Women in the Indian subcontinent have proven to be some of most effective harbingers of socio-economic change at the grassroots. No surprise that governments and NGOs often target rural women for growth-oriented projects. In fact, there are banks that exclusively target women for loans. Only recently (and most famously) the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, was on the Colbert Report explaining why 97 percent of the bank's borrowers are poor women and how they have proven they can handle money better than men.

There are several women who have successfully borne the torch of fundamental social change in the subcontinent. In the next couple posts I would like to celebrate a few of them who have risen from positions of incredible disadvantage and stood up to unprecedented challenges. Fortunately, they have been recognized for their efforts.

The women I mention in this post are bound by their humble roots and formidable opponents, namely multinational corporations. I am not getting into the merits and demerits of the individual cases. The women here sensed a threat to their very existence and fought it tooth and nail. They made sure that their voices were heard.

A tip of the hat to these daughters of the soil.

Mukta Jhodia, a 45-year-old tribal woman from the eastern Indian state of Orissa, became the first recipient of the Chingari Trust Award for Women Against Corporate Crime  in December last year. [The founders of this trust -- Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla -- are grassroots warriors themselves. I talk about them next]. Jhodia has been at the forefront of a 14-year-old struggle against an international mining conglomerate that would drive her tribal village from their ancestral land to make way for bauxite mines. Jhodia's fight has also been against the Indian federal and state governments and their police forces who want to make way for industries in tribal areas.

As journalist Kalpana Sharma  points out in her article on development issues, Jhodia's struggle symbolizes the lack of transparency in the country's "development schemes", where poor tribals are driven from their land and means of livelihood without a decent explanation or adequate compensation. Quoting from the article:

Women like Mukta are asking: Who has the right to decide how their land should be used? Who are the real owners of the wealth that lies beneath? [...]
So, if these communities resist, are they idiots who do not know what is best for them? From the response of the State, you would imagine that this is what the government thinks. Illiteracy and intelligence are equated. So, because many of the people are unlettered, it is assumed that they cannot understand issues like development, or what is best for them. But they struggle and resist because they do understand, because they do know that in the end they will be left with nothing, not even the ground beneath their feet. So they fight a life and death struggle.

Kalpana Sharma often writes about women and development issues. You can find her articles here at India Together, at The Hindu, or on her blog, Ulti Khopdi.

Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla: In 2004, the efforts of these two Bhopal tragedy victims, now in their 50s, were internationally recognized when they won the Goldman Environmental Award   (check out the write-up and video here. Inspiring stuff). The award came with a prize money of $125,000, which they used to set up the all-woman Chingari Trust -- (their punchline says it all -- "We are flames not flowers". "Chingari" means embers in Hindi) -- that scouts for and recognizes women across the country fighting corporate crime. Mukta Jhodia, as mentioned above, is its first recipient.

For those not familiar with the Bhopal gas leak (you can read loads about it here, here and here), it is probably one of the world's worst industrial disasters. At midnight on December 3, 1984, a lethal gas (methyl isocyanate) leaked from a Union Carbide (now owned by Dow Chemical --their website works best on Explorer. In my experience, not Firefox friendly) pesticide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal, killing over 3,000 people (8,000 by some accounts) right away and effecting several thousands more over the years.

For survivors, this was the beginning of a long-drawn and acrimonious battle with the multinational company and the Indian government for compensation, clean-up and treatment. Victims say they had to fight, petition and struggle for everything ever since, including having the area cleared of the toxic waste. Many complain that their children and grandchildren are developing physical abnormalities which they attribute to exposure to the gas.
The two women, who lost family members and their health to the disaster, founded the first women employees' union in the region (since traditional unions there wouldn't admit women), organized women to demand better wages, traveled the world to garner support and make the chemical company take responsibility for the disaster, and turned the Bhopal tragedy into a global cause. The women continue their struggle and are battling the company in court.

The quote below from the award citation says it all:

The leadership of these two physically frail and diminutive women has lit a fire under the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal and catapulted the issue onto the global stage once more. In their journey from disaster victims to grassroots activists, Bee and Shukla have had to overcome the enormous stigma of their poverty, their status as women in a male-dominated society, and, in Bee's case, illiteracy.[...]

In the face of these challenges, they've been able to draw strength from each other's skills and talents. Bee's "big picture" vision and oratory passion make her a natural "front woman" while Shukla's quiet diligence and strength make her a formidable organizing powerhouse.[...]Together, they have made the struggle for justice for survivors of Bhopal a powerful validation of women's role on the frontline of India's civil society.

"A woman's life involves discarding relationships that she has known from infancy and adopting strangers as her own," according to Bee, referring to the cultural tradition of brides leaving their families to marry into those of their husbands. "If she can face the world outside at such a fundamental level, then why should any other struggle for empowerment scare her?"

Bloghers commemorate the Bhopal gas tragedy:

Anindita Sengupta, SpainExchange
Aditi, Salad Days
Amanda, Sheer Mandamonium