In their best-selling book, our colleagues Nandita Rajahansa and Saurabh Mukherjea highlighted the rise of the Indian woman as a key theme underpinning India’s economic progress. Whilst encouraging, it has taken its time coming. Not without effort though. Indeed, a blog we featured here a few months ago attributed women’s liberation as one of the key reasons why China got rich and India didn’t. The blog talked about how bills to free up women from the social shackles and contribute to economic growth came up around the same time (1950s) in both China and India. It did become law in the former and failed in the latter.
“Visvesvaraya was impressed with how women in the Soviet Union, Japan and many European countries worked alongside men in factories. He boldly called for the entry of more women in the formal labour force in India, so that “the capacity of the nation to build up prosperity will advance at a bound”
But KT Shah framed the problem: “women were numerically the biggest minority in the country but were neglected because they were unlike social and religious minorities that “cry aloud to the high heavens about their rights or grievances”. Indian women did not use their collective voice to campaign for more rights.”
This is an excerpt from Niranjan Rajadhyaksha’s upcoming book “Ideas that shaped modern India and its economy” talks about the 1938 National Planning Committee’s efforts to see how women could play a stronger role in the planned economy. The author notes the group tasked for this was chaired by Lakshmibai Rajwade, one of the earliest women doctors in the country, a campaigner for gender rights and an advocate of family planning and comprised of a stellar cast of women including the likes of Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Sarojini Naidu and Aruna Asif Ali. The author quotes from the group’s report: “We would like to displace the picture so deeply impressed upon the racial imagination of main striding forward to conquer new worlds, woman following wearily behind with a baby in her arms. The picture that we now envisage is that of man and woman, comrades of the road, going forward together, the child joyously shared by both. Such a reality we feel cannot but raise the manhood and womanhood of any nation.”
The report highlighted the challenges faced by women in the workplace and suggested remedial action including recognising the value of a woman’s household work and her right to a fair share of family income and property among others, making them independent economic units. The report also recommended a uniform civil code to replace the myriad civil code for various religious groups in India. On marriage, it said: “Marriage from rational point of view can no longer be a divine dispensation but a voluntary association of two individuals with rights and obligations attached to it.”
Whilst some recommendations were codified into law, the aspects of making women a part of the economic engine were ignored and instead women were relegated to targets of welfare. If you, like us enjoy Rajadhyaksha’s column in the Mint, you should look forward to this book.
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