The Times of India
June 22, 2005
THE FACELESS FEMALE WORKER:
Why women toil for free in food-for-work programme
by Brinda Karat
In a remote village in Rajgarh block of Mirzapur district in Uttar
Pradesh, before the outbreak of dawn, groups of workers make their
way to a food-for-work site where they are digging a large water
conservation tank under the National Food for Work Programme (FFWP).
There are an equal number of women in the group of about 70 workers.
In the context of popular demand for at least one-third reservations
for women in workdays created in employment schemes, their presence
could be taken as a positive aspect of the project. But in
discussions with these workers and hundreds of others at dozens of
similar work sites across the states of Maharashtra, Bihar, Uttar
Pradesh and West Bengal, a CPM-organised campaign unravelled a
different story.
The FFWP, redesigned by the UPA government, is fully funded by the
Centre with the wage component to be paid in grain and in cash. There
are several problems with the existing guidelines, including the
restrictive nature of the works permitted. At present, only earthwork
like digging tanks for water conservation is carried out. These
infirmities need to be addressed urgently.
The neo-liberal policy framework has brought upon an unprecedented
crisis in agriculture. It has inflicted unemployment and hunger on
millions of families dependent on agricultural work, the availability
of which has sharply decreased to less than 50 days in a year. Apart
from landless workers, poor peasant families steeped in debt because
of losses incurred in agricultural operations are also driven to find
work on the FFWP sites. The successful implementation of this
ambitious project as a precursor to the Employment Guarantee Act is
therefore literally a life and death issue for millions of our
people. Why else would women and men, many of them frail and with
diminishing strength, go day after day in temperatures reaching 45
degrees to dig and lift hard earth?
But the shame of it is that the producti-vity levels expected on a
food-for-work site are virtually impossible to achieve. To be paid a
minimum wage a worker is expected to dig 100 cubic feet that works
out to about 4,000 kilograms of mud, often hard rocky soil which
requires much more effort and energy.
The worker also has to lift the earth and carry it some distance
away. Only if it is for a distance of 20 metres or more will the
worker get a small supplementary compensatory rate called the lead
and lift rate. The two separate labour processes of digging the mud
and then lifting it and clearing the area are combined into one and
paid a single wage all over the country.
What is the magic governments use to get so much work done? Simply
this: Invisibilise the second worker, the shadow who lifts the earth
carrying 30 to 35 kilos of mud on her head, 150 times a day,
sometimes climbing mounds of mud 30 feet high, to dump the load. To
reach the productivity standards for a single wage set in different
states, actually two workers are required. In many cases a couple
works together and it is the woman who does the earth-lifting.
Without her work less than half the amount specified would be dug.
Yet in all the sites visited, with the exception of Manidhara
village, Sadar block, West Midnapore in West Bengal, the woman worker
was not paid at all.
In Manidhara, the panchayat had intervened to ensure equal wages for
the woman worker. This was done by reducing the productivity standard
to 50-60 cubic feet per worker so that a couple could complete 100
cubic feet or more and get double wage. However, even here there was
no calculation of earth-lifting as a separate process but it was only
the creative thinking of the panchayat which ensured an equal wage
for women workers.
In the FFWP sites single women cannot find independent work since the
earth-lifting work they do is not calculated separately. We found the
most tragic examples of two widows working together - one digging,
the other lifting or a mother working with two children but even
after an 11-hour workday, unable to meet even half the target.
In the transport godowns of Ajmeri Gate in Delhi, a coolie lifting
4,000 kilograms of sacks of grain from a truck parked next to a
godown a few feet away would be paid a minimum of 180 rupees. In
Mumbai it would be double the rate. The rates are low enough. But in
villages in government-organised projects earth-lifters do the work
for free.
There can be little doubt that this savage exploitation has gone
unnoticed because women do most of the earth-lifting. But the main
problem is the calculation of the work itself. The calculation of
piece rates for earthwork requires drastic overhaul. Each activity
like digging or lifting must be given a separate minimum wage. Only
then will the invisible worker get her rightful due.
The writer is a CPM politburo member.
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