Namita Waikar

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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&quot;I have heard that many
people have got good jobs and done well in life through government schemes,&quot; says Gauri. &quot;I’ve
seen this in advertisements on television.&quot;

Gauri Vaghela, however, does not actually know anyone
who has got these jobs or done well because of state schemes, as the ads claim,
and her own work options remain modest too. “I have done a skills course offered by the
government and can use the sewing machine,” says the 19-year-old. “I even got a
job [in a garment factory]. But it was an 8-hour shift for only Rs. 4,000 a
month, and some six kilometres from where I live. Almost everything went on
food and transport. So I quit after two months. Now,” she laughs, “I’m at home
and stitch clothes for neighbours at Rs. 100 per piece. But people here make
only two sets of clothes to last for a year, so I don’t make much money!&quot; 

We are talking with a group of young women in a slum colony in the Ramnagari area of
Bhuj city, in Gujarat’s Kachchh district. The conversation centres around the Lok Sabha elections – the
polling date here is today, April 23. 

In the 2014 elections, with around 9.47 lakh people voting of the registered nearly 15.34 lakh voters in Kachchh, the Bharatiya Janata Party won all the 26 Lok Sabha
constituencies in the state. The Member of Parliament from Kachchh, Vinod
Chavda, defeated his nearest rival, Dr. Dinesh Parmar of the Congress party, by over 2.5 lakh votes.
Moreover, in the 2017 Gujarat state elections, the Bhuj Assembly constituency
was among the 99 seats the BJP
won of a total of 182. The Congress got 77 seats.

Most of Ramnagari’s residents are
migrants from rural Kachchh, who came in search of work and settled here. There
are 78 such colonies in Bhuj – a
city of neary 150,000 people (Census 2011) – where migrants
from rural Gujarat live, says Aruna Dholakia, executive director of the Kutch
Mahila Vikas Sangathan, which works with women in Bhuj.

The 13 women we met in Ramnagari are all
between 17 and 23 years old. A few were born here and others came to Bhuj with
their parents. Only one among them, Puja Vaghela, has voted before, in the 2017
Assembly elections. None of the others, who are 18 years and above, including Gauri, have registered for
voting.

All have attended primary school, but
most dropped out thereafter, between Class 5 and 8, as did Gauri, who
studied up to Class 6 at a state-run boarding school in Kodki village in Bhuj taluka. Only one of them, Champa Vaghela, Gauri’s younger
sister,  has studied further and is in Class
10. Half the women cannot read or write well, including some who attended school
till Class 5.

Vanita Vadhiara’s schooldays came to an end when she was in Class 5. When she told her grandparents that she feared a boy who followed her everywhere, they took her out of school. She’s a good singer and was offered work with a music group. “But there were many boys in the group, so my parents didn’t give me permission,” she says. Vanita, along with her siblings, does bandhni work. For 1,000 dots of the tie-and-dye fabric, they earn Rs. 150 – and make around Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 1,500 a month.At 22, she doesn’t see what difference voting can bring to their lives. “We all had no toilets for many years and had to go out in the open to defecate. We were very afraid to go out at night. Many of us now do have toilets [just outside the house], but many of these are not connected [to the drainage line] and cannot be used. The poorest in these slums still have to defecate in the open.”

The men in the families of the assembled
women work as cooks, autorickshaw drivers, fruit vendors and labourers. Many of
the young women work as domestic workers or helpers in restaurant kitchens.  “My mother and I work from 4 p.m. till
midnight for party caterers, making rotis and washing utensils,” says 23-year-old Puja
Vaghela. “We get only Rs. 200 [each] for a day’s work. If we miss a day or
leave work early, our pay is cut. But we never get paid for jyada kaam – and we have to often work more.” 

She and the others all feel that women Members
of Parliament will be more responsive to the concerns of communities like
theirs. “We poor people need to have more money if we want to become leaders,”
says Gauri. “If half of Parliament is made up of women, they would go from
village to village and find out what problems women face. But what is happening
now is that even if a woman is elected, it is her father or husband who gets
more importance and holds the power.”

Their scepticism echoes around 50 kilometres away, in Dador village of Nakhatrana taluka of Kachchh district. “In this lokshahi [democracy], people are bought over – for Rs. 500 or 5,000
or even 50,000 for their votes,” says 65-year-old Haji
Ibrahim Gafoor, a 20-acre farmer who owns two buffaloes and cultivates castor. “The poorest get divided, half on one
side and half on the other, and don’t get any benefits. A leader of a community
gets money from the people fighting elections. But those who are under the
influence of that leader for voting, they don’t get any real benefits. They are
giving daan
in the matdaan
[donating their votes].”

Nanduba Jadeja, who we met in Vang village in the same taluka (she is
from Devisar village) has this advice for the government: “If they really want
to help people, they should waive the loans of farmers and pastoralists. It is because of the work they do that
we can survive – we get food to eat and milk to drink.  My request to the government is that they
should help these people.”

Nanduba, 60, works
with the Saiyere Jo Sangathan women’s collective of the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan. “Big
companies can fend for themselves, why does the government have to help them?” she
adds. “I have heard from TV news that their loans
are waived by the government. And when farmers ask for loan waivers, the
government tells them it doesn’t fit within their rules! People live because of agriculture in this country. They cannot eat the plastic that companies
manufacture.”

From Ramnagari to Dador and Vang, the issues expressed
by the people are clear. But, going by recent electoral history, will the voting
trends align with these issues?  

The writer would like to thank the
team at Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan in Bhuj, especially Shabana Pathan and
Rajvi Rabari of the KVMS’s Sakhi Sangini, and Hakimabai Theba of the
organisation’s Saiyere Jo Sangathan in Nakhatrana, Kachchh for their
assistance.

Young women, old hopes in Bhuj ballots

ભુજની મતપેટીઓ, યુવાન છોકરીઓ ને વૃદ્ધ આશાઓ

ਭੁਜ: ਔਰਤਾਂ ਦੀ ਪੀੜ੍ਹੀ ਭਾਵੇਂ ਨਵੀਂ ਹੈ ਪਰ ਉਮੀਦਾਂ ਉਹੀ... ਪੁਰਾਣੀਆਂ

নতুন মেয়েরা, পুরনো আশা আর ভুজের নির্বাচন

பூஜ் வாக்குகளில் பழைய நம்பிக்கைகளும் இளம் பெண்களும்

ଭୁଜ୍ ବାଲଟ ଉପରେ ଯୁବତୀ ଓ ବୃଦ୍ଧଙ୍କ ଆଶା

भुजच्या निवडणुकाः नवी पिढी, जुन्या आशा

ভূজৰ ভোটদান আৰু তৰুণীহঁতৰ পুৰণি আশাবোৰ

भुज: मतदान का खेल और महिलाओं के मुद्दे

بھُج میں پولنگ اور نوجوان خواتین کی پرانی امیدیں

Bhuj

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Young women, old hopes in Bhuj ballots

In Bhuj city and nearby villages of Kachchh district in Gujarat, young women and others speak of their hopes and doubts about elections, and why some of them won’t vote today, April 23, in the Lok Sabha polls

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