Tales of courage & conviction

Rachna Singh

Women empowerment has been the subject of debate in academic soirees and conferences. The discussion gathers ‘sound and fury’ and breaches the academic circles when a Nirbhaya or Moga bus incident happens. However, as soon as the media storm abates, the matter goes back to the closed environs of statistical data and analysis. Not surprisingly then, most books and articles on the subject are either overwrought emotional outpourings or dry tomes of data that reflect trends in women literacy, gender ratios and crime.

Anirudha Dutta’s book Half a Billion Rising does not follow the beaten track. Dutta carves out a niche for himself where statistics and sentiments meld to form a readable ‘whole’. He makes out a case that ‘numbers never tell the full story’. So he peoples his book with real women from various echelons of society. Vignettes of strong women, who breached male bastions, are dexterously woven into the narrative. These women breathe life into a subject that has hitherto been the domain of feminists, sociologists and crime reporters.

We have the bright-eyed Daksha of the sing-song voice from Gujarat who vows not to get married because she has seen her mother enslaved in torturous matrimony. We have the brilliant Saira, born and brought up in the Mumbai slums, who prevails upon her father to let her continue her studies. There is Priyanka from Munger in Bihar who sponsors her own studies and manages admission to a Mass communication and Journalism course in Nalanda University. And then there is Salva from Hyderabad who breaks the traditional shackles that bind a Muslim girl to become a commercial pilot. These voices grip and beguile with revolutionary candour, spurring the reader to unravel the skeins of real life stories.

That is not to say that the book is not well researched. The statistics are there for all to see. Dutta dwells upon skewed gender ratios, literacy and mortality rates, female foeticide, crimes against women, et al. However, his analysis goes beyond the number crunching and examines the economic and social mores that cause or result in such statistics.

The anomalies in data are not brushed aside but analysed and interpreted. Tongue-in-cheek, Dutta tells us that Bihar has a better gender ratio than Punjab simply because only men migrate from Bihar in search of jobs while people from Punjab migrate with families.

Certain social practices are re-examined for fresh, though not always palatable perspectives. Our presumption that education and prosperity reduces malpractices like female foeticide comes a cropper when Dutta connects such a practice to prosperous families in Punjab. Prosperous families can afford gender determination tests and have access to pre-natal home kits of foreign origin. Apparently, it is also easy for them to fly to Bangkok for gender selective abortions, which are illegal in India.

In keeping with the time-honoured tradition of research analysts, Dutta also discusses the drivers of change — education, strong role models, NGOs and Government support. The narrative in such parts becomes somewhat staid and repetitive. Thankfully, he pulls the reader out of this morass soon enough.

Things become interesting when he attempts to measure and quantify women empowerment through not just literacy and crime graphs but representation in films and the electronic media. The growth of the protagonist in Queen from a timid girl, who would bend backwards for her fiancé to a woman who wants to live life on her own terms, becomes a metaphor of progress for the writer.

Dutta ends his book on a politically correct note when he devotes a chapter to how boys and men need to accept and respect these changes. But even as you rue this diplomatic mouth speak, he reverses gears and with brutal honesty and discusses the dark side of such empowerment. Women like Geetika Sharma and Bhanwri are held up as symbols of women whose hunger for power and money debilitates.

Dutta has penned a book that chronicles the lives of beleaguered women with a tremendous sense of empathy. He prods and pries and shakes the reader out of the ‘all is well with the world’ stupor. A book that spurs the reader to take up cudgels against the ills that have beset women.