by Kamla Bhasin and Nighat Said Khan

Kamla Bhasin and Nighat Said Khan, from India and Pakistan respectively, both work closely with rural women's development programs in South Asia and regularly collaborate on different activities. A recent one was a ten-day workshop they helped organize for 33 women development field workers in Pakistan the first national meeting of this kind. The women came together to share organizing experiences and strategies, examine the impact of projects, and to reflect on obstacles such as the current wave of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan.

In the following article, the authors tell the .story of a Nepali woman who freed herself from an oppressive marriage and later became a rural women's development officer. Her personal story is testimony to the strength and determination of many other unrecognized women leading feminist struggles in remote areas of the Third World.

Three women make their way down a steep, slippery and dangerous mountain path. They have already spent eighty minutes on this trail. They are tired and anxious because any loss of concentration could mean a step in the wrong direction, with possibly serious consequences. At the same time, they are trying to control their laughter because ahead of them a fourth woman is dancing down these same slopes, jumping from one edge to the other while she sings hilarious couplets to beckon the other three on. This woman is Kalpana, or in her own words, the "new" Kalpana "reborn four years ago" when she joined the Women's Development Section of the Ministry of Panchayat and Local Government in Nepal, as a Women Development Officer.

The story of Kalpana and her "rebirth" is perhaps not unique, yet it is a story needs to be told because it speaks for so many women like her and also speaks volumes about the women's development project that she is working with. Kalpana's personal struggles and the project that she is involved with bring home the uneventful drudgery of the lives of many lower middle-class women; lives that are totally confined to the home and the children, lives of degradation and insults and often also filled with emotional and physical torture. This story also brings home the multidimensional aspects of women's development and how one development project is trying to integrate these dimensions.

"My life," says Kalpana, "was like the life of many other lower middle-class women. I was married off at a young age to a middle-sized farmer. My in-laws lived as a joint family and I spent my years running a home for 22 people and having three children of my own. I was also teaching in a middle school, not because 1 liked teaching or had spare time but I needed the 230 rupees I earned. I spent that money on my children and on a few of my own personal needs. It wasn't much but at least it was mine.

"I was doing my best and more, but my husband was never happy with me. He resented my studying for a B.A. degree (because he himself was not a B.A.) and one day he burned all my books. Often he would beat me or threaten to murder me and once he even threw burning coals on my head. My life was worse than that of an animal. I was tired, 1 was fed up and I was frightened, but I saw no way out of my situation. "

"Then'one day in 1982 while I was pregnant with my fourth child, I saw' an advertisement for the post of a woman development officer and I knew that the turning point had come for me. I decided that I must leave and this job would enable me to do that. So on the pretext that I was ill and needed to go to Kathmandu. I took all my children and left. Initially I had problems getting the job because I did not have a B.A. but eventually I was told I could start work at less pay which would be increased after I completed my B.A.. which I have done since."

"That decision brought me to this job and to this village. Walling. I have been here since, with my work and my four children and my release from life imprisonment."

Only when Kalpana reveals herself her eyes get moist, her voice gets choked and one gets a glimpse of what she must have gone through. Otherwise. Kalpana's ever smiling face, her zest for life, her sense of humor, gives no indication of her past sufferings and the scars (both emotional and physical) which she still carries. Underneath her laughter lies her determination not only to change her own life and the lives of her children, but to try and change the society that allows and perpetuates the inequality of women and the inequality of the poor. All her energies are focused on this ""mission": to ""develop" the poor and to fight the injustices perpetrated on women.

By any definition Kalpana is a feminist without ever having heard the word. There are any number of other such unrecognized feminists in our countries; women who are quietly carrying on their struggles to improve their own and other women's lives and status. Because their feminism in born out of their experiences of oppressive patriarchy and not out of intellectual discourses, there is passion and determination in their voices and in their actions.

"It is not enough." says Kalpana. "to generate more income for women, it is also essential to attack patriarchy [she uses the Nepali equivalent of this term] and women's subordination. It is also not enough to ask others to change themselves without us also changing ourselves. In my own home I try to bring up my four children as equals so that my own family can be an example of equality between girls and boys."

Kalpana is very articulate on women's issues. She speak with an anger and a passion (but without the bitterness that one would have expected) and yet she speak with the logical conviction of one who has understood the essence of the problem. ""In our society," she says, "men are like gold, precious and valued. They can do no wrong. But women are like empty cans, valueless, to be kicked around. Women are also the property of men and our traditions reinforce this notion. For instance, why should only women wear all these signs of marriage like Sindhoor, special kinds of necklaces? To show that we are slaves, that we have a master, that we are owned? Why don't men have to show their marital status? "

This same logic has convinced Kalpana that the project that she works for "Production Credit for Rural Women," being implemented by the Women Development Section cannot be approached one-dimensionally. The project is meant to improve the economic status of rural women living below the poverty line by helping them get access to mainstream credit facilities. Kalpana agrees that credit, economic improvement and economic independence are essential for improving the lives of women. She has seen that women feel stronger if they have an income of their own: and their families and society also respect them more. But income generation and economic independence, she feels, arc only one aspect of the development of women. The other aspect is to struggle against the subordination of women and the control of women by men.

"We have to recognize that often men are a hindrance to the development of women. Women cannot develop in one area while they are still subjugated in another. When we talk of women's development we must also pay attention to real issues of oppression and subordination, like wife beating, men leaving one wife and marrying another, the image of women given by religion, etc. If we don't do this then a limited economic program may end up developing the shriman (male or husband) instead of the woman. Even if an economic project does help a woman to earn more but if she doesn't control that income, then one actually ends up helping the men. For instance, if in our project we help a woman get a loan for raising goats and the men in her household then go and sell the goats squander the money (and this does happen) then whom have we actually helped?"

Yet while recognizing and working toward all these aspects, Kalpana also argues that the dimension of patriarchy and women's subordination must be tackled very carefully and very slowly and that instead of a frontal attack on men, the project must help make women stronger and more clever so that they in turn can tackle the men in their households. More specifically, Kalpana's immediate attempts are to combine four main activities:

• linking women to commercial banks so that they can get credit for productive resources;

• initiating different kinds of community development activities so as to try and offset the general poverty situation;

• providing different kinds of training and exposure to low-income rural women;

• taking up women's issues and raising women's consciousness.

Production Credit and Community Development

As far as production loans are concerned, Kalpana has been able to get 193 women loans from commercial banks. These women have been able to get these loans without collateral by forming groups and giving the banks a group guarantee for the repayment of the loans. Most loans range between 1,000 and 6,000 rupees. These are for purchasing buffaloes (for milk production), and goat and pig raising. A few loans have also been given for ginger production, retail shops and tea shops. These loans have made a definite improvement in the incomes of women, despite some problems in marketing the products and the deaths of some of the animals. Kalpana is very aware of the pitfalls of such activities and is looking for solutions to these and other anticipated problems. 

As for community development projects, Kalpana has assisted the Walling Panchayat to construct three school buildings, one community center, one mahila milan chautara (a women's meeting place under a pipal tree on the banks of a large stream), one brick and cement bridge across a stream, and a drinking water scheme that now pipes water from six kilometers away. Other community activities include adult literacy, constructing latrines, providing family planning information, teaching women how to make and use oral rehydration therapy, etc.

All these projects were identified by the local community which contributed 30 to 50 percent of the costs by providing land and/or voluntary labor, while the last few mentioned were initiated and implemented as part of the Woman Development Section project. The role of women development officers (WDO) like Kalpana are to act as catalysts and as links between different line agencies and the community. In other words, as Kalpana says, "we have to go and bark at different offices. In fact our title should not be WDO but W.DOG!!"

Tackling Women's Oppression

Quite on her own initiative and in keeping with her acute understanding of the "woman question," Kalpana has been intervening in cases of wife beating and the mishandling of women. She uses her moral authority to put pressure on husbands guilty of beating their wives to stop doing so. She has also intervened in a case where the son of a better off family had an affair with a girl from a poor family. When the girl became pregnant the boy ran away and he and his family would take no responsibility for the girl's predicament. Through pressures from different sources Kalpana was able to get the boy to marry the girl. The flexibility in the project which allows, even encourages Kalpana to integrate these dimensions into her official work is indeed unusual and therefore very commendable.

Kalpana's personal example gives strength to the women in the area as does her general consciousness-raising of the women. One hopes that such strength will translate itself into action by the women themselves on these and other issues. Kalpana herself wants this to happen. Until then Kalpana is a local legend. To the people of Walling, the person who is efficient and who delivers in Kalpana. She is greeted with an affectionate "Bahni" (younger sister) or ""Didi" (older sister) by all who encounter her. In the last Panchayat election people wanted to vote for Kalpana only even though she was not contesting the election. But the greatest tribute to her was paid by a dying man. His last sip of water, the last holy sip" he wanted from Kalpana and one of her colleagues. These two women were, for him. the most "holy" in the area.

The story of Kalpana continues. She is determined to see that it does and we cannot help but believe her. Kalpana will continue to grow, to flower, to bloom and knowing her, she will continue to laugh. But there are too many other "old" Kalpanas imprisoned in "respectable" middle-class homes. Too many women subjugated, suppressed and thwarted. Too many yearning to breathe free. Perhaps the example of and efforts by women like Kalpana will make lives easier and more creative for many more women in Nepal.

For more information about rural women's development programs in Asia, contact: Kamla Bhasin, Freedom From Hunger Campaign Program Officer. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. P. O. Box .3088, 55 Max Mueller Marg. New Delhi. India 1100083.