BIHAR

Government's Discrimination against Women Teachers

Krishna Chaitanya The decision to slash the quota for women anti-women dimension of the feudal interests present government in Bihar
T H E Bihar government recently slashed the quota for women teachers in primary schools from 50 per cent to just 3 per cent. This is in violation of a 1987 central government directive which requires that half such jobs should be reserved for women. In the first week of October, the Bihar government announced the recruitment of 25,000 primary teachers and published advertisements to that effect. What was surprising in the government decision was the condition that these appointments would be made from untrained candidates only. This meant that the 35,000 qualified and trained teachers registered with the employment exchanges would not be considered for appointment. A n d then followed the decision to slash the quota for women to just 3 per cent. The directive to do this has come from the chief minister Lalu Prasad himself and his government has sought to justify this by claiming that 50 per cent reservation for women teachers was violative of the state policy on reservations, based on an all party consensus according to which only a 3 per cent reservation has been provided to women of all castes belonging to families having an annual income below the minimum income tax limit. The present system of reservation in state government jobs came into being in 1979. The provision of 50 per cent reservation for women in the appointment of primary school teachers was made much later in 1987 following a central government directive to do so. The directive itself followed an agreement between the central and state governments to evolve a norm for the appointment of women teachers. Bihar has, as per the 1991 census, the lowest male literacy rate and the second lowest female literacy rate. Not only this, Bihar has registered the least progress in these respects over the last 10 years. As for the spread of literacy among the females the state's performance has been nothing but atrocious compared to even the low progress registered at the all India level. An encouraging feature concerning female literacy, as revealed by the 1991 census, is that female literacy has registered greater increase than male Economic and Political Weekly

teachers symbolises the which dominate the

literacy. But on this count Bihar's performance has been poor compared to the all India level. The situation is all the more deplorable in rural areas. In 1981, female literacy rate in the rural areas was a meagre 10.17 per cent. Besides persisting poverty' it is the prevalence of feudal ethos, particularly the purdah system, which impede the spread of literacy among females. Though in the recent years the tendency to enrol children in schools has perceptibly increased, the practice of withdrawing girls from schools even before completion of primary and secondary level schooling has not declined. This is as true of landlord and rich peasant upper castes families as it is of middle peasant castes. Agricultural labourers and poor peasant families, mostly from dalit castes, lack the wherewithal to afford the education of children and if they do, it is the male child who gets preference, given the persisting gender bias. Given this setting increasing the number of women teachers in primary and secondary schools would have been one sure way of spreading education among females. But in Bihar the percentage of women teachers particularly trained ones is very low, even lower than the low national percentage. Indeed if we see the rural/urban female literacy rate in the context of the number of women teachers in primary schools it would seem that female literacy is indeed a function of the number of women teachers in schools. So if the enrolment and retention of girls in the schools is to be encouraged then the number of trained women teachers have to be increased in the primary and secondary schools. But instead of doing this the government of Bihar has taken the retrogressive step of reducing the quota for women teachers. A n d the Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad has justified this on the plea that if 50 per cent reservation for women is continued, the bulk of the jobs would go to upper caste women since the number of educated women among backward castes is very small. The same rationale has been applied to disqualify trained teachers for these 25,000 jobs. While it is true that the majority of

educated and trained women come from the upper castes, this is no justification for slashing the quota for women teachers since gender bias against women is a universal phenomenon regardless of the caste and class to which they belong. Besides, women from upper castes also have to undertake a long and arduous struggle against feudal ethos inside the family. Outside the family too the struggle is equally tough. Upper caste women also therefore need j o b reservation in the same way as backward caste women. So, instead of reducing the quota for women from 50 to 3 per cent, what was needed was to apportion this 50 per cent among women of various castes. In the backward castes'' struggle for social justice, which this government claims to be championing, there seems to be no place for women. The Bihar chief minister has been advising women to stick to household chores, rearing children and knitting and sewing. By doing this he is only espousing the class view of the kulaks on the women's questions. The backward caste women in rural Bihar enjoy more freedom and a better status as compared to the upper caste women. They go to the fields for work. A n t i - w o m e n phenomena like large dowries are not prevalent among the backward castes. At the same time widowremarriage, almost non-existent among upper castes, is widely prevalent among the backward castes. But as the feudalised upper sections of the backward castes started gaining prosperity w i t h the kulakisation of agriculture, the first thing they did was to emulate the upper castes in their attitude to women and they withdrew women from field labour. While the prosperity of the newly emerging kulaks grew, other anti-women phenomena became reinforced. They started demanding huge dowries, widow remarriage began to decline and women became tied to the home. Women's education took a backseat. The question never arose of a 50 per cent job reservation for women. Instead the proposal was made for 3 per cent reservation for women and this was accepted by all without m u r m u r If the late 70s marked the attempt of the kulaks to find a place in the ruling classes, the present phase in Bihar symbolises the kulaks' emergence as the ruling class in the state. Enmeshed as this class is in feudal values it believes that women should be confined to the four walls of the home and rest content with rearing children and conducting domestic chores, that women going out and w o r k ' ing is undignified and so on. And the deci sion to slash the quota for women teachers symbolises the anti-women dimension of the kulaks who dominate the present government of Bihar. 2925

December 21, 1991