Nilika Mehrotra

Negotiating Gender and Disability in Rural Haryana

This paper argues that disability is gendered, culturally constituted and socially negotiated. It explores the nature and form of disability afflicting the individual and social life of women in rural Haryana, in terms of both physical and mental parameters. It describes the community and the family strategies for supporting disabled women in negotiating family, work, economy and society. It also highlights the social effects of physical disability on various stages of their life cycle. Disability remains an obstruction in attaining the full potential of an individual. Each community has its characteristic way of understanding disability and coping with its disabled population. Disability locates the individual in a compromised position not only for biological reasons, but also as a consequence of a complex combination of such non-biological factors as gender, caste, class, neighbourhood relations, and the nature of kinship and family structure. This paper explores the conceptual and empirical implications of the proposition that ‘disability is culturally constructed and socially negotiated’. If disability creates obstacles for individuals in discharging their social responsibilities, th ere are inbuilt cultural mechanisms and social networks available to them as coping strategies within the family, kinship, caste and community. Voluntary agencies and the state machinery, through various empowerment initiatives, are making consistent efforts to minimi se, if not eliminate, the social hindrances and constraints that result from physical disability. 1 Since a large number of the disabled lives in rural areas, the absence of accurate information on the magnitude of the problem has hampered planning of realistic policies and services for them. In urban areas, the disabled are recognised as a social category for their special needs. There are attempts to integrate them into the social mainstream through institutions like special schools and training centres. The situation is different in rural areas. Here the disabled do not constitute a socially recognised group; they often continue to function as normal members of society. In order to understand disability in a rural area, it is necessary to re cognise its social organisation of production, cultural values and the structure of gender relations.

Exploring Constructs of Intellectual Disability and Personhood in Haryana and Delhi

Intellectual disability is one of the least researched areas in social science inquiry. This paper traces the complex interplay between the concepts of intellectual disability, gender and personhood. It outlines the socio-historical and cross-cultural variability of intellectual disability, and its connections with class, urbanisation and modernisation. Based on ethnographic material on the disabled in Delhi and the neighbouring state of Haryana, it presents case studies of two NGOs working with the intellectually disabled, namely, Arpan, a school for the mentally retarded in Rohtak, Haryana, and Action for Autism in New Delhi. It engages specifically with the notion of masculinity and the manner in which intellectually disabled male adults are feminised and infantilised. An attempt is made to understand how disabled individuals and their families seek social spaces for themselves and negotiate the social compulsions for ‘normalcy’ and competent adulthood.

Disability, gender and caste intersections in Indian economy

Abstract Purpose The aim of this chapter is to explore the marginal dimensions of disability, gender and caste in the context of Indian economy in recent globalizing times. Approach Using an intersectional approach it is argued that caste, gender and disability implicate and impact the opportunities available to persons as these account for the marginalities in a developing economy. The chapter is based on ethnographic and empirical data and it critically analyses the trends. Findings This study shows how social and cultural frames on one hand and the nature of diverse occupational pursuits on the other set the context within which a person with dalit 1 status, with impairments and also a woman is likely to suffer the most. Social contexts are diverse and situation of persons within different groups varies. The chapter also examines state and NGO initiatives in this regard and suggests the limitations and possibilities of dalits with disabilities having access to resources within neo-liberal economy. Originality The findings expand the scope of disability research having policy implications.

Perceiving feminism: Some local responses

This paper explores the responses of some womens groups and women activists based in Delhi, during the late 1980s, to the concept of feminism. It attemps to understand how middle-class women and grass roots level women express their needs, aspirations and agenda in the context of womens movement in India. The focus here is on their differential responses and how these can be grounded in the contexts based on caste, class age, and political exposure and affiliations. These differences are reflected in the interpersonal behaviour of women activists and get translated into the way they understand womens issues and evolve strategies to resolve them. Such an understanding is crucial for building a theory of womens movement in India

Disability Studies: Developments in Anthropology

Despite the proliferation of disability studies (DS) in the USA and Britain over the last three decades, anthropology—for a discipline committed to understanding alterity, has contributed surprisingly little to the study of disability. There have been relatively few ethnographic studies that engage directly with disability; fewer still explicitly engage with the broader interdisciplinary arena of DS to document and analyse the experience of disability in the global South. Until recently, this has meant that DS has been dominated by the concerns of disabled people, policymakers and service providers in western, industrialised countries, rather than expanding to explore the different ways in which disability might be configured cross-culturally (e.g. see Miles 2002; Mehrotra 2011; Grech 2011, 2012). Ingstad and Whyte noted this gap in their pioneering edited collection Disability and Culture (1995) 20 years ago; Kasnitz and Shuttleworth made the same point a few years later (2001a, b); and, according to Rapp and Ginsburg (2012; Ginsburg and Rapp 2013), the lacuna still remains. Why that should be so is a matter of speculation. Rapp and Ginsburg, based on their own experiences in the USA, ultimately favour a Freudian explanation: that anthropologists, fearful of the loss that disability ultimately brings to us all, in one form or another, are in denial (2012: 174). Linton (1998) suggests that the lack of interest shown by anthropologists in disability corresponds with the fact that there are so few disabled anthropologists, and that those who do make it within the academy become marginalised. ‘Indiana Jones in a wheelchair’, to borrow Kasnitz and Shuttleworth’s (2001a) image, is not a picture easily conjured up, other than as parody. By the same token, we would also suggest (based on anecdotal evidence from conversations with colleagues over the years) that some anthropologists might implicitly consider ‘the disabled’ as inherently less interesting—because they are assumed to be intrinsically unable to engage fully in social life—as creators and consumers of culture than more mainstream representatives of the populations being studied. Despite Mead’s injunction back in the 1950s for us to study human beings in all their diversity, this is an understanding of disabled people that persists (Mead 1953).

Isliye dard hota hai

Mental health of women is often looked at from a biomedical lens. Mental health issues resulting out of globalising economic and cultural forces are generally neglected. This often implies that social problems are understood as individual problems. Increasingly discourses in sociology and anthropology explore mental health in bio-cultural terms where social structural arrangements are said to contribute majorly to the phenomenon of psychosocial distress. There is a need to explore the ways in which the social and economic conditions which structure women’s existence as part of poor urban households require attention. This article moves away from the mental illness paradigm through which distress of women is usually understood. With the help of narratives, it seeks to explore the distress of women in the context of the community they live in and the gender roles they negotiate.

Displacement from Kashmir: Gendered Responses

The loss of one’s territory has adverse consequences on the displaced persons. The resettlement of displaced Kashmiri people in urban centres has led to a redefinition of gender roles. The context-specific positions of men and women influenced their agency in the resettlement period. Through their active participation, the displaced persons give new meanings to their life and utilise various strategies to cope with the changes in their social structure due to displacement.

Book reviews and notices : SARAH CALDWELL, Oh terrifying mother: Sexuality, violence and worship of the goddess Kali. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999. xviii + 320 pp. Figures, map, notes, references, glossary, index. Rs. 575 (hardback)

In her last chapter, the author includes as ’living voices’ the old students of two institutions-Isabella Thobum College, Lucknow, and Kinnaird College, Lahore-as those who inherited the legacies of the cross-cultural work done by the missionary women. While this last section, which draws its conclusions from questionnaires and interviews, is interesting in itself, it is not quite clear how it connects to the rest of the book. It is true that this section is meant to sub-

Book reviews and notices : LEELA DUBE, Anthropological explorations in gender: Intersecting fields. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001. 268 pp. Tables, figures, notes, references, index. Rs. 425 (hardback)

Gender in India is an important area of inquiry in the social sciences and social anthropology in particular. However, one rarely comes across works which not only address a wide range of issues but also handle them with insight and precision in the way this work does. What makes this book unique is Dube’s ability to relate her anthropological experiences with her own life. In the introduction, a freshly written piece, she has contextualised her anthropological findings against the backdrop of her family background, childhood training and growing up experiences, using them as windows to gain an understanding of the gender asymmetry in a manner that is not only worth noting but also sets a new trend in Indian anthropology. In such an exercise, the distinction between professional and social life collapses, both merging into each other and helping Dube in her

Review Article : Romy Borooah, Kathleen Cloud, Subadra Seshadri, T.S. Saraswathi, Jean T. Peterson and Amita Verma. (eds.), Capturing Complexity: An Interdisciplinary Look at Women, Households and Development. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994. 324 pages. Rs. 295 (hb)/Rs. 175 (pb)

they are working with. But it is also true that donors and governments are reluctant to fund innovations which are as yet untested. It is clear from the experiences documented here that many of these innovations were not part of the initial project design but evolved in the course of implementation. In a world where resources are scarce, programmes with demonstrable quality will always find a sponsor. Wignaraja’s recommendations are an extensive wish list ranging from identifying (and educating) sensitive donors, organising collaborative arrangements amongst them, working on making their procedures more flexible, institution-building (i.e., the establishment of research institutes dedicated to PAR), training of trainers and intermediaries who will act as catalysts. Moreover, issues arising out of the innovative approaches will need to be researched and the structural biases understood. In short, although much has been done, much still remains, implying further purpose in encapsulating the experiences of pioneering innovations in poverty alleviation programmes in the 1980s. Further, the author’s attempt to apply such interventions in Africa and Latin America enhances our under-