Breaking Rural Bonds Through Migration: The Failure of Development for Women in India

Abstract

This paper is about women and development in India. Despite many five year plans which have specifically focused on development in rural areas, the major thru st and rapid development has been in the urban centers. Thus capital and technology is concentrated in the urban centers with the rural areas totally dependent on the urban area for its sustenance. Since growth has been biased toward the capital intensive urban centers, the poor from the rural areas have no other options but to seek a livelihood in the urban centres resulting in an unparalled migration and an unprecedented growth of slums. This study focuses on women’s lives and opportunities and asks whether their opportunities are affected more by rural development programs than by migration. I employed two methods of data collection in the study. First, I interviewed the oldest member of every household in th ree areas: a developed village, a less developed village and an urban slum. Second, I randomly selected and interviewed women from these areas, to collect information on their lives and opportunities. Li stening to the narrations of the women, I di scovered th at the bonds of caste and gender, are more binding in the rural areas than in the urban are as. The lives and opportunities of women in rural India indicate that development programs have perpetuated the traditional gender and caste roles and thus marginalized or worsened the conditions for women in rural India. Migration to urban areas is inevitable unless rural planners and policy makers make it their first priority to develop policies that break the stranglehold of caste and landholding on the one hand and unequal gender relations on the other. If development is to reach the rural areas and benefit the women, planners and policy makers need to promote the autonomy of women in the rural areas and take into account the gender relations in a patriarchal society like India. The catalyst for change in the rural areas is the social organization of women.