Gayatri Devi Parmar is head of Mahila Samiti, a PACS Programme partner that worked on women’s empowerment issues in 10 panchayats of Chhatarpur, Madhya Pradesh, in the Bundelkhand region.

She has been working on women’s issues since the late-1950s, and has worked as a teacher and criminal lawyer. She was also a Congress MLA in the Madhya Pradesh assembly for five years (1957-1962). In her own life too she has battled women’s empowerment issues.

So Gayatri Devi is in a good position to speak about what has changed for women in Bundelkhand -- and what has not.

One thing that has definitely changed is that many families, especially middle and upper class, have no problem with girls going to school. It wasn’t so during Gayatri Devi’s childhood.

Gayatri Devi was born in 1927 in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, a city with a large Muslim population, where Hindu women also remained in purdah (they did not reveal their faces in public). “I remember when I was very young we had to go to school in a cart that was covered from all sides. Often we would take turns to try and see what was going on outside. Sometimes, the handcart would topple,” she recalls with a laugh.

But she had an advantage. Her father, Tanshukh Rai Bhal, was a Gandhian freedom fighter, determined to give his four daughters a proper education. “He often referred to us as his ‘four sons’ and we would generally be seen sporting cotton trousers and kameez,” she recalls.

Conditions at school were different. “We could not be seen on the road, so when we had to go from one part of the school to another, across the road, we had to go through a special tunnel.”

After India gained independence, Gayatri Devi’s family arranged her marriage with Jung Bahadur Singh, a leader of the students’ movement at Allahabad University. Her father laid down two conditions which Jung Bahadur’s mother readily accepted: no dowry would be paid, and Gayatri Devi would not be in purdah.

After her marriage, Gayatri Devi moved with her husband to Nowgong in Chhatarpur where a job opportunity quickly opened up. A high school for girls had been started here, but the government was finding it difficult to get women teachers. Gayatri Devi had a BEd degree by then, and thus began to work as a teacher in 1954. But there were frequent transfers and she had small children of her own. She did what women in this position do even today -- she quit.

But Gayatri Devi was not willing to stay confined within the four walls of her home. Together with some upper class women from Chhatarpur she set up the Vindhyapradesh Mahila Samiti, in 1953, a semi-government organisation that formed mahila mandals (women’s groups) and conducted literacy classes in six districts.

In 1957, when Madhya Pradesh’s first state assembly elections were held, she was offered a ticket by the Congress Party, which was keen on putting up women candidates. As many as 33 women, including Gayatri Devi, got elected.

Working as a legislator was not easy, she recalls. “I didn’t understand the budget. I often had to take the help of senior MLAs.” Simultaneously, she was studying to become a criminal lawyer.

One of her significant contributions as an MLA was to persuade the government to relax education norms for women applying for posts in schools and hospitals -- to make up for the shortfall in staff, especially female staff.

Today, things are different. It is not difficult to find eligible women candidates for vacancies in schools. However, women are still hampered by lack of mobility, she feels. Hence, in the PACS Programme project run by Mahila Samiti, one of the activities was buying cycles for adolescent girls and teaching them how to ride them. “When a girl learns to cycle she can go to high school in a nearby village. Otherwise, she has to drop out.”

Otherwise too, women’s education levels in Chhatarpur and the rest of Bundelkhand remain poor. In Chhatarpur, for instance, nearly 60% of women are illiterate according to official statistics. The figure is almost the same in nearby Tikamgarh and is worse in Lalitpur, in the Uttar Pradesh part of Bundelkhand, where nearly 70% of women are illiterate.

Literacy is a definite asset for a woman, even if does not lead to suitable employment, Gayatri Devi feels. “Knowledge is always useful. A woman can use it in her personal life and change it. Also, a literate woman is more likely to ensure that the next generation gets a proper education.”

However, schools do not usually impart the knowledge that every woman must have. So, under the PACS Programme project, Mahila Samiti ran a ‘life skills training’ module for girls. “They were given necessary information about health, about their bodies, and about gender issues,” Gayatri Devi explains. “They were also taught skills like operating common machines and doing household repairs.”

Such skills can enhance a woman’s income-earning capacity in a predominantly agricultural region like Bundelkhand where there is no modern industry other than a large BHEL unit near Jhansi.

Lack of alternative income opportunities has placed women in a difficult situation, says Gayatri Devi. “Due to work done by NGOs and others, women are becoming more assertive and capable. They are solving problems by themselves, and they are asserting themselves for their rights on issues like PDS (public distribution system) entitlements.”

But such assertiveness is not complemented in Bundelkhand by suitable income-earning opportunities. “Today, only the NGO sector provides some scope for women with drive,” says Gayatri Devi.

Mahila Samiti’s PACS Programme project itself is an example of this. It provided field work opportunities to two harassed women who had left their homes and gone to stay in the Mahila Samiti’s shelter for battered women in Chhatarpur town. While they worked in the PACS Programme project, the two women enhanced their educational qualifications and, at the end of the project, found good openings in other organisations.

But these are the exceptions. The overwhelming majority of women in Bundelkhand are forced to do backbreaking labour in the fields or work as daily wage earners under exploitative conditions. The situation has worsened in the last few years due to drought across Bundelkhand. Thousands of families have migrated. “Half the women in our SHGs (self-help groups) have left,” Gayatri Devi says. Women from migrating families, especially girls, are extremely vulnerable to sexual exploitation in big cities, she adds.

The big challenge in Bundelkhand therefore is to create alternative employment opportunities, especially for women.

Another big challenge is domestic violence. “Particularly in Bundelkhand,” Gayatri Devi says, “men beat up their wives for the flimsiest of reasons.” And people continue to get away with murder. “Just recently, in Gwalior, a man killed his wife, and no FIR was filed until there was a protest.”

While domestic violence must be strongly combated through legal means, the issue can ultimately be tackled only through large-scale gender sensitisation programmes, she feels. A beginning was made in 2001 when Mahila Samiti undertook a ‘jagruti yatra’ (awareness rally) through 70 villages in the district to highlight the issue of violence against women.

That was the first time, Gayatri Devi says, the issue was talked about openly in villages. But it was just a beginning. After working with women for over 40 years, Gayatri Devi feels “it is time we worked with male groups”.

(This story is based partially on inputs from Write Solutions, Bhopal)