Women’s agency, termed so often as “empowerment”, has become an issue for debate in Indian elections once again. In Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, and his challenger, Tejashwi Yadav, have engaged in heated exchanges on the matter. Kumar has queried what the RJD has done for women when in power. Yadav has responded by announcing ambitious schemes for women. Over the past two decades, Kumar’s coalition has introduced welfare transfers including bicycles for schoolgirls and passed legislation such as prohibition. The most recent scheme is the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, whereby cash transfers of Rs 10,000 are made as assistance to start a business. The exchange of words between the two goes to the heart of the matter. It raises the question of which public interventions empower women, not to mention how to determine what women must want. The answers have implications for India beyond Bihar.
Amartya Sen’s work on development as freedom throws light on how to think about the issue of women’s empowerment. He proposes that an individual is free to the extent that she has the capability to lead the kind of life she values. Goods, including cash transfers, will not hurt for sure but they are not the story. We must be endowed with capabilities to actualise our aspirations. What these capabilities are has intentionally been left unstated, for what constitutes a valuable life is to be chosen by the individual and not any other entity — it is certainly not to be decided by the political class. Sen suggests that the proximate determinants of human capabilities are health and education, though social norms can mediate outcomes. Small amounts of money to women will not result in the ecosystem needed to develop their capabilities. The recent spate of targeted cash or goods transfers can be considered inequitable.
Cash transfer on a large scale can wreck public finances. It leaves the government without the financial heft for infrastructure which the private sector is unlikely to provide. Two instances relevant to Bihar have been highlighted by the national media. First, there are public schools that function without proper buildings, electricity supply or enough qualified teachers. Second, a recent interview on national television showed a female student speaking of the absence of roads from her village to her college. It signals the relative roles of private and public goods in our lives. Cash transfers can provide an individual with the former but cannot generate roads, the quintessential public good, and which, it bears repeating, only the government is likely to provide. It is worth remembering that Kumar is completing two decades in office. That is long enough to have equipped Bihar with all the school buildings and roads that its people need. Their absence points to the consequence of positioning sushasan or good governance as cash transfers while ignoring the building of schools, hospitals and roads as necessary tools of empowerment.
A telling detail on the status of women in Bihar is the female-to-male labour force participation ratio. For every 100 men in the labour force, there are only six women here. The national average is over five times higher. Surely it cannot be the case that Bihar’s women are so different in their aspirations from their compatriots. Whether women have chosen to stay out of the workforce or they face constraints in employment is the crucial question. Ascertaining the aspirations of women and what may be working against their hopes would require far greater representation of women in government, which is markedly low all over India. Lalu Prasad had once stated that the social group he represented was seeking sur, or voice, and not vikas, or the development being offered in their name. He had gone on to bring about a caste revolution in governance. Now, it is time for a gender revolution; Bihar’s leading parties must field women candidates in numbers equal to those of men. Their discourse imagines women as passive recipients of welfare without addressing their aspiration for agency. Gender parity in governance is sine qua non if this is to change.
The author is honorary visiting professor, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram
