Category: Highlights

by Vani Viswanathan

India reached a new low in the Global Hunger Index rankings since it began in 2000. The country ranked 102 (out of 117 qualifying countries), lagging behind its south Asian neighbours. This ranking comes amidst one of India’s most significant economic slowdowns in its independent history, and weeks after the Prime Minister launched the ‘Fit India’ campaign, exhorting Indians to exercise regularly to improve their fitness. What do the people in India’s heartlands make of this situation?

A joke on the common man

That the reality of everyday hunger of millions of Indians – where do roti bhi nahin milti hai – is something that most politicians are out of touch with, was a common refrain. ‘How will we do kapalbhati or yoga if we don’t eat two meals a day?’ said one listener. ‘Who is “Fit India” for, because it is apparent that politicians have no clue about the everyday struggles of the common man?’

If there is no food, how do we start to talk about getting healthy, asks another. Across the board, listeners shared their disappointment and anger at the government churning out one campaign after the other – Digital India to Swacchh Bharat to, now, Fit India – without taking the steps to achieve their objectives.

The Global Hunger Index, released by German organisation Welthungerhilfe, is calculated based on four indicators: undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting, and child mortality. Despite progress on reducing child mortality, India struggles on the health of children under the age of 5, often determined by the status of the household into which they are born. 1 in 2 pregnant women is anaemic. NFHS-4 states that 38% of children under the age of 5 are stunted (low height for age) and 20% are wasted (low weight for age), both of which indicate poor nutrition.

These numbers indicate shockingly low access to nutrition for many Indians. What options do economically weaker sections have to eat nutritious food?

A challenge to access nutritious food

Anganwadis and midday meals are programmes from governments to attempt to provide children nutritious food and ensure their school attendance. The midday meal scheme suffers from several issues that put its beneficiaries – government school students until class 8 –  out of reach of nutritious food, ranging from linkages with Aadhaar, to privatization, corruption and not meeting government guidelines for nutrition, to poorly paid cooks who end up having to protest for the right against discrimination and to a decent, minimum wage, as our recent story shows. Shivshankar Mandal from Madhubani, Bihar, shares how teachers end up stealing food grains procured for children in schools under the midday scheme, which leaves midday meal cooks with even lesser to cook.

Going from the school to the family space, the most important space for children – or adults – to access nutrition, the Public Distribution System (PDS), implemented since independence, is the lifeline for millions of Indians to get grains and pulses at highly subsidized rates. Despite this, recent years have seen deaths of children and old people due to starvation from not being able to access the PDS, with its linkages with Aadhaar featuring prominently in most of these.

As per India’s National Food Security Act (2013) “the government must provide five kg of a monthly supply of subsidised food grains per person to two-thirds of the country’s population. But reports show that the identification of beneficiaries under this law has had problems, with many poor people not making it to the lists. And even those who were listed as beneficiaries were reportedly being denied rations because of the government’s decision to link the public distribution system to Aadhaar.”

Ramao Jagat from Chattisgarh’s Bilaspur talks of the difficulty in getting a ration card (used to access PDS) made, and if lucky enough to get one, of the issues in purchasing grains, often being dependent on the whims of the shopkeeper. He also complains of the poor quality of the grains and pulses available at these. He also stresses on the importance of standardization in the pricing and quantity allowed for purchase for families across the country.

Even as entire families struggle to access nutrition, it is important to remember that the situation is far worse for women and girls, who, due to socio-cultural norms, are the last to eat and left with the least – both in terms of nutrition and quantity.

Health or fitness without employment?

The overwhelming response to the hunger crisis from Mobile Vaani users was to ask the government to focus on creating jobs instead. With rampant unemployment, users had strong questions for the government’s and politicians’ focus on campaigns like Fit India instead of taking concrete action to create jobs to engage youth across the country.

Tulsi Paswan from Madhubani, Bihar, says that options for employment in the state, such as factories or for business, are non-existent. Anuja Dubey from Godda, Jharkhand, shares that unemployment is a bigger issue for women to tackle, leaving them with few options to earn and feed nutritious food for their families. Vice President of CITU’s Jharkhand committee, Ramchander Thakur, says in an interview with Mobile Vaani, that capitalists are grabbing land, water, and other resources from people to make profits, leaving nothing for the starving millions and denying them purchasing power.

Mobile Vaani has tracked the status of labour in the country over the last year through its Shram ka Samman series, which shows a dismal picture of not just employment, but of living conditions of labourers across the country. Without strong social safety nets that are nuanced to account for regional, caste, class and gender differences, and not tied to flawed identification, India continues to be far from being well-fed and fit.

by Vani Viswanathan

Not working on farms or going into daily wage labour leaves rural Indians with few options to earn a livelihood. In the last few articles based on our ongoing campaign Shram ka Samman, we looked at the issues in agriculture and MGNREGA that are pushing people from rural areas to cities in hopes of a better income. In this article, we trace what options people have outside of agriculture or daily wage labour in rural areas, and why these are insufficient in keeping them from migrating.

Construction, which absorbs available unskilled labour

The Kuznets process envisages the movement of labour from agriculture to non-farm occupations as an important aspect of structural change. The change typically happens from agriculture to industry or services, but in India, the sector that absorbed the tide of people leaving agriculture to find other occupations – since neither manufacturing nor services sectors managed to create adequate employment – is the construction sector. It is, in fact, the largest employer in rural areas after agriculture. Nationally, the construction sector employs almost as many people as in the manufacturing sector – 50 million.

The construction sector affords seasonality, and requires abundant labour that often can be untrained – which means it is also enticing for women to join, given the lack of opportunities for education or skilling that they get. Many men and women who work in brick kilns that we have spoken to have indicated that they are paid anywhere between 500 and 700 rupees for making 1,000 bricks, and they get work for 6 to 7 months a year, after which they look for casual labour work or farm. Oftentimes, families move together to live in and around brick kilns, working together to make the 1,000 bricks that gives them payment. Several users of Mobile Vaani such as Sumitra Devi from Nalanda, Bihar and Rajbai from Gariaband in Chattisgarh, also highlighted a key factor of attraction to the construction sector, especially in brick kiln manufacturing: the lump sum advance given by owners to workers.

Despite a slowdown in the construction sector since its peak in 2011, it remains a big draw for labour attempting to move to non-farm work. However, the biggest concern is the level of informality rampant in the sector: the APU State of Work 2018 report states that all of 8 percent of agriculture workers are ‘regular’, as in they get a regular monthly salary for an extended period of time, 2.2 percent are ‘regular plus benefits’, that is, they get a regular salary and get at least one social benefit such as provident fund, gratuity, healthcare benefits or paid leave; and a poor 1 percent have a written contract over and above regular pay and at least one social benefit. This leaves workers in the construction sector in the hands of employers who can hire and fire them at a moment’s notice, who can afford to ignore laws around minimum wage or workplace safety, including sexual harassment. Bonded labour is rampant in this sector, especially in brick kilns and stone quarrying, both of which engage impoverished migrant workers – the ‘advance’ that some of our users mentioned (quoted above) is, for many, a loan to entrap them in working for years in the kiln.

Although labour laws, social protection and rights to unionise are also applicable to construction workers, these hardly get used. One of our users, construction worker Salman Ali, who has been in Delhi for 15 years now, says that no union workers have reached out to him – indicating that collectivizing in the construction sector to make demands is difficult. An article on IndiaSpend indicates the hassles faced by construction sector workers – often floating workers and migrants – in accessing social welfare they are eligible for. The Building and Construction Workers (BOCW) Act, 1996, and its allied Building and Other Construction workers’ Welfare Cess Act, 1996, were brought in to provide welfare such as pensions, insurance, maternity benefits and immediate assistance in cases of accidents, etc. The India Exclusionary Report from 2017-18 indicates that despite the many overlaps of this law with other labour laws, BOCW has come to be the main regulatory law for the construction sector. Implementation, however, is weak. The Act requires workers – who can show proof of having worked for at least 90 days a year in the industry – to be registered. However, news reports suggest estimtaes that less than half of those currently in the industry are registered; many, in fact, don’t even know of these provisions. Those who know that they need to be registered report difficulties in getting the 90-day employment certificate from the builder/contractor, and even if they manage that, they face difficulties in completing the registration process. The cess paid for constructing buildings has been underutilized in most states across the country, resulting in little to no benefits for the largely unorganized workers – even the Supreme Court recently rapped the knuckles of states and the centre for “flouting with impunity” previous directives to implement the BOCW.  

When being a government extension worker isn’t helpful

Many people in rural and semi-urban areas attempt to make use of the government’s initiatives to generate employment. Here too, though, they have to contend with ridiculously low wages that are often delayed. However, many of these people are part of unions that help them demand better wages and other rights.

Devki Devi works in a school in the Gumla district of Jharkhand as a cook for its midday meal programme. Recollecting her early days in the job in 2004, she says, ‘We were made to work for free,’ adding that eventually she was paid per child per day. ‘Now, after extensive efforts of the  Jharkhand Pradesh Vidyalaya Rasoiya-Sanyojika Adhyaksh Sangh (an advocacy/rights group of workers such as herself), we get 1,500 rupees. But how can I run a family or feed them nutritious food with this kind of money?’

Colleagues of Devki from the Sangh were part of a protest in 2018 to ask the government to increase their pay from the measly 1,500 rupees they currently receive. Similar protests occurred in Bihar too. Interim budget announcements in 2019 did not include the honorarium received by these workers – last updated in 2009 by the UPA government.

ASHA workers – frontline healthcare workers tirelessly working to improve rates of institutional deliveries and use of contraception in rural areas – face similar issues, and most recently held a large strike in 2018, demanding ‘regularisation’ as government workers and a better pay. While small successes do come up, these are from intense struggles.

The alluring, but trapping, private sector

The only other option left for most is to look for employment in sectors where regulations to do with pay, work hours or employment laws are routinely flouted, and there is a strong corporate lobby demanding further reduction in regulation to make it easier for the industry sector. Millions stream into cities looking for work in garments industries and other such sectors that recruit people with little to no skills en masse. But the workers suffer from rampant unaccountability, with little recourse when faced with violations. Migrant workers tend to stay in exploitative working – and living – conditions given they have few opportunities for livelihood in their hometowns. The stories we hear on our platform Saajha Manch in Delhi/NCR, which documents violations of labour rights and provides information on redressal, testify to these conditions. Similar platforms we have in Tamil Nadu in association with trade unions document violations and receive complaints very frequently, especially from women, on issues ranging from non-payment of wages to sexual harassment, which we resolve together with local trade union representatives.

There are stories of others who are either stuck with low-paying jobs in schools or shops in rural and semi-urban areas, or those who move to the city to find their luck with jobs that do pay well but are largely out of the radar of labour laws. Take the case of Amit Kumar, who spoke on Mobile Vaani from Kapashera, Delhi, who recently moved here from Bihar to look for a job. It’s his first time in the city, but he seems to have done his research in the ten days he’s spent here. ‘Export jobs [in the garments industry] require skills that I don’t have. But for a 12-hour shift as a security guard, I can earn 13,000 rupees,’ he says, even as he qualifies that his hopes to find work are dwindling. The situation back at home isn’t any better, though. ‘You don’t get employment that pays according to the work that goes in. You can only get 4,000 or 5,000 rupees even if you work in a grocery store or a garments store, from 9 am till 11 at night.’ Nilesh Kumar from Munger, Bihar, works as a teacher in a private school and earns all of 1,500 rupees a month.

Skilling comes up often as an important route to address the unemployability of millions in India, and a way to tap into the ‘demographic dividend.’ Indeed, it has received a massive push over the last decade, and with the reelection of the central government, this is likely to continue. A 2018 report from the government indicated that there were over 40 skill development programmes run by 20 ministries of the government, and sought the consolidation of these for better results. But technical skilling isn’t resolving issues in young people finding employment. Amar Kumar from Munger, Bihar, is a certified Act Apprentice from the Indian Railways, which trains young people between 15 and 24 years of age to be welders, mechanics, painters, electricians, etc., to be hired later by the Railways. Amar didn’t manage to get a job, though, and wonders how despite government’s promises of one crore (10 million) jobs a year (announced by the current Prime Minister at an election rally before the 2014 elections), he doesn’t have a job. Ajit Singh is another youngster from Jamui, Bihar, who is an ITI graduate and had to migrate to Gujarat because he couldn’t get jobs in Bihar. Ajit, sharing his experience with us, rues the poor treatment he faces as a migrant at his workplace from his colleagues.

Our work with labourers and labour organisations has given us important insights into the gaps in current skilling initiatives: while building technical skills is laudable, demand and impact will be higher for young people who have life skills – ranging from communication to spoken English to building attitudes and being proactive, and importantly, the resilience to adapt to tough and ever-changing employment conditions. Similar findings have been echoed by other organisations working on skilling in rural areas, such as in this article by Pranav Kumar Choudhury from Dr. Reddy’s Foundation, which suggests that core employability skills such as communication, financial literacy, arithmetic and English might actually be the game-changer, as they are domain agnostic and transferable across sectors.

SHGs and MFIs to the rescue?

Despite the overwhelmingly dismal stories we heard on Mobile Vaani, we have had many positive stories of change from people who have been able to use the help of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) or Self-Help Groups (SHGs) to diversify their income streams in rural areas itself, rather than migrate. Our experience working with SEWA on SEWA Vaani, JEEViKA (Bihar’s rural livelihood project) and Punji ki Kunji with Sa-Dhan, an association of community development finance institutions, shows that people are keen to receive information and support in identifying opportunities to diversify their income streams so as to not depend on agriculture alone. There is growing interest in using education and entrepreneurship opportunities to move up the social ladder, and the biggest demand from listeners was to have programmes that offered information and mentorship on setting up and running businesses. One of our most successful content series with JEEViKA Mobile Vaani was Kamyaab Didiyon ki Kahaani, which was a platform for women to share their stories of struggle, and eventually, success in their ventures.

While this is an encouraging trend, the fact is that these efforts aren’t sufficient in retaining people in their villages; our surveys, for instance, showed that 75 percent of families where women were part of an SHG had at least one migrant member.

A clarion call for local industries

The overwhelming request of many Mobile Vaani users who spoke to us as part of Shram ka Samman is for factories to be built in and around where they lived, be it Bihar or Uttar Pradesh or Jharkhand. That Jharkhand has many natural resources and still has not enough mines and factories in place to employ people is a complaint that was echoed throughout the Shram ka Samman campaign. APU’s State of Working India, 2019 aligns with the growing calls for State intervention in creating new technologies to boost the industrial sector and set up sophisticated industries that can meet the demands of the near future. All the same, the report also warns of the growing informalization of the sector, where more and more employees are hired on contract and therefore outside the purview of labour laws that are increasingly being diluted – the consequences of which have been recorded frequently on our platform Saajha Manch.

What’s in store for the rural worker?

Trends in labour force participation data analysed by the State of Working India, 2019 report show that the proportion of working age men who are in employment has been falling, largely led by men with lower education levels, who are likely to be in the informal sector. It’s not that they aren’t working – it’s that work is available irregularly, and is poorly paid. Open unemployment – where people are willing to work at the given wage rate but can’t find regularly-paying jobs – is high among the educated. Stories of hundreds of thousands of job applications received for a few thousand entry-level government jobs are common, with many of these applicants being heavily over-qualified for the posts they are applying for.

Jobs emerged foremost when our users were asked what they wanted from the new government. In our four-part series, we have highlighted the reasons people migrate, and the specific issues they face when trying to continue living in their hometowns, and conversely, the poor ways in which they are treated wherever they migrate. These voices from the poorest and among the most marginalised in India’s rural heartlands deserve to be heard in policymaking in the new cabinet. Will the new government listen and work out ways to give the sharmik samman?  

by Vani Viswanathan MGNREGA: No incentive to stay back Ranjan Kumar describes the enthusiasm with which his friends and neighbours got their job cards made after NREGA was introduced. ‘Some of them travelled far to get it, as far as the block or district office.’ The card was made, but not all of them got it, he claims. ‘And even if they got it, they didn’t get to use it,’ he says, complaining about the lack of awareness among many people about how to use the job cards to access their MGNREGA benefits. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005), MGNREGA, which aims to provide a right to employment, is meant to be a safety net for very poor rural households, especially those that depended on the vagaries of agricultural labour and may be forced to migrate to look for work in the months between sowing/harvesting, when they don’t get work on farms. NREGA was conceived to give employment for 100 days to households that demand it – within 15 days of the demand being made. The scheme has been described as ‘one of the strongest tried and tested measures that this government has to address the high levels of unemployment and declining farm incomes that have led to the situation of acute rural distress across the country.’ As of 2019, 13.11 crore job cards (which allow individuals to apply for work) have been issued, of which 7.4 crore are active (i.e. a household member used it to work at least one day under NREGA in the last three years). NREGA has much demand, as evidenced by the number of people who responded to our prompt asking them to share their experiences about the employment guarantee scheme. In part 2 of our series on Shram ka Samman, we discussed the failure of agriculture in ensuring a living wage for farmers, a significant factor in distress migration. Our callers indicated that migration was the last resort after their attempts to stay in the village and tap into government income options, such as MGNREGA, have failed. In this article, we focus on what users have to say about NREGA, and the potential for the employment guarantee scheme in addressing distress migration and rampant unemployment.

A source of hope, even if bleak

Rinku Devi from Nagarnausa (Nalanda), Bihar, doesn’t want to move away from her village for work.

Issues regarding NREGA came up frequently in our users’ experiences. Here are some issues that were described.

• Middlemen: Ranjan Kumar describes how for those lucky enough to know how to use their NREGA job cards, middlemen lay claim to a cut of their wages, threatening that they will ‘cancel’ the job card if the latter refuse to share their wages.
• Faking of records: Pujari Tiwari, who migrated to Kapashera in Delhi but travels back home and engages in NREGA work, says that officials use villagers’ job cards to fake records of work done and pocket the money.
• Delays or non-payment of wages: Rinku Devi says she hasn’t been paid for hauling sand that she did eight years ago under NREGA. Panchayat Adhyaksh from a village in Chhura tehsil in Chattisgarh Dhaneshwari Markam says money goes to bank accounts that people aren’t able to track (since money is directly transferred to accounts than given in cash), something that was recently reported in Madhya Pradesh as well.
• Not really a ‘guarantee’: An overwhelming complaint was that applying for a job under NREGA was no guarantee that one would get it. Many users said that they got jobs under NREGA anywhere between 40-60 days a year, giving them no simple way to decide what else to do to earn.

Statistics tell the other end of the story of how NREGA could be doing better. In 2018-19, NREGA generated a massive 268 crore person days, higher than in the previous three financial years, even though the average number of days available to each household – guaranteed to be 100, was only at 51. The average (national) wage rate was 179 rupees, and in some states, lower than the agricultural minimum wage. In many states, the average wages that were actually paid were less than that notified by the government.

Despite this underperformance and labourers’ issues in accessing NREGA, the idea that comes up, among the intended beneficiaries and many policy specialists, is that it is an important safety net that protects the extremely poor citizens who are landless labourers or are farmers tilling very small plots of land. Besides, the scheme’s guaranteeing of a particular wage has been credited with increasing agricultural wages as people have been seeking work under NREGA even during agricultural season, by reducing the labour supply – an argument that has often been made to dilute the scheme, including a recent proposal to use its funds to subsidise farmers in hiring labour, which was heavily criticised. Finally, NREGA has also played a role in bringing more women to the realm of paid employment, by guaranteeing that at least one-third of the jobs should be given to women (with actual uptake going to 50% in the last 5 years), and by ensuring parity in pay for men and women. Studies have shown that NREGA has ‘played a positive role in increasing rural wages, especially for female workers.’

Indeed, as stated in a letter by activists and elected representatives against the dilution of the Act, ‘there is substantial evidence to show that it has played an important role in protecting the lives, livelihoods and wages of rural workers, and been a vital support to vulnerable communities, including those facing distress due to natural disasters and calamities.’

However, as has been identified by experts and activists, as well as our users, the potential of NREGA is getting stifled due to poor funding – which means wages are ridiculously low – and due to problems with digital leapfrogging that has left out many deserving employment-seekers.

Funding issues with NREGA

The increase in demand for NREGA – the government had to provide 268 crore person-days in 2018-19 compared to 233 crores and 235 crores each in the previous two years – reflects deep rural distress and unemployment. Shalini Nair reports in The Indian Express analyses of how drought and agrarian crisis have spurred the increase in demand for NREGA.

Despite this, funds allotted to NREGA in the interim 2019-20 budget were lower than that of 2018-19. If states require funding higher than that allotted to them, the Government of India is bound to reimburse these. This gap in funding has only been increasing over the years and has resulted in delayed or in some cases non-payment of wages.

With low funding raises, wage rates have also stagnated, or increased from a meagre 1 to 17 rupees across states, a move that has been criticized by activists and economists alike. The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, which works for the rights of NREGA workers, calls for 600 to be the minimum daily wage, keeping with the seventh pay commission recommendation of 18,000 rupees as the minimum monthly salary.

The call for higher wages was echoed by many of our listeners, including Balram, who believes that NREGA is a very good opportunity. ‘But with the wage rate, it is impossible to educate children – and therefore illiteracy prevails. The wages have to go up to at least 400 rupees a day for the scheme to make any dent in people’s lives’.

When digital doesn’t mean efficient

Having an Aadhaar card was made mandatory for people to be able to access government social welfare schemes, including MGNREGA. Issues of linking Aadhaar to social welfare schemes have been explored in detail. Reetika Khera, economist and social scientist, points out how the gaps are larger with NREGA, because the responsibility to inform NREGA beneficiaries about the requirements to access its benefits, falls between the cracks, with the result that individuals don’t realise simply why they are unable to register for work or get payments.

Linking Aadhaar to their job card – and ensuring that the bank account tagged with their job card (a mandate since 2008, when NREGA transfers were made directly to bank accounts) is also linked to Aadhaar – is a complication that escapes most labourers who haven’t been given the information and steps to take.

The experience shared by our user Dhaneshwari Markam (above) perhaps reflects this very confusion: where wages were ‘lost’ because users don’t know simply to which bank account the payment was made.

NREGA: Important, but needs to be revamped

NREGA is one of the most important legislations in India that has enacted for the benefit of its masses. By being universal, but prioritising self-selection, it has, for the most part, avoided issues of excluding those who need it the most.

All said and done, there are mixed opinions about NREGA’s benefits for the individual and for the village. Sangeeta Devi from Nalanda, Bihar, is all praise for it, for instance. ‘People here like NREGA work,’ she says. ‘Wages get deposited within 20 days in our bank accounts.’ She lists the developmental work that has happened in her village due to NREGA: ponds, platforms, fixing issues of water stagnation in schools, road constructions, and so on. ‘The good thing about NREGA is that along with getting work, it helps with the development of the village.’

Some others aren’t as positive, such as Pujari Tiwari, who says that the Samudayik Bhawan built in his village through NREGA is hardly used – and is sometimes a spot for cows to be left tied.

Rajbai’s husband has migrated to work at a brick kiln in Ayodhya, all the way from Gariaband in Chattisgarh. NREGA work only came through for around two months, and they desperately needed money for the education of their three children, so her husband went there with the promise of an advance payment of wages. No money had come through from him yet when our volunteer spoke with her.

But Dablu Pandit, a panchayat member from Gidhaur in Jamui, believes in the potential for NREGA. It can be used even for animal or poultry rearing, or for building cow sheds.

The hope placed on MGNREGA isn’t misplaced. The scheme was developed after significant activism and has a component of social audit built in, giving the rights to gram panchayats to audit the utilization of funds and the quality of the assets created through the scheme. Additionally, several organisations and activists are highly invested in monitoring the scheme’s funding and implementation, and drawing attention to issues, such as the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan. Such measures have led to the creation of strong community institutions that can help raise people’s grievances and advocate at various levels for resolving issues with the scheme. In fact, lessons from NREGA – including an increase in rural wages and consumption; positive effects in employment irrespective of gender and caste; increased community participation through deciding NREGA work; and the creation of quality assets across rural India – have also been used by the Azim Premji University’s Centre for Sustainable Employment to propose an urban job guarantee scheme.

However, NREGA is bound to fizzle out if immediate steps aren’t taken to address its funding and payment issues, and to retain its original premise and structure. Perhaps some improvement to the scheme and its implementation will give some hope to our listener Ranjan Kumar, who says, ‘Koi bhi sarkar shram ka samman khud nahi karta hai.’ No government respects the labourer, why would anyone else do so?

by Vani Viswanathan

‘I dreamt of putting my children through school and taking care of my aged parents with the money I make,’ says Rakhi from Jamui, Bihar, who migrated with her family to Gujarat. Rakhi had to flee back to her hometown to avoid violence before she could earn enough, with fear and insult stinging her and dashing her hopes for her family.

Govind from Kanpur, who has migrated to Haryana, says wages are never paid on time, leave alone the fact that it is inadequate for the work done. ‘We are treated like animals,’ he says, ‘the locals always think they are much better than us.’

Stories like Rakhi’s and Govind’s abound in Bihar, Delhi/NCR, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, where Mobile Vaani clubs are active in gauging the pulse of community members. We reached out to community members in the aftermath of the violence meted out on Hindi-speaking migrants in Gujarat after a migrant from Bihar was accused of raping a toddler in September 2018. Speaking to migrants and the discrimination and violence they face was among the first of our discussions on the status of workers and labour in India as part of a campaign called Shram ka Samman – Respecting Labour.

Who migrates, and why?

An estimated 9 million people migrated annually within India between 2011 and 2016, according to the Economic Survey of India, 2016-17. This figure is likely to include inter-state migration as well as short-term ‘circular’ migrants, such as those who only migrate during the lean agriculture season when they don’t have work that pays, and return to their villages or farms once sowing or harvesting season begins again.

The largest share of inter-state migrants come from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, totalling up to over 900,000 migrant workers, who often go to the relatively more prosperous states of the south and the west, including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra and Delhi. The Economic Survey 2016-17 found a strong correlation between state per capita income and migration: Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, with among the lowest per capita income, reflected high outbound migration, while ‘relatively more developed states’ such as Goa, Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka reflected net in-migration.

People’s reasons for migration reflect a resounding lack of jobs locally. Community members shared a variety of reasons – all to do with lack of jobs locally – for why they migrated.  

 

Listen to Ajit Singh here.
Listen to Devi Kumari here.
Listen to Om Prakash here.
Listen to Dilip Kumar here.

The growth mismatch

Even as we tout increasing rates of economic growth in India, it has not been translating into enough employment opportunities in the recent past – Azim Premji University’s ‘State of Working India’ report shows that in the 2000s, a 10% increase in GDP results in less than 1% increase in employment, when in the 1970s-80s, even a 3-4% increase in GDP would result in 2% employment growth. In 2011-15, APU’s calculations showed that for a 6.7% Compounded Annual Growth Rate, there was only a 0.6% rise in employment. Unemployment has only been growing, especially among states in the north. The government-contested statistics from NSSO on the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), recently published by the Business Standard, state that unemployment rate is a four-decade high of 6.1% in 2017-18.

On the other side of this statistic which the relative prosperity of the western and southern states belies is the lack of employment opportunities for the locals in this state. An analysis in the APU report of employment generation rates in both agriculture and non-agriculture sectors shows that it slowed in the key migrant destination states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat. This has led to resentment among locals, who find that they cannot get employment that matches their qualifications, a problem that especially states with high enrolment of young people in tertiary education has to handle. Madhvi Gupta and Pushkar write for The Wire on why the trend of educated but unemployed youth is an issue that India needs to pay attention to. Writing in the aftermath of the violence meted out on migrants in Gujarat, Rajeev Khanna discusses how despite its promises of growth for all, Gujarat has many young, unemployed locals who, rather than question their government, chose to incite violence against the ‘Hindi-speaking migrants’ who have ‘snatched away jobs’.

‘They use “Bihari” as an insult’

Ask migrant workers about how they were treated in their place of employment, and bitter experiences come forth in plenty.

‘Once they hear us speak, they know we are not from here,’ explains Manohar Lal Kashyap, who works in the outskirts of Delhi. ‘The company I work for doesn’t employ locals because the employers are scared of them… instead, we’re asked to do work that we didn’t sign up for, and if we raise our voices, we’re shown the door.’

Nitish Kumar from Gidhaur, who drives an auto-rickshaw in Mumbai, recounts the harassment he faced at the hands of officers at the Road Transport Office. ‘They slapped a random fine of thirteen thousand rupees on me, and I had no choice but to not pay it. They don’t do this with locals here,’ he says. Discrimination against Biharis is an everyday affair, he says.

Many who responded to our call for experiences on Mobile Vaani reported that they were treated without basic respect, simply for being Biharis or Hindi speakers. ‘Bihari’ was often used to indicate different levels of intelligence or sophistication.

‘“Bihari, come here!” is how we are commonly addressed. It is very disrespectful,’ rues Santosh Kumar Pathak from Munger. Ajit Singh from Jamui recalls experiences of being teased endlessly for no reason by his Gujarati colleagues, and complaining to his boss was of no avail. ‘He said that it would settle down in a few weeks, but that didn’t happen,’ he says, indicating that redress mechanisms are all but absent for migrant workers.

Rakhi shares how locals wouldn’t even let migrant workers sit next to them. ‘We’re always treated as outsiders and as workers. I lived in constant fear because I knew that if something went wrong, they wouldn’t hesitate to beat us up.’

Mahesh Kumar Yadav from Jamui wonders why, when migrants to Bihar are treated well, migrants from the state aren’t treated with respect wherever they go.

‘One person’s crime should not be used to paint a whole community,’ says Teknarayan Prasad Kushwaha from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, in the days following the Gujarat episode. ‘The government and police forces should understand that migrant workers have left their homes behind only to earn and support their families.’

How family life gets affected

Most male migrants leave their families behind when they go to other cities or towns. Common concerns are about their safety in the destination, the irregular availability of jobs, and therefore, the inability to ensure that they can provide for their families in cities/towns where expenses are higher. Sonu Yadav from Gidhaur, Jamui in Bihar, for instance, says he gets 450 rupees for 8 hours of work. ‘How can I live with my family here, on this kind of money? The money is enough only for me to live here, take care of my travel, food and so on.’ When does he visit them, then? He only heads home for the few months when it is the farming season. Jitan Mahto from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, has also left his family behind because he has moved to the city with a contractor, who demands many hours of work each day and penalises him if he doesn’t meet these numbers. ‘If I take even a few days off, I could lose my job,’ he says. 

Leaving families behind can also lead to issues in accessing social welfare benefits. Jitan Mahto says that since one has to visit the block office to register for most of these benefits, it has been difficult for his family after he migrated to get these. Middlemen are there to ‘help’ such families, but they end up transferring the benefits to other families that aren’t eligible. ‘They ask for many documents,’ he says, alluding to the complicated processes which oftentimes women or the elderly – left behind in the village – are unable to navigate. Motilal Paswan from Muzaffarpur, Bihar, who has worked in Assam, Nagaland, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, has been relatively lucky in this regard. He has managed to have his home built under the Indira Awas Yojana (now the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana), and his children and wife are easily able to access the public distribution system to buy essential grains and other groceries at government-subsidised rates. 

The difficulties grow if someone falls sick – the migrant himself, or a family member. Sonu Yadav rues the lack of medical benefits from his employer, which means he has no option but to spend his meagre salary for treatment. Jitan Mahto, on the other hand, describes how when his child contracted malaria, he had to bring the child to a city hospital because facilities in the village were poor – and that meant a significant drain on his savings. 

Affording dignity by ensuring labour rights

Beyond disrespectful and demeaning behaviour, migrant workers gave many examples of how basic labour rights weren’t met. Here are some issues that workers brought out on the Shram ka Samman campaign, some of which also came up in a survey in Delhi-NCR we did in 2018 through Saajha Manch, our platform for Hindi-speaking migrants across the country:

 

Here’s a glimpse into what community members voiced as steps that will ease the lives of workers:

• Strong demand for local employment opportunities, especially in Bihar. ‘Why would we go elsewhere if we had jobs here?’ is a common refrain from many workers who spoke to us.
• Cooperation between state governments to ensure rights of migrant workers are met and they are treated with respect and dignity. For instance, Rakhi says that the Bihar government must collaborate with the governments in Maharashtra, Assam and Gujarat to seek their support to migrants from Bihar who go there to work.
• Registration of workers leaving the state for work outside to track what’s happening, ensure payments and insurance are maintained. These are mandated in the Inter-state Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1979, but are routinely flouted.

That the Indian Constitution gives citizens the full right to move to and live in any part of the country was emphasised by many workers who shared their opinions on Mobile Vaani. And yet, violence against migrants is a recurring, common feature, as Indradev Chauhan from Jamui reiterates. With the country still in transition from being an agricultural economy to an industrial economy, labour and employment policies have to be mindful of both economic and social concerns. In our next article in this series, we will explore the role of agriculture in addressing the labour and employment crisis in the country.

by Vani Viswanathan

Vijay Sharma from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, grows potatoes and some wheat, but couldn’t manage any more because of lack of irrigation facilities. ‘Sevaks and Krishi Mitras all live in the blocks, so there’s no one to give us information to help us.’ Most local youngsters have migrated; education is out of the question for them because we’re living hand to mouth. ‘Agricultural schemes aren’t working: getting an electricity connection took me four months. Another loan official sent me on a wild goose chase saying my Aadhaar number was wrong, but nothing happened even after I changed it.’

Our latest campaign on Mobile Vaani, Shram ka Samman, on the status of workers and labour in India, highlights many such stories. In part 1 of a series of articles on the campaign, we talked about migrants – why they migrate and what they face in the places they move to for work. In this article, we talk about the situation of employment in rural India, especially the desperate state of agriculture that millions of Indians from rural areas try to leave behind and migrate in the hopes of better income and a better future.

Gross Value Added from agriculture – outputs less the cost of all inputs and raw materials – were at their lowest in 14 years during the October-December 2018 quarter[1], the time when we were gathering opinions of people in rural India on agriculture through Shram ka Samman. Azim Premji University’s ‘State of Working India’ report cites statistics from the NSS Situation Assessment of Farmers Survey, which highlight that for 20% of the households that owned less than 2.5 acres of land, wages were the primary source of income – even in a sector where self-employment is prevalent. The various dimensions of India’s farming crisis have been well-documented, be it farmer suicides; the protests, increasing in participation and agitation; the surpluses that are dumped; or the stark, dry fields[2].

The causes, known and shared for decades, are echoed by our listeners too: the poor status of irrigation across the country – while also the fast-depleting reserves of groundwater due to exploitation; the government-set Minimum Support Prices (MSPs), which farmers say don’t reflect the costs that go into inputs and production; the devastation wreaked by natural calamities; the smaller landholding sizes that are only worsening with the rise in population.

 

Listen to Balram Chaudhury here, and to the farmer from Sikandra, Jamui, Bihar here. 

Farmers’ demands and their efficacy in reviving Indian agriculture

Ironically, even as some farmers make demands, there are others in the Mobile Vaani community who contest the effectiveness of these. Several such demands have also been questioned by experts and economists, reflecting that policymakers requires an in-depth – and localized – understanding of the issues in agriculture, rather than reverting to solutions that may have worked in previous decades but may no longer be relevant. In this context, it also becomes imperative to encourage farmers to collectivise and learn to understand and dissect policies devised for agriculture.

In the following sections, we outline the key issues and demands shared by farmers speaking on the Shram ka Samman campaign, and what we believe these mean for the state of agriculture in the country.

Irrigation

Lack of water is a huge complaint. Farmers such as Balram Singh and Mukesh Kumar from Bihar said they migrated to a city after losing their crop because it dried out due to poor irrigation facilities.

Irrigation infrastructure was among the top pushes of India’s Green Revolution, with policies devised then continuing to hold sway today, such as diesel and electricity subsidies for farmers to dig borewells. For instance, Teknarayan Prasad Khushwaha from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, says the government’s attempts to build ponds (for fish farming) are futile because they didn’t dig deep borewells that will ensure water “all year round”.

However, groundwater tables across the country are severely depleted, and this is no sustainable solution. Economist Bina Agarwal also talks about the need for regulating groundwater extraction for irrigation as well as techniques to conserve water. Some farmers realise this too. Kunal Singh, a young farmer from Jamui, Bihar, discusses the need for training on efficient irrigation techniques rather than depending on tubewells and free power, which deplete groundwater. ‘This will cause worse problems’, he says.

The price factor

Prices that farmers get for the crops they plant are the most frequently raised concern. The Minimum Support Price, a safeguard for farmers from forces of the market as it is the price at which the government will procure the produce from farmers, and a signal to the market on the rates below which crop prices may not fall.

The MSP is announced at the beginning of each crop season every year, but farmers complain that it is usually insufficient. For instance, Nand Kumar Mishra, a small farmer shared on Gidhaur Mobile Vaani that despite “working day and night”, he doesn’t get the right prices for his harvest, which makes it tough for him to make ends meet and fund the education of his children. Many farmers have complained that the price is so far off the mark that often it doesn’t even cover input costs. As Vijay Kumar Singh from Jamui, Bihar, says, ‘Others decide the prices of inputs and the value of our crops, but it is we who bear the costs’.

Not only is the price insufficient, the implementation of this idea of MSP and government procurement capabilities also falls far below expectations. Government procurement centres are few, and even these aren’t required to purchase crops at any rate higher than the MSP. Our own experiences[3] trying to gauge the usefulness of PACS, farmer-operated cooperatives that are also a platform for government’s crop procurement, show that MSP purchases don’t reach most farmers: the quotas for each PACS centre for crop procurement end up getting utilized by large farmers, leaving marginal farmers with no option but to sell to local traders at prices lower than the MSP.

What, then, can be the solution? Several users of Mobile Vaani said that farmers should be actively involved in devising the MSP each year. Arvind Kumar from Samastipur, Bihar, for instance, states that farmers should be given the right to decide the rate at which crops are sold. Indeed, the idea of the “right to sell at MSP” has been mooted for some time now, although with little on-the-ground impact. The Swaminathan Commission recommendations, which many farmers we speak with want implemented, include setting the MSP by pegging it to the cost of production. But this will also not have the desired impact, as it might only serve to ensure the farmer doesn’t go into loss, with little scope for a profit.

Subsidies and loan waivers

Loan waivers – announced in eight states as of end 2018[6] – have overwhelming support from farmers. Farmers such as Suresh (Jharkhand), Shravan Yadav or Niranjan Kumar (both from Bihar), believe that loan waivers are “100% beneficial” for farmers. Ram Lakhan Jadhav from Bihar says that loan waivers “free” farmers and they no longer have to live in fear of having to sell their land to make ends meet; they can think of the ways forward.

Loan waivers as a sustainable strategy to revive Indian agriculture have been questioned by many economists, and Bina Agarwal sums it up thus: ‘They deplete state finances, undermine bank culture, and barely reach 20-25 per cent farmers who have access to institutional credit, but not the marginal farmers or labourers who depend on moneylenders, or get no credit at all.’⁴

Indeed, farmers on Shram ka Samman pointed the difficulty in accessing bank credit, which means loan waivers might not reach those who need it the most, as they may not have borrowed from formal credit sources. Sunil Mandal from Dhanbad, Jharkhand, explains how, for many farmers, land records are in their grandfathers’ name, which means banks might not lend in their name. The number of documents to produce and changes to make dissuade many farmers who have migrated out of distress from accessing these loans, as they end up missing work days and therefore lose pay in the process.

All the same, loan waivers are considered a useful stop-gap solution for the debt-ridden farmer. Kavitha Kuruganti from the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture discusses that while loan waivers could be useful, these need to be followed by holistic strategies to ‘prevent farmers from falling back into an unbearable situation of indebtedness’[7].

Farmers also recognize that loan waivers only bring temporary relief, and believe that subsidies are the way to go. Although Surendar (Bihar) is all praise for loan waivers being given in other states, he believes that the next step is to provide subsidies for inputs such as seeds and fertilisers, and electricity, among others. Many farmers echoed this call for subsidies, retaining a Green Revolution-era process that has since been considered redundant⁴. Over the last decade, subsidies are increasingly being considered through the mode of direct transfers to farmers’ bank accounts, rather than on specific inputs, leaving the decision on how to use the cash to the farmer. The Telangana direct transfer scheme for farmers is often held up as a successful case study. The usefulness of these, however, should be considered in the Indian context of poor financial inclusion and the limitations of digital payments technologies, which are often used for these transfers[8], and fundamentally, whether the direct transfer goes to farmers who need it the most⁵.

What this means: Suggestions from economists on moving away from the subsidy culture include encouraging farmers to shift to ‘low-cost, low-external input ecological agriculture’⁷ and research and adoption of productivity-enhancing methods and crop insurance based on rainfall estimates⁴. Even as access to formal credit for farmers needs to be strengthened, Kuruganti suggests that credit products designed for farmers should include some relief for them in case of disasters or losses, which puts them in the face of “unlimited liability”.

 

The ways forward

The question of reviving Indian agriculture has kept politicians, bureaucrats and experts busy for decades, with solutions being routinely doled out and failing. Even seemingly good solutions fail for reasons that have to do with the complexities of data collection, technological connectivity, financial inclusion, and so on. An in-depth, non-populist understanding of farmers’ issues are needed, with the representation of farmers across landholding size, caste, tribe status, and, importantly, gender, since policies often assume that the principal farmer is male, ignoring ground realities of women-farmed land and women farming in the absence of men who have migrated.

Featured image from https://www.flickr.com/photos/145113407@N05/

As we begin 2019, we are delighted to also share that Gram Vaani has completed ten years of operations! It has been a long journey, from university technology labs to now having worked with over 150 partners across several countries and millions of users, with tremendous learning for all of us, many successes and failures, and it is indeed junctures like this that have us take a pause and reflect.

We started with building technologies for community media that could lead to social development, and indeed we have seen all this working to achieve strong impact. Last year, we wrote to you about what we learnt from our work to build gender equitable and healthy societies by using ICTs, and our various collaborations to enhance access to and resilience in livelihoods for people in rural or semi-urban India. This update is about what we do to help people access their rights and how simple, low-cost community media – supported by offline means – can be critical in connecting people with safety nets and essential services.

We tell you about how our Mobile Vaani networks inform people about government policies and enable them to learn from each other to be able to access their entitlements.

We show examples of how community media networks can help monitor the performance of different schemes and services, and bring accountability towards improved public services delivery and grievance redressal.

We emphasize the role that social workers play in helping the poor get access to their entitlements, and how technology alone is inadequate to guarantee that citizens will be able to access their rights.

The same principles of media that help improve awareness among people and impose checks and balances on power structures, are relevant even in the space of industrial workers. We tell you about our platform in Delhi NCR for migrant workers in the garment sector and other industries, and our work with the TTCU, GAFWU, and PTS women trade unions in South India, to improve working conditions and facilitate action against violations.

ICT4D: Impactful, but still limited

All these projects have produced tremendous impact, as have other projects we have shared with you earlier. And we are not alone – many other fantastic organizations have applied technology in very innovative ways to bring social change. Yet so much remains the same. Problems of gender equity, exploitation of the poor, growing inequality, etc., continue to persist. Technology for development programmes operate within this fabric with an aim to change it, but often find it hard to scale their impact or distribute the impact progressively, while the same underlying technologies are appropriated more effectively by the privileged and increase inequalities even further.

All this only strengthens our resolve that we need to do more to utilize new technologies and enable the poor and marginalized to use them very effectively, that the social impact sector needs to do more by diverting more capital towards development and equality, the state needs to be more realistic in its assumptions of what technology can really achieve and where it needs to be supplemented with human development, and society needs to get more serious at bridging the growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

What’s new in Mobile Vaani

With that note, we are excited to announce that Mobile Vaani is now available on an app, and we are in the process of integrating exciting speech technologies to be able to scale and automate the operations more easily. We are also venturing in a new direction of aiding data collection for community health workers through an AI-based optical scanning technology that will enable real-time data collection and intelligent decision making for local planning.

We are also actively writing about our learning in using technology for development, and what needs to be done in a better way. Check out some of the latest papers and writings by our team on enabling local communities to build sustainable networks to utilize technology, why technology adoption among rural women needs to be encouraged patiently, the importance of social workers to help the poor utilize government schemes, how community media can hold employers to account when the government fails, views on the anti-migrant violence in Gujarat collected by our users, and how responsible outcomes can be ensured from the use of technology.

Several of our projects have also been mentioned in the media, of bringing legal aid to Indian garment workers, rural voices to the fore, protection of children from abuse, and about Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon on the use of Mobile Vaani to create engagement around the TV serial, now headed into its third season starting from Jan 26^th 2019

Below are our recent initiatives to help people access their rights and how community media, together with offline means can connect people with safety nets and essential services. We look forward to your support in continuing, strengthening, learning and sharing more about these initiatives. Please write to us at contact@gramvaani.org if you’d like to know more about any of these programs or explore areas of collaboration.

Building awareness of policies and public services, and strengthening accountability

 

Creating systems for addressing grievances

Engaging with workers & their employers towards meeting workers’ rights

by Vani Viswanathan

by Vani Viswanathan

Neha is a proud, beaming 16-year-old. Standing on the lawns outside Delhi’s India Gate, she speaks to the camera about how she is the first female volunteer with Jharkhand Mobile Vaani– a voice-based social network for rural India – to get an opportunity to visit Delhi for a workshop. She talks about how she visits several villages, interacts with the communities and village heads and relays news from the villages on Mobile Vaani. But most importantly, she talks about how she and other female volunteers with Jharkhand Mobile Vaani have learnt a lot – to travel, meet people, discuss issues with them – and present these issues with confidence on Mobile Vaani.

Much has been written about the role of technology in increasing access to information, helping lead to attitude change and strengthening accountability of governments and institutions. Technology helps us reach people we haven’t been able to reach before, and technology helps us talk about topics that are sensitive and often don’t find a place in mainstream community discussions – such as on sexuality or early marriage or domestic violence.

At Mobile Vaani, for instance, hyperlocal news – at the block or Panchayat level – is reported for the benefit of the community, and campaigns are run on a range of topics, ranging from sexual and reproductive rights, to maternal health, to early and child marriage, to the functioning of public health institutions at the village or block levels. All of this is available to people through a number they can call from their mobile phones, following which they can select options to listen to news, record their opinions, or catch up on the latest bits of information on a campaign they’re interested in. Started in 2012 by Gram Vaani, Mobile Vaani today reaches over 100,000 people in rural areas in 25 districts across Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh.

However, all this hasn’t happened organically, simply through the power of technology. Technology adoption needs to be nurtured – a ‘human touch’ is critical to extending the use of technology to people at the periphery, such as women, people from low-income groups, people living in far-flung rural areas, etc.

This belief is central to Mobile Vaani’s community volunteer system. Our volunteers are community members who spread the word about Mobile Vaani among the community, collect from community members news and happenings, conceptualize new and locally relevant ways in which the platform can be used, and use their contacts and influence with local governance officials for grievance redressal.

In this article, we discuss our experiences in bringing women users on to the Mobile Vaani platform.

Reaching women, a significant, peripheral population

A significant reason why fostering technology adoption among women users is hard, is simply poor access to mobile phones. Access that women – especially those in rural India – have to mobile phones is limited, putting them out of reach of services such as ours, or other trade or information gathering opportunities. Only 1 in 3 women in rural India owns a mobile phone, according to the National Family Health Survey-4; most women who access mobile phones use their male relative’s, and their use is strictly monitored by the male family member.

Despite strong efforts undertaken by Mobile Vaani’s volunteers, surveys taken using the IVR platform show that women comprise hardly 23% of users on Mobile Vaani.

In a different project however, in partnership with Gram Tarang, we set up a platform, Tarang Vaani, for young migrant women from Orissa living in Bengaluru to connect and share their stories. The women engaging through Tarang Vaani are all young, and who, by virtue of having left their homes and villages, possibly for the first time, were ‘allowed’ to own mobile phones – a basic smart phone. The Tarang Vaani platform is exclusively used by women only, and has become a space for them to share stories of the process of their migration, folk tales, songs and personal experiences. However, it took several months of comfort with using the platform and with sharing their thoughts for the usage to stabilize and sustain itself.

Another way to overcome technology literacy barriers is to create spaces for women where they physically meet each other, and then use the technology to initiate discussions and information sharing activities in these meetings. We are working through this pathway in Bihar with women Self Help Groups (SHG) organized by JEEViKA, where even when only 2-3 women of the SHG have mobile phones (out of 10-12 SHG members in the group), there are vibrant discussions that happen during the SHG meetings, initiated by the SHG leaders who dial into Mobile Vaani and have others listen to the content during the meetings.

Calling into the platforms and listening to content is only the first step – encouraging the women to share their thoughts on the platform is even harder. Mobile Vaani faces barriers in increasing female participation in discussions on the IVRS; while campaigns that are focused on women have many female listeners who record their opinions, few women raise local issues for grievance redressal, report local news or share their opinions on ‘hot’ topics publicly. Dr. Orlanda Ruthven, who is the head for workforce programmes at Gram Vaani, suggests that this could be because news and public discussions, in the Indian rural context, are seen as belonging to the male sphere. “Campaigns do get traction from women, because women receive pre-recorded information and record their responses to it,” she says. “However, where user-generated content – bottom-up information, such as local news or grievances – comes into the picture, few women actively voice their opinions. Communities automatically assume that this is a space for men, where women don’t have much of a role to play,” says Dr. Ruthven.

Indeed, campaigns where women are the key target audiences see high participation from women, receiving hundreds of calls per day. Episodes of Oxfam’s campaign on maternal health, or CREA’s campaign informing women about the reservations available to them to contest Panchayat elections, or Tarang Vaani reaching out to young women migrant workers in Bangalore, have been heard thousands of times and get active participation from the women as well.

Making technology-based platforms more accessible to women

What this tells us is that for participation of women in the ‘public sphere’ that technology enables, we need to re-imagine what we can do to facilitate women’s access to these spaces. We are reconsidering, for example, how our ‘club’ model – of volunteers drawn from the community – could be reshaped to bring more women in as listeners and callers. Most of our current volunteers are men, and their mobility within local communities makes it easy for them to approach other men, but can we build women-only clubs that provide a more accessible space for women to listen and contribute in public discussions?

We are also exploring the issue of trust between users and the platform – can the initial adoption by men, and consequently the high degree of trust established between them and the platform, be leveraged to encourage them to share the platform and messages with women members in their households? Another pathway we are keen to experiment with is to mobilise listeners and participants via schools, so that young women – who are likely to be far more technology savvy than their mothers – are the ones to adopt the platform and then encourage wider use within their family.

We don’t have all the answers yet, but we acknowledge that in rural India, we do need to put different ideas to work to have more women adopt technology platforms and participate on them. We hope that through our efforts, women can move from being peripheral users of our technology to core contributors, adding different voices, colours and ideas of their own.

Gram Vaani believes in using appropriate technology and people driven processes to build participatory media networks that can empower communities. Mobile Vaani is a platform developed by Gram Vaani that seeks to serve as a social media network for rural India, based on and IVR (interactive voice response) system.

***

This article was originally published in the August 16, 2017 edition of In Plainspeak, an e-magazine on issues of sexual and reproductive health in the Global South.