond 200 and fluctuates across the year. The high density of women at this home may be because it is located in Puri, the city of Lord Jagannath, where widows come from all corners of the state, in search of mokshya (salvation), to find ultimate meaning in their life. This home is maintained under an approved scheme of government but the fund provided is inadequate for the maintenance expenses (only a sum of |500 per month per person is available under the scheme). The government does not provide any other resource to enable such women to contribute meaningfully to society’ (personal communication with Chandrika Mohapatra, June 16, 2011).

Mohapatra also shared the challenges in accessing sanctioned payment from the state for the daily expenses in managing the Swadhar Home. She had to interact with the central and district administration and was constantly harassed by the bureaucratic system. She was always asked to pay bribes and felt humiliated in getting the money sanctioned for running this home. A study conducted by the National Commission for Women of India supports this narrative and reports that the budget for the year 2007–08 was released in 2008–09, at the time of the study as a result the women received their dues after one year (NCW Report, 2010). A report on Swadhar Homes (NCW, 2016) stated that many of them had to be shut down because of delay in receiving funds.

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The Vijaya Swadhar Home, located in Duttatota, Puri, housed 98 women. Even though they belonged to different age groups and from different socio-economic backgrounds, they all had one thing in common—experience of a lost partner, either due to death or an absence. There were 12 older women in their sixties and seventies; a majority, 56 middle-aged women in their forties and fifties; and about 20 younger women who were in their twenties and thirties. These women were sheltered in a rented three-storey house with 10 rooms and 13 bathrooms. A retired nurse supervised the residents as the in-house director. The residents were visited weekly by a local doctor at no cost. When the residents were asked what drew them most to this facility, their instant response was its proximity to Lord Jagannath.7 ‘We feel so close to Jagannath and living near his majestic abode, just a walking distance from here’ (personal communication). The women led a very austere life, and everything was cooked sadha (plain) without any onion or garlic. On special occasions, they ate Prasad (consecrated food) from the Jagannath Temple along with some sweets. The cooking was done by a few Brahmin women residents (with a small stipend of |350 per month), cleaning of the home was done by the residents taking turns. The older women over 60 were spared of any chores. They spent time with each other and were engaged in their Jagannath worship. The home provided the residents the required safety. One of the residents, Bhuta (literally means ghost, her acquired name at this home because she walked in and out of the ‘home’ at her will), was quite content in her living situation. She claimed that she stayed at a beautiful home where she could go to the temple and was safe. ‘What more can I ask for’? Bimala, a seventy-year-old widow, resident for almost three years, considered this home as her family. In her own words, ‘my only desire is to die at the footstep of Jagannath’. Bhamati, in her 50s, visited Jagannath Temple every day and took immense pleasure in making garlands for the deity. She said, ‘worshipping Jagannath is my calling. Hope I will die peacefully’ (personal conversation, 7 June 2011). For many of these widows, it is the vanaprastha, the third stage of life as Hindus, and they are waiting to die in peace. Pramila, in her 70s, is one of the older residents of the home. She was a housewife and came to Swadhar Home approximately five years ago after she lost her husband. She said, My son and his wife were very mean and abusive. Even though I did all the household chores, they would not give me enough food to eat or clothing for the winter months. When I asked my son for a little money to do my habesha8 (the winter month of November–December in 7

Jagannath, an avatar of Vishnu (depicted in indigenous, pre-Aryan idolatry), the preserver of the universe, is the patron deity of the people of Odisha, India. His abode in Puri is one of the four centres of pilgrimage for the Hindus. 8 The habesha, like many Hindu rites, is a brata (or Vrata) rite—a vowed observance. Historically, vows have been an important part of Hindu ritual life for centuries. People make vows mainly to secure something in this world, such as progeny, wealth, good fortune, health, fame or long life, sometimes people make vows to secure something in the next world; and occasionally, as in the habesha rites, people make vows to gain something both in this world and in the next. Proper fulfillment of vows not only brings the vow maker the rewards that he or she seeks but also invests the person with great spiritual power. Refer, Freeman (2009, p. 64).

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the lunar calendar when thousands of widows in Odisha move to Puri to spend a month of austerity and penitence in the presence of Lord Jagannath), he taunted me by saying that you are a widow and be thankful that at least you have a roof over your head. If you want money, go and earn it. We do not have enough money to take care of our children and ourselves. On top of it, you are an extra mouth to feed. From that day on, I decided that I will never see them again’ (personal conversation).

Pramila is one of the most active women in Swadhar. Being a Brahmin widow, she helps out in the kitchen (giving/handing out food and collecting thalis) and is eager to participate in any income generating program to help her earn her own expenses. She was mistreated by her family after losing her husband, and here she is, very content, and says ‘everything we get here is adequate and we are treated like a family’. She recites that her motto is, ‘If there is a will, there is a way’. Sabita Sar, a demure and pretty, 24 year old has an easy smile on her face. When asked, she quipped ‘Apa, I am the first one in my village who studied until class ten. I always wanted to do something for the neglected women. I used to listen on radio and was inspired by women leaders who would discuss women’s issues and about various programmes to help women out’. She got married in 2005 and had two children. But she was physically and mentally abused by her husband’s family for dowry. ‘I was so physically and emotionally broken both in body and spirit that I left them without knowing where I was going. I came in search of Jagannath and landed up here at this Home’. Sabita was a symbolic widow being deserted by her husband. His absence in her life makes her husbandless. Bharati Das, in her fifties, has been staying in Swadhar for approximately four to five years. After she became a widow, her children and their spouses were cruel and unjust to her. She loves helping out with the making of incense sticks. For her, the Swadhar Home is ‘my home. I will die here. Where else will I go’? Sashiga is also known as ‘Sashi Ma’, a Bengali, about seventy years old is another case of abuse and mistreatment in the hands of her family after she became a widow. She hopes to spend her life in the home. She says, ‘everybody treats me well here and loves me so much’! Bimala is a feisty 70 years old and has been at Swadhar for almost 3 years. Being childless, when she became a widow, she had nowhere to turn to. She went to live in one ashram but came to Puri emotionally disturbed. She finds this home as her last resort. ‘Now this is my family. My only desire is to die at the footstep of Jagannath’. Tandra, a 45 year old, has been at Swadhar since 2007. She was physically abused by her husband and left home totally helpless. Odia diaspora has also supplemented the assistance provided by the state. For example, in 2011, the first author raised $6,000 funds in California and supported these women at the Swadhar Home in Puri to start a catering business. In 2013, on her visit to the centre, she found that the women had invested that money in buying a refrigerator, a commercial stove, grinders, pots and pans to start their business enterprise. They were making puris, aloo dum, chutneys, papads, spices and chhatu, badi, etc., and supplied these food items to the local women’s college and set up a food stall to cater to a section of the tourists coming to the Jagannath Temple. They have discovered a new talent and strength in themselves which has helped them in developing a new sense of identity—independent, self-assured and productive members even while staying at this home. This entrepreneurship has given a

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new meaning and purpose to their life. When they came to the home, they were so shattered, emotionally drained and broken, with little self-esteem. On a Sunday in July 2011, the first author saw two elderly women brought over to this home by the government staff. Mohapatra said ‘they were abandoned and left on the street in Puri. The district collector had sent an order to bring them to this home’. Many such cases end up in Swadhar Homes. Being abandoned by their family, now they live and work together and feel comfortable as successful entrepreneurs brushing off the feeling of being a burden on society. They feel comfortable in their new surroundings. This opportunity has made them feel useful about themselves, and instead of feeling marginalised and victimised by their circumstances, they have developed a new zest for life. Cast out by society, rejected by their family, they already experience a state of loss and lack self-esteem. They are deemed to be unfit/misfit in their cultural roles as a daughter, wife, mother or mother-in-law. This entrepreneurship opportunity provided them a sense of sustenance and dignity for who they are and also gave them the confidence that their life is not wasted without a husband. They can create a positive niche for themselves and in the process become the role models for the women sharing similar life experiences. This research on Swadhar program suggests that the widows find a place for themselves and develop a sense of dignity, in living in these homes. But placing together all the women from different generations, irrespective of their skills, knowledge and education, brands them as destitute widows and traps them in this status. Given scope and opportunity, these women could become economically independent. They generate economic mobility and social networks among themselves by strengthening their base and giving them a sense of dignity and a new purpose in their life. Women develop a new space, a sense of self-worth, a connection with the broader community and a new lease of life.

5 Discussion The Indian state has played a vital role in improving the situation of widows who have become destitutes. The Swadhar program has provided shelter to so many underprivileged women who had nowhere to turn to being deserted by their families. Still the Swadhar program had its loopholes. Chandrika Mohapatra, the founder of the Swadhar Home in Puri, was very compassionate and empathetic towards the widows, but she was struggling to take adequate care of the residents without getting the timely financial aid from the government. A committee convened by the National Commission for Women produced a report on the Status of Widows in Swadhar Homes in four states, namely Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, and Odisha (NCW, 2016), and established that the present government scheme for Swadhar Homes has serious limitations. The women in these homes live in deplorable conditions, and the institutional funding is very irregular.

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The Indian state has done little of substance to make the widows skilled and selfreliant. A major deficiency in the current skill development framework of the state is that after the skill development training, widows are left to themselves without institutional support such as access to credit, market linkage, and job placement. Keeping in view the dire condition of the widows, India’s Supreme Court ruled that their plight must be taken into account9 , and the government must provide them food, medical care, and a safe and clean place to live. Since 2012, a number of government projects have been introduced, including building Krishna Kutir, or Krishna’s House, in Vrindavan, which cost $8 million and opened in August 2018 which accommodates 129 destitute widows (Schultz, 2019). Widows receive a small stipend along with free food and lodging. It is clear that these widows had been so battered and bruised at home, and they flock to holy cities like Vrindavan, Puri and Varanasi in India for their own peace and spiritual nourishment. The government merged Short Stay Home and Swadhar Scheme in 2015 to form Swadhar Greha Scheme extending services, namely counselling, medical care, psychiatric treatment, occupational therapy, education-cum-vocational training and recreational faces. Three hundred and eighteen Swadhar Homes are operating in the country.10 Under the Swadhar Greha Scheme, no effort is made by the state to empower the widows on their rights and integrate them with the community. The state has failed to deliver due to implementation lags, no evidence of coordination and indifferent monitoring mechanisms. Many impoverished and marginalised widows are struggling to survive being left without jobs. Multiple forms of discrimination make them easy targets for economic and sexual exploitation. In South Asia, women’s lawyer associations report that many of their briefs relate to the denial of widows’ rights to inheritance, land and property ownership and custody of children. Few cases reach the courts, owing to corruption, cost, patriarchal bias, illiteracy, and fear of violence towards the litigant (Obe & Lees, 2020). Keeping in view the suffering of the destitute widows, ‘The Widows (protection and maintenance) Bill, 2015’ was proposed to give protection to abandoned and destitute widows. Under Section 7 of the proposed Bill, it affirmed the right of widows on her husband’s property and stated a widow shall not be evicted or thrown out of the house of the in-laws or parents. She shall be entitled to inherit the property or the share of her late husband in case of joint ownership of the property from her in-laws and shall be entitled to maintenance from the heir or in-laws who abandon a widow for subsistence. Unfortunately, the bill was not passed in the parliament, and hence, the need for legislation is yet to be fulfilled. The Government of India has to make a comprehensive and uniform pension scheme for widows. The procedure has to be made user-friendly keeping ground realities in mind. The report by the National Committee constituted by the Hon’ble Supreme Court (2017) recommended dedicated widows’ cells at the district level that will register the widows in the respective districts and facilitate the process of generation of 9

Please see, Venkatesan (2012). WCD, Govt. of India (2018).

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identity proof such as Aadhaar. It recommended a robust monitoring mechanism for Shelter Homes at the district level itself. The report also argued that self-help groups (SHGs) of widowed women need to be promoted by the state. These SHGs will bring them together for entrepreneurship and solidarity building and develop selfconfidence in them. It will inspire and encourage them to go for income generating activities. It suggested for a proactive state to adopt a ‘many hands approach’11 that will converge all policies under one umbrella and bring multiple agencies engaged in implementation of developmental programs for women to one platform to work for one goal—amelioration of the condition of widows. This will create an enabling environment for the widows to be aware of their rights have access to necessary skills and environment to earn a livelihood. This would also empower widows to negotiate with the state collectively in case of non-performance of the administration. However, the recommendations of the experts committee await implementation.

6 Concluding Remarks The present research demonstrates that the customary and religious, rather than statutory, legislations continue to govern the lives of the abandoned widows we have studied in Puri. Laws cannot quickly nor readily overcome centuries of entrenched patriarchy. Widows, suffering from deprivation of assets and abuse are forced into extreme poverty and destitution and are excluded from social protection and access to essential services and housing. They are compelled to move to Shelter Homes, leaving their family and kin support. India continues to lack institutional mechanisms or infrastructural support to provide care for the destitute widows. Traditionally, they were expected to be taken care of by family especially their sons and other family members. But with poverty, migration of the children, and the changing economy, families are shying away from their moral responsibility to care for women in the family, their women who are widows or separated/divorced. As a result, many such women simply land up on the streets. Along with the neoliberal economy and privatisation of vital resources, namely health and education, the state has promoted welfare schemes like Swadhar, to take care of women deserted by their families and other kin groups. The state has also tried to build partnerships with NGOs to provide shelter to such women. However, they do not cater to the widows in need located in different parts of the country. The Indian state lacks adequate, effective, and workable societal infrastructure, such as appropriate income generating programs, healthcare services, and vocational skill training, available for these destitute widows deserted by their families. As a result, they end up seeking protection from Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) or temples for their survival. The families facing financial constraints are 11

‘Many hands approach’ implies that all administrative agencies like police, the executive and the civil society should work together for the accomplishment of one goal well-being of the widows in India.

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pushing their mothers, wives, and sisters to NGOs, which are trying to do what the families were doing previously. These NGOs have taken over some of the functions/responsibilities/obligations of the state to take care of these marginalised citizens. These women are indeed doubly marginalised, first as widows/deserted and secondly as poor individuals. Finally, the present study emphasises that by secluding the widows in destitute homes or Short Stay Homes does not confer dignity to them. Widowhood comes at different ages and many young women become vulnerable against all the atrocities that the family and society inflict on them, during and after their widowhood. If the state and society provide opportunities for their economic and social security, they would be much better off than they are today. If these destitute widows were given the opportunity to make an independent living, even in patriarchal India hostile to them, this would vastly increase their position in families and communities. Another major dilemma in the state and national legislations is to assess the needs of these destitute widows and the effective implementation for their well-being

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Pandey, A. (2018). Microcredit/microfinance: An Indian alternative to development. In B. Mohanty & V. Faessel (eds.), Our money our lives: Microcredit and women’s empowerment in cross cultural perspective (pp. 201–234). Aakar Books. Parker, L., & Creese, H. (2016). The stigmatisation of widows and divorcees (janda). Indonesian Society. Indonesia and the Malay World, 44(128), 1–6. Perkins, J. M., Lee, H., James, K. S., Juhwan, O., Krishna, A., Heo, J., Lee, J., Subramanian, S. V. (2016). Marital status, widowhood duration, gender and health outcomes: A cross-sectional study among older adults in India. BMC Public Health, 16 (1032). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12 889-016-3682-9 Razavi, S., & Miller, C. (1995). From WID to GAD: Conceptual shifts in the women and development discourse. UN Fourth World Conference on Women, Occasional Paper, No. 1. United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). Report of the Committee constituted under the direction of the Supreme Court of India by judgement dated 11 August 2017 in WPC 659 of 2007. (2017). National Commission for Women. http:// ncwapps.nic.in/PDFFiles/VrindavanCommitteeReport02022018.pdf Schultz, K. (2019). India’s widows, abused at home, have sought refuge in this holy city for centuries, Aug 27. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/world/asia/india-womenwidows.html Sen, A. (2000). Social exclusion: Concept, application, and scrutiny. Office of Environment and Social Development. Asian Development Ban006B. Sen, A. (2008). Violence, identity and poverty. Journal of Peace Research, 45(1), 5–15. Smith, L. (2015). City of widows: The 38,000 forgotten women of Varanasi. International Business Times. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/city-widows-38000-forgottenwomen-varanasi-1505560 Stivers, C. (2002). Gender images in public administration: Legitimacy and the administrative state. Sage publications. Swain, R., Wallentin, F. Y. (2007). Empowering women through microfinance: Evidence from India. Poverty in Focus, 13, 20–21. The Loomba Foundation. (2017). The world widow report. https://www.theloombafou ndation.org/hour-work/research/world-widows report/statistics#:~:text= The%20regional%20 percentage%20of%20the, percent%2020 in %20Europe%20and%20Russia. UN. (2011). Department of Public Information Strategic Communications Division. DPI/2572. https://www.un.org/womenwatch/calendar/International_Widows_Day_backgrounder.pdf United Nations (UN). (2014). Statement for International Widows Day. https://www.un.org/en/obs ervances/widows-day UN, Women. (2014). Empowering widows: An overview of policies and programmes in India, Nepal and SriLanka. https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2015 UNFPA. (2012). Report on the status of elderly in select states of India, 2011: Building a knowledge base on population ageing in India. Available at: http://www.isec.ac.in/AgeingReport_28Nov2 012_LowRes-1.pdf. UNICEF. (2018). Child marriage: Latest trends and future prospects. https://www.unicef.org/pro tection/files/Child_Marriage_data_brief_20June(3).pdf Venkatesan, J. (2012). “Ensure at least proper last rites to Vrindavan widows: Supreme Court” in Hindu, August 04, 2012 and Updated: July 25, 2016. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ ensure-at-least-proper-last-rites-to-vrindavan-widows-supreme-court/article3723607.ece Women’s UN Report Network. (2017). India and Nepal—young girl child widows of child marriages, July 25. https://wunrn.com/2017/07/india-nepal-young-girl-child-widows-of-childmarriages WCD, Govt. of India. (2018). http://wcdodisha.gov.in/Application//uploadDocuments/contentMo dificatios_in_the_guidlines_of_Swadhar_Greh_Scheme_reg.pdf Yadav, P. (2016). White sari—Transforming widowhood in Nepal. Gender, Technology and Development, 20(1), 1–24. Young, K. (2006). Widows without rights: Challenging marginalisation and dispossession. Gender and Development, 14(2), 199–209. https://doi.org/10.1080/13552070600747131

Chapter 12

Social Exclusion of the Hijra During COVID-19 Pandemic in Odisha: Vulnerability and Precarity Dimensions Smita Mishra Panda

Abstract The chapter discusses the challenges faced by the Hijra community, one of the most marginalised and transgender groups in the state of Odisha in eastern India, during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the strict lockdown period. The popular perception was that the pandemic is a ‘great equaliser’, turned out to be a myth as it exposed the differential vulnerabilities in society, the Hijra community being one. Based on an empirical study in five locations of the state, an analysis of the impact of the pandemic on Hijra life and livelihoods is attempted in the chapter. The coping mechanisms amidst heightened exclusion experienced by the Hijra groups is also discussed. Vulnerability to precarity of the Hijra life and livelihoods during the pandemic forms the central analysis of the study. However, during the pandemic, group dynamics manifested in solidarity and support for each other was evident, that helped them partially tide over the livelihood challenges faced by them. Insights from post-COVID-19 lockdown situation are also analysed focusing on Hijra trepidations, possibilities of pre-COVID income earning and maintaining their identity. Some concluding remarks are given in the form of suggestions made by the Hijra groups on how to deal with pandemic like situations.

1 Introduction The transgender are those individuals whose gender identities are not part of the binary categories of females or males. The other synonyms by which they are typically referred to as are—‘gender variant’, ‘intersexed’, ‘differently gendered’, ‘nonheteronormative’, ‘cross-dressers’ ‘third gender’, and ‘gender non-conforming’. A male-to-female transgender person is referred to as ‘transwoman’ and a female-tomale transgender person is, ‘transman’. The chapter at hand focuses on one of the transgender groups—Hijra (eunuch). It draws from an empirical study conducted in the state of Odisha during the COVID-19 strict pandemic lockdown period which lasted for 5–6 months in 2020. The main objective of the study was to understand S. M. Panda (B) Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_12

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their life and livelihood challenges in different geographical locations of the state, in the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The Hijra community in India needs to be placed in the wider context of the transgender community. According to the Census of India 2011, the population of Hijra was 480,000. There was an official count of transgender persons in 2014, which put the figure at 490,000. However, this seems to be a conservative estimate as many transgender activists put the figure at 6–7 times more than what is reported (Nagarajan, 2014). The Salvation of Oppressed Eunuchs Survey (SOES) puts the figure at 1,900,000 (March 1, 2011). According to the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (GOI, 2011), the Hijra population was reported as 4,316 in rural areas and 463 in urban areas in Odisha. However, this is a grossly under-reported number. It is much higher, especially after the Supreme Court granted legal recognition to a person’s self-identified gender as either male, female or third gender. A study conducted by the National Institute of Epidemiology and Indian Council of Medical Research along with UNDP and NACO estimated the population of Hijra in Odisha to be 7854 which is the third highest after Maharashtra and UP (Subramanian et al., 2015). However, it is to be noted that there is no reliable data on the demography of Hijras in India, especially with respect to the distribution of the population across the country. There are many local names of Hijras in India. They are, namely Kinnars, Shivshaktis, Aravanis, Jogappas, Sakhi, Jogtas, Aradhis and among others. The Hijra identity reverberates with the Western trans-sexual identity, where an individual typically feels that they are born with a wrong body (Karla & Shah, 2013). Nanda (1998, p. ix cited in Nayak & Panda, 2021) defines the Hijra as: a religious community of men who dress and act like women and whose culture centers on the worship of Bahuchara Mata, one of the many versions of the Mother Goddess worshiped throughout India. In connection with the worship of this goddess, the Hijras undergo an operation in which their genitals are removed… This operation defines them as Hijras— eunuchs—neither men nor women… function as an institutionalized third gender role.

In the Odisha study, the Hijra respondents, self-identified as persons who were born as men, but feel, dress and act like women. They can be referred to as transwomen. A distinguishing feature of the Hijra community is that they are an institutionalised gender group or collective governed by norms within the framework of the culture of the Guru–Chela system and the worship of Goddess Bahuchara Mata. The system is an ‘obligatory, hierarchical, and mutually beneficial relationships, based on a framework of duties and responsibilities’ (Ung, 2013). The Gurus (leader) are the patriarch of the community deciding the day-to-day affairs, assigning income earning tasks to the Chela (follower), and the territories in which they should operate. This typical non-biological kinship network is also known as ‘gharana’ involving a symbiotic relationship between the Guru and the Chela. The ‘gharana’ provides the space for negotiating and legitimising their identity (Naseeb, 2018). Chela of today can become a Guru tomorrow by mobilising a regular following. There are clear rules, roles and responsibilities, territorial jurisdiction (movement and areas of operation) that all members follow. Hijras would typically engage in

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begging, ‘badhai (blessing)’ (during life cycle rituals like child birth and marriages), sex work and entertainment (dancing in groups in weddings and other Hindu functions). The Guru takes care of the Chela, providing protection when they get into trouble during begging and sex work. In return, the Guru is paid the ritual–contractual share of the Chela’s income, which is typically 40% of what they earn in a day and strictly followed by all. Apart from certain unwritten codes of conduct which the Chela has to follow, there is also a sense of trust which is non-negotiable in the Guru-Chela relationship. As already mentioned, this chapter focuses on one of the groups within the transgender community, i.e. the Hijras in Odisha with insights drawn from a study conducted in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the strict lockdown period which lasted for 5–6 months. The data collection was conducted during the months of Dec 2020 and beginning of 2021, when the lockdown was somewhat relaxed. The objective of the study was to understand the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown on the life and livelihoods of the Hijra in five geographical locations of Odisha State. They are, namely Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Kendrapara, Paradip and Puri. Key respondents in each field location were identified, who organised focused group discussions among two groups in each location. There were 50 Hijra participants in the 10 FGDs that were conducted in the field. The age group varied between 17 and 40 years. The key respondents (2 in each study location) were also interviewed for the purpose of the study. The data obtained was primarily qualitative looking at how their occupation and livelihoods have been affected due to the pandemic; their coping strategies including support from outside; group solidarity; impact on their identity; challenges to get back to normalcy; nature of vulnerability and social exclusion; lessons learnt. Video calls using android smart phones were used in discussions with pre-chosen respondents. There was some initial hesitation by the participants to respond through the android medium, but with time, they were comfortable to answer questions through video calls. This method saved time in data collection and with the key respondents facilitating the discussion at the ground level was very effective for the researcher in view of the pandemic restrictions on movement during that period. All participants were monetarily compensated for the time they spent for the FGDs. Consent was taken in the form of signatures from all of them for the responses to the questions that were asked, which clearly stated that the data will be used for academic research only. Needless to mention that care was taken not to disclose the identity of the participants for which pseudonyms were used. The chapter is divided into six sections. After the introduction, the second section delves into social exclusion of the Hijra in Indian society. This is followed by a section dealing with the impact of COVID-19 on the Hijra. The fourth section focuses on the coping mechanisms of the Hijra individuals and the community. The fifth section is a discussion eliciting the vulnerabilities, precarity, trepiditions and challenges of the Hijra in dealing with the pandemic and beyond. The last section provides some concluding remarks.

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2 Hijra and Social Exclusion The concept of social exclusion is used to denote a group of people or a community, who are excluded from the everyday activities in society in a variety of ways. They are different realms of everyday life where inequalities originate and are nurtured and manifested (de Haan, 1999; Vobruba, 2002). Poverty and deprivation are invariably linked with social exclusion. It works both ways where poverty can lead to social exclusion and vice versa. Essentially, social exclusion is ‘exclusion from social, political and economic institutions, resulting from a complex and dynamic set of processes and relationships that prevent individuals or groups of people from accessing resources, participating in society and asserting their rights’ (Beal and Pinon 2004 in Shaaban, 2011). More explicitly, social exclusion implies denial of rights to various services such as education, health and livelihoods. It also means deprivation of the right to express oneself for some reason. Kabeer (2000) talks of social exclusion as an experience of certain groups being distanced from participation in social life. Literature on social exclusion depicts the variation in disadvantage of individuals and groups from ‘what you have’ to ‘who you are’ (Deshpande, 2013). ‘What you have’ is clearly economic, whereas ‘who you are’ is cultural or it has to do with one’s identity. The transgroup like the Hijra, the focus in this chapter, are excluded primarily due to cultural factors. They may not necessarily be economically disadvantaged. However, not conforming to the heteronormative behaviour is considered a taboo in the Hindu caste society. Pandey (2020) in her study of ‘desi’ transgender communities in the USA argues that religion is a strong identity marker in the Hindu culture which is shame based associated with the fear of social ostracisation. Whereas, among the Abrahamic religions such as Islam and Christianity, it is tied to guilt that threatens after-life consequences like going to hell. The attitudes of the society towards the transgender are oppressive, stigmatising, marginalising of perceived deviant forms of sexuality and gender and make self-expression more challenging, especially when it does not conform to the norm (Krupat, 2001; Lovaas & Jenkins, 2007). Heteronormativity describes how social institutions and policies further reinforce the presumption that people are heterosexual and that gender and sex are natural binaries (DeFrancisco et al., 2014). The Hijra is caught in the midst of well accepted cultural norms like transphobia (hatred towards transgender people) and homophobia (hatred towards gay and lesbians). It may lead to ‘gender dysphoria’ among the Hijras, who would like to seek hormone treatments or undergo sex reassignment surgery (SRS) to give them some relief. The American Psychiatric Association (2020) refers to ‘gender dysphoria’ as a psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. There is significant literature on the subject of ‘gender dysphoria’ and its implications for gender identity and expression mostly from the West. It falls in the area of psychology and sociology. The Hijra identity is closely intertwined with their occupation, their way of dressing with loud make up, their clapping and certain gestures typical of the group. This is what distinguishes them from others in the society and makes the latter

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intolerant towards the Hijra. They are looked down upon and routinely discriminated against in the health centres, educational institutions and workplaces. The Hijra is often subject to physical abuse and mental torture in which they are mocked and ridiculed for their behaviour and dressing. The Guru–Chela relationship has protected the Hijra and made them feel safe and wanted in a group. It is for this reason, that they value their relationship with the Guru and accept the hierarchy in the group. The world of the Hijra is closed to outsiders. They find solace and peace being with their own, worshipping Bahuchara Mata as their goddess. The exclusion of the Hijra begins at home, when they discover that they do not conform to the heteronormative gender category. Family members are not willing to accept them and also start putting pressure on them to remain invisible to protect their social lives in the community. In a patriarchal society such as India, women do not enjoy equal status with men. With the Hijra dressed like women, they are doubly disadvantaged. In Odisha, they are generally referred to as ‘Mychia’ or ‘Chhaka’—having a derogatory connotation aligned to mis-gendering. The Odisha study revealed that most low income and less educated families from small towns and rural areas were happy to get rid of their transchildren as they were a social burden on them. This is because they are unable to explain to the society about their non-confirming wards. Among middle- and upper-class families, the problem may not be as apparent as parents would encourage their transchildren to get education and make a place for themselves in the society. Families tend to support their transchildren as much as possible for them to secure a better life in future. However, they are not comfortable in disclosing the identity of their children for the stigma it carries in the mainstream society. That does not, however, take away the problem of identity of the Hijra in the Indian society. The children are caught between their gender identity and gender expression, the latter causing inexplicable mental conflict for them. What is therefore important to note is that exclusionary outcomes maybe different across economic classes. Similarly, there could be religion and caste differentiated exclusionary outcomes as well.

3 COVID-19 and the Hijra Livelihoods The COVID-19 pandemic-affected people across the world and in India, when a strict lockdown was declared from March third week to August 2020. The Government of Odisha was also very strict with the lockdown and stopped all public transportation, thereby restricting all movement by its citizens. As already mentioned, the Hijra livelihood requires them to move around in the streets, trains and other places away from their homes for begging/blessing, sex work and entertainment. In the day times, they are mostly into begging close to the toll and railway gates; inside trains on certain routes pre-determined by the Gurus. After sunset, they engage in sex work, in which they solicit customers in certain fixed locations of the urban areas. The areas are clearly demarcated among the different groups of Hijras. Table 1 gives an idea about the average earnings of a Hijra working in all the professions of their choice.

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Table 1 Earnings of the Hijra Type of work Average income range (per day) in INR

Daily contribution to the Gurus in INR

Average work hours

Monthly income range of the Chela in INR

Average daily income of the Gurus in INR

Begging in trains, traffic signals and toll gates

300–500

105

Trains—3 to 4 h; Traffic signals and toll gates—5 to 6 h

10,000–15,800

3,150

Sex work

500–1,200

210

5–9 h

10,000–37,800

6,310

Source Nayak and Panda (2021)

The data in the table does not include the earnings that the Hijra can potentially make in the life cycle ritual blessings and dancing in wedding function of the groom and other such events. They are generally paid in lump sum for the group and not individually. However, begging and sex work seem to provide a perineal source of income for the Hijra. Sex work brings in maximum income, but it may not be on a regular basis like begging. These two occupations have been greatly affected during the lockdown, when the income came to a standstill. All religious and wedding functions restricted participation of guests to a small number. Hence, there was no opportunity for the Hijra to earn from blessing, dancing and singing in functions. Table 2 gives an idea about the Hijra occupation-affected during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Begging on the Streets, toll gates and trains came to a complete halt due to the strict lockdown. Similarly, sex work required them to solicit customers, standing in specific locations of the towns/cities was not possible. They could manage with their savings for a maximum of two months, after which they found it difficult to pay house rents and even buy essential goods like food, sanitizers, protection for sex. We used to survive on train begging. Due to the pandemic, we found it difficult to even pay the house rent. And also to pay for food. The house owners gave us a discount of 50% for few months. In some cases, the house owners evicted our friends. (Sonika 22, Puri)

Some of them were evicted by the house owners not only, due to non-payment of house rents, but also, on the suspicion that they were spreaders of COVID-19 virus. This is because they are suspected to come in close contact with people outside for begging, blessing and sex work. When I could not pay the rent, my house owner confiscated by almirah, expensive sarees and other items. I was helpless and felt as if my identity is lost. (Arati 24, Puri)

Those evicted, moved in with friends of their community and had to live in crammed conditions, thereby raising the suspicion of neighbours and house owners that they are potential COVID-19 virus spreaders. So much so, that they had to be in hiding and also go without meals for several days.

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Table 2 Hijra occupation affected Location

Primary Source of income

Order of preference (by the Hijra) Begging/Blessing

Sex work

Entertainment (singing and dancing)

Cuttack Group 1

Begging

2

1

3

Group 2

Sex work

1

1

1

Bhubaneswar Group 1

Begging

1

2

3

Group 2

Sex work

2

1

3

Group 1

Begging

1

1

1

Group 2

Sex work

1

1

1

Puri

Kendrapara Group 1

Begging

2

1

3

Group 2

Sex work

2

1

3

Group 1

Begging

1

2

3

Group 2

Sex work

1

1

1

Paradip

Source Primary Survey (2020)

Sex work requires proximity with men and due to the pandemic none of our clients wanted to come near us. The same problem was with begging as we have to touch the customer’s head, to bless them after they have given us alms. (Mitali 23, Bhubaneswar)

Paradip is a port town and has a sizeable floating population who come there for using the port facilities dealing with cargo and marine products. The port activities came to a complete standstill, which forced the Hijras to remain indoors. The truck drivers and their helpers were the main clients of the Hijras. We could not buy vegetables and other food items as there were no shops close-by and those few that were there did not have enough supplies. We were ostracised by the villagers who lived close to our living quarters. They did not allow us to drink water from the common facilities, so we were forced to take water from the ponds. As there were no vegetables available, we used to pick green leaves close to the ponds and somehow survived. (Sheela 21, Paradip)

Most of the Hijras live independently, invariably estranged from their families. But there were about 30% of the respondents who were the breadwinners of their families. With the incomes coming to a naught, it was not possible for them to send money to their families. Although the estranged Hijras were better off with no family obligations, they could not go home or ask for any support during the pandemic lockdown. It may be noted here that those who were supporting their families also could not go home, as their families and their neighbourhood suspected them of carrying the coronavirus.

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I wanted to go home as I was not feeling well but my family was reluctant to have me back, as I had not sent them any money in the past 2 months or so. (Rasika 26, Bhubaneswar) The police would shoo us away if we solicited customers for sex work. They would hound us even when we tried doing anything hiding from the public eye. We could not bring clients home as the house-owners would threaten eviction. Puri town being a holy place was not friendly for sex work. (Ria 30, Puri)

Some of the clients with whom the Hijra had a rapport would call and tell them that they had also lost their jobs, hence do not have the money to pay them. All respondents mentioned that society looked down upon them even more during the lockdown as there was a common belief that the Hijras are more susceptible to get the virus as they are into sex work. Our regular clients were concerned about us and also asked us to stay indoors. Atleast they cared for us and some of them also helped us in small ways. But I know some of my friends survived on less food and drank water only for several days. (Reena 25, Cuttack) I was forced into sex work during the pandemic, but that was also not available. (Kumkum 22, Kendrapara)

Finding sex work in Kendrapara is difficult as truck drivers who were mostly the clients and had stopped coming to that area. The police were very strict during the lockdown and used to drive the Hijras away from the roads. Cylcone Amphan had devastated parts of Kendrapara in May 2020, which destroyed their ‘semi-pucca’ mostly tin-roofed houses. Combined with COVID-19 lockdown, it was a devastating experience for the Hijras in Kendrapara. They were unable to repair their houses and had to move in with friends. Table 3 gives an idea about the income difference of the Hijra during pre-COVID19, lockdown period and post-COVID-19 lockdown. Although the lockdown is relaxed at present to some extent, it is taking time for them to get back to normalcy. Clients are still apprehensive about coming in close proximity with the Hijra. The income earned by the Hijra from begging and sex work varied by location. The Hijras living in urban areas like Cuttack and Bhubaneswar have better opportunity for income earning compared with Paradip and Kendrapara which are considered to be semi-urban, more towards rural hinterlands. Puri on the other hand is a holy place and also a tourist destination, but the earnings are limited as the Hijras find it generally difficult to solicit customers for sex work. The reduction in earnings (preand post-pandemic) is accordingly reflected in the table location wise. The drop in income varies from more than fifty percent to zero income after the lock down was somewhat relaxed towards end of the year 2020. Those were the early days of the post-COVID-19 lockdown. However, the situation still remains the same till this date and the problem of regular flow of income for the Hijra continues. As police was very strict, we tried using social media to solicit customers for sex work and were partially successful but very few responded. (Ria 22, Puri) We offered fifty percent discount on sex work and yet no one responded. (Kali 23, Bhubaneswar) Wearing colourful silk sarees and dressing well is my identity. COVID 19 shook our identity and we feel as if we are completely bereft of ourselves. (Mita 35, Cuttack)

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Table 3 Income difference of the Hijra Location

Primary source of income

Income earned (INR) per Month Pre-COVID

During lockdown

Post-COVID

Nil

5–7,000

Nil

3–5,000

Nil

No income

Nil

1–2,000

Nil

3–5,000

Cuttack Group 1

Begging

15–25,000

Group 2

Sex work

13–14,000

6–7,000

Bhubaneswar Group 1

Begging

20–25,000

Group 2

Sex work

20–25,000

Group 1

Begging

10,000

Group 2

Sex work

10,000

Group 1

Begging

12–14,000

Group 2

Sex work

10,12,000

Group 1

Begging

10–12,000

Group 2

Sex work

10–15,000

5–7,000

Puri No income

Kendrapara 2000

Paradip 5–7,000

Source Primary Survey (2020)

As most of the Hijras were confined to their homes, they never got an opportunity to dress like they used to, which curtailed their gender expression. The latter is very important for the Hijra to express themselves in the public spaces to assert their identity. They felt like fish out of water and some of them had depression and emotional breakdowns. In an interview, Lakshmi Narayan Tripathi (Famous Hijra activist and leader based in Mumbai) aired in the national TV channel (NDTV) during the pandemic lockdown in Oct 2020 mentioned that ‘Hijras and transmen were the worst affected during the lockdown as they were the most visible on streets. They were unable to buy food, pay their house rents and did not have access to quality health care’. Through her networks (she is on the board of several important organisations working on LGBT activism) and her own organisation ‘Astitva’, she was able to raise funds for the Hijras and transmen during the pandemic lockdown. She distributed 55,000 ration kits (cereals and other consumable) all over India. Table 4 gives a picture of social exclusion experiences of the Hijra during the pandemic. Exclusion is part of Hijra life, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, the exclusion experience for them has heightened. They experienced a sense of rejection by those on whom they depended for income and building relationships. Many of them have boy friends who are close to them. ‘We are hungry for relationships’ is something that is oft heard response, when asked about their intimate friends, marriage or live-in partners. During the pandemic, that relationship got negatively affected. They want

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Table 4 Experiences of exclusion during the pandemic Location

Experience of exclusion during the pandemic

Cuttack Group 1

Earlier people used to call them to receive blessings; even clients used to give alms willingly; now they were seen with contempt and fear

Cuttack Group 2

They were especially ostracised since they were assumed to be more exposed due to the nature of their profession and hence carriers of coronavirus

Bhubaneswar Earlier used to avoid them and now they ridicule and run away Group 1 Bhubaneswar Now, people hate and avoid them more because they are suspected to be exposed Group 2 to more people and hence carrying the coronavirus Kendrapara Group 1

This area being rural, there is already not much acceptance of the community as they are very traditional. During the pandemic, they were refused entry into shops to buy ration, etc.

Kendrapara Group 2

They mentioned that the nature of exclusion is worse than women sex-workers. As they were already looked down upon due to their identity, men who visited them at night would ridicule and humiliate them in presence of their friends

Paradip Group 1

Landlords asked to them to leave rented places. Shop keepers refused ration. Earlier used to avoid them, now ridicule them which is humiliating. At times, the shop owners tried to exploit them sexually

Paradip Group 2

Same as the Group 1

Puri Group 1

Police violence increased and neighbours were very suspicious of their movements

Puri Group 2

Elderly Hijras were worst affected. Health centres also discriminated them

Source Primary Survey (2020)

to feel wanted and loved, which is lacking in their day-to-day life as a Hijra. The group members are close to each other. But if one among them has a permanent or semi-permanent partner, the rest of the members celebrate their happiness. It is like being accepted by the society and this gives them the feeling of being complete as a woman. Although none of them can bear children biologically, if they have a partner, adoption of children becomes legitimate for them. A few Hijras are getting married and are happy to flaunt their status and celebrate womanhood.

4 Coping with the Pandemic The strong ‘gharana’ system, their group solidarity and resolve not to leave each other made them partially tide over the strict pandemic lockdown. Their savings lasted from two weeks to maximum two months, after which they had to seek help or find other sources of income. They had to take loans not only, for their own needs but also, to send money to their families who were dependent on their earnings.

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Except Kendrapara and Paradip, in rest of the three locations, NGOs helped the Hijra community through their leaders. The presence of strong Hijra leaders and their contacts with the government in Bhubaneswar could garner the support of the Municipal Corporation to help the community on two occasions. Business men and youth clubs too helped the Hijras in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. The Gurus supported their Chelas in Kendrapara and Paradip, which lasted for about two months. As already mentioned, the support was mostly in the form of food grains and other consumables. There was no cash support and therefore the problem of paying house rent, which was the other priority continued. However, it may be noted that the support from outside was not for the entire lockdown period. The Hijras attempted to start begging and sex work in hiding after four months of lockdown, but were not so successful. The police were everywhere, and they used violence against the Hijras. Senior leaders and Gurus asked us to move in with them to save house rent and we all ate together. (Sukanti 25, Cuttack)

Relief was organised by some of the leaders from various government and private sources. However, there was no perineal source of support available for the Hijra. They had to make do with whatever they had and many of them survived on one meal a day. They felt safe being with each other with the support of the Gurus. Old customers helped sometimes. The common belief among the public was the fear of getting infected by the Hijras and that primarily deterred many voluntary organisations to come forward and help them. Family support was not there during the lockdown. Most families did not want them to come back. Hijras also felt that they would be putting their family members at risk of corona infection. Besides, they could not send any money to their families during the pandemic months and hence did not want to be a burden on them. I wanted to go back and had contacted my parents. But my brother did not allow me to come home. (Simran 24, Paradip)

When asked whether they had thought of trying their hand at some other occupation, all of them replied in the negative. There were only three of them who mentioned that they did in desperation try to get a job as domestic help with some local families. But none of them could get a positive response. Apart from the fear that they may be carriers of coronavirus, there was this stigma attached to their identity which always followed them. I tried to clean utensils in a household, but their relatives made fun of me and I never felt like going back. (Sunita 23, Cuttack) I got a job for doing manual labour in someone’s agriculture field, but other people misbehaved with me and I did not go back. It was a humiliating experience for me. (Rina 25, Kendrapara)

One group in Paradip started an ‘Agarbati’ (incense stick) business. The Hijra is not used to doing certain kinds of job involving manual or semi-skilled labour. Earning income by begging and sex work was assured and easy for the Hijra. And

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that is the only work they were familiar with. They are unable to internalise the fact they could possibly look for alternative income earning opportunities, primarily due to pre-existing stigma and discrimination that took a worse turn with the advent of the pandemic.

5 Living in Precarity—Discussion Social exclusion of the Hijra in India is institutionalised in the social structure of the society. However, the analysis of their lives and livelihood in the backdrop of COVID19 ushers in a plethora of issues for discussion. Vulnerable and marginalised as they are, the Hijra during COVID-19 lockdown made them live in precarious condition where their identity, livelihood, uncertainties for the future, anxiety, depression and thoughts of suicide are some hard thresholds that the Hijra is faced with. For expository ease of how COVID-19 affected one of the most vulnerable and marginalised groups in India, it is useful to make a distinction between vulnerability and precarity. Rigg et al., (2016, p.66) defined vulnerability as being ‘inherited or traditional forms of livelihood exposure’, and precarity as ‘produced or modern forms of exposure’. Some forms of precarity are market induced and others are policy induced. For example, the case of COVID-19 lockdown was a political decision that led to stifled market space and restricted income earning means for the Hijra and many others like them who depend on daily income for their survival. Vulnerability of the Hijra is an indelible part of their identity in the Indian society that prevents them access to all opportunities for education and jobs. Only very few of them belonging to middle and upper class are able to overcome such vulnerabilities. The large majority remain vulnerable and stigmatised. Within that vulnerable condition, their choice of occupation oscillated between begging/blessing, sex work and entertainment (exotic dancing and singing). Few of them (mostly Gurus), however, are aspiring for socially acceptable roles in the mainstream society. They are engaged in activism, social work, NGO work and politics, the number being very small though. It is important to bear in mind that those few Hijras never shed their old identity. They continued with their traditional occupation mostly receiving the ritual–contractual share of money earned by the Chelas. What is important to observe is that the Hijra are able to create a livelihood and identity balance for themselves (individuals and groups) so long as there was regular flow of income from such occupations, through their gender identity and expressions. It can be said that their pre-existing vulnerability took a downward turn towards precarity, which is characterised by all sorts of uncertainties, challenges, long-term implications and trepidations for the Hijra. The state of precarity characterises the lives deemed by the powerful and dominant in the society to not matter. However, it applies to the most vulnerable and disenfranchised who do not qualify as recognisable, readable or grievable (Joy et al., 2015). In this way, precarity is a rubric that brings together women, queers, transgender people, the poor and the stateless (Butler, 2009). Furthermore, precarity is then a precarious existence, lacking in predictability, wage security, material and

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psychological welfare. The class of people defined by such conditions is referred to as the precariat. Standing (2013) defines precariat as a ‘class in the making’ in the context of class relations in the global market in a primarily urban oriented system of the twenty-first century. The concept of precariat has been borrowed from Standing to understand and analyse the precarious condition of the Hijra. The precariat has several layers of precarity—the Hijra who is a minority in the Indian society; has limited options for income earning; who does not conform to the heteronormative gender; exposed to various forms of exploitation in society due to their gender identity; and is constantly reminded that they are the ‘other’ primarily due to their gender expressions, who can never be accepted by the mainstream society (as defined by the larger Hindu caste population). Such conditions pre-suppose their precarity that got manifested in greater magnitude during COVID-19 pandemic times. During the pandemic lockdown, what is observed is that the Hijra as a collective lacked a voice to take decisions about their employment and welfare. The precariat is also defined as those having low ‘social income’ are isolated and marginalised (Standing, 2013). According to Standing, social income comprises—what one can produce and consume; wage income received from labour; value of support received from family and local community; economic benefits from enterprises; state benefits such as insurances and subsidies; private benefits from investments and savings. On all counts mentioned above, the Hijra is grossly disadvantaged especially during the COVID-19 period. Their relationship with their clients/customers is most critical for their survival, and this was completely destroyed during the pandemic leading to very low social income. The very same customers started to look down upon them when contacted and some of them asked discounts in return for sex. Their low social income leads to emotional upheavals, mental agony and depression among the Hijra. Being a precariat with low social income is a disempowering experience for the Hijra. Both income and identity being eroded takes a toll on their mental health. This is a precarious situation for them and their trepidations about the future and challenges to overcome them, constantly haunts the Hijra. The elderly Hijra were the worst hit by the pandemic in the community, with no access to income as their group members were all affected. Further, they were already living at the mercy of others. One of them also contracted the coronavirus and had to be isolated. She was taken care by other members of the group. They did not want to take her to the quarantine centre as they knew that she would not get much support in the facility. Mental health and depression are other dimensions of precarity. Anyone has to cross several thresholds to reach that stage and being a precariat did exactly that to the Hijra. With the relaxation of the strict lockdown, they could start their work— begging/blessing and sex work, but it was difficult for them as their potential clients were still reluctant to come close to them. They would throw the money (alms) from a distance and asked them not to come physically close to give blessings. Similarly, finding customers for sex work was also a challenge and till the virus is around, physical proximity with the Hijra is problematic. We have expanded our area of operation for sex work, but we still are not able to get the number of customers like before. It has come down drastically and at times, we do not earn anything despite waiting till very late in the night. (Nupur 23, Bhubaneswar)

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Meera Parida, co-founder of NGO Sakha and a prominent Hijra leader in Odisha, says ‘The COVID-19 outbreak has pushed us back to those times when we were struggling to come to terms with our identity, get heard and save ourselves from life threatening challenges’ (The New Indian Express, 2020). The promulgation of the Transgender Protection Bill, 2019 is supposed to give them the much needed representation in the society and a voice that will be heard. The bill is meant to be a step towards inclusion of the transgender in the mainstream society. But is it happening? It has been hyped by the media as providing a life changing opportunity for the transgenders, but does not really facilitate the protection of the Hijra. It is interesting to note at this point that all the respondents interviewed for the study did not have much idea about the bill. This clearly shows that it is a few among them like the Gurus and leaders based in Cuttack or Bhubaneswar, who were somewhat familiar with the bill and its implications. The rest of them are primarily concerned about their daily survival needs only. The bill in no way says anything about supporting the Hijra community during times like the pandemic or any kind of disaster. A discussion on precarity cannot be complete without a look into the history of policies and Acts provided by the state to facilitate inclusiveness of the Hijra. The landmark judgement by National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) in 2014 was path-breaking as it declared the transgender persons as ‘third gender’ and affirmed that all fundamental rights under the constitution should be granted to them. The highlight of this judgement was the right to self-identification of their gender as male, female or third gender. It was followed by the repeal of Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code by the Supreme Court of India in 2018. Both these decisions by the judiciary were welcomed and celebrated by the transgender community across the country. However, the Transgender Protection Act of 2019 passed by the Parliament was a step backwards according to the transgender community. The first objection, by them being that it flouted the right to self-expression of identity, which was earlier given to them by NALSA in 2014. The clause mentioned that the district magistrate will certify their transgender status after they have been medically examined. So in case of the Hijra which has a male body, if she has not undergone the SRS, it is likely that she may be denied that certificate. It is to be noted here, that not all can afford and go through the SRS as it is an expensive affair and some do it in phases. Among other objections there are a few which may be noteworthy to mention—(1) if the family is unable to take care of the transgender children and adolescents, they should be put under the care of the state-run rehabilitation centre; (2) the Act says that discrimination should be eliminated but there is no punishment prescribed for those who discriminate the transgenders; (3) there is no mention of reservation in education and employment. Thus the critique of the bill by transgender activists and leaders is that…. ‘it is a series of betrayal of assurances and a convolution of the law that would do nothing for the transcommunity and would snatch away the bare minimum that existed’ (https://feminisminindia.com/2019/08/05/critique-transgender-persons-pro tection-of-rights-bill-2019/). In case of Odisha, the state has come out with a policy (2017) that looks good on paper, but in reality has no teeth. Similarly, a scheme has been proposed titled SWEEKRUTI (A Scheme for Promotion of Transgender Equality and Justice) in

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2017, by the Social Security and Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (SSEPD) Department, Government of Odisha. The very fact that such a scheme is being proposed by a department meant for people with disabilities is not convincing. Being a transgender is not the same as being disabled. The department has however detailed out a long list of components that will take care of mandating an inclusive society for the transgender community. They are, namely survey and identification; multipurpose smart card; assistance to parents of transchildren; pre- and post-school scholarships; personality development; skill upgradation training; self-employment, self-help groups; sensitisation of workers and activists; and community awareness. None of the Hijra participants of the study are aware and have any clarity about the scheme. It only goes on to show that despite being proposed in 2017, it is yet to see the light of day. Some local Gurus of lesser importance are of the opinion that despite pro-transcommunity policies, it is the state-level Hijra leaders who control decisions and act like gatekeepers. They do not allow the local Gurus to take the limelight. So, any action towards bringing about a change in the policy and its implementation has to be approved by the gatekeepers. Such dissonance could be the cause of non-implementation of policies at the ground level.

6 Concluding Remarks As suggested by Rigg et al. (2016), in this study, differentiating between vulnerability and precarity was useful in understanding the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown on the lives and livelihoods of the Hijras. Vulnerability of the Hijra in the Indian society is a given, but precarity provides an idea about the long-term consequences of COVID-19 pandemic on the community. The precarious condition of the Hijra during COVID-19 has shaken their gender identity, gender expression and survival balance, which will take a long time for them to recover. This makes exclusion experience and vulnerability of the Hijra even more severe. The pandemic was purported to be a ‘great equaliser’ by many, turned out to be a myth, as COVID19 laid thread bare the differential vulnerabilities of populations like the Hijra. They occupy the bottom most position in the vulnerability ranking in society and hence are the worse off due to precarity that brought out several layers of regressive dimensions of the lives of the Hijra, not experienced by them earlier. The only silver lining is the group solidarity among the Hijras and the role of Gurus who have helped them in different ways to tide over the pandemic situation. However, the Gurus were also helpless after sometime as they too were going through similar experience. Notwithstanding, increased vulnerability leading to precarity, the Hijra has survived so far. It is now clearly established that till the virus is completely gone from the memory of people, the Hijra will remain untouchable. This will severely curtail income earning opportunities from begging/blessing and sex work and make them invisible for a while. Planners and policymakers should work on how to create alternative income earning means for the Hijra, where they can be accepted by the

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society. Unlike other countries, India has a long way to go in accepting the Hijra individuals in the society. The lessons learnt by the Hijras after going through the pandemic experience are— to cultivate the habit of savings and insurance; seeking alternative income earning opportunities including entrepreneurship; importance of hygiene; identifying true friends and customers; more discipline in spending and to survive on less. Policies of inclusion purported by the state from time to time have certainly made the Hijra more visible and emboldened them to some extent, but their condition and position remains the same as before. Except for the repeal of 377, there is no other policy or scheme that has benefitted them. None of these policies could provide them any relief during the COVID-19 pandemic. Only time will tell, whether the policies have made any dent in the lives of the transgender community, the Hijra included. The larger question, however, still remains—will India provide that space for dissent and plurality despite being a democracy, especially around issues of non-heteronormativity among individuals in addressing social inclusion? Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha, for providing seed funding for research on ‘Social Exclusion of the Hijra in Odisha during COVID-19 Pandemic’. She is grateful to Ms. Payal Nayak who coordinated the data collection in the field. She would like to take the opportunity to thank the respondents in the field who participated in the research, despite their troubles caused due to the aftermath of pandemic lockdown. The study was conducted in the backdrop of the first wave of COVID-19. By the time, the chapter was finalised, the second wave of COVID-19 had started in Odisha accompanied by a two month lockdown. It is most likely that the Hijra life and livelihoods would have been severely affected during the second wave as well.

References American Psychiatric Association. (2020). What is gender dysphoria? https://www.psychiatry.org/ patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria. Accessed March 28, 2021. Butler, J. (2009). Performativity, precarity and sexual politics. AIBR – Revista de AntropologiaI beroamericana, 4(3), 1–13. DeFrancisco, P. V., Palczewski, C. H., & McGeough, D. E. (2014). Gender in communication. Sage. De Haan, A. (1999). Social exclusion: Towards a holistic understanding of deprivation. Department for International Development. Deshpande, A. (2013). Exclusion and inclusive growth. UNDP. Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/USER/Downloads/exclusion-and-inclusive-growth%20(1).pdf Government of India. (2011). Socio-economic and caste census. https://secc.gov.in/lgdStateList. Accessed June 21, 2020. Joy, A., Belk, R., & Bhardwaj, R. (2015). Judith Butler on performativity and precarity: Exploratory thoughts on gender and violence in India. Journal of Marketing Management, 31(15–16), 1739– 1745. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2015.1076873 Kabeer, N. (2000). Social exclusion, poverty and discrimination: Towards an analytical framework. IDS Bulletin, 31(4), 83–97. Kalra, G., & Shah, N. (2013). The cultural, psychiatric, and sexuality aspects of Hijras in India. International Journal of Transgenderism, 14(4), 171–181. Krupat, K. (2001). Out of work: Building a gay-labor alliance. University of Minnesota Press.

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Lovaas, K., & Jenkins, M. M. (2007). Sexualities and communication in everyday Life: A reader. Sage. Nagarajan, R. (2014). First count of third gender in census: 4.9 lakh, https://timesofindia.indiatimes. com/india/First-count-of-third-genderin-census-4-9-lakh/articleshow/35741613.cms. Accessed November 25, 2019. Nanda, S. (1998). Neither man nor woman: The transgender persons of India. Wadsworth Publishing Company. Naseeb, A. (2018). The lifestyle of ‘Hijras’ are under sheer societal neglect. https://thewire.in/ gender/the-lifestyle-of-hijras-embodies-resistance-to-state-societal-neglect. Accessed March 18, 2021. Nayak, P., & Panda, S. M. (2021). Redefining identity and expansion of livelihood options among Hijras in India. Gender, Technology and Development, 25(1), 68–86. Pandey, A. (2020). Desi transgender find solace, encouragement and acceptance from activists and support groups. In American Kahani, March 5, https://www.americankahani.com. Rigg, J., Owen, K. J., Basyal, G. K., & Lamichhane, R. (2016). Between the rock and a hard place: Vulnerability and precarity in rural Nepal. Geoforum, 76, 63–74. Shaaban, S. (2011). A conceptual framework review of social exclusion and its relation with social cohesion and poverty in Europe. The International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations, 11, 3–21. SOES. (2011, March 1). Eunuch statistics in India. http://sooe.org.in/book/pdf/07.eunuchs.Statis tics-in-India.pdf. Accessed July 5, 2019. Standing, G. (2013, April 19). Defining the precariat: A class in the making. Eurozine, https://www. eurozine.com/defining-the-precariat/. Accessed February 15, 2021. Subramanian, T., Chakrapani, V., Selvaraj, E., Noronha, A., Narang, A., & Mehendale, S. (2015). Mapping and size estimation of Hijras and other trans-women in 17 states of India: First level findings. International Journal of Health Sciences and Research, 5(10), 1–10. The New Indian Express. (2020). Transgenders, elderly and disabled population had a difficult 2020 amid Covid 19, https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/dec/24/transgenders-eld erly-and-disabled-population-had-a-difficult-2020-amid-covid-19-2240610.html. Ung, L. J. (2013). Why vote for a fake kinnar when you can vote for a real one? Representation and political identity among kinnars in Madhya Pradesh, India. (Doctoral Dissertation). SOAS, University of London. Vobruba, G. (2002). Actors in processes of inclusion and exclusion: Towards a dynamic approach. Social Policy and Administration, 34(5), 601–613.

Chapter 13

Social Exclusion of the Elderly in India Annapurna Devi Pandey

Abstract This chapter explores the nature and experience of India’s ageing population in rural and urban India, particularly those who are disengaged from society and living on the edge, subject to social, cultural and political exclusion and, consequently, isolation. I analyse how the elderly are isolated, abandoned, deprived of personal family care and enhance their sense of personal dignity in contemporary India. What factors are responsible for pushing these elders out of family care, home health care and residing in senior homes? What are their struggles and challenges with the changing intergenerational relationship within the family? What are the inclusionary policies of the state and private institutions for the safety and well-being of the elderly? I intend to explore these questions: to broaden our understanding of ageing and expand public policy discussions on the safety and proper care of the aged.

1 Introduction Sankaracharya, on desire and old age: While a man is fit and able to earn for his family, See the affection those around him show. Yet none at home offers even a word with him Once the age-burdened body totters and slows Strength has abandoned the older person’s body; Leaving a cane, toothless gums, and greying head; Yet attachment lingers with youth’s vigor; And his hopes and desires have not yet fled (Bhaja Govindam, 15th Stanza) https://saibalsanskaar.wordpress.com/2017/02/08/bhaja-govindam-story-16-verse-15/ A. D. Pandey (B) University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_13

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In 2019, I asked my friend Dr. Bhagaban Prakash, a senior advisor to the Election Commission of India, about his views on old age. After retirement, he moved from Delhi to his hometown Bhubaneswar. He noted: ‘Look around you. Every household is an old age home now’ (personal communication, Oct 17th, 2019). Suddenly, I realized the accuracy of his observation, particularly among the middle class. Evidence of this phenomenon is all over my ancestral neighbourhood in Cuttack (Odisha). The older man who lives across from my family home sits alone and nods at people passing by. He lost his wife a few years ago and is in and out of the hospital. A friend’s mother in her 80s is losing her memory and is cared for by three attendants. This friend manages the eldercare arrangement from California. She video chats with her mother every day and notices her mothers’ hearing ability deteriorating by the day. These vignettes speak vividly about the variety and intensity of meanings accruing to ageing for contemporary Indians. Media reports are replete with accounts of the deplorable conditions of elderly in India, both rich and poor. This unfortunate reality is captured in television serials, films, social media texts and gerontological studies. The last decade of Indian public discourse deals with ageing and the changing values of a traditional society. Getting old is a biological fact, but it is culturally managed and negotiated. Through ethnography and history, we know that nearly every culture recognises that life goes through different stages, defining features of each. Based on a comparative study of sociocultural milieus in the United States of America, nations in Africa and India, Turnbull (1984) analysed how youth, adulthood and old age are managed cross-culturally. He admired the way African and Indian cultures handled old age and was disturbed about the individualistic capitalist American culture ‘moving towards autonomous individuals, of individual freedom and rights’. India’s demographic transition of the last decade puts the elderly population at nearly 104 million, according to a 2016 Government of India report (73 million rural and 31 million urban). After China, India is home to the second-largest elderly population. HelpAge India suggests that by 2050 a quarter of the people will be older than 60. These trends, mainly due to declining fertility and rising life expectancy, indicate future vulnerability, including a rise in old-age dependency and reduced support levels for older parents. This chapter covers the social exclusion of the elderly in the family, society and the state. I explore the nature and experience of India’s ageing population, both rural and urban, particularly those who are disengaged from society and living on the edge, subject to social, cultural and political exclusion and, consequently, isolation. The empirical question is whether primarily a family can take care of its elderly in a swiftly changing socio-economic and political milieu. It may not have the provisions or resources to be a caregiver for the elderly. I discuss the changing structure and function of the family, primarily the middle and lower class, and explore the role of the state and other civic organisations, emerging to take care of the elderly. The chapter is divided into six sections. After the introduction, I present the methodology and conceptual underpinnings. The second section covers who is considered old, cultural ways of ageing, the Indian perspective on growing old and the importance of Seva (societal service). It discusses intergenerational reciprocity and old age in India, with individual narratives of the elderly. The third section covers the rise of senior

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homes in India, followed by the fourth, exclusion among the elderly and Elder homes as a taboo. It also includes the emergence of in-home health care and the lonely living of the elderly in the cities. The fifth section highlights the policies and laws for the protection of the elderly in India and various elderly care services followed by the sixth with some concluding observations.

2 Ethnographic Study of the Elderly and Old-Age Homes This study is a ‘thick description’ of the life experiences of the elderly in senior care homes in Odisha, which I collected using thematic questions. During 2017– 2019, I interviewed 150 elderly residents in six care homes in and around Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, and the smaller provincial town of Jatni, in Odisha. I used broad, open-ended questions that addressed their experiences of physical, psychological and social exclusion, ultimately leading to their move to homes for the aged. I also conducted personal interviews about their experiences living in such homes. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–21, I made extensive phone and video interviews with 35 Indian American immigrants in the USA who took care of their elderly parents in India long distance. My samples also include extensive interviews with about a dozen older adults who live alone in their homes in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, twin cities with a metropolitan area of 3.5 million population. This ethnographic study and detailed policy analyses have highlighted the limitations of the policies for the elderly at the national and subnational levels in India. I have focused on the personal narratives and life experiences shared by the residents in the senior care homes I visited in Odisha. These residents have emphasised their sense of loss upon being neglected and abandoned by their families. They talked about the emotional distress at the rupture of a family bond—their children’s ill-treatment and harassment, deprived of their assets and savings. The narratives of Indian American immigrants, who are caring for elderly parents long distance, have thrown light on the challenges of such arrangements. Video interviews as a data collection tool allowed access to the interviewees. It also brought out issues of poor connectivity and lack of IT savviness of elderly parents that posed a challenge to communication between elderly parents and their children living overseas.

3 Conceptual Underpinnings India is a mosaic of cultures, traditions and identities, with Hindus constituting the large majority. The main focus in this chapter is on the Hindu way of life. In the Indian tradition, the ‘concepts of community, interdependence and divinity are primary, made salient and implicitly institutionalized’ (Hodge, 2004). Within Indian culture, scholars observed a generation ago that people cared and provided for each other in the family and were highly interdependent (Miller, 1994). The sweeping changes

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in the value of intergenerational relationships and family structure have comprehensively restructured the traditional social system. Indeed, new cultural terrain is emerging ‘where family members are dispersed nationally and internationally, and values such as materialism, consumerism and individualism (all often associated with the West or modernity) have taken center stage’ (Lamb, 2009). LASI India Report (Government of India, 2020) observes that family support has declined for older people, commensurate with increased urbanisation and mobility. Older adults live alone and without spouses, their children away for education, work or marriage. The Indian state has a fragile societal infrastructure for health care, senior care, community service and other core needs of the elderly. As a result, the aged are among the most vulnerable and marginalised groups in India. There is increasing reliance on private institutions, non-profit organisations, senior care homes and home healthcare services as the key agencies for ageing and eldercare. Social exclusion focuses on relational issues: inadequate social participation, lack of social integration and diminished power within the family and society. Social exclusion is also the process of becoming detached from the organisations and communities of which social relations are composed and from the human rights and obligations they embody (Room, 1995). Social exclusion is articulated as a multidimensional experience in the face of urbanisation, modernisation and industrialisation. Considering the ‘plurality’ of exclusionary processes, Littlewood and Herkommer (1999) identify social exclusion’s economic, cultural, spatial and political dimensions and call attention to their cumulative consequences. This chapter aims to explore the above.

3.1 Who is Considered Old? Cultural Ways of Ageing There is considerable variation between and among categories of older people and between societal milieus. The World Health Organization defines those aged 60– 74 years as elderly. In 1980, the United Nations recommended age sixty as the period of transition for the elderly population, and they have been categorised as young–old (60–75 years), old–old (75–85 years) and very old (85 years and above). The World Population Data Sheet, 2002, considers those aged 65 and above as aged. The census of India declares a person at sixty as old, which coincides with retirement age in the government sector. Socially, it is based on family transitions like getting the children married and having grandchildren rather than a specific chronological year (Cohen, 1998).

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3.2 The Indian Perspective: Growing Old and Importance of Seva Indians have a unique perspective on growing old, arising from the Hindu view of life. Underlying the Hindu view of life is a system of unifying beliefs that have guided the ordinary Indian family for thousands of years. The purpose of life for Hindus is to achieve four aims, called Purusharthas—dharma (ethics/duties), kama (desires/passion), artha (prosperity/work) and moksha (liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth), which provide Hindus with opportunities to act morally and ethically and lead a good life (Radhakrishnan, 2015). These four ideals for a Hindu are related to four stages of life, the ashrama dharma—brahmacharya (student), marked by chastity, devotion and obedience to one’s teacher; Grihastha (householder), tied to marriage, children and fulfilment of duties towards ancestors and gods; Vanaprastha (forest dweller) withdrawal from worldly attachment, the pursuit of solitude and ascetic and yogic practices; and Sanyasa (renouncer) renouncing material possessions for the union with Brahman (the absolute). Traditional Hindu values place importance on family and emphasise the moral and spiritual significance of offering care or service (Seva) to older people. In the Hindu system, every person is born in debt (rinn) as part of their societal obligation. The first and foremost debt of a Hindu is to the parents who raise the child to adulthood. Gods and sages come after their parents. One is obliged to parents for giving birth, so must repay their debts. The Hindu and Buddhist philosophical concept of dharma, or proper conduct, foresees care of the older parents as the children’s duty to fulfil their obligation. Children realise that their duty towards their parents without expectations, known as Seva, is divine worship (Brijnath, 2014; Cohen, 1998; Lamb, 2000). Ultimately, they will liberate themselves from all debts, duties and obligations, attaining moksha, or salvation, an end to the cycle of birth and death. Under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act of 1956, sons and daughters are legally responsible for maintaining aged parents in need in India. The family generally provides social security for the older population. Most older men and women in India live with their families, and it is the most preferred living arrangement of older people. Families continue to be the central organising unit for economic support and the provision of care for those physically unable to care for themselves (Kozel & Parker, 2001; Samuel & Thyloth, 2002).

3.3 Hindu View of Life: Joint Family and Intergenerational Reciprocity Intergenerational reciprocity and the joint family’s role are widely discussed by Indians in everyday talk as natural, expected, moral and religiously proper—the rational way of doing things. From ancient times, the family has dominated the

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cultural values and belief systems of Indian society. Even though the family structure has changed in recent years, most elderly Indians still rely on their families for support and accept rightful dependency on their children, especially their sons. Social media portrays living within an intergenerational ‘joint family’1 to represent a quintessentially moral and traditional way of life. Parents take care of their children and expect their adult children’s care and service, especially sons. 84-year-old Sachidnanda Acharya said: I spent 34 years in Burla, an industrial city, and retired as a foreman in the Electricity Board. I continued in this city to give my five children a good education—three daughters and two sons. Now each one of them is well educated and settled with their own family and children. I made sure that my children got a good education not to ignore me or disrespect me. Also, they would not depend on others. I am very proud of my children’s success. All my children are very supportive and respectful, and ultimately I would like to spend the rest of my life with them (Interview 12/28/2020).

Mythical narratives of the dutiful son, Sravan Kumar, who held his parents in high esteem, and Bhisma, the patriarch from Mahabharata, who sacrificed his marital pleasures for his father’s sake, are frequently shared in social media as reminders of children’s duty towards their parents in modern times. In India, the state predominantly aims to enforce family care in contrast to the USA, where the state takes care of its ageing population. According to Pew Research, two-thirds or more people in India live in extended family households (2010–2018). Fewer than 5% of the elderly live alone in India compared with 27% who live alone in the USA (Ausbel, 2020). The nature of family, intergenerational relationships and the role of women in the family are changing. These transitions have a tremendous impact on the care and welfare of older people (Lloyd-Sherlock, 2000). According to the LASI India Report, 2020, the old-age support ratio, which describes the population capable of providing economic support relative to the number of older people materially dependent on others, rests at 13 to 1. It is expected that the old-age support ratio will fall from 13 working supporters per Elder in 2020 to five working supporters per Elder by 2050. There are myriad implications of this notable demographic shift. In many instances, the family in the twenty-first century is unable to meet the needs of the elderly, thereby creating a need to look for other support services.

4 Rise of Old-Age Homes in India With the increase in the elderly population, their care situation is not getting better in India. ‘The life expectancy of those above seventy has increased by 18%’, observes S. P. Kinjawadekar, president of the All India Senior Citizens’ Confederation (AISCCON), ‘but it has not necessarily improved their quality of life.’ (Datta, 2018). The AISCCON survey in 2015–16 reports that 60% of older adults living 1

Joint family refers to any multigenerational household including at least one senior parent and one married adult son with a spouse.

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with their families face abuse and harassment, 66% are either very poor or below the poverty line, and 39% have been either abandoned or live alone. The situation is exceptionally grave, especially when parents shy away from reporting abuse cases by family members. HelpAge India in 2014 says that a majority, 72% of 5014 elders interviewed, did not report any abuse citing ‘maintaining the confidentiality of the family’ as the primary reason. Many residents of senior homes lamented about leaving their own homes due to the neglect and indifference of their sons and daughters-in-law. How long will the daughters take care of us? They have to deal with their in-laws. If the son is not responsible, what can we expect from the daughter-in-law? Respondent, Old Age Home, Cuttack (Interview 10/02/2019).

Akbar et al. (2014) interviewed 174 elderly in 14 different senior homes of Uttar Pradesh and observed that misbehaviour of sons and daughters-in-law (29.8%) was the most cited reason for joining the home. The respondents cited other factors such as poverty or lack of financial support (29.3%), loneliness (8%) and adjustment problems with children’s families (5.7%) for leaving their homes. Only 1.1% cited the reason to live independently or the inability to cope with the interference of family members. This study emphasised that these older adults consciously choose to move to senior care for lack of support in the family. Lower education and lack of economic independence compelled the elderly to move into care homes. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the British had established a few eldercare homes to accommodate the poor and needy (Lamb, 2009). According to HelpAge India study (2020) conducted across 20 Indian cities, 29% of family caregivers (mainly son, daughter-in-law, daughter, son-in-law) felt the burden of eldercare was moderate to severe; for 15%, it was harsh, and 35% never felt happy looking after the elderly. These findings have helped create a space, and also a market, for old-age care providers. These homes are on demand with an increase in educated Indians who join the global class of transient professionals, offering portable skills that can take them to any part of the world to work and settle permanently. In the last decade, there has been a striking increase in the number of senior homes in cities, a direct consequence of frequently absent children, unwilling or unable to provide service to their parents. HelpAge India reports that there are 1279 old-age homes in India. Mala Kapur Shankardass, a geriatric sociologist, explains this recent surge of senior homes to the rise of the Indian nuclear family: ‘the nuclearisation of the Indian family means that older people don’t want to adjust to other people at this age. Even in rural India, more and more families are opting for adjoining homes with their kitchens and day-to-day activities, so they can look after their parents while each party has their own space’ (Desai, 2019). Odisha has 32 senior homes being run by Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) across the state (Ramnath, 2018). In 2019, the Odisha Minister of Social Security, Ashok Panda, reported 286 emotional and physical violence cases of the elderly within the past year. At that time, he confirmed the construction of 150 coordinated complexes for elderly residents at the cost of |62 million in the state. He added that 44 additional homes are constructed by NGOs across Odisha (Panda, 2019).

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We are working in the grassroots and see every day how their families are treating the elderly. We cannot blame extended families since they are also in dire straits. Even where the family has the resources to take care of, they are unwilling and abusive towards them. We see a substantial need, and there is a great demand from some quarters; therefore we started these homes, but we are finding it very challenging to maintain and operate them due to lack of funds as the people in villages around us cannot afford to pay for these services. The support from the Government for these initiatives is also minimal. NGO Representatives, Odisha (Interview 9/02/2019)

5 Social Exclusion of the Elderly My respondents said they moved to the senior home as dependents and lacked any agency to ask for their requirements or request better facilities. The senior homes I visited in Odisha were very welcoming. Yet, they did not have proper health checkups, physical therapy, a nutritious diet and trained assistance for the elderly, My son says, you have a good life here. You are getting everything you desire. Why do you need money? Even if I feel like buying something for my personal needs, I have no one to turn to. Here at this home, they provide us food and shelter, but my children do not bother about my personal needs and desires. I do not receive an old-age pension either. Woman respondent, Old Age Home, Cuttack (Interview 10/02/2017) We have distributed all our assets and wealth amongst our children. Now that we need extensive medical care, we have nothing with us and have to depend on the mercy of our children, who are so busy with their own lives that they have no time for us. An elderly couple, Old Age Home, Cuttack (Interview 10/02/2017)

These perceptions explain the personal, emotional and financial dependence of the elderly on their adult sons. Severing this vulnerable group from the intergenerational family, particularly in the absence of adequate social networks and universal social security, poses a grim future scenario for the elderly. Commonly, older adults come to these homes with no earning capacity. Their chances of being neglected by their family members escalate with their economic dependency and increasing health needs. Kumar et al. (2008), in their study of sixty-eight elderly residing at four senior homes in Surat, Gujarat, observed the unwillingness of the family to care for the aged: expressed through abuse, neglect and refusal to cohabit with and care for them. The LASI India Report (Government of India, 2020, p. 144 and 148) presents that most of the elderly in the workforce are rural men (66.4% over 60 work, compared with just 11.3% of urban men), and pension coverage is limited and largely inadequate.2 A 2016 survey by the Agewell Foundation with 15,000 rural and urban respondents showed 65% reported themselves as either financially dependent or facing a financial crisis, primarily due to medical expenditures. Economic inequality is also associated 2

Old-age pension is a joint contribution of national and state governments. As a result, the amount of pension varies from state to state. The proportion of elderly people aged 60 and above who are currently receiving a pension is higher in urban areas (39%) than in rural areas (11%) (LASI Report, 2020).

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with poor health, especially among the elderly (Pickett & Wikinson, 2015). In the present context, old age is viewed as a significant period of disengagement from major life activities. Working, earning and managing the household are no longer the responsibilities of the aged, and decision-making shifts to the younger, achieving generation. Our decision-making power is meager. We no longer have much financial power and functional abilities, so we are left out of family decision-making processes. Our old-age pension is taken away by our adult children. Respondent, Old Age Home, Bhubaneswar (Interview 02/26/2018)

The children too justify using their parent’s old-age pension. You are in good shape. You are getting food, shelter, and new saris to wear. What else do you need? Malati’s daughter, Cuttack (Interview 02/25/2018) My daughter-in-law collects my pension, along with the pension she receives and keeps it for herself most of the time. My grandson sends me a little money through someone else, but it is not regular. Elderly Sujata, Paralakhemundi (Interview 02/16/2018)

Some residents felt displaced from their homes where they had their privacy— their room, food choice and toilet facilities. After moving to philanthropic care, they have lost both privacy and agency. I saw five to eight people sharing a room, with a single bed as their personal space. The main problem of the elderly is economic dependency and lack of infrastructure resources for them. Lena et al. (2009) reported that ‘nearly half of the entire elderly population are of poor socioeconomic status’. They suffer from financial and health insecurity due to loss of employment and poor health infrastructure in society. The safety net to take care of the needs of the elderly is still in its infancy in India. We have to share rooms and toilets with several others; we have no privacy whatsoever. We are not allowed to do what we want or go anywhere at our will. We feel our freedom is curtailed, and we don’t have access to good health care facilities, but we also feel safe and secure here. Elderly respondent, Old Age Home, Cuttack (Interview 02/17/2018)

5.1 Exclusion Tied to Health Health problems are another major issue that leads to neglect of the elderly by adult children. The most crucial fact of old age is elders’ fragile health conditions. In India, almost a quarter (23%) of elderly age 60 and above have been diagnosed with multiple morbidities (simultaneous presence of two or more chronic health conditions in an individual), and older women are more likely to have multimorbidity (Government of India, 2020). ‘Out of pocket expenditures for health service account for more than 70% of health expenditure, leading to health vulnerability in the older population’

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(ibid, p. 6). The joint family, especially adult children, are expected to take care of the health of the elderly in their old age. Yet, reality does not paint such a happy picture for the elderly. I have several medical conditions for which I need expensive medicines. Sometimes I have to decide which medicine not to take because I do not have enough money to buy them all, and I do not feel like asking anyone. Elderly woman respondent, Old Age Home (Interview 02/15/2018)

The prevalence of what appears to be significant depression among the elderly aged 60 and above (8.3%) is ten times higher than the self-reported prevalence of diagnosed depression (0.8%), suggesting a higher burden of undiagnosed depression among the elderly. Older women, those residing in rural areas, the widowed, those living alone and those with lower education are more vulnerable to major depression (Government of India, 2020, p. 398). Under these circumstances, I observe that parents are driven out of their homes by their children. I was working and had a steady income, everything was going on smoothly, and the children were happy. When I became incapable of earning anymore because of a physical ailment, my children started neglecting my wife and me, and made us feel like we were a burden on them. Ranjan, 75 years old, resident of Old Age Home (Interview 02/10/2018)

India still purports to follow a healthcare model where government hospitals are accessible to the public. In reality, it is tough to get admission because of their increasing demand, and the care facilities may be very inadequate. Besides, the condition of these hospitals is deplorable. All the licensed doctors therein draw their salary from the government but render their service at the private facilities for hefty fees. So people with means depend on personal health care, which is extremely expensive, taking into account the exorbitant cost of the doctor’s charges, medicine, hospital fees, to name a few. We had to sell our land, mortgage our home, and pawn several of our belongings to provide medical care for our parents with the hope that would save their lives. Our parents did not have any insurance, and we had no other means. Children of elderly parents, Cuttack (Interview 02/08/2018)

In India, public spending on health is low. 1.4% of its GDP is spent on health care when the global average is about 6.5%, according to the 2017 World Bank Report. Joumard and Kumar (2015) state that ‘when measured in per capita terms, India is 184th out of 191 countries in (2012) public spending on health (p. 16).’. Some insurance services are available, but the premium has increased over time, and insurance reimbursements remain low. Household income, therefore the primary source of financing for health care in India, accounts for more than two-thirds of health spending nationwide (MoHFW, 2016). The elderly population is particularly vulnerable to health shocks resulting from a high disease burden, increased hospitalisation rates, out-of-pocket expenditure and catastrophic health expenses (Mohanty et al., 2014).

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A National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report showed that in 2014, the average urban hospital stay costs 176% more than it did in 2004, with rural patients paying 160% more than they did a decade before. NSSO data also showed that a household comprising only elders spends 3.8 times more per month on health care than one without elderly kin. As a result, many elderly Indians are financially dependent on their families. In reality, a majority of the elderly in India do not have pensions or health insurance. Ayushman Bharat Yojana, a National Health Protection Scheme, is still in an embryonic stage, phasing in slowly in a few districts—hence, health conditions are a significant contributor to the increasing suffering of the elderly.

5.2 Gender-Based Exclusion According to the LASI India Report (Government of India, 2020), the gender difference in economic, social and health conditions is stark. The nature of problems experienced by the elderly varies among men and women. There is a considerable number of elderly living alone, especially women. Around 6% of the elderly live independently, whereas 9% of the older women live alone, compared with 3% of the older men (ibid.). Older women, the poor, those living in rural areas and other marginal groups of society are highly vulnerable. Their poverty plays a vital role in entering a senior home. In many instances, a woman enters alone. A man often enters an Old age home along with his wife, reflecting the patriarchal culture dominating Indian society. Several residents said they have come to live in this home because of a marital breakdown. I came to know that my husband had another wife; I felt disgusted and left him. I went to live with my brother and sister-in-law but felt unwanted. So with the help of some other relatives, I came to this home two years ago. Sixty-two-year-old Sarita, Old Age Home, Jatni (Interview 10/3/207) My family threw me out because I had a second wife. My sister and brother-in-law visit me and give me pocket money. My mother also sends me |300 per month. I have adjusted well at this home. Sixty-five-year-old Bikram, Old Age Home, Bhubaneswar (Interview 11/1/2017) I came to the old age home partially paralyzed, and my wife came with me to take care of me. Bimal (Interview 10/5/2017)

Many residents said that even though daughters are willing to take care of the vulnerable parents, their in-laws or husbands had objections. Residents, especially women, move to a care home, sometimes followed by a period of intense caregiving for their grandchildren. In India, of the elderly respondents, 30% take care of at least one grandchild, followed by 47% who take care of two or three grandchildren and 24% take care of four or more grandchildren. Taking care of four or more grandchildren is more common in rural areas than in urban areas. Older rural women in the past had an average of ten grandchildren and spent, on average, 20 hour per

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week taking care of them (Government of India, 2020). The grandmothers were expected to take care of their grandchildren and support the adult sons and their wives. I spent a lot of time looking after my grandchildren, and this I continued to do even after my husband passed away. Now that my grandchildren have started going to school and have become more independent, I have become a burden. I therefore no longer wanted to live with my son and his family, so I came away to this old age home. Ranjita (Interview 12/4/2017)

The most common reason for looking after grandchildren is that the grandparents were the preferred caregivers (73%), the child’s parents were working (22%), and the child was orphaned (9%). The child’s parents were away (5%) (Government of India, 2020, p. 492). About a quarter of the widowed elderly stated that they looked after their grandchildren because the child’s parents were working. I met Parvati, in her sixties, who had just joined this care home. She was visibly devastated and was very quiet. When I inquired, she said: My son-in-law brought me in a cycle rickshaw and left me here. I had no idea where I was going. After my husband passed away, I gave my daughter my share of the family property and raised her children. Now she and her family have abandoned me, as my services are no longer required. Parvati (Interview 10/3/2018)

Often women entered old-age homes because they gave away their property in trust or were deprived of it through stealth. Conflict over family property was an important factor driving the elderly to institutional shelter. From the case studies above, poverty was a significant reason driving the elderly to free old-age homes. My older son stole the savings that I had from the sale of my share of the property after my husband passed away. Therefore, I moved to this Old Age Home. Mita (Interview 08/3/2018)

6 Old-Age Home as a Taboo Traditionally, old-age homes were meant for the destitute and managed mainly by charitable organisations. In recent years, paid facilities have also emerged to cater to the needs of middle and upper-middle-class older persons, who can afford to pay for care in old age (Datta, 2017; Clark, 2019). Still, Old-age homes are not the norm in the country and are not very well regarded. Sarah Lamb observes that approximately ‘less than 1% of India’s elders live in old-age homes’ (2016). Many are run by non-profit agencies and subsidised by the government for helping the poor and marginalised. They are viewed primarily as philanthropic agencies for the lower classes, needy and most destitute. They choose to live in senior homes, which subjects them to caste-based exclusion by their family and community. Since people of different castes live together, their families ostracise the elderly who belong to the upper and middle castes.

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I was upset with my children’s attitude towards me and had moved to the senior home. Now, after a year, even if I want to, my son and daughter-in-law would not allow me to return home, as they fear losing their caste status. Manju (Interview 11/12/2017)

Living in the senior home makes the children feel that their parents have become outcasts and not welcome back in their homes. A 68 year old says: I came to the senior home about five years ago. Upon my husband’s death, when I attended the funeral rituals, my daughter-in-law asked me not to enter the kitchen. Since I stayed in this community home with people from other castes, I had lost my family status. I felt hurt that I gave birth to my children, raised them, and ran the household, but at this stage of life, I have been rejected and devalued by my children. Sandhya (Interview 11/09/2017)

She cried incessantly while describing this incident. The exclusion of elderly parents and blaming them for leaving home defy the principle of dharma and challenge the notion of children’s debt and their Seva for their parents. The experiences of the elderly were quite varied depending on the kind of oldage home they went to/were taken to or could afford. Regarding a care home that had both free and paid services, in 2018, I visited ‘Sraddha o Sadhana’, (Reverence and Meditation), a home run by the local Rotary Club in Cuttack. It has two wings: one free for the elderly needy and the other, a paid wing. The free section was full capacity, but the paid wing with about a dozen small suites was sparsely occupied. The monthly cost was about $75 per suite. Here I met a charming old lady who lived by herself. The staff told me that she was the wife of the deceased director general of police, and all her three children were settled in America. She was very quiet. In 2019, when I went back, I was told she had passed away. In the paid wing, I met an elderly couple. The husband was visibly angry and bitter and was disappointed with the poor facilities. His wife was quiet. He said: My two sons and their wives are too busy to care for us. For a while, the sons each took one parent to live with them, but it did not work out for us. So we moved to this place (Interview 10/11/2017).

Senior homes are still considered a stigma, and the middle-class elderly feel ashamed to talk about their family’s negligence. It also goes against the family as the primary caregiving institution. Recently, my retired friends posted a story about an elderly who was forced to be in a senior home on a WhatsApp group. It focused on the helplessness of the older parents who live in old-age dwellings but always think of the well-being of their adult children. These narratives on the plight of the elderly cast the children as culprits. In 2020, Pradip Kumar Acharya, a resident of Sai Sangha Bruddhaa Ashram (Senior home) in the suburbs of Bhubaneswar, died from COVID19. He had had several chronic health issues and had barely spent a year in this home. He chose to join this home as the last recourse when his children were unavailable to take care of him and his wife. The mistreatment of the elderly is multidimensional and multilayered, emerging from differences in gender, economic position and physical

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condition (Sebastian & Sekher, 2012). According to the LASI Report (Government of India, 2020, p. 502), older women experienced more ill-treatment than older men. A combination of personal, familial, economic and psychological factors is responsible for the increasing ill-treatment of the elderly. Caregivers are the primary abusers of the elderly. Two-fifths of the elderly are ill-treated by their sons or daughters (41%), followed by their son-in-law or daughter-in-law (36%). The victims feel a sense of shame and helplessness that makes them reluctant to report such incidents. T. V. Sekher observed that ‘one in twenty reported abuse in their household. The ones who were supposed to care for the elderly are abusers’ (interview 06/01/2021). He also confirms that about 8% of the elders suffered from depression, and the percentage was much higher among older women. HelpAge India (2018) surveyed Elder abuse in 23 cities of India, and interviewed 5014 elders above 60 years of age. Around 60% of elders confirmed that Elder abuse is common in Indian society. Eighty-eight per cent of them reported its existence is high. The most common form of abuse they experienced was disrespect (56%), verbal abuse (49%) and neglect (33%). The primary abusers were sons (57%) and daughters-in-law (38%). Only 18% of elders confirmed that they attempted to report abuse. The key reasons not to report abuse were to ‘maintain confidentiality of the family matter’ (52%) or ‘did not know how to deal with the problem’ (34%). More than 60% of the elderly agreed that quality time spent by their adult children and grandchildren has decreased. They attribute this to the increased use of phones/computers. 65% of the elderly stated that extreme attention to personal screens is disrespectful.

6.1 The Emergence of In-Home Health Care With the change in society’s structure and culture, the intergenerational reciprocity of services is weakening rapidly. In a conventional Indian family system, a son and wife provide material support for their ageing parents and key services. These include cooking hot meals, tea and snacks, taking care of household chores, providing companionship and entertainment and nursing during illness. In the last two decades, with adult children moving away from home to pursue economic betterment, home nursing care facilities for the elderly are becoming popular. It is distinctly a middleclass phenomenon. Indian-origin residents of the USA often travel to India to arrange home care help for their ageing parents. A variety of home healthcare services, including live-in help, nursing care and acute care, are becoming more popular among the middle and upper class as the inevitable support for the elderly. For example, in 2002, Sushrusa, the first home nursing care training institution was introduced in Bhubaneswar. It trains young women with high school and college education to take care of the elderly at home. Currently, such facilities are spreading as they are in great demand. These home healthcare facilities have many limitations. The young women get a three-month training for Elder care, yet may not be inclined or adequately trained to take care of the elderly. Such service is looked upon as feminine hence does not attract many men. Moreover, many young women get married quickly after joining

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this profession, so the retention rate is meager. Regarding the Sushrusa service, one respondent noted: The young women provided by the local organization, Sushrusa, for my ailing father did not stay for long. She left to get married. It is very difficult for us to feel comforted that our elderly parents are taken care of, without reliable services. Even if we are willing to pay, we are unable to find reliable people. Linda Jena, Chicago. (Interview, 12/10/2020)

Home health care is a helpful service that allows the elderly to stay in their private setting with full-time help. Still, it is challenging to find reliable and committed home healthcare personnel in cities. A friend from Silicon Valley, California, spent several months in Cuttack to care for her ailing mother. She was very disappointed. Her observation was that: They are only interested in money and are not professional in taking care of the patient. (Interview, 01/31/2021)

Capistrant et al. (2015) conducted 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews of older adults’ caregivers in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. They found that caregiving for the aged with critical health conditions is a burden on family members’ and hired domestic help. India’s rapid demographic transitions—declining fertility, changing family structure, expansion of morbidity, chronic diseases and increased life expectancy—result in more responsibility for eldercare falling on fewer family members. And it varied by gender and family structure. In December 2020, an 84-year-old man living with his elderly wife and disabled son in Bhubaneswar fell and broke his hip bone. His long-time caretaker took him to the private Apollo Hospital, which offers a high standard of care at a high price. His son in New York had to take an emergency flight but could only get there on the fourth day after the surgery. The caretaker took care of his surgery at the hospital. His wife could not be there by his side in order to be with the special needs child at home. The operation was successful, and he is back home. The son stayed for a month but had to get back to his work in New York. The caretaker is in charge of caring for the elderly couple. My discussions with the middle-class elderly in Odisha made it clear that they consciously chose to educate their children, allowing them to succeed. Their children left home seeking jobs far and wide. The younger generation is moving away from their parental homes for better educational and employment opportunities. Children still bound by dharma, duty towards their parents, now outsource their responsibility to these home nursing care facilities like Sushrusa that are mushrooming all over the country.

6.2 The Lonely Living of the Elderly in the Cities With migration, modernisation and globalisation, more and more parents live alone with their children moving away for better economic opportunities. The elderly are lonely, isolated and feel alienated. Kasturee Mohapatra, from Long Beach, California,

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says that her friends in India in their 60s send WhatsApp messages on the ever-giving, sacrificing, suffering Hindu mother and parents in the image of living Gods. They complain about the individualistic attitude of their children living in the USA. India wali Ma (Mother from India), a recent Indian television serial in 2020, has become very popular, focusing on a sacrificing mother, a disrespectful son from abroad and misunderstood mother–son relationships. It emphasises the importance of family, especially the value of a mother. Popular Bollywood films like Baghban (2003) depicted the misery of the older parents separated between their two sons. Recently, a retired friend shared her story. It is focused on the loneliness of an Indian couple while their only son lives in America. When the mother passes away and the father is heartbroken, their son arrives at the family home in India. Father is pleased but is bewildered by his strange behaviour. The son would not eat anything, be very quiet and be very mechanical in his movements. After a few days, the father receives a phone call from his son. He was surprised. How could he be on the phone? He is around. The son shares that he sent a look-alike robot to take care of him since he could not get time off work. The story reflected so much of the anguish of the author’s loneliness! The author and her husband live in Bhubaneswar, while their children live abroad. These narratives reflect on the isolation of the elderly in the cities. Social media and films depict lonely elders, preoccupied children and a clash in parents’ and children’s expectations. Newspaper accounts are full of older people being abandoned and neglected, treated as burdens and cheated of the property. Modernity, immigration and globalisation are common factors responsible for this development. India ranked 71 out of 96 countries in measuring the quality of life of the elders (Global AgeWatch Index, 2015). Government facilities and infrastructural support are not at par with the ageing population’s rise. Families face challenges as the primary caregiving institution.

6.3 Policies and Laws for the Protection of the Elderly in India The policy landscape concerning the elderly in India leaves much to be desired. There are few and far between efforts to address the needs of the elderly. The Government of India has launched schemes to promote senior citizens’ health and personal well-being. The Indira Gandhi National Old-Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS) was introduced in 1995 as part of the National Social Assistance Program (NSAP) to provide financial assistance to the below poverty line (BPL) elderly. The scheme was later transferred to the state in 2002–2003 for implementation, with additional central financial assistance. The main objective of this scheme is to provide social security to make the poor elderly economically independent. The central government contributes |200 per month to beneficiaries between 60 and 79 and |500 to those aged 80 years and above. The state government is advised to add the matching amount or more, and their contribution varies. At present, old-age pension beneficiaries receive

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anywhere between |200 and |2,500 per month, depending on the amount granted by the state. The low pension is not very useful without any other source to supplement it. However, the study observes that the retirement pension differentiates between an elderly being cared for and abandoned. Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme (IGNWPS) for (BPL) elderly is implemented by the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. In February 2009, the Government of India approved a pension to widows living below the poverty line (BPL) in the age group of 40–64 years @ Rs. 200 p.m. per beneficiary. The Annapurna Scheme is a centrally sponsored food security scheme launched in 2000 as part of the National Social Assistance Program (NSAP). It provides food security for senior citizens who, although eligible, remain uncovered by the National Old-Age Pension Scheme (NOAPS). The Annapurna Scheme is targeted to cover 20% of the people eligible to receive a pension under NOAPS and is provided to the beneficiaries who fulfil the following criteria: 1. 2.

The age of the applicant (male or female) should be 65 years or above. The applicant must be impoverished in the sense of having little or no regular means of subsistence from their source of income or through financial support from family members or other sources.

It is critical to note that the eligibility criteria eliminate all possibility of abused elderly from middle-class families benefiting from such schemes. All beneficiaries receive free 10 kg of food (grain) per month, providing they do not receive a pension under the NOAPS or state pension scheme. According to the LASI Report (Government of India, 2020), the overall awareness of social security schemes among the elderly in India is low. Fifty-five per cent of the elderly are aware of the old-age pension scheme (IGNOAPS). About 44% of the elderly are aware of the widow pension scheme (IGNWPS), and only 12% are familiar with the Annapurna Scheme. The two main reasons for not using the social security schemes are that the process of enrolment in the system is cumbersome (35%) and not having the required documents (8%). Slightly more than a third (35%) of the widow pension beneficiaries state a considerable delay in receiving the money. Further, many senior home residents did not get their eligible pensions as they were not registered at the local administration to verify their eligibility credentials like age and earlier residential proof. T. V. Sekher3 observed that about 40% elderly in the villages in India did not know about the state pension program. He suggested that the local administration facilitate the information available on the services for the elderly. In India, only one-fifth (19%) of officially retired elderly aged 60 and above are currently receiving a pension, and it is only 13% in Odisha (Government of India, 2020). In the last few years, police in Odisha have begun maintaining a registered account of the elderly at the police station and have weekly awareness meetings at the local police station to track older people’s activities. 3

Professor T. V. Sekher presented this information in a talk titled “India’s Elderly: Socioeconomic and health conditions” 20 February 2021. This lecture was based on the report on Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI), 2020. Prof. Sekher is a Professor & Head of the Department, Population Policies and Programs, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai. This talk was organized by Centre for Rural Management (CRM), Kerala.

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In 2008, the Government of Odisha introduced ‘Madhu Babu Pension Yojana’, which provides a pension of Rs. 300/- per month per beneficiary between the age of 60 and 79 years and Rs. 500/- for 80 years and above. Its objective was to provide financial assistance to the impoverished elderly and destitute differently abled persons in the state. These are populist policies as the budgetary provisions are often inadequate to meet the demand. In December 2007, the Indian Parliament passed the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Bill, which became law in 2009. It stipulates that adult children may be fined |5,000 and jailed for up to three months if convicted of neglecting their parents. This is too little, too late. The LASI Report (Government of India, 2020) finds that only 12% of the elderly are aware of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act (2009). Awareness is relatively higher among the urban elderly (18%) than those from rural areas (9%). Only about 5% were aware of the HelpAge Elder Helpline number. The increase in homes is supported by the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007, which envisages the establishment of old-age homes for indigent senior citizens and the creation of adequate medical facilities and security for senior citizens. In 2018, the Government of India’s National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), in Hindi, the Ayushman Bharat Yojana (popularly known as ‘Modicare’), aims to provide health care to 107.4 million families (about 500 million population) for the bottom 40% of the country’s population (www.ayushmanbharat.co.in). This scheme has identified the elderly as a vulnerable group and makes them eligible for insurance up to |500,000, with those above the poverty line responsible for paying their premiums. Through reimbursements, it covers roughly 100 million ‘poor and vulnerable families’ (or an estimated 500 million individuals). This is nascent, and only its firm implementation will indicate the benefits accruing to the elderly.

6.4 SenCiCare Service in Odisha Since March 2020, during the pandemic, senior citizens living alone have become more isolated. HelpAge India’s Odisha Head, Bharati Chakra, reports that senior citizens made frantic calls for physical company besides delivering daily essentials or health check-ups. Some desperate requests were, ‘We have everything, but no one to interact with. Please find someone with whom we could, at least, talk, every day’ (HelpAge India Report, 2020). ‘Covid-19 has aggravated the emotional vulnerability of the elderly couples living alone; they never felt more helpless, before’, puts retired professor Chinmay Jena (Ibid.). HelpAge India 2020 reports, ‘during Covid-19, a disturbing 62% of the elder respondents reported suffering from chronic diseases: asthma, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, etc. Of these, 53% were from rural and 47% from urban areas’. In November 2020, the SenCiCare service (private Senior Citizen’s Care) was launched to provide extensive services to the elderly who live alone in their homes. Plaban Mohapatra, the founder, lives in California. He says this service is ‘your extended family’. For a nominal monthly fee of |365, a person comes to the door to

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provide essential life-saving services like buying vegetables, doing a bank run, paying the electricity bill, getting a barber, doing a blood draw and getting the medical checkup done. Mohapatra surveyed more than 300 middle-class professionals in India and the Indian diaspora and found out that 90% of people wanted some home service for parents who live alone. During the pandemic lockdown in 2020, his parents, a 65-year-old mother and a 70-year-old father, were left helpless. ‘I realised how large this problem could be for others’. In the last few months, he already has more than 30 clients in Odisha and is excited to fulfil the demand for this service. The adult children live away from their parents and find this service very useful. SenCiCare service provides the elderly with technological, emotional and material support. For example, an elderly mother received an iPad from her son in the USA but did not know how to use it. SenCiCare staff helped the mother and connected her son through Zoom. Now, mother and son talk every day. Bhubaneswar-based, retired professor Jyotshna Mohapatra is full of praise for the SenCiCare service she subscribes to: I bless Plaban for his wonderful professional service. I used many informal ones, and they were not adequate (Interview 07/03/2021).

Technologies, e.g. WhatsApp and texts, have facilitated the seniors to seek and receive services from SenCiCare, and they are compelled to learn how to use mobile technology for communication. Besides the senior homes, many NGOs, namely Prafulla Pathagar, which runs a public library in Chilka, Odisha, have recently started celebrating older members’ birthdays in the community. They are collecting their life stories to publish in their monthly newsletters. The founding secretary, Prasanna Das, remarks that the elderly in the villages live a precarious life without much financial and social support. Once they retire from work, they are isolated as the children have moved away. Das observes that most of the elders have financial difficulties without a pension. Only the retired government employees receive stipends. Those who are poor and needy get about |300 per month. They do not have children’s support and lack healthcare insurance. Das says, We started a private health check-up facility for senior citizens by paying a retired doctor and a pharmacist. But the doctor is not coming nowadays as he gets more money elsewhere (Interview 02/05/2021).

7 Concluding Observations My discussion of the social exclusion of older adults in India leads me to some general observations. First, elders, dependent on their family, remain vulnerable and see their sons as legitimate caregivers. When the sons are not available to take care of them, the elderly feel morally betrayed and emotionally shaken. Second, the older adults look upon the family as the ideal place for the aged, and they feel entitled to their children as the caregivers. Since they have taken care of their children, now it is the responsibility of the children, especially sons, to take care of them. Third, even with the increasing number of senior homes in India, the elderly in Odisha still consider it taboo to move to these facilities. These homes are looked upon as a last

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resort rather than alternatives to family care. Once the residents move there, they build a community, develop a sense of belonging and enhance their understanding of personal dignity in the process of doing that. Further, they develop community building and support within these facilities. The state is building more units to accommodate the abandoned elderly. This study suggests that despite the state policies and programs, these homes are still looked upon as philanthropic and out of the norm. With an increase in senior care homes in our society, there is still a general feeling of dissatisfaction and anxiety, leading to unhappiness and despair among the elderly living in these homes. The Indian diaspora uses various technology platforms to find solutions to manage the isolated lives of the elderly living alone. But they seem inadequate to deal with the magnitude of the problems the elderly are experiencing in rural and urban India. Finally, as the opening invocation of this chapter shows, it is a societal tendency to disregard the elderly, which was already evident and universal when the Bhaja Govindam appeared in the eighth century of the Common Era. In modern times, older adults are reconciled to living alone and move to these homes when they become helpless.

References Akbar, S., Tiwari, S. C., Tripathi, R. K., Kumar, A., & Pandey, N. M. (2014). Reasons for living of elderly in old age homes: An exploratory study. The International Journal of Indian Psychology, 2(1), 55–61. Ausbel, J. (2020) Older people are more likely to live alone in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/10/older-people-are-more-likely-to-livealone-in-the-u-s-than-elsewhere-in-the-world/. Accessed April 18, 2021. Baghban. (2003). A Bollywood film by Ravi Chopra. Brijnath, B. (2014). Unforgotten: Love and the culture of dementia care in India. Berghahn. Capistrant, B. D., Ghosh, S., Friedmann-Sanchez, G., Kowal, P., & Mathur, A. (2015). Culture and caregiving for older adults in India: A qualitative study. The Gerontologist, 55(2), 112 Clark, O. (2019). “Beyond shame and sorrow”: Abandoned elderly women in India speak out. International Journal of Aging Research, 2(28), 1–16. Cohen, L. (1998). No aging in India: Alzheimer’s, the bad family, and other modern things. University of California Press. Datta, A. (2017). Old age homes in India: Sharing the burden of elderly care with the family. In: S. Irudaya Rajan & G. Balagopal (Eds.), Elderly care in India. Springer, Singapore. Datta, R. (2018). Eldercare: Demographic downside. https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/ nation/story/20180507-branded-corporate-elderly-care-old-age-homes-1221657-2018-04-26. Accessed April 3, 2021. Desai, K. (2019). Why these seniors prefer old-age home. The Times of India, April 24. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/69028391.cms?utm_source=contentof interest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst Global AgeWatch Index. (2015). Global AgeWatch Index 2015: Insight report, summary and methodology. Government of India. (2020). Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) wave 1, 2017–18, India Report (LASI India Report), New Delhi: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. https://lasiindia.org/public/documentation/LASI_India_Report_2020.pdf HelpAge India Report. (2018). Elder abuse in India. In 2018 changing cultural ethos & impact of technology. https://www.helpageindia.org/aboutus/publications/helpage-research-reports/

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Helpage India Report. (2020). The elder story: Ground reality during Covid 19 impact and challenges nationwide survey. https://www.Helpageindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/TheElder-Story-Ground.pdf. Accessed April 21, 2021. Hodge, D. R. (2004). Working with Hindu Clients in a spiritually sensitive manner. Social Work, 49(1), 27–38. International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), National Programme for Health Care of Elderly (NPHCE), MoHFW, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of Southern California (USC) 2020. Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) Wave 1, 2017–18, India Report, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai. https://www.iip sindia.ac.in/lasi/ Joumard, I., & Kumar, A. (2015). Improving health outcomes and healthcare in India. OECD Economics Department Working Papers (pp. 1–29). No. 1184. Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation. Kozel, V., & Parker, B. (2001). Poverty in rural India: The contribution of qualitative research in poverty. The World Bank. Kumar, M., Bansal, R. K., & Bansal, M. (2008). Need to support old-age home residents. Indian Journal of Community Medicine, 33(2), 131. Lamb, S. (2000). Aging and the Indian diaspora: Cosmopolitan families in India and abroad. Indiana University Press. Lamb, S. (2009). Elder residences and outsourced sons: Remaking aging in Cosmopolitan India. In J. Sokolovsky (Ed.), The cultural context of aging worldwide perspectives (pp. 418–440). Praeger. Lena, A., Ashok, K., Padma, M., Kamath, V., & Kamath, A. (2009). Health and social problems of the elderly: A cross-sectional study in Udupi Taluk, Karnataka. Indian Journal of Community Medicine, 34(2), 131–134. Littlewood, P., & Herkommer, S. (1999). Identifying social exclusion: Some problems of meaning. In P. Littlewoodm, I. Glorieus, S. Herkommer & I. Johnson (Eds.), Social exclusion in Europe: Problems and paradigms (pp. 1–22). Routledge. Lloyd-Sherlock, P. (2000). Old age and poverty in developing countries: New policy challenges. World Development, 28(12), 2157–2168. Miller, J. G. (1994). Cultural diversity in the morality of caring: Individually oriented versus dutybased interpersonal moral codes. Cross-Cultural Research, 28(1), 33–39. Mohanty, S. K., Chauhan, R. K., Mazumdar, S., & Srivastava, A. (2014). Out-of-pocket expenditure on health care among elderly and non-elderly households in India. Social Indicators Research, 115(3), 1137–1157. MoHFW. (2016). Annual Report of Department of Health and Family Welfare. Government of India. Panda, A. (2019). 288 cases of atrocity on elderly in one year. The New Indian Express, July. https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/2019/jul/28/286/-cases-of-atrocity-onelderly-in-one-year-in-odisha-says-minister-2010518.html Pickett, K. E., & Wilkinson, R. G. (2015). Income inequality and health: A causal review. Social Science and Medicine, 128, 316–326. Radhakrishnan, S. (2015). Hindu view of life. Harper Collins Publishers. Ramnath, N. (2018). What are some good old age care homes in Bhubaneswar and Berhampur? https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-old-age-care-homes-in-Bhuban eswar-and-Berhampur/answer/Narsimha-Ramnath. Accessed March 7, 2021. Room, G. (1995). Beyond the threshold: The measurement and analysis of social exclusion. Policy Press. Samuel, M., & Thyloth, M. (2002). Caregivers’ roles in India. Psychiatric Services, 53(3), 346–347. Sebastian, D., & Sekhar, T. V. (2012). Intergenerational care and support for elderly: Evidence from Kerala state, India. European Population Conference, Stockholm, Sweden. The New Indian Express. (2019). https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/2019/jul/28/ 286-cases-of-atrocity-on-elderly-in-one-year-in-odisha-says-minister-2010518.html. Accessed July 18, 2019. Turnbull, C. M. (1984). The human cycle. Simon and Schuster.

Chapter 14

Oil Exploitation and Socio-economic Vulnerability in Mexico Victoria Chenaut

Abstract This chapter is focused on Mexico, where the forces of the capitalist system and globalisation since the mid-1980s have ushered in neoliberal policies that have increased poverty and inequality in the country. It is based on a study in a village Emiliano Zapata, in the state of Veracruz, where large-scale oil installations like PEMEX and its subsidiaries are present and where poverty and social vulnerability intersect and risk the lives and livelihoods of the local communities. The chapter highlights how agricultural production and health are adversely affected due to aggressive extraction-based industrialization in the region. Socio-economic vulnerability and exclusion are the outcomes of oil exploration combined with the state’s apathy towards the local communities. Though local communities and civil society groups have protested against environmental degradation due to continuous fracking techniques used for oil exploration, they have not been effective in bringing any change in the oil exploration policy of the government.

1 Introduction The concept and approach of social exclusion, about understanding poverty and inequality, have been used increasingly in Latin America since the 1990s, in the context of the deepening of the neoliberal development model. Poverty and vulnerability are not the same as social exclusion. Poverty refers to the lack of social resources and income, whereas vulnerability has to do with changes that occur in the state of individuals, households or social groups, due to an event that has taken place (Bayon, 2015; González, 2018; Saraví, 2007; Sen, 2000). In addition, it is proposed that vulnerability and risk are interlinked concepts, since risks are socially constructed and are impacted by the development models of a country, as well as by its economic, social and environmental aspects (García, 2018). V. Chenaut (B) Centre for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_14

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The above authors suggest that poverty, vulnerability and risk are interrelated in certain political, economic and social conditions, triggering exclusion/inclusion processes. In this chapter, I have analysed practices and policies of the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons (oil and gas) by PEMEX, the largest Mexican stateowned petroleum company established in 1938. It is one of the fully integrated oil companies having developed the entire production chain: exploration, production, industrial processing/ refining, logistics and marketing. This will constitute the axis around the situation of vulnerability and risks, currently experienced by the local population where oil exploitation is taking place in the state of Veracruz (Mexico) to be discussed in the ensuing sections. Hydraulic fracturing used by PEMEX for oil extraction informally referred to as ‘fracking’ is an oil and gas well development process. It typically involves injecting water, sand and chemicals under high pressure into a bedrock formation via the oil well. This process is intended to create new fissures in the rock as well as increase the size, extent and connectivity of existing fractures, thus liberating trapped oil or natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing is a ‘Well Stimulation Technique’ used commonly in lowpermeability rocks like tight sandstone, shale and someal beds to increase oil and/or gas flow to a well from petroleum-bearing rock formations. Mexico is an emerging economy and is considered one of the most advanced developing countries in the world. Hydraulic fracking has no doubt revolutionised oil and gas drilling, but is also known to trigger seismic events and major groundwater and air pollution, eventually damaging flora, fauna and the rural population living close to the fracking sites like Emiliano Zapata. Besides, unfiltered chemical waste products get discharged into the river and caused severe surface water pollution and soil damage. However, it is the absence of rigorous safety regulations that can poison groundwater, pollute surface water, impair wild landscapes and threaten wildlife. If the wells are not sturdy, they can leak and contaminate groundwater with cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and toluene (which are normally exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act). The local population has very little awareness regarding this in Mexico. This chapter aims to analyse the case of Emiliano Zapata, a village located in the municipality of Papantla, Veracruz (Mexico), where oil extracted from the San Andrés field1 since 1955 is sent to the city of Poza Rica for further processing. After a brief description of the locality, as well as the oil installations and activities that take place there, I will highlight the situation of socio-economic vulnerability and social exclusion in which its local inhabitants find themselves. The emphasis is on agricultural production and the health of the local communities. I have used testimonies from interviews that I conducted between the years 2015 and 2019 for the analysis.

1

An oil field is a geographical area in which a number of oil and gas wells are present.

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Fig. 1 Oil wells in Municipalities of the Chicontepec Paleochannel (States of Puebla and Veracruz)

2 The Geology and Richness of the Subsoil From a geological perspective, Emiliano Zapata is located in the coastal plain of Veracruz, in the Tampico-Misantla oil basin2 (57,170 km2 ). Here lies a geological formation known as Paleocanal of Chicontepec, which contains a vast reserve of gas and oil in the subsoil, considered ‘one of the largest accumulations in America’3 (CNH, 2010, p. 3; González, 2011), although its extraction was a problem due to certain geological conditions. In 2006, PEMEX reactivated the exploitation of the Paleocanal and named the project Aceite Terciario del Golfo (ATG or Gulf Tertiary Oil). Since then, numerous wells have been explored for the extraction of oil. The San André’s field is located in the southeast portion of the basin, 35 km from the city of Poza Rica, where the oil activity of this region is centralised (Fig. 14.1). The CNH document states that in ATG, the burning and venting of associated gas cause damage to the atmosphere due to the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and methane (CH4 ), which contribute to global warming. The document (CNH, 2010) also warns about the proximity of these gas burning installations ‘to human 2 3

The oil basins are geological formations where there are large deposits of hydrocarbons. National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH).

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settlements, which represent a latent risk to the safety of local communities and to the operation of the oil field itself’. It recommends that measures be taken to reduce these emissions to a minimum. In 2012, a Venezuelan company OLEOREY began to explore and extract hydrocarbons in this area, following a 30-year contract obtained from PEMEX for extraction of gas and oil in the San Andres oil field. Such activities are still the main source of pollution in the region.

3 The Village of Emiliano Zapata and the Oil Boom Decades ago, Emiliano Zapata (with around 2000 inhabitants) was a flourishing village due to the boom in hydrocarbon exploitation. The village of Emiliano Zapata is located on ejido lands that had been distributed to the ejidatarios in 1936–374 during the nationwide agrarian reform process, whereby they obtained a total of 622 ha. The population of Emiliano Zapata was 4561 in 2015 (48.5% men and 51.5% women). Compared to 2010, the population has increased by 10.2%. In 2015, 77.5% of the population live in moderate poverty and 10.2% in extreme poverty. The vulnerable population due to social deprivation was 10.2% in 2015, while the same in terms of income was 1.48%. Around 3.62% of the population in Emiliano Zapata had no access to sewage systems; 0.86% were not a part of the water supply network; 2.95% did not have a bathroom and 0.95% had no electricity (https://datamexico. org/en/profile/geo/emiliano-zapata-29046?redirect=true). Currently, citrus fruits, corn and beans are cultivated in the village. The local communities also rear livestock for their livelihood. PEMEX occupies more than half of these lands, expropriated mainly to install oil wells and pipelines. At present, Emiliano Zapata is characterised by a small number of professionals (doctors and teachers), as well as merchants and builders, among others. Most of the men make a living from working as agriculturists or by rearing livestock. Some of them are also employed as PEMEX contractors. However, the young people are reluctant to work in the rural areas and thus migrate to the northern states of the country or the USA in search of better employment opportunities. Rural out migration is one of the serious social problems faced by the community (González, 2011). In 1955, PEMEX exploration began, and a year later, the first oil well was drilled in Emiliano Zapata. It was previously inhabited by indigenous farmers of Totonac ethnicity engaged in the cultivation of corn, beans and vanilla. However, the village grew with the arrival of non-indigenous immigrants from other regions of the country to work as labourers, technicians or professionals in the oil industry. Many stayed on to settle down and raise their families. Agricultural fields were affected by the 4

The ejido is a form of social property that emerged in Mexico, consequent to the Mexican Revolution, in the early decades of the twentieth century. It was incorporated into the Constitution of 1917 as a form of land tenure, and since then till 1992, lands were distributed to the peasants, known as ejidatarios. However, in 1992, new agrarian legislation terminated this distribution.

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installation of oil wells without seeking permission from the local peasants, thereby demonstrating the authoritarian manner and impunity with which PEMEX conducted their operations in the region. PEMEX began to open access roads to the wells to allow for the integration of the lands into regional and national markets that could potentially facilitate the marketing of agricultural products by the peasants. Many shifted to oranges and lemon cultivation which had a better market compared with their traditional maize, beans and vanilla. Inhabitants recognised that the opening of communication channels contributed to the development of this isolated region, despite the social and environmental problems caused by the exploitation of hydrocarbons. In the years 1964–65, PEMEX built facilities on top of a hill for its staff in Emiliano Zapata, which included a communal dining area for employees, a hotel, a doctor’s office and wooden houses. Some soldiers were also deployed to protect the workers and the buildings. Today, these facilities have been looted and stand abandoned, but they still represent a symbol of a flourishing past and a gloomy present. Neither PEMEX nor the state has maintained the infrastructure built or found an alternate use for the same. The 1970s and 80s were the peak time for oil exploitation in Emiliano Zapata, although the production declined due to the discovery of the Cantarell oil field located in the sea, in the southeast of the country, which was considered one of the most significant reserves in the world at the time. It was observed that initially there was a lot of enthusiasm among the local communities due to the establishment of market connectivity and opportunities to enhance agricultural productivity. However, with the growing pollution, the benefits to the region dwindled leading to rising poverty and unemployment. State apathy has set in with the decline in oil production in the region of Emiliano Zapata. The outcome is the exclusion of the local communities from mainstream development.

3.1 Different Forms of Pollution When PEMEX exploitation of hydrocarbons began in 1955, the company installed its infrastructure in an inhabited area whose strategic location allowed the concentration of a large part of the production to be sent through pipelines to the city of Poza Rica, the centre of oil production of the region. PEMEX installations were set up in the form of turbine plants that sent gas to Poza Rica, or the ‘separator’, that separates water and oil. Likewise, three gas burners were constantly on as well as the ‘produced water treatment’ plant, and a network of old and rusty, underground pipelines to transport the hydrocarbon, which crossed the village below the settlement. In addition, there were numerous leaks, which could potentially lead to explosions in the pipeline. Local inhabitants still remember the explosion of a gas pipeline in July 1966 that led to the death of ten inhabitants and injuring eight others (González, 2011). The turbine plant is located in the centre of the village, making a constant noise that can be heard across the village, simultaneously emitting toxic gases. The pollution

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caused by all the oil installations and technical processes related to them affects the health and well-being of the inhabitants of the village. The burners, installations for gas venting and burning, emit a continuous flame, day and night, that gives off strong heat. At night, the village is ‘lit up’ by the lights of the flame, especially affecting the families whose houses are closest to the turbine plant. Noise, water, land and air pollution are the order of the day in Emiliano Zapata. The oil spills that leak out of the old pipelines, which are more than 30 years old, pollute the land and water. They also contaminate the aquifers and water wells as well as agricultural lands and drinking water for livestock. Local communities do not have access to safe water, and therefore, PEMEX supplies water to them with the help of tankers. Environmental pollution was evident when, in 2017, a team from the North American organisation ‘Earthworks’ monitored hydrocarbon wells in Poza Rica and Emiliano Zapata with an infrared camera that captured fugitive emissions responsible for climate change (carbon dioxide and methane) released during the process of exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons that was not visible to the human eye. The technician in charge claimed that he had never seen such large amounts of gases emitted into the atmosphere.5 Mexico was the first developing country to submit a plan to cut carbon emissions in the lead-up to the landmark Paris Agreement that became effective in 2016. Thereafter, it joined climate recalcitrants like Russia and Brazil in failing to boost efforts to combat global warming. The government’s approach has been ‘emissions be damned, the environment is damned, air quality is damned,’ (Jeremy Martin, Vice President for energy and sustainability at the Institute of the Americas). ‘There’s just not anything you can point me to that makes me feel confident in its ability to be anything other than poor stewards of their environment and emissions profile’ (Stillman & Haldevang, 2021). The Government’s slogan is that the ‘oil belongs to us Mexicans’, said labourer Josue Sanchez. ‘But for us Mexicans, who live the reality, have not seen half a Peso of that wealth’ (Stargardter, 2014).

3.2 Health Impacts on Local Communities The environmental impacts of fracking activities harming human health are well documented (Sangaramoorthy et al., 2016). The inhabitants of Emiliano Zapata also feel stressed due to the noise and heat of the gas burners and live with the risk of a possible explosion in pipelines or oil installations. In addition, they have attributed the health problems that comprise respiratory infections, as well as skin diseases such as irritation and itching through exposure to oil-contaminated water. Schmidt (2013) suggests that fracking wastewater could have a range of environmental and health impacts if not managed judiciously.

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Author’s interview, Poza Rica, 2 March 2019.

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A major health concern articulated by several respondents was the incidence of a very wide range of cancers—leukaemia, viscera, liver and intestinal cancers, as well as cervical and breast cancer in women, colon cancer, most of them being silent cancers and diagnosed late (2019, primary data).6 Evidence from some parts of the world shows that there are high rates of occurrence of cancer among people living close to oil exploration sites and refineries (McDermott-Levy et al., 2013). Similarly, a review of 15 upstream oil extraction and environmental public health studies varied from chronic diseases to acute symptoms, including cancer, hospitalizations, liver damage, autoimmune disorders, allergies, respiratory symptoms, general well-being and quality of life (Johnston et al., 2019). Six studies assessed the association between cancer and oil extraction, the majority of which were based in the Amazon region of Ecuador. Comparing the incidence of cancer in a small Ecuadorian community in the Amazon basin affected by oil extraction to a reference population, San Sebastian and colleagues (2001) found an excess of incidence and mortality for all types of cancer. Similarly, a later study of four counties with a history of at least 20 years of oil extraction also showed the excess risk for cancer incidence, including an increase in childhood haematopoietic (blood stem cell) cancer (Hurtig & San Sebastian, 2002). The same authors also identified a significantly increased relative risk for leukaemia among Ecuadorian children less than 14 years of age who lived in an oil extraction region compared to those who did not (Hurtig & San Sebastian, 2004; Johnston et al., 2019).

3.3 Community Response to Health Public and individual health are seldom the concern during energy policy discussions, with health professionals and affected communities are completely excluded from decision-making. A wide variety of stakeholders need to join hands to address the adverse health effects of fracking. The voices of those affected need to be heard where it matters, and therefore, public education and policy efforts regarding fracking, keeping current scientific advances and training towards leadership roles have to be emphasised (McDermott-Levy et al., 2013). In the city of Poza Rica, Mexico, women, those who are breast cancer survivors, formed a civil society organisation called ‘Full Life after Cancer’ to raise awareness and help those in need of cancer treatment in the nearby city. People with all types of cancers faced a range of problems. The government did not supply all the required drugs they need, and the Regional Hospital of Poza Rica did not have an oncologist or any provision of cancer drugs, despite repeated requests by the people. All these factors have together worsened the state of cancer in the area. In addition, poverty prevents local inhabitants from accessing quality treatment elsewhere. In Emiliano Zapata, of the cases mentioned, the out of pocket expenses that most cancer patients seeking treatment at Xalapa or Mexico City are extremely high, and 6

Author’s interview, Emiliano Zapata, 18 March 2019.

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to this day no government agency, neither PEMEX nor OLEOREY, has come to the assistance of patients to provide support in health matters in a targeted manner.7 The public health system at the local level is inadequate to address the needs of the local communities. In addition, poverty and social exclusion have prevented access to insurance services as well. For example, in the nearby village of Remolino, there was a free health centre; however, many people refused to go there as the process of seeking services was extremely cumbersome. It may be mentioned here that despite repeated demands by the local people, the government is yet to set up a healthcare centre in Emiliano Zapata. PEMEX did not intervene either. This indicates that the profits earned by the state-owned PEMEX are not ploughed back to the local communities for their welfare. Therefore, it is imperative to mention that public health workers and communities alike need to support only those energy policies that make human health a priority.

3.4 Agriculture Production Fracking is an extremely water-intensive practice. A single horizontal shale gas well will use between 11 and 34 million litres of water. The exact amount varies depending on the size of the area being exploited, the depth of the well and the geological characteristics of the formation. The requirement of water for exploitation and the depletion of aquifers has created conflicts in water usages (Peduzzi & Harding Rohr Reis, 2013). Notably, competition with agricultural users is likely to be a serious issue (IEA, 2012). Perhaps the biggest problem is the damage that can be caused to agricultural lands because of the polluted water, which can inhibit germination and plant growth while excessive sodium can change the physical properties of soil and result in poor drainage, crusting and reduced crop yields (ibid.). In the past, the local communities of Emiliano Zapata were engaged in the cultivation of maize, beans and vanilla. The impact of fracking on the territory was significantly adverse, leading to the decline in vanilla production due to contamination of the soil and water caused by oil drilling in the region. With the market connectivity being established, there was a shift to cash crops like citrus and lemon by the local communities. This led to increased profits at the outset, but with the growing water pollution due to oil spills, the productivity declined, and the risks to their daily livelihoods were aggravated, leading to poverty and exclusion. Similarly, livestock was also affected due to the consumption of polluted water.

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Author’s interview, Emiliano Zapata, 19 March 2019.

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4 From Socio-economic Vulnerability to Social Exclusion The socio-economic vulnerability of the local communities is caused primarily due to oil drilling conducted by hydraulic fracking. In Mexico, forces of globalisation and a strong presence of capitalism fuelled by neoliberal policies since the 1980s have increased poverty and inequality. There is an inverse relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction in Mexico. With progressive structural reforms and implementation in the country, poverty could be reduced, although an extensive feminist critique of the structural reforms that have especially marginalised women is well documented (Campbell, 2010; Parpart, 1993; Sparr, 1994). Globalisation has benefited some regions and certain sections of the population in Mexico, but there is about 42% of the population living below the national poverty line. It is noteworthy to mention that the indigenous communities in the country (21.5%) particularly suffer from poverty, causing them to be marginalised from society. Veracruz state has 9.5% of the indigenous population who live below poverty levels. Although ‘local and federal governments implemented social protection programs to alleviate poverty conditions and interregional disparities, in general, conditions for indigenous people remain unchanged’ (Wikipedia, Poverty in Mexico). Studies have shown that ethnicity is an important cause for inequality in income distribution, access to basic healthcare services and education. There is a significant difference in earnings between indigenous and non-indigenous people. According to the World Bank, about three-quarters of indigenous peoples in Mexico are poor, and the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous groups is very high (ibid.). Against this backdrop, the socio-economic vulnerability of Emiliano Zapata inhabitants has been analysed at two levels. One level of analysis relates to the limitations of the current capitalist development model in the country, which has neglected infrastructure, particularly public health services in rural areas. The high incidence of life-threatening diseases like cancer is a testimony to the environmental degradation caused by PEMEX. As Bayon (2015, p. 96) claims, when it comes to services, the ‘public’ ones are destined for use by the poor, and the ‘private’ ones, considered to be ‘more reliable, of better quality, efficient and accessible’, are used by the middle class and the people who can afford them. Another level of analysis relates to what various authors have called ‘cumulative disadvantage processes’ (González, 2018; Saraví, 2007; Sen, 2000) whereby different types of exclusions can relate to each other, so that a given exclusion may lead to another, and so on. In Emiliano Zapata village, socio-economic vulnerability is triggered by environmental pollution caused by the extraction of hydrocarbons. With the advent of extraction of hydrocarbons and associated deterioration of the agricultural land quality, the increased use of chemical fertilisers and herbicides has caused immense damage to the health of the local community. This means that people need medical care that they cannot obtain locally, and whenever they receive an unfavourable diagnosis, they have to face the high costs of treatment for diseases such as cancer.

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I believe that the situation of poverty, vulnerability and risk as a result of the exploitation of hydrocarbons, together with structural inequality and deficiencies in the public health system in rural areas, as a whole, violate the human rights of local people, such as the right to water, to a healthy environment and personal health, among others. The cultural identity of the local communities is also at stake as their traditional livelihoods have been disrupted, and they have been forced to find alternate ways of living. The vulnerabilities experienced by the local communities for an extended period have led to their exclusion by being kept out of the planning process. Despite being major stakeholders, they have been losers, locally, regionally and nationally. Along with poverty, the out migration of able-bodied men is a frequent phenomenon. It is necessary to take into account the different forms that vulnerability can assume, depending on the living conditions of the place. One notes that everyone is united by the dangers of being surrounded by oil installations and pipelines that can explode, as well as by air, water and land pollution. However, socio-economic vulnerability is expressed among certain groups of the population with greater intensity than in others. For example, homes that are closer to the gas burners suffer a greater impact from pollution due to the noise, flames and heat they emit. In addition, the exploitation of hydrocarbons has a differential impact on men and women. In rural areas, vulnerability among women is higher because of high illiteracy rates, especially among older females. Furthermore, in the municipalities of the state of Veracruz where the fracking technique is used, 23% of homes do not have potable tap water (Olivera, 2019). When streams or water reservoirs are contaminated or diverted from their natural course for oil and gas extraction activities, the reduction of water has a greater impact on women and children, as they are mostly responsible for collection of water for domestic use. Therefore, it is to be noted that the health effects outlined in this chapter have a severe impact on women. One wonders what it means when citizens’ demands related to health and pollution issues are ignored. What are the reasons behind the silence and omissions of PEMEX and the contracting company concerning the existing problems in this town? What does this silence from oil companies tell us, when they refuse to inform the residents about fracking, or the activities carried out in the oil installations? In another paper, I have commented on the challenges that the region’s inhabitants face in getting PEMEX to address the damage to crops and the environment. They consider this company to be a ‘monster’ since they perceive it as a gigantic state entity that holds all the power (Chenaut, 2017). It may be noted that oil extraction in Mexico has a particular stature because it is considered that oil ‘entails the development and is synonymous with nationalism’ (Checa, 2016, p. 28). Thus, oil exploitation appears linked to a feeling of national pride derived from the nationalisation of oil that was carried out by President Lazaro Cardenas, which obscures the local effects on the environment that this activity causes. In their daily lives, the inhabitants deal with and suffer the effects of pollution, an experience that is undoubtedly the product of a social construct of suffering related to social domination and symbolic violence by the state (Auyero & Swistun, 2008). Following these authors, I wonder how is it that inhabitants of Emiliano Zapata live

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with and face their problems. Further, I have been able to observe the different types of reactions and approaches to the situations that they are encountering. On the one hand, I consider that the social capital, the solidarity ties of kinship and friendship provide elements that help contain and face the situations of vulnerability they experience. On the other, it is also observed that different visions emerge regarding what they experience, their concern and helplessness felt by many of them. The problem is normalised and has become part of everyday life, as someone argued when speaking about the noise of the burner: ‘everything is annoying at first, then you get used to it’.8 As for the ejido land, some consider that they cannot oppose PEMEX because they have already received the money in compensation for the expropriation of the lands. Others think that since the oil belongs to the nation, it is not possible to take action. Some oppose the use of the land by PEMEX. That is to say, those diverse points of view prevent many from expressing the fact that they are fed up with the continuous wait, to have their complaints addressed. However, in some cases, they abandon the legal procedures they were carrying out to get some compensation for the damage caused. Such delays speak of the political subordination of citizens in the country (Auyero, 2013). In other words, through waiting, the domination and power of the state are experienced and, in this case, is manifested in the silence and omissions of PEMEX, as well as in the deficiencies of the public health service. The relational nature of exclusion, highlighted by Sen (2000), can perhaps be summarised in the words of an inhabitant interviewed, ‘there is no will’.9 This sentence reveals that given the lack of interest in resolving problems shown by the authorities, they feel that they are denied the right to health and a decent life. In the previous sections, I explained some of the reasons for not organising a strong opposition movement in the area. However, it is necessary to mention that some Totonac indigenous people and inhabitants of the region, in alliance with environmental and human rights organisations, have proposed various strategies against fracking. They intend to develop a process whereby communities are organised to fight against environmental devastation because their way of life, as well as their culture and identity, is threatened. The close relationship of local communities with the environment incites their resistance to oil exploitation, which is why they take on different ways to fight against and confront the challenges they face, such as social mobilisation, protests reported in the media or attempts to use official law of the state through judicial protection. With these actions, they demonstrate their rejection of what they call death projects and take a stand against pollution and against a paradigm of development, they do not share. Further, their actions are based on the ancestral wisdom of indigenous peoples and their relationship with the natural environment. Such issues should occupy the centre stage while planning and implementation of neoliberal policies in regions like Veracruz. However, such movements are limited to certain communities only and not the entire population affected by the state’s oil exploration.

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Author’s interview, Emiliano Zapata, 17 March 2019. Author’s interview, Emiliano Zapata, 18 March 2019.

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5 Concluding Remarks The case of Emiliano Zapata clearly shows how the encroachment of capital by a state-owned corporate PEMEX has led to an acceleration of socio-economic vulnerability and exclusion of the local population of Emiliano Zapata in Veracruz state. The region in Mexico represents a classic case of a ‘resource curse’ situation, where despite having rich resources, a region remains poor and deprived of economic growth and development benefits. The primary reason for such a state of affairs in Emiliano Zapata is that the profits are not ploughed back to the region for the development of the area and the local communities. With the loss of traditional sources of income and lack of income-earning opportunities, the affected communities are left to fend for themselves with limited support from the government or any other agency. With the increasing out migration of able-bodied people from the village, there is no willingness to protest against the state-run corporates like PEMEX. Mexico is currently a part of the MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) group of countries, which are projected to grow faster in the next few years as they show strong growth indicators that can potentially provide a higher return for investment in the coming years. Despite such predictions, Mexico is yet to show some promising results. Growth has no doubt happened, but socio-economic vulnerability and exclusion have simultaneously increased in the country. Acknowledgements I thank Norma Guevara and Gumersindo González† for their support and hospitality during my stay in Emiliano Zapata. Likewise, I am grateful for the comments made by Smita Mishra Panda to the chapter. I am thankful to Paul Robinson and Ana Adela Chávez Ursúa for translating the chapter from Spanish.

References Auyero, J. (2013). Born amid bullets. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 12(1), 24–29. Auyero, J., & Swistun, D. A. (2008). The social production of toxic uncertainty. American Sociological Review, 73(3), 357–379. Bayón, M. C. (2015). Experiencias, discursos y representaciones de la pobreza urbanaen México. México: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Bonilla Artigas Editores. Campbell, H. (2010). Structural adjustment policies: A feminist critique, SIGMA. Journal of Political and International Students, 27, 1–14. Checa, M. (2016). Los efectosen el territorio de la explotación de hidrocarburosen México. Recuentobibliográfico. In M. Checa-Artasu & R. Hernández Franyuti (Coords.), El petróleoen México y sus impactossobre el territorio (pp. 17–47). Instituto Mora. Chenaut, V. (2017). Impacto sociales y ambientales de la explotación de hidrocarburos el municipio de Papantla, Veracruz (México). e-cadernos CES (pp. 94–117). https://journals.openedition.org/ eces/2433 CNH. (2010). Comisión Nacional de Hidrocarburos - Disposiciones técnicas para evitar o reducir la quema y el venteo de gas”. Cnh.gob.mx.10–27. Retrieved 2.11.2020.

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García, V. (2018). Vulnerabilidad y desastres: génesis y alcances de una vision alternativa. In M. González de la Rocha & G. Saraví (Coords.), Pobreza y vulnerabilidad: debates y estudioscontemporáneosen México (pp. 212–239). CIESAS. González, M. (2011). Emergencia del socialismo ecológico en la Huasteca. El Paleocanal de Chicontepec bajo escrutinio de un comité de derechos humanos maseual, Tesis de Maestría en Desarrollo Rural. Ciudad de México: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco. González, M. (2018). Acumulación de desventajas y vulnerabilidad. In M. González de la Rocha & G. Saraví (Coords.), Pobreza y vulnerabilidad: debates y estudios contemporáneos en México (pp. 26–57). México: CIESAS. Hurtig, A. K., & San Sebastian, M. (2002). Geographical differences in cancer incidence in the Amazon basin of Ecuador in relation to residence near oil fields. International Journal of Epidemiology, 31(5), 1021–1027. Hurtig, A. K., & San Sebastian, M. (2004). Incidence of childhood Leukemia and oil exploration in the Amazon basin of Ecuador. International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 10(3), 245–250. IEA. (2012). Golden rules of a golden age of gas. World Energy Outlook. Special Report on Unconventional Gas. International Energy Agency, Paris, France, p. 143. Johnston, J. E., Lim, E., & Roh, H. (2019). Impact of upstream oil extraction and environmental public health: A review of evidence. Science Total Environment, 20(657), 187–199. McDermott-Levy, R., Kaktins, N., & Sattler, B. (2013). Fracking, the environment and health: New energy practices may threaten public health. American Journal of Nursing, 113(6), 45–51. Olivera, B. V. (2019). Impactos del fracking en las mujeres. Ciudad de México: Alianza Mexicana contra el Fracking/Fundar/CORASON/Heinrich BöllStiftung. Available from https://www.nof rackingmexico.org. Accessed on October 10, 2019. Parpart, J. L. (1993). Who is the ‘other’?: A postmodern feminist critique of women and development theory and practice. Development and Change, 24, 439–464. Peduzzi, P., & Harding Rohr Reis, R. (2013). Gas fracking: Can we safely squeeze the rocks? Environmental Development, 6, 86–99. Sangaramoorthy, T., Jamison, A. M., Boyle, M. D., Payne-Sturges, D. C., Sapkota, A., Milton, D. K., & Wilson, S. M. (2016). Place-based perceptions of the impacts of fracking along the Marcellus Shale. Social Science and Medicine, 151, 27–37. San, S. M., & Armstrong, B. (2001). Exposures and cancer incidence near oil fields in the Amazon basin of Ecuador. Occupational Environmental Medicine, 58, 517–522. Saraví, G. (2007). Nuevas realidades y enfoques: exclusión social enAmérica Latina. In G. Saraví (Ed.), De la pobreza a la exclusión. Continuidades y rupturas de la cuestión social en América Latina (pp. 19–52). PrometeoLibros/CIESAS. Saraví, G. (2018). Conclusiones. Pobres y vulnerables en México: contexto, transformaciones y perspectivas. In M. González de la Rocha & G. Saraví (Coords.), Pobreza y vulnerabilidad: debates y estudios contemporáneos México (pp. 240–259). CIESAS. Schmidt, C. W. (2013). Estimating wastewater impacts from fracking. Environmental Health Perspectives, 121(4), 117. Sen, A. (2000). Social exclusion: Concept, application and scrutiny. Social Development Papers, 1, 1–54. Office of Environment and Social Development Bank, June. Available from https://www. adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/29778/social-exclusion.pdf. Accessed on July 31, 2020. Sparr, P. (Ed.). (1994). Mortgaging women’s lives: Feminist critique of structural adjustment reforms. Zed Books. Stargardter, G. (2014). Mexico’s rural landowners pose threat to foreign energy investors. Available from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-reforms-ejidos-insight-idINKBN0E T0JN20140618 Stillman, A., & Haldevang, M. D. (2021). Energy protectionism in Mexico has made climate the victim. Bloomberg | Quint (January 10). Available from https://www.bloombergquint.com/ onweb/energy-protectionism-in-mexico-has-made-climate-the-victim Wikipedia. Poverty in Mexico

Part IV

Rethinking Social Exclusion and Inclusion

Chapter 15

How (Not) to Exclude…? Against Totalising and Colonising Delusions of Inclusion Jacques Boulet

Abstract This chapter attempts to create a reflective template for practices and theories aimed at progressing inclusive policies, programs and relational behaviours and attitudes by—first—examining the words and concepts we use to describe them. It then moves towards a consideration of the common structural reasons underlying most if not all forms of social exclusion and of the difficulties encountered when attempting to become more successful with legislative and programmatic attempts at realising true inclusion as societies and organisations/communities. Two societies— the US and Australia—are then presented as exemplary ‘vignettes’ illustrating some of these difficulties while offering a starting point for creative imaginations as to how we could move towards a state of extended ‘inclusive diversity’—extended by including the non-human in our considerations and sustainable practices.

1 Introduction Thinking, writing and talking about ‘inclusion’ require us to be more precise about what we mean, lest the concept and its associated relational practices—including policy development and implementation—will dissipate into a trend, a fashion or even orthodoxy—a pretence of complying with some human right, because it is written in some vision or mission statement. Given the ‘weasel-wording’ (Boulet, 2014, 2021b; Watson, 2005) afflicting the English and other ‘modern’ languages, especially after the onslaught of globalised neoliberalism (the Lingua Franca of which appears to be English), that problem has only intensified as ‘inclusion policies’ have become ‘outcomes’ to be ‘delivered’ to the expectant—and often not quite welcoming—populations …of course ‘co-designed’ and ‘co-produced’ as the script expects.

J. Boulet (B) 35 Baker Parade, Ashburton, Victoria 3147, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_15

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Simultaneously, the world we inhabit seems to be caught in a confusion of upheavals in which all assumed truths and standards are suspended or held in abeyance… walls we thought dismantled are being rebuilt—if sometimes rather haltingly; dichotomies and antinomies, we thought overcome and differentiated are being reintroduced—sometimes with a vengeance; and questions about ‘borders’ and separations and distances central to—what I believed were—steps towards a deepened sense of cosmopolitan and cross-species co-existence and co-sustenance, and they are asked again with renewed separatist and distancing intention…. And, I admit to feeling deeply disturbed by these trends after a life of intellectual and practical activism hoping to contribute to (a) more peaceful and convivial ‘borderlands’1 —a connection I will return to. Rather than being ‘evidence-based’ in the epistemologically and methodologically restricted sense it has come to be understood in published academic work, I offer this chapter as a ‘speculatively pragmatic’ think-piece, inspired by Donna Haraway’s ‘speculative fabulations’ sustaining her work in ‘Staying with the Trouble’ (2016, p. 1): We – all of us on Terra – live in disturbing times, mixed-up times, troubling and bumptious times. The task is to become capable, with each other in all of our bumptious kinds, of response. Mixed-up times are overflowing with both pain and joy – with vastly unjust patterns of pain and joy, with unnecessary killing of ongoingness but also with necessary resurgence. The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present.

I first examine the language of inclusion and its antonym, exclusion, leading to a cursory look at the social entities in and to which the ‘act’ of in and excluding is to be applied or that are being ‘tasked’ or expected to include or are being told not to exclude. This leads to a—probably uncommon—reflection on what lies behind the unquestioned assumption that these social entities are indeed worth being included into and what the price of such inclusions may turn out to be for those to be included. A second section critically explores the structural context in which inclusion is to ‘happen’; this context is generally characterised by growing degrees of inequality, a feature that majorly influences the nature and severity of the exclusions certain groups suffer from. The respective and different intensities of the exclusions of diverse groups are briefly examined, thus entering the domain of intersectionality, the overlapping and co-occurring rationalisations justifying and ‘explaining’ exclusions and (often conditional) inclusions. Attention for class-based segregations and inequalities and their overlapping with ‘dis’ability, gender, race and other characteristics of people being excluded leads to an approach to social justice that may offer a platform to rethink inclusion and ways to achieve it. Next, several examples of ‘incomplete inclusions’ in the USA and Australia are shared, leading to an attempt at aligning notions of ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’, exploring what the ‘price’ of inclusion might be when important characteristics of those now generally referred to as ‘other’ grate against values and habits of the social body ‘willing/needing/having to include’. 1

The title of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderland/La Frontera: The New Mestiza; the cooperative I helped start and remain part of adopted its name—see www.borderlands.org.au.

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If diversity remains crucial to the sustainability of any social body and if monocultures are destined to become ‘extinct’, how can difference become co-existential in an inclusive ‘pluriverse’? Finally—and only suggestively—what would it take to stretch our notion of inclusion to ‘include’ the non-human? While the ‘anthropos’ has been ‘including’ the non-human or the multispecies in our lives ever since we evolved—indeed, we would not have survived without it/them—entering the ‘anthropocene’2 signals a necessary reflection about the consequences of the modalities of that ‘inclusion’; domesticating, controlling, manipulating, capturing, killing, extinguishing and desertification are its operative verbs… The notion of the pluriverse invites us to reconsider the fearful exclusions and disastrous inclusions that humanity continues to commit to our lifesustaining ecology, leading to an exponentially growing number of species extinctions—the ultimate exclusion!—and to the destruction of their liveable contexts; they should be part of our considerations in any exploration of inclusive living.

2 The Language of In/Exclusion and Its Assumptions When terminology becomes mainstream and used by individuals, public and private organisations and—especially—via the media, social or otherwise, the vocabulary used is often taken for granted and the original meaning of the words ‘hollows out’. Understandings of what it means to include and exclude can be rather perverse; without thoughtful reference to the social/relational unit the ‘including’ needs to happen ‘in’ and ‘from’ which the ‘excluding’ should stop, the phrases—or the speeches or declarations—in which they are used become declamatory but empty of real meaning.3 Like with so many policies, programs and ideologically infused intentional statements about political and economic programs, the value-based assumptions surrounding their framing are often unquestioned and unquestionable. Australian readers will remember the ‘Is Don, Is Good’ slogan promoting Donbranded small goods,4 still displayed on many an advertising site; in its seemingly gentle and simple—if linguistically and culturally potentially denigrating and insensitive—way, the advertisement means to increase the sale of deli-meats, giving them a bit of a ‘continental’ and, therefore, unassailable positive aura of being superior 2

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/anthropocene. A rather shameful example of this is presently occurring in Australian public discourse; First Nation Australians for decades have objected to public events and statements that ignore or willfully belittle the cost of the European/white invasion in their country or that celebrate the ‘achievements’ of the invaders/colonisers. Indigenous Australians still suffer most from exclusion and inequality and have protested against many statements that fully ignore their over 65,000 years’ presence in this country. In response, the government of the day promised remedial action and the Prime Minister exuberantly announced on New Year’s Day 2021 that the sentence in the national anthem ‘And we are young and free’ shall henceforth be sung as ‘And we are one and free’…. (Williams 2021). 4 isdonisgood.com.au Don small goods Company. 3

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to the stuff Australians usually put on their lunch bread. Similarly, in social policy, welfare programs, human and community services, even in community development, the words with which we describe, profess and proliferate the values and the ‘visions’ we espouse, often resonate with a similar unshakable sense of ‘rightness’, even righteousness. This is the stuff that renders us and our societal visions and purposes vulnerable to attacks of ‘political correctness’5 by those who then shamelessly use similar and other words to promote their own ideological framings (Goffman, 1974; Kahneman, 2000; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Just take words and concepts like ‘empowerment’, ‘resilience’, ‘transformation’, ‘participation’, ‘stakeholder’, even ‘community’ and ‘bottom-up’, words and notions which are all deemed ‘good’ … never mind what the person, agency or department or indeed the political party or commercial entity utilising them have in mind—if anything. And as we now know, the ‘social’ media has done nothing to make this any better—rather to the contrary (Zuboff, 2019). And so, it is with ‘inclusion’… like Don, inclusion is good … ‘inclusion’ and ‘being inclusive’ are assumed to be a ‘must’ and have produced and generated policies, programs, positions, officers, approaches, values, philosophies and action principles across numerous fields and areas of public life and endeavour. Evaluations and researches continue to be carried out about the ‘state of inclusion’ in communities, societies, organisations, initiatives, programs, etc., often not going beyond counting the numbers of (various groups of) people attending or taking part in such programs or events; even the more psychologically based questions about whether people ‘feel’ included or have encountered barriers and, hence, ‘are’ excluded do not go any further. The first approach usually leads to often numerical statements about society, the organisation, group or event being ‘inclusive’ (of women, young people, Aboriginal peoples,6 CALD-people,7 old people, poor and disadvantaged people, people with disability or any intersectional combination thereof…); the second approach has more to do with perceptions of and experiences with such organisations or events (feeling welcomed, accepted, addressed, acknowledged, involved…). Without fear or favour, well-known Australian cartoonist Leunig has been asking many important questions, usually without really ‘asking’ them… and he has often been harshly attacked for it. The April 2020 cartoon of his much-loved yearly wallcalendar shows a rather imposing bill-board situated in a bare, desert-like landscape; 5

According to the Collins Dictionary: ‘If you say that someone is politically correct, you mean that they are extremely careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, race, or disability’. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/politically-correct. 6 Closing a June 2020 episode of Q&A on ABC-TV focused on Black Lives Matter and Indigenous deaths in custody, Meyne Wyatt stared down the barrel of the camera to deliver a monologue from his play City of Gold that made the nation’s hair stand on end: ‘You want your blacks quiet and humble. ‘You can’t stand up, you have to sit down” and his final lines: ‘Silence is violence. Complacency is complicity. I don’t want to be quiet. I don’t want to be humble. I don’t want to sit down’. https://www. abc.net.au/news/2020-06-09/meyne-wyatt-delivers-powerful-monologue-on-racism/12333854. 7 CALD—Culturally and Linguistically Diverse’—is at present the term used for Australian residents of non-English-speaking backgrounds (previously indeed ‘acronymised’ as NESB).

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a startled ‘Mr Curly’—Leunig’s hero and alter-ego featuring in many of his works— stares in confusion at the text, obviously not ‘getting’ the rather ambiguous message: evoking the tension between individual ‘freedoms’ and social or collective normativity, Leunig illustrates how in or excluding is/are not that simple and unequivocal as we may wish…

WARNING! THIS IS AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY! AND IF WE FEEL YOU ARE TALKING, THINKING OR BEHAVING IN A NON-INCLUSIVE WAY YOU WILL BE EXCLUDED!

International publications and research on ‘inclusion’ across several groups of people(s) and diverse fields of social practice and across organisational contexts reveal three points of concern with the conceptual framing of in and exclusion (Soldatic & Johnson, 2019; personal conversations with Kelley Johnson). Inclusion is not defined or properly circumscribed even by researchers who have undertaken research into it, or it is defined differently by different writers. Especially, when applied to groups of people suffering from disadvantage or disability, the intent to ‘include’ can vary wildly from mere ‘presence’ to active engagement and involvement in decision-making. Even when policies and legislation include the concept, it is very difficult to actually know how to go about ‘doing’ inclusion and about evaluating it when it is ‘done’ or whether it ‘happens’. Indeed, does one look at the ‘presence’ of policies on a societal level, at the way social institutions ‘practise’, regulate and otherwise process and norm inclusion; or, at the everyday on-the-ground relational practices, behaviours, awareness and ‘thinking’ of people in situations? The term does not consciously take account of agency; one can be ‘included’, but it is difficult to include ‘oneself’, and there can be pressure—or expectation—to be included in ways or in groups one does not wish to be included in, because of the anticipated or experienced social, cultural or general relational power imbalances. Indeed, there is a broader question whether communities or organisations planning to be ‘inclusive’ are really ‘worth being included into’ for those ‘excluded’; what are the ‘adaptations’ one is expected to engage in when one is ‘to be’ included? Think about people with disabilities who had/have to be or act ‘normalised’8 in order to be included… Think about indigenous peoples anywhere being ‘included’ in community life, but having to live according to imposed and expected individualist norms 8

Most notoriously Wolfensberger (1972).

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and normalities… As we know, community and individualism are no easy bedfellows…and as Fox and Prilleltensky (1997) pointed out: ‘When thousands and even millions of people experience essentially identical problems, defining these problems as ‘individual’ oversimplifies to the point of absurdity…’ leaving the ‘agency’ issue in the onto- and epistemological (and political …) doldrums. Using the concept of inclusion may have positives as it puts responsibility on social bodies and their structures, on organisations, communities and on people other than the ‘excluded’ groups and individuals often too marginalised themselves to make change happen. Unfortunately, the resources to indeed ‘do’ this, to make it real and support it usually go missing; funding for community development, health promotion and other policy instruments to initiate and support the creation of the systemic relationships deserving to be called ‘inclusive’ were savagely cut during the last decades of living under the neoliberal ideology, and the next section will deal with this more explicitly. Language used in processes presumably aiming at ‘inclusion’ often regresses to outright ‘othering’ (hence excluding) and a restrictive welfare vocabulary; an Australian example is the use of the notion of ‘closing the gap’ when describing attempts to ‘lift’ Aboriginal people’s shocking life circumstances to those of ‘mainstream’ citizens. ‘Closing the gap’ leaves no doubt as to the price the former has to pay to be considered ‘included’ and as to what the ‘indicators’ of such inclusion will be: taking part in the kinds of things ‘normal’ Australians (supposedly) ‘enjoy’: education, work, health, recreation, paying taxes, football…all the ‘normal’ things Western ‘progress’ presumably has brought to the land… and the quotation marks are deliberate and indicative! Indeed, is this really all there is to ‘inclusion’…? And, what is the price Aboriginal peoples had and have to pay for this rather restrictive ‘inclusion’? Their officially never ceded land was invaded, stolen and vastly destroyed by agricultural and extractive industries imported and controlled by the invaders; they continue to suffer ignominious treatments by the dominant structure and culture, including loss of lives and culture; if desiring to be ‘included’ in decision-making processes about how to live their own lives and livelihoods, the price they have to pay is agreeing to a mode of living utterly antithetical to the culture and practices that supported their survival for tens of thousands of years (see Footnote 7). As indigenous leader Pat Turner9 recently stated in a talk about present attempts to open ways for Aboriginal peoples to have a direct ‘voice’ in governmental decisionmaking on national and state levels and to have that ‘voice’ and their historical presence in this land constitutionally acknowledged in—what is after all—their country: What is now unfolding is a convoluted and flawed process….It is high on rhetoric and wellrehearsed: co-design, empowerment, doing things with us, rather than to us. But if we look closely, the practice continues to be poles apart…. The Voice process [relies] on hand-picked groups to advise on, rather than help negotiate options on what the Voice might look like… 9

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/we-have-not-been-heard-indigenous-leader-slamsvoice-process-20200929-p560de.html.

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the commitment to shared decision-making applies only at the discretion of governments…. Anything short of what was asked for in the Uluru Statement from the Heart 10 should not be accepted because it does not respect the specific contribution our diversity can make to Australia. (My emphasis)

Finally, a brief illustration that even in the restricted ‘closing the gap’ or ‘welfarist’ understanding of ‘inclusion’ as not having access to the ‘benefits’ of a developed society and to what would be expected as full participation in such society’s rights and obligations, the UNESCO’s 2020 Global Education Monitoring Report 11 brings sobering news; a few excerpts referring to ‘inclusion’ suffice to offer an inkling that not all is well globally: While some countries are transitioning towards inclusion, segregation is still prevalent. In the case of students with disabilities, laws in 25% of countries (but over 40% in Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean) make provisions for education in separate settings, 10% for integration and 17% for inclusion, the remainder opting for combinations of segregation and mainstreaming. In OECD countries, more than two-thirds of all immigrant students attend schools where at least half the students are immigrants. A key barrier to inclusion in education is the lack of belief that it is possible and desirable. One in three teachers in 43 mostly upper-middle- and high-income countries in 2018 reported that they did not adjust their teaching to students’ cultural diversity. Discrimination, stereotyping and stigmatisation mechanisms are similar for all learners at risk of exclusion. While 68% of countries have a definition of inclusive education, only 57% of those definitions cover multiple marginalized groups.

Moving beyond the assumed specific indicators for the persistence of exclusions of various kinds, the common denominator of many failures to ‘include’ remains inequality…

3 So What is at Stake When Discussing Inclusion…? We stay with language as an entry point into a brief examination of the structural context in which ‘inclusion’ is to happen and from which ‘exclusion’ is to be eradicated. It is useful to have a look at the etymology of the word inclusion and its ambiguous set of meanings12 haunting us till the present day. The word inclusion emerged in the English language around the end of the sixteenth century, derived from the past participle of the Latin ‘claudere’—to shut, to close—and via ‘includere’— to block up, make inaccessible; put an end to; shut in, enclose, confine—eventually becoming ‘inclusion’… Talking about ambiguity…! A few centuries earlier, the early 1400s, a related concept, ‘enclosures’, had started to spread—again, from ‘claudere’, via the (old) French language of the 1066 invaders, 10

https://fromtheheart.com.au/. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373718. 12 https://etymology.enacademic.com/. 11

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clos and enclos: ‘to fence in waste- or common-ground’ for the purpose of cultivation or to give it to ‘private’ owners. It gradually came to denote the spreading but illegal practice of the ‘enclosing of the commons’ by the aristocracy, gradually excluding the commoners and the general community from ‘common use’ of what was theirs by right, as granted by the 1227 version of the Magna Charta (Linebaugh, 2009). Enclosures, thus, demarcated private from public and common land, and by and throughout the 1800s, the remaining morsels of public land were privatised in the UK and to different degrees in other modernising and industrialising countries espousing the philosophies, cultures, legislations and relational structures and practices of aggressive and acquisitive capitalism (Mignolo, 2011; Piketty, 2020). Understanding ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’, thus, needs to be grounded in the realisation that we still live the consequences of this historical period, gradually crystallising into the constitutional and cultural separations between ‘private’ and privately owned and controlled matters and the ‘public’ and ‘common’ (Bollier, 2003), and that as a society and ecologically, we continue to suffer from the accumulated and ongoing acts of stealth, eviction, over-exploitation and destruction.13 It also illuminates some historical and linguistic reasons for the lack of clarity and rhetorical usages of inclusion while presumably describing an unequivocal response to the many social exclusions at work in an individualistic and ‘private-propertydevoted’ society like Australia and elsewhere. Indeed, such societies are in their essence characterised by profound inequalities exacerbated by systems intentionally designed to maintain them by those in power. Kurt Anderson’s new book Evil Geniuses (2020) demonstrates for the USA how the assumption of the necessity of inequality lies at the heart of a political model, ruthlessly imposed14 during the past 50 years by wealthy industrialists, software capitalists, libertarians and the useful idiots, they hired and appointed to promote their cause. As our diverse societies—affected by the destructive COVID-19 pandemic— now attempt to recover, the neoliberal model of trickle-down economics, deregulation and rabid individualism, of outsourcing and privatisation of government services to profit-making businesses and to reduce the ‘size’ of government, is finally coming under scrutiny in spite of rather desperate-sounding claims by conservative governments that we should just switch back to the ‘old normal’. Further, examining how societies governed by processes of the capitalist political-economy intentionally generate unequal power relationships, Piketty’s Capital and Ideology (2020) offers a grand historical exploration of how the powerful, in evolving versions of political and economic domination, justified and continue to justify and explain inequality. Piketty details how dominant modes of maintaining and justifying inequality evolved from ‘trifunctional inequality’ (clergy, nobility and workers) via the ‘invention’ of ownership, into early political-economic forms of capitalism or ‘ownership societies’ establishing themselves in Europe; through invasions, slavery and colonialism, the 13

http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=ellen-rosenman-on-enclosure-acts-and-the-com mons. 14 As ‘TINA’, Thatcher’s There Is No Alternative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alt ernative.

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‘model’ spreads worldwide; through the crisis of ownership societies in the second half of the nineteenth century, leading to the ‘Great Transformation’ (Polanyi, 1944) of the twentieth century, resulting in capitalist social-democratic political-economies and in communist political-economies, both exhibiting ‘incomplete’ equality and, as I argue, incomplete inclusion. Often referred to as neoliberalism or economic rationalism,15 the last 50 years saw the emergence of ‘hypercapitalism’, hovering between ‘modernity and archaism’ and its spread across both liberal-democratic and post-communist auto-cratic societies, resulting in the extraordinary and outrageous extent of present day global inequality. This grotesque situation and its justifications are exposed to all and have become common knowledge even if not acknowledged as causing the massive and diverse exclusions, it maintains and helps justify (Harvey, 2014). It has become ‘normal’ that the wealth of the world’s richest 380 people equalled the wealth of the bottom 50% of humanity in 2009, by 2018 intensifying to only 26 billionaires owning as much as that same 50%; the top 1% (each owning more than $1 million) now owning 40% of the world’s wealth.16 One hypercapitalist, Amazon’s Bezos, in the first five months of the COVID-19 pandemic, doubled his wealth to more than US$ 205 billion, while tens of millions—especially victims of various forms and instances of exclusion – went into (even deeper) poverty, faced eviction, lost jobs and went hungry worldwide. Indeed, as Forbes reveals, ‘Coronavirus has boosted total billionaire wealth to its highest level ever. Since the pandemic begun, the total wealth held by billionaires around the world has grown by a quarter to over $10 trillion. Between April and July, billionaires grew their wealth by 27% from $8 trillion at the beginning of April. This was largely thanks to government stimulus packages’ .17 Especially, the last sentence stirs… after all, such ‘stimulus packages’ intending to get the ‘economy going again’ after the crisis derive from tax-payer monies and are often ‘budgetbalanced’ by parallel cuts to services the excluded and marginalised have had to fight for long and hard to attain, get legislated and funded. It certainly confirms how inequality is maintained systemically and has reached the stage of ‘normality’ for the majority of the population. Galbraith’s much quoted adage seems to have infected even those who suffer from the resulting inequalities: ‘The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness’.18 In a roundabout but eloquent way, the Forbes article also indicates how governments’ financial interventions after economic or any other crises rarely if ever render 15

https://eurhythmaniac.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/economic-rationalism-and-neoliberalismredux/. 16 https://www.oxfam.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/bp-power-profits-pandemic-100920en-embargoed.pdf. 17 https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2020/10/06/. 18 https://wist.info/galbraith-john-kenneth/7463/ As a matter of fact, selfishness is not and should nor could be the prime moral energy holding individual and social lives together, let alone helping humanity in overcoming the present environmental crisis. After all, we are relational beings utterly connected with one another and with what surrounds us and we are deeply dependent on (Gergen 2009; Manne 2014; Verhaeghe 2014).

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superfluous ‘occupy’ rebellions, women’s movements, ‘black lives matter’ protests, ‘nothing about us without us’ of disability activists, decolonisation efforts, movements for the acceptance of ‘sexual otherness’, struggles of indigenous peoples in ‘settler’ ex-colonies or age-related campaigns for inclusion and against exclusion (and the ‘intersections’ of all these marginalised existences; Collins & Bilge, 2016; Crenshaw, 2008), abundantly illustrating that the excluded are not taking inequality and injustice laying down. In capitalist market economies, care, educational and health work that would contribute to equalising the life chances of such excluded, or precariously included groups is regularly dismissed as unworthy of investment. Particularly for government stimulus investments during economic contractions, the orthodox policy approach is to take on public debt only to make capital investments in ‘hard’ infrastructure, seen to create wealth and provide long-term returns benefiting current and future generations. Such investments overwhelmingly favour growth in jobs that are disproportionately held by men and as pointed out before, bring extraordinary profits to the ‘one-percenters’ and their associated ‘executives’.19 ‘Class’, as the social/personal/material expression of economic inequality and the permanent possibility of tumbling down its ranks and into poverty, intersects with other states of marginality, as the social systems people inhabit or the social categories to which they belong are structurally connected, influencing their daily life experiences. At the intersection of several socially excluded categories, people are also politically silenced from expressing their views; or, they are culturally stereotyped in negative representations. Hence, singularly and in their intersection with a fundamentally unjust and unequal political-economy, addressing processes excluding particular groups or ‘categories’ of people requires an approach to justice that Rawls (1971) invited us to think about and design as if we did not know what role or ‘category’ we would be born into; not knowing what nation, what social class or what material conditions would be your lot, what form of justice would you design as ‘just’? When trying to understand inequality and the many overlapping forms, structures, processes, relationship and experiences of disadvantage, exclusion and their associated violences, class remains a necessary frame. Without including class, attempts to understand events and phenomena like the Trump presidency, the Brexit vote in the UK, the trend towards populism in governing and governance in many nations and the emergence of proto-fascist parties and groupings like One Nation in Australia remain reduced to being ‘only’ about racism and misogyny. The problem with such reductionisms is that they offer us nowhere to go, other than to reject our fellow citizens as deplorable and feed new cycles of manipulative hate and dislocation hatched for cynical political gain. To take a society forward, we need a more complex understanding and a class-frame offers an analysis of power and of the creation and maintenance of inequality that demands a greater share of the benefits of a society for working people and the disadvantaged and excluded of all kinds.

19

https://percapita.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/The-Case-for-a-Care-Led-Recovery_ FINAL-1.pdf.

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Going back to Piketty’s Capital and Ideology (2020), similarly to Rawls, he proposes Elements for a Participatory Socialism for the Twenty-First Century (Ch. 17 pp. 966–1034), but cautions: ‘… that similar principles can be found in much earlier civilizations (e.g. the 1789 French Rights of Man and the Citizen and in the US Declaration of Independence… ) but they did nothing to prevent the persistence and exacerbation of large social inequalities in both countries throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries nor did they prevent the establishment of systems of colonial domination, slavery, and racial segregation that endured until the 1960s … Hence it is wise to be wary of abstract and general principles of social justice and to concentrate instead on the way in which those principles are embodied in specific societies and concrete policies and institutions (2020, pp. 968–969 – my emphasis)’

That resonates with my warnings about the use of language in the previous section, especially language associated with rights, claims and obligations as the vocabulary around Human Rights abundantly illustrates (Ife, 2009). Piketty helps us out here with his understanding of a ‘just society’; justice should be understood as participation and deliberation which I paraphrase for this chapter as ‘relationally thoughtful inclusion’ in decision-making about existentially essential matters. Piketty’s contribution to a definition of a just and inclusive society (or any social body) sounds as follows: What is a just society? … A just society is one that allows all of its members access to the widest possible range of fundamental goods. Fundamental goods include education, health, the right to vote, and more generally to participate as fully as possible in the various forms of social, cultural, economic, civic, and political life. A just society organizes socioeconomic relations, property rights, and the distribution of income and wealth in such a way as to allow its least advantaged members to enjoy the highest possible life conditions. A just society in no way requires absolute uniformity or equality. To the extent that income and wealth inequalities are the result of different aspirations and distinct life choices or permit improvements of the standard of living and expansion of the opportunities available to the disadvantaged, they may be considered just. (pp. 967-968 – my emphasis)

But Piketty warns that ‘this must be demonstrated, not assumed, and this argument cannot be invoked to justify any degree of disadvantage whatsoever, as it too often does’. And further: ‘it requires collective deliberation on the basis of each citizen’s historical and individual experience with participation by all members of society. That is why deliberation is both an end and a means’. These foundations set us on our way to consider how a just society—and group or social unit—that, according to Piketty, ‘in no way requires absolute uniformity or equality’, can maintain the necessary diversity for its survival without collapsing in violent segregations and exclusions.

4 Inclusive Diversity and Diverse Inclusivity: A Necessary but Impossible Dream? What are we up against? I do not intend to make universal or abstract-general statements about the evidence of in/exclusion across the world—international bodies

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should be (re)empowered to do this job, especially in an era of growing nationalist and deliberately divisive ‘identity’ populism (Boulet, 2021a; Kenny et al., 2021). Rather, based on my experiences of the ongoing struggles for equality, social justice and inclusion in the two countries I lived in for over 40 years, the USA and Australia, I aim to paint a realistic background for my imaginations—dreams—about extending and deepening relational forms of ‘inclusive diversity’ or ‘diverse inclusivity’ within and beyond the anthropos. ∗ ∗ ∗ Writing this chapter during the final weeks of the 2020 US election, it is hard to avoid the media avalanche of the myriad miniscule details of what may be a decisive moment in the struggle for inclusion for many groups in that country. After the four rather turbulent years of the Trump presidency, as many painfully and laboriously achieved steps towards equality and justice for several groups of citizens and residents (First Nations peoples, women, African Americans, Latinos and other migrants, the sick, those with disability and with sexually diverse orientation) have been undone if not radically reversed, the pronouncements and debates are revealing the precariousness of what is at stake. In a televised campaign event, South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham rhetorically asked: Do I believe our cops are systemically racist? No. Do I believe South Carolina is a racist state? No. Let me tell you why. To young people out there, young people of colour, young immigrants, this is a great state, but one thing I can say without any doubt, you can be an African American and go to the Senate but you just have to share our values. If you’re a young, African American or an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state, you just need to be conservative, not liberal.20 (my emphasis)

Notwithstanding the heated—and sometimes thoughtless—nature of election speeches and exchanges, I find this an extraordinary public statement… or is it really intended to be as shameless as it sounds? Linking inclusion with diversity and applying it to institutional process and composition, Vestige Strategies documents that a ‘lack of diversity in foreign policy can inadvertently lead to disenfranchisement of minority groups not just in the field but in how institutions interact and perceive them globally’.21 A research team (Medina et al., 2018) investigated Geographies of Organized Hate in America; their summary is instructive: Hate in the United States today is narrowly understood but widely used as a politically charged term. Recently, political blame-placing on outsiders such as immigrants has bred a climate of hate and provided fuel for organizations that promote hostility toward others based on marginal group identification. This study investigates patterns of hate groups across space and their drivers with respect to socioeconomic and ideological variables for counties in the United States ...We find that distinct regions of hate can be delineated with variations of hate group activity according to the independent and control variables employed. 20

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/10/lindsey-graham-black-people-immigrantssouth-carolina. 21 http://www.vestigestrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/AdvancingDIReport.pdf.

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Even during the election campaign in late 2016, the fearful fragility of the status of ethnic, racial and other minority inclusion became visible through the nostalgic call to Make America Great Again… MAGA on red baseball caps and eloquently omnipresent… The musical Hamilton was doing acclaimed rounds of the country and newly minted vice president Pence attended a Broadway performance at the end of which African American actor Brandon Dixon welcomed him as follows22 : We, sir, are the diverse America, who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us — our planet, our children, our parents — or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us. All of us.

The president-elect’s response and the crowd’s boos as reported in the press made it sound as if Pence was the victim of a hate crime, labelling Dixon’s remarks as harassment, mocking him for not memorising his remarks and ordered him to apologise, thus using social justice vocabulary he and his supporters habitually mocked. But, what he did mattered. The then president of the USA made it clear that he primarily views those who look like the Hamilton cast—that diverse America Dixon spoke of—as a threat. Even when simply demanding to be seen and included as citizens, people are given the same advice Burr gave to Hamilton: talk less, smile more (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEH9I_oJfqY). ‘American’ has meant ‘white’ for so long and as that changes, as Toni Morrison23 explained in Make America White Again, white voters’ hyperbolic reaction to racial advancement ‘suggests the true horror of lost status’. The fragility she describes may be the principal reason why Trump won—‘backlash’ (Faludi, 1991) is the word to describe the reaction of the privileged when the marginalised make inroads in their power. More disturbing signs have appeared that the achingly slow wins on the road to inclusive diversity are threatened; as the ‘Black Lives Matter’ global movement erupted in 2020, the ‘all lives matter’24 reaction, sometimes by well-meaning but ill-informed people, but mostly by those who feel variously threatened by the surging waves of cross-racial solidarity, causing several other ‘backlashes’ against ‘others’, Muslims, Mexicans and other Latinos and First Nations peoples. One instance of white backlash against the latter group is achingly illustrative; Goldstein25 describes the poignant encounter: The graphic convergence of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous violence in the name of selfdefence emerges with unmistakable clarity in the recent ‘stand your ground’ meme featuring sixteen year-old Nick Sandmann wearing his MAGA baseball hat. The red, white and blue meme appeared on white nationalist and right-wing social media in the wake of the viral online video26 of the mostly white Covington Catholic High School students from Kentucky, wearing MAGA hats and taunting Nathan Phillips, an elder of the Omaha Tribe, on the steps 22

http://www.mtv.com/news/2956571/white-people-problems/. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/making-america-white-again. 24 https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a32745051/what-black-lives-matter-means/. 25 https://publicseminar.org/2019/04/stolen-land-standing-ground-and-the-viral-spectacle-ofwhite-entitlement/. 26 https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsy80cfFVAR/?utm_source=ig_embed. 23

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of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC on January 18, 2019. The students had travelled to DC as part of their school’s delegation to a rally against women’s reproductive rights. Phillips and those drumming with him were participating in the Indigenous Peoples’ March. In the video, surrounded by his laughing schoolmates, Sandmann stands face-to-face with Phillips, blocking his path. Another video27 … shows a Catholic high school student just prior to the Sandmann-Phillips clash, who declares: ‘Land gets stolen, that’s how it works’. The premise ‘land gets stolen’ and the Sandmann ‘stand your ground’ meme together starkly convey the relentless onslaught of racialized colonization, the fantasy of the perpetrators as the real victims, and the obstinate disavowal of the colonial present’s unpaid debts. (My emphases)

A final remark before leaving the USA; Isabel Wilkerson’s latest book offers a remarkable reframing of racism in the USA. Extending our understanding of the workings of privilege (e.g. Pease, 2010), Wilkerson’s Caste: The Lies that Divide Us (2020, p. 19) describes the various exclusive and excluding guises and often mysterious intersectional operations, the bedrock undergirding many forms of discrimination: Caste is the bones, race is the skin. Race is what we can see, the physical traits that have been given arbitrary meaning and shorthand for who a person is. Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place. Caste is fixed and rigid. Race is fluid and superficial, subject to periodic redefinition to meet the needs of the dominant caste in what is now the US. As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theatre, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance.

∗ ∗ ∗ Australia, my country of residence since 1985, could be considered a veritable laboratory for the study of the intricacies and contradictions of in and exclusion, the white Anglo-Saxon-Celtic settlers—precariously but privileged—interspersed between, on one side, indigenous cultures dating back at least 65.000 years of human habitation and, on the other, waves upon waves of immigrants from all continents. Elaborating at sufficient length the history and the present status of inclusive and exclusive politics, policies and the institutional processes and relational practices bringing them to life is beyond the scope of this chapter; the Racism in Australia Wikipedia entry28 has a useful overview drawing from various framings; as well, historians (Blainey, 1966; McIntyre & Clark, 2003; Reynolds, 1999) offer abundant and often contradictory detail of events and processes shaping the country into its present still volatile contours. Usefully—because more generally for what is now often referred to as the Anglosphere-Lisa Lowe (2015, p. 8) describes that. …distinct yet connected racial logics (that) constituted parts of what was in the nineteenth century an emergent Anglo-American settler imperial imaginary, which continues to be elaborated today, casting differentiated peoples across the globe in relation to liberal ideas of 27

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/land-gets-stolen-s-how-it-works-native-covington-catholic-lin coln-memorial. 28 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Australia.

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civilization and human freedom. The safekeeping and preservation of liberal political society, and the placement of peoples at various distances from liberal humanity – ‘Indian’, ‘Black’, ‘Negro’, ‘Chinese’, ‘coolie’, and so forth – are thus integral parts of the genealogy of modern liberalism. Not only differentiated racial classification, but taxonomies that distinguished between continents and civilisations have been essential to liberal, settler, and colonial governance.

Australia’s story as a settler colony—from the British invasion, the genocide of the Aboriginal population to their ongoing situation of discrimination—is wellknown as is the so-called White-Australia Policy established at Federation in 1900 and only officially lifted in the mid-1970s. So are the massive waves of immigration from the 1950s onwards, bringing millions of non-English speaking populations whose struggles for inclusion—or simply for better treatment—were regulated by successive legislations referred to sequentially as ‘assimilation’, ‘integration’ and ‘multiculturalism’—concepts speaking eloquently but questionably for themselves (Jakubowicz et al., 1990). Most recently, the country was—and still remains—widely condemned by a chorus of Human Rights activists and officials for its policies and inhumane dealings with refugees and asylum seekers—especially for those who attempt to arrive ‘illegally’ by boat and without following the internationally instituted refugee processes. A more brutal and radical example of exclusion is hard to imagine,29 especially for a signatory to the agreements establishing the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, regularly opining about persecutions and violence against minorities in other countries (Burnside, 2014). When questioned about these and other less-violent instances of exclusion or extremely harsh treatment, responses refer to ‘policies’ or to the ‘legislative’ level, intimating that laws and processes need to be followed ‘lest the floodgates of illegals will open up…’. While these instances have certainly aroused international condemnation including reports from United Nations’ Human Rights investigators, I share some of the institutional processes and everyday relational practices that contain people—individuals and groups—in their places of exclusion. Australia likes to present itself as a ‘success story’30 of integration, multicultural harmony and tolerance; a more nuanced story emerges from a recent guardian article by Tim Soutphommasame,31 critically reacting to the conservative coalition government’s attempt to reintroduce an English language test for people seeking partner immigration visas: Australia has two faces when it comes to immigration and multiculturalism. There’s the face of multicultural triumphalism. This is the Australia that likes to celebrate our success as a 29

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum-policies/. https://johnmenadue.com/australian-multiculturalism-is-a-success-story-it-is-time-to-enshrineit-as-our-shared-value/; https://othersociologist.com/2015/02/18/migrants-in-australia/. 31 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/14/english-test-for-australian-partnervisas-reveals-coalitions-true-nationalist-colours?utm_term=9b0c45d54004513e86432b90a68 f1151&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayAUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP= GTAU_email. 30

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nation of migrants. An Australia that sees it as a mark of progress that our nationhood, once defined by the ideal of White Australia, now embraces diversity. Then there’s the face of nationalist exclusion. While our political leaders like to boast we’re the greatest multicultural nation on the planet, some go out of their way to undermine that achievement. Words are never matched by deed. Whatever they might say, they signal that some of us don’t really belong here, that some of us are more Australian than others.

The many forms of discrimination, exclusion and marginalisation, both historical and present, are painstakingly documented in the chapters in Critical Social Work (Allan et al., 2009) conveying a very different set of stories. As well, Voices Against Bigotry sends out regular media announcements lately focusing on the surveillance of Muslim children,32 as the Federal Government rolls out Countering Violent Extremism training to teachers, social workers, psychologists, GPs, psychiatrists and other ‘caring professionals’. While the training is ostensibly ‘ideologically neutral’ and aimed at all forms of extremism, the reality is that it is funded to counter assumed Muslim-generated terrorist activities and sympathies and may easily lead to extra surveillance of Muslim children, actively working against their meaningful integration and supporting diversity in the classroom. Omar Musa’s one-man show Since Ali died at the Sydney Festival end 2018 is instructive33 ; through theatre, hip-hop and spoken word, an idea of the in/exclusion conundrum becomes clear. Musa’s life fell apart after the death of his hero, Muhammad Ali; his best mate, in a self-destructive streak out of Goulburn gaol; the woman he fell in love with—inscrutable, captivating him and then breaking his heart when she calls him ‘champ’. Add onto that the ‘Australia stuff ’, as Brigid Delaney reports34 : It’s being told at school that your skin is the colour of shit. It’s being singled out by (Australian conservative politician) Mark Latham on Twitter. It’s shock jocks and far-right rallies and riots declaring war on the religion you were raised with. It’s race-baiting by politicians to win elections. It’s learning, Musa says, ‘what it means to be a young brown boy on black land run by white people’.

In 2018, just before the Australian Labor Party’s national conference, reflecting on her own story, being a child of Muslim parents who had migrated here in the early 70s, attracted to the promises of the Whitlam government’s multicultural policies, and now in Parliament reflecting on the tradition of ‘our multicultural nation’, too often referred to as ‘the most successful’ in the world, Anne Aly writes in the Sydney Morning Herald35 : I write this amid a growing and increasingly ugly discourse in our Parliament. A discourse that speaks of good migrants and bad migrants, and an arbitrary and obscure checklist of 32

(http://www.voicesagainstbigotry.org/surveillance-of-muslim-children/). https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/since-ali-died/9640082. 34 https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/jan/12/omar-musa-australia-could-be-so-much-bet ter-but-instead-we-indulge-our-worst-instincts. 35 https://www.smh.com.au/national/so-we-re-a-multicultural-nation-dipping-a-sausage-roll-insoy-sauce-won-t-do-20181211-p50lic.html. 33

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‘Australian values’, and that turns the gaze to those ‘others’ among us who don’t quite make it into the narrowed prism of ‘our Australia’.

Titled Being asked if I’m the sister of a terror suspect—welcome to the white Australian media, Jennine Khalik36 describes her experience: Deep inside major news outlets across Australia, ethnic and Indigenous journalists are facing constant, quiet uphill battles daily. For the few of us in the news industry who are not white, each day is an exercise in tongue-biting, tiptoeing and feeling like imposters in newsrooms that are overwhelmingly white and middle-class. We carry with us stories about casual racism in the workplace, and examples of being held to different standards to our white colleagues. We are placed under more scrutiny by lobby groups and vexatious politicians and commentators whose blood pressures soar at the word ‘diversity’ and view our very existence as politically loaded.

Recently, GetUp started a campaign37 supporting researcher Osmond Chiu; it is worth quoting the full campaign text carrying his words, as it illustrates the institutional machinations through which politicians institutionally are prepared to attempt exclusion: My name is Osmond Chiu, a Research Fellow at Per Capita, an independent progressive think tank committed to ending inequality in Australia. For years I’ve been a vocal advocate for greater diversity in Australian politics. When I appeared at yesterday’s Senate Inquiry into issues facing multicultural communities in Australia, I expected an earnest and respectful discussion. I didn’t expect to have my loyalty to our country questioned. During questions, Senator Eric Abetz, out of nowhere, demanded that I and two other Chinese Australian witnesses ‘unconditionally condemn the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship’. As someone who was born in Australia, I refused. The implication that all Australians of Chinese heritage need to prove our commitment to democracy by condemning a foreign government is absurd and, frankly, racist. But so far, the Prime Minister has said nothing about this incident. Scott Morrison needs to denounce Senator Abetz’s behaviour immediately and finally address the obvious lack of diversity in the Liberal Party that led us here.

The belief that Australian society ‘dealt’ with disability, ‘breaking down the barriers’, in 1981, the International Year of Disabled Persons, is engrained; yet, some forty years later, not much has changed as a recent Royal Commission shows.38 International wheelchair Paralympian Kurt Fearnley, with numerous medals for his sports feats, last year received the Don Award for excellence in sport; his reflections resonate39 :

36

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/06/being-asked-if-im-the-sister-of-a-ter ror-suspect-welcome-to-the-white-australian-media. 37 https://www.colourcode.org.au/campaigns/colour-code/stand-up-against-racist-bullying-in-par liament/stand-up-against-racist-bullying-in-parliament?t=2pBBSWDW&utm_content=29729& utm_campaign=Stand_with_me_against_racist_bullying_in_politics&utm_source=blast&utm_ medium=email. 38 https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2020-09/apo-nid308462.pdf. 39 https://www.sbs.com.au/news/disabled-athlete-fearnley-delivers-message-of-hope-after-mak ing-history.

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I’ve heard the stories of Paralympic forebears who speak about losing friends, who felt too much shame in their experience with disability – and that is within our own community. There was too much shame and there wasn’t enough hope. So our sport was born out of that hope. Hope that somebody can be judged by substance and not image. That the difference that we each hold can be celebrated and not used to be segregated.

Merinda Epstein,40 collaborator, friend and mental health activist, talks about attempts to include service users on government committees, consumer decisionmaking bodies, roundtables, storytelling and leadership roles and as theorists. Consumers are respected enough to be ‘on the board’, which is positive as they are now included in ways they previously were not. But beyond this beginning, the idea of inclusion takes a different direction; it is now ‘which consumers’? Having left the movement, it now seems that narrow definitions of excluded groups create a sense of ‘exclusive inclusion’ as it has become imperative to include people from indigenous organisations, ethnic and multicultural communities and the LGBTIQ+ community. So, everyone feels vulnerable to criticism if these groups are not specifically included—intersectionality thus playing a divisive role and as consumers they do not know how to do this very well. Just putting a chair to the table of bureaucratic jargon is not going to work. To conclude this section, a look at the ‘official’ Australian definitions of ‘social’ inclusion and exclusion interests for what they ‘in/exclude’; In the Australian policy context, social inclusion is conceptualised as four key domains of opportunity—the opportunity to participate in society through employment and access to services; connect with family, friends and the local community; deal with personal crises (e.g. ill health); and be heard. Social exclusion is defined as the restriction of access to opportunities and [a] limitation of the capabilities required to capitalise on these [opportunities]. Social exclusion is not the equivalent of poverty (i.e. inadequate economic resources) or deprivation (i.e. an enforced lack of social perceived necessities). Rather, social exclusion is fundamentally about a lack of connectedness and participation.41

The modernist/neoliberal focus on ‘opportunity’ is eloquent, as is the emphasis on the ‘lack of connectedness and participation’, ambiguously leaving responsibility for their exclusion with the excluded themselves, no mention being made of its structural-cultural causes. As well, the distinction with ‘poverty’ is eloquent: differentiating ‘social’ from ‘economic’ exclusion, the structurally limited access to resources assuring a dignified livelihood (housing, money, food, transport, etc.), it fragments the concept and the intersectionally underlying and totalising real-life experiences of exclusion (Wilkerson, 2020). Further, ‘be heard’ as signifying ‘political inclusion’ suggests a rather passive ‘opportunity’, illustrating the focus on the assumed ‘agent’ of inclusion, the excluded themselves presumably being too passive, rather than on structural and institutional processes and hurdles excluding them from full access. The definition thus reveals a restricted—or undefined—view of ‘participation’, an example of the indeterminate and reductionist use of the concept of ‘social’ (like in 40 41

personal communication. https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/social-exclusion-and-social-inclusion-resources-child.

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social welfare, social tennis, social media, social distancing, organising a ‘social’… all of which can be very ‘asocial’, even ‘anti-social’). Again, the inclusion language is treacherously ambiguous; reviewing the proposed changes to the discrimination legislation in Australia, especially formulations of racial and other forms of ‘vilification’, initiated by conservative commentators protesting that it limits their freedom of expression, Jacqueline Maley42 wonders: A Muslim woman is asked to remove her hijab in her workplace. A Christian employee is sacked for speaking against same-sex marriage on a Facebook page. A Pentecostal preacher recommends gay conversion therapy for the son of a congregant. An Imam tells his followers the Koran preaches that Jews are treacherous. Which of these is discrimination, which is vilification, and in which should the government involve itself?

A Belgian friend involved in political inclusion work sent a neat summary of ‘our’ ways of dealing with difference and diversity as applied to post-modern societies’ tortured attempts at ‘conviviality’; he distinguishes five successive—sometimes overlapping—‘gradations’ in societal attempts at reaching ‘inclusion’ for the ‘other’: 1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

White is good. The rest is not. Segregation: each group stays apart. Velvet apartheid; pigeonhole thinking. Assimilation: all ‘other’ differences should be extinguished. ‘They’ must totally integrate and adapt. It is ‘our’ country, and ‘we’ decide what is ‘normal’… Tolerant multiculturalism: differences are OK (and ‘their’ foods are so much more interesting than ‘ours’…); but, the law is the law. Cultural differences are OK (and some of my best friends are—fill in the name of the ‘other’ or group demeaned …), but politics/policies need to regulate… Inclusive Diversity: diversity of groups but with common responsibilities; common domain: dialogue, deliberation, inter-/trans-/multicultural… diversity and interconnection as a necessity.

Our inclusion politics—and resultant policies and relational practices—seem to remain stuck in ‘step’ four and experience severe and repeated regressions, many blocked in ‘step’ three, with changing numbers of ‘outlier’ groups and individuals hovering about a mixture of ‘steps’ one to three; they may often not even refer to ‘race’ or ‘sexuality’ or ‘religion’ or ‘(dis)ability’ or ‘sexual otherness’ explicitly, but hide their rejection of difference or diversity into various constructions of ‘culture’, ‘civilisation’, ‘spirit’ or elements of beliefs or practices or dress (‘we’ parade and display ourselves close to naked on our beaches … so what are ‘they’ doing covering themselves up…?). Finally, the contemporary rise of fascist, populist and racist sentiment and politics feeds and thrives in the ‘mixture’ of ‘steps’ one to three… here and elsewhere (Boulet, 2021a). What would it take us to move into the fifth step and commit to an ongoing dialogue about creating and maintaining cosmopolitan as well as local relational forms and practices of co-existence43 that can truly be referred to as inclusive diversity? Or in the formulation of Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking (2011, p. 94). 42 43

In the Sunday Age 16/12/18. https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Cosmo-Localization.

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A cosmopolitan orientation empowers people within communities and traditions without automatically accepting traditional definitions of the group…. Calhoun (2003, p. 93) argues that a cosmopolitan orientation must reject: ‘… the unity of simple sameness and the tyranny of the majority – (and) must demand attention to differences – of values, perceptions, interests, and understandings’.

A rather unique Australian childcare program confirms this stance44 : Inclusion happens when children are viewed as capable and valued contributors as opposed to having deficits that need to be fixed. Inclusion is about human diversity, where each child is viewed as being unique. True inclusive practice values diversity as a resource that informs all policy and practice…

Following this wise council, I must conclude…

5 Inclusive Diversity Must Lovingly Include the Non-human… This is the point where ‘we’ need to admit that it is imperative to let those take a lead who have been silenced—sometimes to death—as ‘we’ were applying our suffocating hold on their voices, ignoring their wisdom and knowing about how to survive with nature so that all may live… Australian Aboriginal leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu’s words pronounced at the delivery of the Uluru Statement from the Heart 45 offer a circumscription of what inclusive diversity could look like: What Aboriginal people ask is that the modern world now makes the sacrifices necessary to give us a real future. To relax its grip on us. To let us breathe, to let us be free of the determined control exerted on us to make us like you . . . Let us be who we are – Aboriginal people in a modern world – and be proud of us. Acknowledge that we have survived the worst that the past has thrown at us, and we are here with our songs, our ceremonies, our land, our language and our people – our full identity. What a gift this is that we can give you, if you choose to accept us in a meaningful way.

More directly, Nemonte Nenquimo,46 the first female president of the Waorani organisation in Ecuador tells us, ‘developed moderns’: … the less you know about something, the less value it has to you, and the easier it is to destroy… guiltlessly, remorselessly, foolishly, even righteously. And this is exactly what you are doing to us as Indigenous peoples, to our rainforest territories, and ultimately to our planet’s climate. You forced your civilisation upon us and now look where we are: global pandemic, climate crisis, species extinction and, driving it all, widespread spiritual poverty. In all these years of taking, taking, taking from our lands, you have not had the courage, or the curiosity, or the respect to get to know us. To understand how we see, and think, and feel, and what we know about life on this Earth. 44

https://www.inclusionagencynswact.org.au/what-is-inclusion. https://fromtheheart.com.au/. 46 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/12/western-worldyour-civilisation-kil ling-life-on-earth-indigenous-amazon-planet. 45

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Pat Turner’s earlier warning that ‘we’ do ‘not respect the specific contribution our diversity can make’ resonates beyond Australia, even if it seems that we ‘postmoderns’ are slowly catching ‘on’ (if not ‘up’ yet) with indigenous wisdom and knowing; one simple example—but vital in a fire-prone state like Victoria—is the ‘inclusion’ of Aboriginal Elders knowledgeable about the use of fire as culturally passed down for thousands of years. The Chief Officer of the Country Fire Authority acknowledges that there is a lot to learn from them and their relationship with fire: They use fire to craft the landscape, they have developed this sympathy with the landscape and with fire, which is something we are still striving to understand. This shared culture of fire sets us on a journey of how to better protect our communities and importantly, how to better care for the country.47

We meanwhile know that all species, animate and inanimate are interrelated in a thick mutuality of interdependence and that abandoning, ignoring or fighting this interdependence leads to demise and, for humans, to all manner of problematic, sometimes life-ending, emotional and social situations, notably loneliness, the most rapidly growing state of being for many humans across the lifespan (Manne, 2014; Roberts, 2014; Verhaeghe, 2014). Science and research have caught up as well; there are interand trans-disciplinary fields developing around post-humanism (Braidotti, 2013), new materialism (Cool & Frost, 2010), quantum theory and philosophy (Barad, 2007), neurological research (Sapolsky, 2017) and—of course—ecology (Capra, 2002); they all teach us the importance of diversity, systemic connectivity and mutual interdependency. We know that monocultures are doomed to die, even more so with the abundant addition of fertilizer, herbicides and other noxious elements (Massy, 2017) and that regenerative diversity and deliberate interdependence of species are the only ways in which we can reestablish the ‘intra-relationality’ and necessary ‘entanglement’ for our survival (Barad, 2007).48 Inclusive diversity within the human species is the necessary form of the ‘autonomous interdependence’ we should adopt to play our part in the pluriverse and in the ‘making of worlds’ (Escobar, 2018; Kothari et al., 2019). Even business is catching on: ‘awareness of the business case for inclusion and diversity is on the rise. While social justice typically is the initial impetus behind these efforts, companies have increasingly begun to regard inclusion and diversity as a source of competitive advantage and specifically as a key enabler of growth’; ‘openness to diversity widens our access to the best talent. Inclusion allows us to engage talent effectively. Together, this leads to enhanced innovation, creativity, productivity, reputation, engagement and results’.49 While the rather utilitarian resonance of the last quotes may be off-putting, they still illustrate the point, I think; inclusive diversity is a necessary feature of sustainable and sustaining life on earth. Returning to Anzaldua’s Borderland/La Frontera (1987), her words remain inspirational for me. She writes: 47

http://news.cfa.vic.gov.au/news/the-culture-of-fire.html. I have attempted to apply this for social work; Boulet (2021c). 49 https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/delivering-throughdiversity#https://globaldiversitypractice.com/what-is-diversity-inclusion/. 48

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In fact, the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under-, lower-, middle- and upper-classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy....[A borderland] is not a comfortable territory to live in, [a] place of contradictions…with society’s clamour to uphold the old, to rejoin the flock, to go with the herd. No, not comfortable but home (my emphasis).

Being infested with rampant inequality and hyperindividualism—narcissism—a transition to creating and maintaining homes—communities—of diverse inclusiveness will not be comfortable but necessary. Wendell Berry’s wife Tanya being interviewed by Robert Jensen50 (2018) suggested that young people seem ‘desperate for a place, desperate for a life, questioning the path they have been put on’; upon which Jensen wonders: ‘Our society is out of touch and out of balance, and needs to find a way home. We need to know what meaningful, sustainable home looks like’. Wendell’s and Tanya’s granddaughter Virginia’s definition of home is a safe place, ‘where people are good to one another’. And as ‘we’ seem to have forgotten a bit how to be ‘good to one another’, perhaps we should follow First Nations’ Elder Robin Kimmerer’s advice (2013, pp. 9–10). … in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as ‘the younger brothers of Creation’. We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn – we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. … They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have, and have had time to figure things out. They live both above and below ground, joining Skyworld to the earth. Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then they give it away.

References Allan, J., Briskman, L., & Pease, B. (Eds.), (2009). Critical social work: Theories and practices for a socially just world. Allen & Unwin. Anderson, K. (2020). Evil geniuses: The unmaking of America: A recent history. Random House. Anzaldua, G. (1987). Borderland La frontera. Aunt Lute Books. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Blainey, G. (1966). The tyranny of distance: How distance shaped Australia’s history. Macmillan. Bollier, D. (2003). Silent theft: The private plunder of our common wealth. Routledge. Boulet, J. (2014). ‘Hanging on’ to multilingualism in a homogenising monolingual-imperial ‘glocal’ context… or: the displaced should never expect a rose garden…” In S. Pattanayak, C. Pattanayak & J. M. Bayer (Eds.), Multilingualism and multiculturalism: Perceptions, practices and policy (pp. 168–191). Orient Blackswan. Boulet, J. (2021a). Social-media-weaponised populism and community development. In Kenny S. Kenny, J. Ife, & P. Westoby (Eds.), Populism, democracy and community development (pp. 89– 108). Policy Press. Boulet, J. (2021b). Modes of being across and between cultures: Opportunities for understanding the pluriverse. In M. Kumar & T. Welikali (Eds.), The context of being, interculturality and 50

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/solidarity-economy/2018/01/16/a-populism-of-hope-beg ins-when-people-feel-their-own-power/.

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new knowledge systems for teaching and learning in higher education (pp. 95–108). Emerald Publishers. Boulet, J. (2021c). Restorative and regenerative relational praxis must include the non-human. In V. Bozalek & B. Pease (Eds.), Post-anthropocentric social work: Critical posthumanist and new materialist perspectives (pp. 46–57). Routledge. Braidotti, R. (2013). The post human. Polity Press. Burnside, J. (2014). podcast https://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/2014/04/07/reality-boat-people-sol ution-asylum-seeker-problem/. Calhoun, C. (2003). The class consciousness of frequent travellers: Towards a critique of actually existing cosmopolitanism. In D. Archibugi (Ed.), Debating cosmopolitics (pp. 1–15). London. Capra, F. (2002). Integrating the biological, cognitive and social dimensions of life into the science of sustainability. Doubleday. Capra, F. (2003). The hidden connections. Flamingo. Clark, M. (1966–1993). History of Australia (6 volumes). Melbourne University Press Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Polity Press. Coole, D., & Frost, S. (2010). New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics. Duke University Press. Crenshaw, K. (2008). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics and violence against women of color. In A. Bailey & C. Cuomo (Eds.), The feminist philosophy reader (pp. 279–309). McGraw-Hill. Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press. Faludi, S. (1991). Backlash, the undeclared war against American women. Crown. Fox, D., & Prilleltensky, I. (1997). Critical psychology: An introduction. Sage. Gergen, K. (2009). Relational being: Beyond self and community. Oxford University Press. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Harper & Row. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. Harvey, D. (2014). Seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism. Profile Books. Ife, J. (2009). Human rights from below. Cambridge University Press. Jakubowicz, A., Morrissey, M., & Palser, J. (Eds.). (1990). Ethnicity, class and social welfare in Australia. University of New South Wales. Kahneman, D. (2000). Preface. In D. Kahneman & D. Tversky (Eds.), Choices, values, and frames. Cambridge University Press. Kenny, S., Ife, J., & Westoby, P. (Eds.). (2021). Populism, democracy and community development. Policy Press. Kothari, A., Salleh, A., Escobar, A., Demaria, F., & Acosta, A. (Eds.). (2019). Pluriverse: A postdevelopment dictionary. Columbia University Press. Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teaching of plants. Milkweed Editions. Kinnvall, C., & Nesbitt-Larking, P. (2011). The political Psychology of globalization: Muslims in the west. Oxford University Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press. Linebaugh, P. (2009). The magna carta manifesto liberties and commons for all. University of California Press. Lowe, L. (2015). The intimacies of four continents. Duke University Press. McIntyre, S., & Clark, A. (2003). The history wars. Melbourne University Publishing. Manne, A. (2014). The life of I: The new culture of narcissism. Melbourne University Press. Massy, C. (2017). Call of the reed warbler: A new agriculture, a new earth. Queensland University Press. Medina, R., Nicolisi, E., Brewer, S., & Linke, A. (2018). Geographies of organized hate in America: A regional analysis. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(4), 1006–1021.

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Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press. Pease, B. (2010). Undoing privilege: Unearned advantage in a divided world. Zed Books. Piketty, T. (2020). Capital and ideology. Harvard University Press. Polanyi, K. (1944). The great transformation: Economic and political origins of our time. Rinehart. Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Harvard University Press. Reynolds, H. (1999). Why weren’t we told? Penguin Books. Roberts, P. (2014). The impulse society. Bloomsbury. Sapolsky, R. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Vintage Books. Soldatic, K., & Johnson, K. (2019). Global perspectives on disability activism and advocacy: Our way. Routledge. Verhaeghe, P. (2014). What about me? The struggle for identity in a market-based society. Scribe. Watson, D. (2005). Watson’s dictionary of weaselwords, contemporary clichés, cant & management jargon. Vintage Books. Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The lies that divide us. Allen Lane. Williams, J. (2021). Changing one word in Australia’s national anthem is mere tokenism and does little for actual inclusion. In The Guardian, January 01, 2021. Wolfensberger, W. (1972). The principle of normalization in human services. National Institute on Mental Retardation. Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. Profile Books.

Chapter 16

Living Between the West and the Pacific—Papua New Guinea and the Question of Social Inclusion/Exclusion Yaso Nadarajah Abstract This chapter explores the questions of social inclusion/exclusion in Papua New Guinea and argues for a deeper critical engagement about the intellectual origins, applicability and political consequences of these concepts and terms as analytical tools within both the context of colonial and post-colonial Papua New Guinea. These terms, constructed within a broadly Western, liberal and representative democracy remain incredibly difficult for a culturally heterogenous society and its historically autonomous clan-or-tribal-based kinship relationships and relationality. Drawing on the author’s longitudinal work in Papua New Guinea, this chapter attempts to map the epistemic politics of the concept of social inclusion/exclusion within a decolonising context. Over the last 40 years, the shift from an economy based almost entirely on subsistence agriculture to one where the economy is driven and dominated by a limited number of conglomerates and aid, has further anchored a Western-framed ideologue of a social inclusion/exclusion approach and process in Papua New Guinea. This chapter explores the performativity of the notion of social inclusion and proposes that concepts of social inclusion/exclusion provide opportunities for a deepened critically reflexive interrogation of epistemic dominance and singular ways of interpreting the world.

1 In the Field It has taken nearly three days to get here, to Akwanja village in Watut customary land, located in the Upper Tauri Valley in the south-west corner of the Morobe Province from Wau.1 We had travelled from this colonial township in a four-wheel truck, Y. Nadarajah (B) Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia e-mail: [email protected] 1

The opening of the Morobe Goldfields in the 1920s and 1930 heralded a colonial epoch—one that opened the doors of Papua New Guinea to an increasing presence of large-scale resource extractions activities, including copper and trees. Wau, a colonial-constructed township, was the site for these rapidly growing extraction activities and enabled the spread of the industries inland and into some of the more remote areas of the districts and especially into Watut customary land. This enabled © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9_16

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stopping along the way to greet compatriots of this mobilising tribal community; and then after several hours at Oiwa village, close to Aseki Station Mission, we ploughed our way through the viscous of red-brown mud. Between Aseki and Menyamya, we also battled our way through sections of the road where the thick mud, dug in by the four-wheel vehicles (returning to Wau with their excessive loads of coffee beans), had created several large potholes. Often, it felt like we were driving through endless tunnels of potholes, some of them so deep, measuring at places more than six to seven metres. It was late 2013. An invitation by a group of Elders belonging to the Kukukuku tribal community2 to visit their villages in late 2011 to sit with them and listen to their ideas of development and progress had grown substantially.3 Akwanje village had just joined this mobilising group. Located in upper Watut, most parts of this area are isolated from road access; and the track we had taken was remnants of what the spread and protection of colonial power and commerce, transforming, until into the late 1990s, both Wau and its neighbouring town Bulolo into booming resource extraction service centres. Yet little of this wealth was spent for the benefit of the Upper Watut area. As independence approached, the Bulolo district’s large-scale mining industry also began to lessen; and local employment opportunities and services also declined significantly. This led to a spiralling process of socio-economic stagnation that gathered pace rather than reversed in postcolonial Papua New Guinea. 2 The Kukukuku people (also variously called Anka, Anga), a remote tribal community of approximately 98,000, are spread across the Kaintiba district in the Gulf Province to Menyamya and Wau districts in the Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. Since the 1930s, powerful and often uncompromising global demands for resources, land and control have guided state expansion into these remotest parts of Watut customary land. A significant aspect of the Kukukuku tribal identity in external/foreign/colonial literature on Papua New Guinea is articulated in images such as ‘ferocious’, ‘harsh-featured’ (Sinclair, 1998); fierce and detested for their unwelcoming disposition and apparent love of fighting and ambushes. Such narratives prevail till today. Papua New Guinea is a developing nation; and state-led development agendas often seem to be at odds with a growing population that relies mainly on agriculture. About 97% of the total land is customary land, owned and looked after by the people who have intimate knowledge and relationships with their environment. More than 85% of the total population lives in rural and remote areas and depends on subsistence agriculture. 3 In late 2011, a group of Elders from this Kukukuku tribal community travelled to Wau and invited the author of this chapter to their land in the Upper Watut areas. The author had been travelling to Wau as part of a national study, entitled Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development in partnership with the Papua New Guinea Department of Community Development. The study’s aim was to address problems and gaps in the literature on development and create a new qualitative conception of community sustainability informed by substantial and innovative research in Papua New Guinea. The Elders were not as interested in the national study, but much more in building a relationship with the author. They had been observing her in and around Wau, as she was meeting and talking with other tribal communities. The Elders commended me for my patience, deep interest and respect for the people as I conducted my research and felt that I would be ‘the right person’ for them to invite into their lands to hear what they had to say about development and the presence of the West on their lands. In 2012, I began my first visit; welcoming this shift in my research as an important process of a critical reflexive examination of my own field of development and policy. Over the years, this place-based collaborative research has provoked a different, empowered, non-subordinate cultural future—one that bestows a deeper understanding of local people’s connection to kin and country and its resilient intergenerational transmission of ancestral inheritance, kinship and distinctive metaphysics of place and language.

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was once maintained as road access to the goldmines operating in that area. Nine kilometres form the village, and we left the truck to walk the rest of the way. The hired truck was covered with mud; and the nine Elders who had travelled with me were probably even more exhausted than I was. They had jumped into the thick mud all along the way, sometimes aided by villagers who happened to be cutting across what was once a dilapidated road, now eroded into a messy, unstable stretch of mud held together by old bitumen, rock and stones. I think they were perhaps relieved that now they only had to worry about ensuring I was able to walk the rest of the way. The slight drizzle did not help. The rain made the thick mud slippery and heavy, often clamping on to your feet like slow cement. My shoes had long succumbed to the mud and now felt like a swathe of cloth clinging onto my feet. When we finally arrived at the village, I was so relieved just to take them off and walk with damp sore feet. I was so absorbed with not slipping and wincing that I failed to notice the growing crowd around us. As we entered the turning into Akwanja village, I was greeted by a large group of women, in their clothes and accessories of custom and ceremony, woven from the grasses, reeds, seeds and flowers. They held me by my hands, leading me into the centre of the village. It was a large space like a semicircle, surrounded by little clusters of circular huts of several sizes. As they stepped behind and around me, a large group of men, in their customary clothes and headdresses, came out from behind the huts. The Elders from the other villages who had accompanied me moved into the circle and stood with me; as they received the greeting of what I later learnt, were the Elders of the House of Men (Hausman) and House of Women (Hausmeri). With the visiting Elders, I was ushered into a long seat at the head of the semicircle. It had a canopy over it, and we all sat. And for the next hour, watched as the local men, women and children performed dances, and then what was an enactment. I called it ‘performing voice’ in my journal; where a story of sorts unfolded of trees being cut down in the forests, men driving machines that tore down mountains and children and women weeping; and men running around with spears, throwing them into the approaching machines. It was surreal watching men driving two large poles in front of them like as if they were driving machines. But the whirring noises they made and the clothes they wore made me suspect that they were meant to be machines driven by outsiders, probably those by miners or loggers. Decades of large-scale resource extraction activities, land development and biological research have wrought significant changes in the landscape and entwined tribal life worlds with Western capital and modern culture, disrupting relationships between place, people, custom and the everyday. Whenever I looked up, it felt as if the crowds were growing bigger; and sometimes, an Elder would come towards me from the side; and someone would say that he or she was an Elder from the neighbouring village. As the hour of ceremony and dance and ‘play’ grew to an end, I realised that there were probably more than 750 people all-round the semicircle, spreading right back into the raised ground that rose gently towards the mountains in the background. What seemed like the Elders from the other villagers started coming forward and collected, first in little groups, and then slowly, gathering together, the men on one side and the women on the other. The other villagers stood around the circle, smiling and talking among themselves, but

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also watching their Elders. Some of the children were running around, weaving in and out of the crowds, laughing and chattering. Others were clinging on to their parents or older siblings, all watching the Elders.

2 The Questions Through the Elders Then three of the Elders from the men’s group that had gathered stepped forward. They came up in front of me and laid down two sets of clothes. One looked like a shirt, pair of trousers and a dress. The other set looked like a grass skirt, a large headdress and some spears. One of the women Elders ran up and put a set of bead necklaces on top of that pile. Then one of the Elders asked me, in dialect (which one of the Elders who was travelling with me translated); ‘Which set of clothes would you choose for us to wear for our future life?’. I was most unprepared for this. And also, rather anxious. I said, ‘you’ve invited me here; and to hear what you have to say about your life?’ Why will you not choose what you will wear yourself?” The Elder was persistent ‘No, we want you to choose’. This was getting more confusing for me. Why did they want me to choose? I was not here to suggest the way forward—but to understand what it was that they had wanted to share with me. I realised as the minutes ticked away that I was not going to be able to get away without answering their question. I looked long at them and thought about all the villages I had visited over the past year and a half. And the resounding messages that were filtering across to me—the loss of their land and their cultural knowledge and most of all, the daily confrontation of so much that was alien and unrelentingly erosive to their lives in these remote regions. I remembered particularly the first enactment in the forest of Kaindii that the tribal collective had unfolded to me—a brilliant exposition of a ‘drama’ that they called ‘Tears of the Rainforest’—a haunting depiction of loss, betrayal and destruction. I said, ‘If I were you, I would wear my customary clothes and ask myself who I am. If I do not know who I am, how will I know what I want for my future?’ There were several moments of silence as the Elder translated my words, into Pidgin and the local dialect. It was like a rolling whisper, as my answer was passed back into the crowd. That moment was so distinct for me as I stood there. Myself an outsider to this country, but also an outsider of sorts in the country where I now resided, as a migrant. And the one constant was my awareness of my own identity, always negotiating, but also always constant. If this was not the right answer for these people, it was for me at least, in my own, life, the right one. Suddenly, one of the Elders from the village, an old man, came up to me and then raised his arms as if he was shooting an arrow in the sky. He pulled the imaginary bow right back; and then he released the arrow into the sky. And then he turned to me and held my hands for a short while. And smiled. And suddenly, the crowd burst

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into a roar. It was so astounding—like a clap of thunder.4 And I did not know if this was good or bad. But then they clapped. One of the women Elders came up to me and hugged me. And she was crying. I realised that I had chosen the right answer. The Elder who had asked me the question now stepped forward and said: You have chosen as we had hoped you would. You see us. Now, you must ask all those people who come here, from our government, from outside our country; and tell us what to do, why is it that they do not ask us first, what is it we do here? How we live our lives? And what we do not want? You ask them why is it that they say they are coming to make us belong to a better world, then why they do not tell us, what it is they want us to become? What do you hear about us, from your own Elders in the big cities, from the books you read about us? We have all become beggars and thieves on our own land. And now, we are waiting for them to tell us how we have to live together in our own land, in these beautiful forests that we have lived in for hundreds of years. As if it is no longer ours. As if, only you can teach how to live together. What do you know of these mountains and forest? Of the rivers and animals? Who are you?

3 What then, of This Exchange? I looked at all of them and for a searing moment, felt the crushing weight of the complex and persistent network of dominant discourses and strategies that had only seemed to subjugate this land and its people. As Ivanovic (2018, p. 104) points out; ‘…we often understand instances of human struggle only through mediated depictions which are typically formed by our own social and cultural milieu’. And this questioning by the Elders reinforced this fact; that knowledge and power are coterminous, and they reinforce each other. I was reminded of what Regis Tove Stella (p. 10) had set out to do in his 2007 book Imagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject. In this compelling book, he strived to focus ‘on how Papua New Guineans have contested and interrogated dominant representations, and how they have endeavoured to recoup, restore, and reinscribe their identity, social histories, selfhood, and cultural place within an unequal power relationship’. It seemed like this tribal community, right up here in one of the remotest mountains of Papua New Guinea, were doing just that. And what they were asking was what had been excluded from their lives and life worlds in this push to make their lives more inclusive? Inclusive to what? To whom? An ironic question, particularly given that the PNG Constitution ‘gave expression to two basic re formations of the modern nation-state. First, it reconfigured modern ideals of the community- polity in relation to the continuing importance of tribal and traditional ways of life. Second, it placed the nation-state in a continuing relation to other social institutions—in particular, local community and family’ (James et al., 2012, pp. 2–3). 4

Many years later, as my work deepened in these areas, I asked one of the Elders what that act of shooting the arrow into the air meant. He laughed for a while and then said that the Kukukuku were also known as the ‘arrow shooters’. Such a performance, in front of all the people, was an act of acceptance, of connectivity. One that expressed a way of life and truth that was also connected to their knowledge of life.

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Over the last 40 years, the shift from an economy based almost entirely on subsistence agriculture to one where the economy is driven and dominated by a limited number of conglomerates; mostly focused on large-scale resource extraction activities; is certainly driving a deep wedge on relationships between different social groups and also between and within clans. A resentment towards both the central and local-level government institutions and leaders is palpable, in many instances, often visible in the angry outbursts at community gatherings and events. A focus on conventional approaches to development, primarily driven by the state, appears to be rocketing Papua New Guinea’s slow and painful decline. For the Elders and people in these remote places, only a creative, kinship-connected and people-led grass roots response can attend to these crises of their beloved country. Until we address this question that the Elders posed, we will continue to do ‘development’ as before, turning a blind side to the fact that our articulations and representations are not identical with the complexity and particularity of those whom we hope to empower and represent. This event, etched in my repository of unlearning and new learning, reminded me of what Serequeberhan (2012, p. 147), in his compelling work on Decolonization and the Practice of Philosophy, points out: The critical exploring and exposing of the shared presuppositions of our common situationa situation in which the physical presence of colonial rule has ended, and yet, the ideas and concepts that structured and sanctioned it still endure. To make more conscious here means to de structure the symmetry of images, ideas, and concepts that today, as in the past, underlie Western hegemony.

Cameron (2006) adds to these debates and points out that a failure for any critical understanding of the real and discursive geographies of social inclusion has further contributed to a significantly asymmetrical and normative spatialization of the concepts. And as he emphasises: …when and where such concepts are applied, implicitly or explicitly, matters. It matters because their powerful boundary-setting role has a determinant effect on the societies within which they are mobilized. All societies, this is to say, involve exclusions, but specifically to label a person or a place as excluded (especially when they are manifestly members of that society) is an act of considerable social violence (p. 403).

Taking the point of departure in the urgent social challenges tied with the costed failures of social concepts such as inclusion/exclusion, this chapter looks at the ways in which the etymology and episteme of terms such as social inclusion/exclusion enable us to reckon with, as Ivanovic (2018, pp. 105–106) points out: …(that) there is a reason for the West’s failure to respond adequately to the current predicament of millions of people, and this reason is embedded in historical and political commitments that run deep in the work of liberal Western moral and political culture. The problem, as I see it, arises from the particular role that humanitarian activism and solidarity have in relation to a corrupted reading of history…such a reading considers the historical legacy of Europe in positive terms as a harbinger of enlightenment that has shared benefits of progress with the rest of the world.

What will enable us to guide our (un)willingness and sometimes (un)consciousness to challenge the ways in which our representation and knowledge

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about the world are constructed? The complex concept of social inclusion/exclusion, as raised by the Kukukuku people (in this instance and not necessarily not equally applicable to other such communities on the margins), demonstrates how these concepts, as apparati, identify and problematise people on the margin and in doing so, by extension, take hold of their governance and control. In his essay Our Sea of Islands, Hau’ofa (1993) engaged a broad critique of the dominant ways in which the Pacific and Pacific Islands have long been represented, as empty, small and without real value. In this, he explained how the small island states and territories of the Pacific, that is, all of Polynesia and Micronesia are too small, too poorly endowed with resources and too isolated from the centre of economic growth for their inhabitants to ever be able to rise about their present condition of dependence on the largesse of wealthy nations (p. 28). Hau’ofa also lamented his own complicity, early on in his academic career, in the reproduction of these ideas. In this troubling relationship between the identification (and representation) of those who are ‘excluded’ and of those will provide the ways and means in which to become ‘included’, the main challenge remains in how we may address what Ivanovic (2018, p. 109) points out ‘is an old, yet persisting philosophical and cultural imaginary that justifies the political subjugation, marginalization and exclusion of distant others through claims that such people are less advanced and cognitively inferior, and therefore remain at the periphery of moral and political considerations of Western political culture’. Added to this is the production of externally generated inclusion/exclusion knowledges, administrative processes and interventions that often rarely consider the actual biophysical environment and the people on the ground. Like the rest of the world; and particularly like many other tribal communities, for the people of Akwanja village, the confrontation with modern agents, representations and institutions have only intensified in the last few decades; and this exchange opens us to the kind of epistemic engagement that challenges us to ask how our own agency is associated with dominant ways of producing knowledge. It certainly requires the ability to question ourselves and the ways in which our knowledges are formed and sustain (consciously or unconsciously) the old or narrow or procedural or abstract universal forms. What will begin is a relational form of epistemic activism that can challenge epistemic marginalisation and enable us to think of different ways in which we can work with tribal communities such as the Kukukuku as alliances? How do we challenge our own evaluative tendencies and connect with different subjectivities?

4 The Critical Reflexive Turn Kapoor (2004) in his work on Critical Reflexivity says that the work of Spivak is invaluable for us, especially those in the development field; when she emphasises how our representations, especially of marginalised Third World groups, are intimately linked to our own positioning, be what it is. Spivak aligns with Foucault, Said and Escobar in this elucidation; and as Kapoor (ibid, p. 632) points out:

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Perhaps the most common answer in the field of development to the question about why we represent the Third World is that we want to better get to know it so as to be of help (to the ‘less fortunate’?). Yet Spivak stands with Foucault (and Said and Escobar) in arguing that such noble and altruistic claims are never just that: knowledge is always imbricated with power, so that getting to know (or ‘discursively framing’) the Third World is also about getting to discipline and monitor it, to have a more manageable Other; and helping the subaltern is often a reaffirmation of the social Darwinism implicit in ‘development’, in which ‘help’ is framed as ‘the burden of the fittest’ (2002, p. 22)5

Marshall Berman, in his extremely influential book All that is Solid Melts into Air (1983), provided an analysis of modernity as that which enabled men and women to become freer and more creative; and as Seth (2012, p. 1377) noted, ‘as something including, but not limited to, capitalism, and as something which encompassed not just ‘social processes’ but also new subjectivities, not just new world(s) but new ways of inhabiting them’. Berman’s (1983, p. 21) passionate analysis of modernity as ideas that ‘..the maelstrom of modern life has been fed from many sources: great discoveries in the physical sciences, changing our images of the universe and our place in it; the industrialization of production, which transforms scientific knowledge into technology..’ and so forth; drew on progress and its renewal, from, as Knauff (2002, p. 4) puts it, ‘the triumphs of Western-style economics, politics, material culture, technology and aesthetics’. Seth (2012, p. 1384) offers a compelling argument to Berman’s analysis of modernity as an absolute logic. He argues that: Modern life may be shaped and animated by a (modernist) logic that makes it a whole, but it is not a coherent or singular whole, for that logic has not reshaped and remade everything. Difference—that which is not subsumed by this logic— continues to exist, although ‘difference, in this account, is not something external to capital. Nor is it something subsumed into capital. It lives in intimate and plural relations to capital, ranging from opposition to neutrality. (And) ---(i)f this is true, attending to such differences is intellectually important, because such practices cannot be dismissed as relics destined for extinction; they may rather reveal the fissures and hetero temporality that are part of the modern condition.

Like the rest of the world, this tribal community works out their relationship with modernity in their own distinct manner and through their own ideas and beliefs of what it means to be modern as opposed to tribal or traditional. How then have we incorporated this difference in the way we understand and roll out notions and process of social inclusion/exclusion? Those questions to which I was pinned down up in those remote forests drove home the compelling need to press for a much deeper and critically reflexive interrogation of the term social inclusion and exclusion itself; and what these processes of inclusion and exclusion facilitated? Did they inevitably perpetuate injustices? Why did a Stone Age tribal community feel like beggars on 5

Spivak (2002) Righting wrongs, unpublished paper available at http://www.law.columbia.edu/law culture/Spivak%20Paper.doc, accessed 12 October 2002 as cited in Ilan Kapoor (2004), Hyper-selfreflexive development? Spivak on representing the Third World ‘Other’, Third World Quarterly, 25:4, p. 627–647. Accessed in September 2020 by author of this chapter, and new citation is Spivak,(2004); Righting Wrongs; The South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 103, Number 2/3, Spring/Summer, 2004, 523–581 (see final reference list).

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their own land? In what way had these policies for social change in fact become processes for domination and subordination? In what follows, the questions raised in the mountains are taken as an entry process endeavouring to maintain a political-epistemic praxis; where the attempt has never been to study or report about a particular situation, event or question (from a lived reality; but rather to think with; and at the same time, to theorise from that political–cultural moment in which one is engaged). The question that I was asked, in that part of the jungle, from a collective of villagers, who felt so disfranchised and disconnected from their nation’s development, provided me with an urgent imperative to examine how such public concepts like ‘social inclusion’ were conceived; and how does the roll-out of such concepts play out in the contexts that support their interpretations? And the question we must ultimately confront is whether what we perceive as inclusion does not in fact entrench the presumed supremacy of one lot over the presumed inferiority of the other? The concepts of social inclusion and exclusion are closely related, and often, it is not possible to talk of social inclusion without it also meaning what it also means—social exclusion. So, throughout this chapter, the notion of social inclusion switches between inclusion and exclusion as two faces of the same coin—two interchangeable ends of the same continuum.

5 Locating the Notion of Social Inclusion and Exclusion The conceptual notion of social inclusion could possibly be located in Weber’s regard for the importance of social cohesion (Gidley et al., 2010, p. 2) and later in the twentieth century through the work of Durkheim’s ‘functionalist social theory, concerning how social order and stability could be maintained in a society where social dislocations accompanied the transitions from an agrarian to industrial society’ (Rawal, 2008, p. 162). A more recent adoption of the notion of inclusion as a practice, policy and process first appears in France, ‘“in the 1970s when the economically disadvantaged began to be described as the excluded’ (Silver, 1995, cited in Allman, 2013, p. 7). As Allman (p. 8) posits, the idea of ‘exclusion’ emerges in the book published by Lenoir (1947) titled ‘Les Exclus’, while serving as the Secretary of State for Social Action in France. Citing Davies (2005), Allman adds that Lenoir’s ‘contended social exclusion was a result of France’s post-war transition from a largely agricultural society to an urban one’. Within this context, Lenoir defined the ‘excluded’ to be the (Naval, 2008, p. 162) ‘mentally and physically handicapped, suicidal people, aged invalids, abused children, substance abusers, delinquents, single parents, multiproblem households, marginal, asocial persons, and other social ‘misfits”; or as Naval notes ‘a tenth of the French population’ at that time. Thus, as Allman (2013, p. 8) notes, ‘if there were a birth of the modern rhetoric of social inclusion, it would be in French thought that sought a means to reintegrate the large numbers of ex-industrial workers and a growing number of young people excluded from opportunities to join the labour force in the new economies of the 1970s and beyond’.

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Moreover, as Davies (2005, p. 3) notes, shedding light on who was considered to be ‘excluded’ in Lenoir’s conception that ‘the novel characteristic of les exclus was not that they were poor (although most were), but that they were disconnected from mainstream society in ways that went beyond poverty’. Building on Davies’ argument, Allman (p. 9) adds that the disconnect was not only framed around the social positioning of the excluded in relation to mainstream society but was also dictated by other indicators such as ‘poor health and social, economic, and geographical isolation from active engagement in politics’. Thus, to be socially excluded under this framework amounted to those people belonging to the underclass of post-war French society, and subsequently as Silver (1995) reveals in her extensive study of the development of social exclusion discourse since then that those considered socially excluded made up some 50% of the world population; or as Labonte (2004) puts in those who were not (European) male, middle class or middle aged. Another pertinent point arising in the literature on the social exclusion/inclusion discourse emerging in the 1970s is that more often than not, it has failed to define social inclusion in its own right. As Rawal (2008, p. 172) echoes this point, that in the literatures conceptualising exclusion, notions of inclusions are often unproblematised, implicit, or only defined relationally to social exclusion. Jackson (1999, p. 132) draws a critical lens towards the tendency of defining exclusion and inclusion in binary terms noting that such framings ‘suggest a unitary notion of power in which the included are powerful and excluded are powerless, rather than one in which power is dispersed, contingent and unstable’ and that ‘dualist discourses can themselves be structures of control’ (as cited by Rawal, 2008, p. 170). Similarly, Cameron (2006) too raises the issue of how social inclusion merely gets ‘negatively’ framed in relation to exclusion within these discourse noting that often social inclusion ‘appears in invocations of ‘normal’ social expectation/participation or, more commonly, ‘mainstream’ applied to various things that people are understood to be excluded from: labour market, economy, society, culture, citizenship…[where] the meaning and location of ‘mainstream’ is routinely taken to be self-evident… as whatever is not socially excluded’ (p. 397). As Cameron continues (p. 401), ‘[t]he focus on the personal deficits of the poor and the marginal—means not only that the process of social inclusion is a ‘one-way street’ (as defined by policy measures such as ‘welfare to work’, for example), but also that the concepts of exclusion and inclusion are asymmetrical’. The asymmetry for Cameron arises from the fact that ‘[t]he whole concept of social exclusion, including its localized geography, is defined by those who consider themselves qualified to determine their own social inclusion’. Importantly, as Cameron reflects, one of the main consequences of adopting negative definitions of inclusion is that it ‘places an enormous responsibility on those considered to be excluded to resolve their own problems—(as) they have been made responsible for their own condition as a form of social ‘pathology”. While the birth of the social exclusion/inclusion debate can be found in post-war France, as Wilson (2006) notes, this idea spread across Europe towards the 1980s, with the European Community’s (EC and former EU) adoption of the term; for the reason that, as William and White (2003, p. 91) note ‘poverty was no longer the right word to use to describe the plight of those marginalized from mainstream society’.

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From here, one observed the importation of the term as a policy framework in a range of commonwealth countries including New Zealand, Australia and South Africa (Allman, 2013, p. 8). As noted by Davies (2005), Allman (2013), as the concept of social inclusion gained momentum in policy circles, it grew to be framed beyond mere material aspects concerning poor populations or those with limited resources or access, to instead being one that reflected a variety of lapses in social cohesion in the context of advanced capitalist societies (Chakravarty & D’Ambrosio, 2006). As Allman suggests (2013, p. 8) as the concept of social inclusion gained currency, it ‘incorporated those segregated also from the social core through attributes such as ethnicity or race, age, gender, and disability, and whose characteristics could contribute to justify the need for deliberate social inclusion programs’. Over time, as Rawal (2008, pp. 175–176) notes, following the First World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995, the notion of social exclusion/inclusion soon integrated into contemporary development discourses and agencies. In more recent policy constructions, the notion of social inclusion has been embedded as a central development agenda measure, either through government agendas, international aid or international development agencies like the UN, and its related agendas like the MDGs (2000), and more recently, the SDGs where it appears as a key driving indicator in five of the 17 goals. Moreover, since gaining importance in such global development discourses, much of the literature now frames inclusion in terms of ‘inclusive development’. As Gupta et al. (2015) frame it, ‘Inclusive development per se focuses, first, on human material, social-relational and cognitive/psychological well-being. Second, inclusiveness focuses attention on the poorest (in income), vulnerable (in terms also of age, sex and location) and the most marginalized or disadvantaged people (in terms of caste, sect, creed) (c.f. Rauniyar & Kanbur, 2009, p. 455). It includes a gender-sensitive focus on income and assets, unemployment (CGD, 2008), broader conceptions of poverty and ill-being (Alkire & Foster, 2011; McGregor, 2007) and gender inequality (Chatterjee, 2005) and is non-discriminatory in nature (Huang & Quibria, 2013). At the global level, this would imply the active inclusion of the least developed countries and post conflict nations, and a focus on income inequalities in the middle-income and rich countries.’. In this etymological journey of the concept of social inclusion, one comes to see, as Ivanovic (2018) points out, how ‘all knowledge is historically conditioned, and as such serves as a discursive formation that mirrors and sustains specific historical forms of social organization and practices…Such a reading (must surely) consider the historical legacy of Europe in positive terms as a harbinger of enlightenment that has shared benefits of progress with the rest of the world’ (p. 106). Thus, an etymological analysis of the notion of social inclusion/exclusion reveals that the evolution of the term depended on constructing a certain cohort as being excluded, while certain cohorts are responsible for their inclusion through a specific set of discursive practices, which overtime has been adopted into a range of local/global policy agendas. The next section of the chapter aims to trace the historical context of the creation of the Papua New Guinean subject, who under contemporary discourses

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continues to be framed as the ‘excluded’, while also exploring historically what was termed as inclusion and what this would mean in the Papua New Guinean context.

6 The Notion of the ‘Excluded’ Subject in Papua New Guinea The political creation of the Papua New Guinean landscape, place and identity arose from colonial invasion that began in 1884, with Britain annexing the southern part of the island (termed British New Guinea) on behalf of Australia while Germany invading the other portion, which came to be known as German New Guinea. As Stella notes citing JanMohammed (1983), pp. 2–4) ‘The general motivation to colonize was grounded on the desire for material profits, and other arguments to justify this motive developed subsequently, as we have seen, for example, in constructing the moral and cultural backwardness of the colonized people, and the need to rescue them and impart to them European ways’. According to Stella, it was the declaration of James Erskine’s 1884 speech at the proclamation of British New Guinea as Protectorate that marked the official imposition of the system of colonisation in PNG. As Erskine declared (as cited in Mayo, 1969, p. 17): It has become essential for the protection of the lives and properties of the native inhabitants of New Guinea, and for the purpose of preventing the occupation of portions of that country by persons whose proceedings, unsanctioned by any lawful authority, might tend to injustice, strife, and bloodshed, and who, under the pretence of legitimate trade and intercourse, might endanger the liberties and possess themselves of the lands of such native inhabitants, that a British Protectorate should be established over certain portion of such country and the islands adjacent thereto.

This declaration set the tone for ‘the hegemony of western epistemology and ontology…it gave sanction to everything that had marginalized, subordinated, and relegated Papua New Guineans to social and racial inferiority’ while also noting that the ‘protection’ that Erskine spoke ‘was given, not for the local population, but for the European residents against natives and non-British people in general’ (Stella, 2007, p. 6). By the late 1960s, there was increased momentum for Papua New Guinean independence, both in PNG and among Australian policymakers owing to a ‘combination of factors, ranging from international pressures for decolonisation, manifested in the UN Trusteeship Council, to changing attitudes towards colonial administration amongst Indigenous Papua New Guineans’ (Ferns, 2020, p. 14). Yet, it was also a period when international organisations like the World Bank began to take significant interest in the ‘development of PNG’ (p. 15). In the move towards independence, one could observe a shift in Australian ‘aid’ spending in PNG towards social development projects focusing on improved housing, community services, while also witnessing a spike in expenditure towards training indigenous populations in areas like governance and bureaucracy. It was also during this period that new development ideas undersigned by the ‘basic needs approach’ which was linked to the continued

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prevalence of poverty following decades of development assistance in the newly decolonizing world (Dehm, 2018). Taking up the rhetoric of ‘basic needs’, members of the Department of External Territories staff, working on a five-year development program between 1970and 1975 in PNG maintained that ‘[e]conomic development is largely meaningless if it does not improve the lot of ordinary men and women and it may actually be self-defeating if it creates more problems than it solve’ (Ferns, 2020, p. 16). This sentiment was also reflected in the shift in PNG aid budget where direct expenditure aimed at improving the lives of ‘ordinary men and increase[d] from $170,000 in 1970–71 to over $2.5 million in 1973–74’ (ibid). And as Ferns observes, at the onset of PNG independence, the nature of Australian aid largely took on the form of supporting ‘improvements to housing, provisions for child welfare. Community centres were to be built throughout PNG, from Port Moresby to Lae. Youth activities attracted funding, including the expansion of existing school leaver programs, which had the objectives of maintaining student morale, inculcating ‘habits of responsibility and reliability’, and assisting students to find employment’. These trends, as well as the rhetoric carrying them, are evident even in the latest reiterations of Australian aid to PNG. The 2017 Country Information Report on Papua New Guinea, prepared by DFAT (2017), begins with a background information section, detailing the ‘recent history’ of the country. It opens with: European colonial powers assumed political control of the island of New Guinea in the late nineteenth century. The western half of the island, now part of Indonesia, was annexed by the Dutch; while the Germans and British divided the eastern half, now PNG. In 1906, the British transferred their rights to newly federated Australia; Australia’s military took control of the German-run area during the First World War. After the invading Japanese were defeated in a fierce military campaign during the Second World War, the United Nations granted Australia administrative rights over PNG. Australia granted PNG limited home rule in 1951 and autonomy over its internal affairs in 1960. PNG achieved full independence in September 1975” (DFAT, 2017, p. 2).

In these opening paragraphs, the successor to Australia Aid which emerged during the Hasluck era takes no note of its own colonial past, where so much of its justification to support PNG through aid was done under the garb of controlling the PNG subject and their lands, a practice inherited from the legacy of those who defined the very subjectivity of those being governed through racialist and oppressive culturalepistemic frameworks. It displays no intention of revealing its own hidden agenda of coming across to the international world as the benevolent generous neighbour to the island of PNG when it subsumed its colonial administrative spending into the framework of external aid. In many ways, the DFAT report, from the insider’s perspective, starts from a non-reflexive, historical context of contemporary PNG. The next point goes on to illuminate the contemporary context of PNG following its independence; the opening sentence remarking that ‘[s]ince independence, PNG has faced considerable economic, security and political challenges’; the language subsequently getting meatier, the tone more alarming, the context of modern PNG, a grim, miserable one.

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While large-scale mining operations quickly became the largest contributors to the economy, they also caused major environmental degradation, and social and political disharmony. Disputes over the disbursements of profits from a major copper mine on the island of Bougainville descended into a violent conflict between the PNG Defence Force and secessionist guerrillas from 1988 to 1997, which drained national resources considerably…. The country also experienced growing levels of crime, corruption and political instability” (ibid).

The report then goes on to detail the range of development-related challenges from failing health systems, poor literacy, increased tribal warfare leading to property damage and loss and general political stability. In 2020, PNG continues to be the largest recipient of Australian aid, which in 2020 sits at around 607 million AUD, largely monitored and delivered by DFAT and supporting agencies. Its three main development objectives revolve around ‘promoting effective governance, enabling economic growth and enhancing human development’; all of which are drawn on the principles of enabling more social cohesion in PNG society by focusing on improving standard of living in sectors like health, education and gender as well as strengthening the prospects for ‘inclusive growth’. But through the work of Stella (2007), as we have seen in Kabutaulaka’s (2015) work in the context of the general region of Melanesia, it becomes evident how European colonial discourses (p. 21) ‘produced and circulated (racialized) knowledge and imagery that regularly depicted Papua New Guineans as inferior and subordinate, portraying them in positions of subjection, savagery, and powerlessness in accordance with the widespread operation of the discourse’. These colonialist discursive strategies ranged from ‘the specific legal discourse in place to control indigenous people in colonial Papua New Guinea, as well as more widely employed colonial tropes, such as those of sexual violation, debasement and idealization, and the discourse and image of the native (female) body as sexual fetish…through (which) a (ontological-epistemic) social hierarchy is produced and indigenous people are relegated and dispossessed as Other’ on their own land (Stella, 2007, p. 10). And as Kabutaulaka’s (2015, p. 202) notes ‘[s]uch attitudes are often reflected, albeit implicitly, in contemporary discussions of social, political and economic developments in Melanesia (including PNG). In the last three decades, Melanesia has been portrayed predominantly as a place of conflicts, political instabilities and poor social and economic development. The diversity of cultures and languages is often presented as a problem rather than as a rich cultural heritage’, giving the impression that such development challenges were natural to the region and also generalizable to other racial contexts like that of the African continent. The engagement with this tribal community, in one of the remotest parts of Papua New Guinea with modern institutions and its frame of cultural and political references to notions of ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’, opens up several questions. If the object of a social process (such as social inclusion) is to include as many and as widely as possible, in whose ultimate interest does the process serve? On the surface, a discussion of a concept like ‘inclusion’ in the context of Papua New Guinea’s development story displays a narrative of change in this post-colonial nation.

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Independence in 1975 was a time of great dreams, proclaiming a more complex aspiration than that of a one-dimensional modern focus on a nation state. The Constitution of Papua New Guinea was a doubly extraordinary document given that it was written in the context of a prevailing global orthodoxy of large-scale capitalist development and mega-projects (James et al., 2012). In this, the constitution (1975) gave expression to two basic reformations of the modern nation state. First, it reformulated modern ideals in response to the continuing importance of tribal and traditional life. Secondly, it explicitly articulated an understanding of Papua New Guinea society in which individual and community interdependence are basic principles and in which development would occur primarily through the use of Papua New Guinean forms of social and political organisation. This was an extraordinary vision—reflecting the hopes of an emerging nation state—and was intended to enable PNG to develop in a way that was uniquely its own. Yet, as West (2016) points out: development projects are not merely about increasing incomes for rural Papua New Guineans; they are also about destroying customary tenure to allow for new forms of economic activity (including conservation) and creating new consumption-oriented citizens. This formation also obscures infringements on sovereignty and acts of dispossession that play out through capacity building sessions, such as discussions about the administration of conservation funds in which PNG Institute of Biological Research scientists are reduced to laborers for big international nongovernmental organizations.

Yet, events like those in the remote forest with the enactment of dramas such as ‘Tears of the Rainforest’ and interrogation by the Elders and communities about questions of inclusion and exclusion show how despite this complex crisis in the nation’s development strategies and efforts to engage locally and meaningfully to find that people, especially in these rural and remote places still live in communitybased relations with one another and are desperately seeking to be part of their own response to their sustainability and well-being. The Kukukuku people are a contemporary example of a Papua New Guinean tribal community that has taken on an embodied form of self-conscious effort to remain grounded—and to negotiate their own terms and understandings into this difficult and challenging world. Concepts and practices of modernism and traditionalism—called either ‘new ways’ or ‘old ways’ by both locals and government officials and/or academics and researchers remain contested—remind one of the fragilities in a world that no longer allows grounded communities to change incrementally or organically. In this respect, the Kukukuku people’s development process is part of a creative fashioning of the past in the present; guided by history, to the demands of a modernising state, negotiating the politics of identity, community and development not only from outside, but also from within the tribe itself. Their efforts and questions of inclusion/exclusion offer a significant and interactive way to think about the impact of contemporary institutions and polices. At this point, within social policies, it is well documented that such policies are the institutions of governance and governmentality—they offer a particular vision of how the world is, as well as plan to order the world so that it conforms to that sought-out desire. In their work and review of notions of inclusion/exclusion, particularly in the South; Sayed (2002), Porteous (2003), Dickson-Waiko (2006, 2013) among others

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demonstrate that there is much contestation about the applicability and meaning of social inclusion/exclusion, not just as analytical tools, but increasingly as epistemological questions. Others like Hau’ofa (1993) speak out for a conceptual shift in the ways Oceania is perceived and talks of an inclusivity that predates modern interventions of notions of inclusion/exclusion. In his interview with Juniper Ellis in 2001, Hau’ofa (p. 22) draws us back to when: Our world was much bigger before colonialism. In the past there wasn’t a clearly constituted body called Oceania, but there were much larger conglomerations of peoples and places, inter-relationships. And colonialism broke up these relationships. And I think even the technologies that people had in those days- for travel, for instance- made the world relatively larger, probably bigger than our world today in Oceania.

In this, he throws open the fundamental epistemic questions and points that ‘…our cultures, our new Oceania, have to be recognized, not because of pride or anything else but because it’s the only way, the surest way, of securing our autonomy. We cannot get that autonomy as long we continue to be patronized’.

7 Conclusion Far from offering a comprehensive guide to public action, this chapter is very much a reflexive analysis of the social concepts of inclusion/exclusion that builds from the questions, insights, writing sand narratives of tribal Elders, villagers, social theorists, historians, post-colonialists and decolonialists. In this, the chapter was also written in a way to unravel the historical continuities of its Western hegemonic and epistemic presence. It has critically explored the way images, ideas and concepts which primarily underlie Western hegemony still endure, although the physical presence of colonial rule has ended. Concepts such as social inclusion/exclusion have to challenge and undo the underpinnings of this hegemony and epistemic dominance and singular away of interpreting the world. The first step towards this goal is to add an epistemic question to the re-examination of terms such as social inclusion/exclusion. It engages us in different ways as we challenge epistemic dominance and authority and its consequences. Such an approach, of course, comes with its own insecurities, risks and challenges. Certainly, such an approach calls upon a process that recognises and acknowledges narrow procedural or abstract knowledge forms and seeks a relational and reciprocal investment in the other. Inevitably, this process also demands a purported own sense of self into that struggle with one’s own epistemological positionalities and location. The Kukukuku Elders have already begun questioning their own epistemic and ontological inheritances by interrogating our assumptions and interpretations of them. This chapter weaves together a narrative that begun in the field and attempts to navigate, more deeply, the question of the concept of social inclusion/exclusion and its performativity. The interrogation up in the remote mountains of Papua New Guinea is just another call for these kinds of reckonings—where, rather than bundling

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these event as stories about them—these stories are really an exploration of ourselves and the ways in which these ‘selves’ are conceived and sustain certain values and images and which profoundly affect the way we relate with the world at large. Such encounters also affect those who meet with us; both producing and disabling them as they confront their own images, stories and life worlds. Such encounters, like the questions of social inclusion/exclusion, are difficult and political. It requires profound self-reflection, an ability to not orient towards hegemonic values and perspectives. Whatever the Kukukuku Elders were voicing, they were also creating a space for them to be heard on their own terms and refusing to accept anything less. In the end, as Ivanovic (2018, p. 124) summarises, ‘our understanding and knowledge of human suffering must avoid the reductive epistemic and ontological assumptions that separate ‘humanity’ into the privileged and those inferior. We must avoid this at the intersection of tensions and relations between different historical processes. This not only helps us to understand all the pitfalls of the current ethical agency of the ‘Western’ humanitarian subject, but helps us also understand that as much as objects of our knowledge are product of social processes, we are also part of the same relations of power and epistemic biases that pervade different dimensions of our social existence. …(S)uch a moral burden raises an important concern for which addressing our epistemic capacities and social conditions is just the beginning’. There is much to learn from the Kukukuku Elders and people—and their assertions of power, identity and belonging and responses to the growing deep social inequalities in their homeland. It is ‘also a space of a poetics of resoluteness, to recover an identity that is not fractured, not alienated from place’ (Nadarajah, 2014), challenging and defying modernity/coloniality constructions and practices which work from the outside in. In this, we see the endless possibilities to understand more deeply the performativity of inclusion/exclusion as a shared reflexive social sensibility.

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Afterword

Reflections on Social Inclusion and Inclusiveness This is an important book, and it is appearing at an opportune time when all the institutions of the society and the state are claiming to be inclusive and are trying to diagnose problems of social exclusion and develop policies to remedy them. As the editors point out in their thorough and thoughtful introduction, several chapters in the book were presented as papers at the 2019 Inter-Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) held in Poznan, Poland. It was a day-long session and was well attended by many distinguished scholars from different parts of the world. I was present throughout the day and towards the end made some comments which were widely appreciated by the audience. This led the editors to invite me to share my thoughts with the readers of this book. I wish to thank them for their generosity. My task in this chapter is to offer some brief comments on the new insights provided by various authors represented in this book. I should make it clear at the outset that my comments on the individual chapters are biased and deeply personal. They are made to facilitate ongoing investigations of various themes covered in this volume. As I have said elsewhere (Pandey, 2002), and several of the authors have noted in various chapters in this book, social exclusion is a multidimensional phenomenon, not just limited to material deprivation. Poverty is indeed an important dimension of social exclusion, and almost every nation state in the world is trying to develop policies and programs to alleviate it. Sen, invoked by a majority of the authors, in his seminal survey essay, ‘Social Exclusion: Concept Application Scrutiny’, points out that ‘social exclusion can indeed arise in a variety of ways, and it is important to recognize the versatility of its reach’ (2000: 9). All the contexts of social exclusion and inclusion covered in this book validate Sen’s insight and add new themes to advance and deepen it further.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 S. M. Panda et al. (eds.), Social Exclusion and Policies of Inclusion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9773-9

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The plurality and the politics of exclusionary processes and practices—common throughout human history—have begun to impact each one of us in our lives in whatever space or position we occupy. The Covid-19 pandemic—globalised in a very short time—uncovered divergent problems faced by many minorities, especially individuals and groups stigmatised and marginalised. The sixteen chapters in this volume cover a lot of territories—spread out in both the Global North and the Global South. They identify the economic, cultural, political and spatial dimensions of the claim of inclusiveness and social exclusion, and call our attention to their cumulative and destabilising consequences. Tribes, one of the oldest social formations, arguably the most enduring victims of progress—a nineteenth-century term—and its twentieth-century incarnation, development, have suffered the most. Virginius Xaxa, in Chap. 2, documents their experiences in India during the British Colonial rule and in the post-independence period. He points out their loss of land, forest, minerals and other resources. From my visits to various tribal regions of India, starting in 1962, I can attest to this. In 1984, the chief minister of Nagaland told me that ‘the Central government gets more revenue from our forests than the subsidy it gives to the state.’ Similarly, I was often told by the tribal leaders in Jharkhand, during my visits in 2003 and 2006, that ‘next time you will visit the state there will be just Khand (land) here; the Jhar (forest) will be gone.’ Luthra Sinha’s contribution (Chap. 4) points up another aspect of the tribal situation in India. These days, several tribal students from North-East—Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland—are coming to the capital to study at Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, and they ‘face with hate crimes and racial discrimination’ there. This did not come to me as a surprise since they differ from the mainstream students in their culture (food, dress, demeanour), language and race. In 1986, when I visited Itanagar to give a lecture at Nehru College there, I was told by the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh that ‘Whenever I go to attend Chief Ministers’ meeting in New Delhi, invariably I am asked, ‘who are you and where do you come from?” When I was in North-East during 1986–88, quite often I heard the slogan ‘mongoloid people unite.’ Even then local university students complained that they feel ‘interiorised’ and ‘otherised’ by ‘Indians’ of other states (Pandey, 2012). This attitude of superiority of non-tribal people towards the tribals is not confined to India alone. I have often encountered such reactions in various parts of Native North America as well. Based on her longitudinal work among the Kukukuku tribal community in Papua New Guinea, Yaso Nadarajah in her Chap. 16 reports on their ‘social and racial inferiority’ described in European residents’ discourse. She narrates that decades of large-scale resource extraction and activities and land development during the colonial and post-colonial period brought significant changes in ‘tribal lifeworlds’ and their ways of life and livelihood. Similarly, based on her long-term research, in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, Victoria Chenaut (Chap. 8) documents how ‘aggressive extraction based industrialisation and oil-based economy marginalised agriculture communities,’ leading to their social exclusions by the state and its dominant groups

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of people. This made me sad but brought back a pleasant memory of my 1968 visit with the affable farmers of Papantla, Veracruz. Industrialisation did improve the life and living standards of many people and led to the economic growth and modernisation of society, but it also caused enormous suffering and dislocation. It did usher in a new civilisation by transforming agrarian society (Gellner, 1997). The project of industrialisation was intended to create homogeneity in society, but it ended up generation economic and social inequality, leading to social exclusion and lack of inclusiveness (cf. Boulet in this volume). Several authors in this volume discuss situations generated by industrialisation and globalisation. For example, Immanuel and Narayanan (Chap. 9) note that the advent of the aquaculture industry destroyed the traditional fishing livelihood of the fisherfolk community in coastal parts of Tamil Nadu, leading to their marginalisation and ‘social exclusion.’ Relying on the ethnographic data collected from their multisited research, they mention that the neoliberal state has been promoting large-scale Blue Growth initiatives to generate and increase the export for the country, leaving behind ‘the small scale’ fishermen and farmers. The other outcome of industrialisation and globalisation has been local and global flows of labour from impoverished places to resource-rich sites. In Chap. 5 of the book, Shahed Khan presents a moving account of the life of Filipino migrant domestic workers in Singapore. Based on first-hand observations, coupled with an extensive review of the available documentary material, he discusses the forms of ‘exclusion and discrimination’ they face in Singapore and their struggle for ‘their human rights’ and self-dignity. This situation is not confined to Singapore alone. During the past two decades, Annapurna Devi Pandey and I often witnessed similar situations faced by migrant workers from Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, working in Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the USA. This development needs to be studied in depth by scholars from different countries. Let me turn to the chapters which directly deal with the programs and policies developed by the state to ameliorate the alienation, loneliness, and pain individuals and groups experience due to their dislocation. Ahmed-Ghosh, in Chap. 3, describes the tragedy of unending wars in the Middle East for oil, the engine of development of modern industrial complex everywhere. Very few people benefit from these wars; still, Western democratic states are spending more than a trillion dollars every year fighting them. The war in Afghanistan just ended after twenty years, but still raging in Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Men, women and children from these countries, after losing their kin and clan connection, are seeking refuge in Canada, England, Germany, Italy and the USA, among other countries, but, as Poulin discusses in Chap. 10, many of these countries are having their internal dislocation due to poverty, disease and lack of economic mobility. Canada has done a much better job managing diversity and multiculturalism and has been welcoming to the people displaced by various wars taking place in Sri Lanka and many Middle-Eastern countries. After the 9/11 catastrophe, things drastically changed in the USA. The development of ‘Islamophobia,’ Ahmed-Ghosh mentions, is indeed a sign of intolerance of those differences in culture, religion and race.

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Kelkar, Sinha and Nathan deal with another kind of ‘difference’ in their study of witch hunts in India. Based on surveys and investigations conducted by a team of researchers in eight districts of five different states in India, they reviewed a total of 115 case studies over five years and noted that the persecution and killings of 84 women and 31 men charged with witchcraft. To me, the most interesting part of their study is what they discovered among the matrilineal Khasi of Meghalaya. I had interviewed twenty Khasi women traders in Shillong and ten Lyngdoh (the male priests) in several Khasi villages in 1987. Even then the relations between men and women were strained due to their unequal access to wealth accumulation and power. The situation seems to have become worse over time. While I was teaching at North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong, I heard a Lyngdoh Professor of Khasi say that ‘We need men’s liberation here, not women’s.’ Their finding of the skewing of matrilineality towards patrilineality confirms my observation on the matrilineal Zuni, as reported in a recent paper I wrote (Pandey, 2018). I agree with them that this situation requires further investigation. Inclusiveness is in the air these days. Even the Taliban wants to have an inclusive government in Afghanistan. Banks want inclusive economic growth, universities intend to create inclusive campus life, armies plan to have an inclusive fighting force, but the reality on the ground is so inconsistent with these goals and ideals. The five chapters dealing with various issues and problems in the state of Odisha provide very rich data to look at them closely. These chapters are indeed the meat—tofu and paneer for vegans and vegetarians. All the three editors of this volume belong to Odisha and have been researching for a long time in various regions of the state. Their chapters cover youth, elderly people, transgender (Hijra community), widows, and an analysis of how various yojanas (schemes) developed by the Central and State governments are faring on the ground. There is some overlap in their methodology and analytic framework, but their observations and ethnographic data provide massive material to examine various theories and claims of inclusiveness and social exclusion. Lund and Panda’s study of the youth of low-income groups moving to urban centres in Bhubaneswar and other cities out of the state focuses on their work, aspirations, and inability to game the system permeated with the structural inequalities of various kinds. I agree with them that young people feel disillusioned and abandoned due to the slow pace of economic development and lack of job opportunities. Smita Mishra Panda’s study of the Hijra community during the Covid-19 pandemic in Odisha, reported in Chap. 13, is bold and instructive. Based on her interviews with fifty Hijra people dispersed in five different geographic locations in Odisha, she discusses how their lives and livelihoods were affected during the strict lockdown period. Since they lost every opportunity of earning any money, they were able to survive with the help they got from youth clubs, business leaders, and the local government agencies. Thanks to the work of Smita Mishra Panda, Annapurna Pandey, and other scholars, my understanding of the Hijra community is far better now than it was in the early 1970s when I supervised the dissertation of Serena Nanda on the Hijra community in Bombay.

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Annapurna Devi Pandey’s study of the elderly people living in old age homes in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Puri, as well as how diasporic Odias are managing longdistance care of their elderly relatives in rural and urban Odisha, is very educational. Based on her interviews with 150 elderly residents of six senior care homes by nongovernmental organisations and her video calls with 35 Oriya immigrants living in the USA, she presents massive material to see how the senior citizens are managing their life without any kin support. In the swiftly changing socio-economic milieu, bereft of family support, the elderly people are suffering from isolation and social exclusion. The State and Central governments are developing policies and programs to manage the care of the elderly, but they are inadequate for a rising population. Pandey’s collaborative study, with Tripathy, of the exclusion of widows and the state’s welfare policies to help them, supplements her discussion of old age homes in Odisha mentioned above. Based on their fieldwork, interviews of 35 widows and archival research examining various government proposals and documents, they looked at several Swadhar Homes funded by the state government. These homes provide shelter for widows coming from different castes, classes, communities and ethnic groups, and give them safe space to develop new patterns of interaction with each other. In their interviews, the widows—long-neglected, maligned and stigmatised—expressed new zest for living. Several chapters in this volume have mentioned the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) of the Central government to provide 100 days of paid work to any person who demands employment. Appropriately, one of the editors, Supriya Pattanayak, decided to study how effective this act has been in dealing with those who are below the poverty line, especially women, tribals and lower caste people. Based on her research conducted in four districts of Odisha, and using both qualitative and quantitative data, she reports in Chap. 7 that the act has not made much improvement in their socio-economic lives. They continue to suffer from social exclusion despite various provisions for social protection. I agree with her that there are various structural factors responsible for that, and they require further investigation. The concluding chapter is a ‘think-piece’ of Jacques Boulet who encapsulates many of the ideas and issues discussed in several chapters in this volume. In his overview of the world scenario, particularly Australia and the USA, he thinks that ‘understanding ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’… [should be built] on the realisation that we live in a society still suffering from the accumulated and ongoing acts of stealth, eviction, over-exploitation, and destruction.’ Many people have become acutely aware of this during the global crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. I agree with him that we still live in a world created by industrialisation, urbanisation, colonialism, modernisation, globalisation, and never-ending wars. Relying on my own lived experiences in India and the USA, I can easily see that we are ferociously divided by lines drawn by caste, class, creed, gender, ideology, race, and geographical location. In this situation, it is logical to see how relational aspects of our day-to-day interactions with one another are overlooked in a taxonomic way of looking at the world. Several authors in this volume have reminded us that ‘exclusion and inclusion are two sides of the same coin.’ It is high time that we

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change our perspective in looking at the world and our own life experiences in it. I am sure this book is going to have a salutary impact on moving the future studies of inclusiveness and social exclusion in a new direction. Nov 2021

Triloki Nath Pandey Professor Emeritus of Anthropology University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA [email protected]

References Gellner, E. (1997). Nationalism. New York University Press. Pandey, T. N. (2002). Some thoughts on marginalization and marginalized communities. The Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India, 51(1), 1–7. Pandey, T. N. (2012). Foreword. In P. Guillermo Delgado & J. B. Childs (Eds.), Indigeneity: Collected essays. New Pacific Press. Pandey, T. N. (2018). A diachronic perspective on household and lineage structure in a Western Pueblo society. In P. M. Whiteley (Ed.), Puebloan societies. University of New Mexico Press. Sen, A. (2000). Social exclusion: Concept application in scrutiny. Critical Quest.

Triloki Nath Pandey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has had his education at University of Lucknow (M.A.), University of Cambridge (M.A.) and University of Chicago (Ph.D.). His research centres on tribal cultures in India, Nepal and the American Southwest. He has done fieldwork among the Zuni, Hopi and the Navajo of the American Southwest and more recently among the Tharus of India and Nepal and among the Khasi, Garo and Naga of the North-eastern India. He has focused mainly on politics, religion, life, history and the impact of literacy in his research. His work also has comparative and historical dimensions such as native peoples of America, cultures of India, political Anthropology, Anthropological theories and comparisons in Anthropology.