INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
ORGANISED BY JOINT ACTION FRONT FOR WOMEN

MONDAY, 08 MARCH 1999

CONGRESS PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS

Smt. Suman Krishan Kant,

Shri Murali Manohar Joshi, Minister for Human Resource Development

Smt. Shiela Dikshit, Chief Minister of Delhi,

Smt. Geeta Mukherjee,

Smt. Ranjana Kumari,

Friends,

The single most significant achievement of the twentieth century has been the liberation of women. If we cast our mind back a hundred years we will see that so much we take for granted was then deemed inconceivable, impossible, and outrageous.

There has been more improvement in the condition of women in the last few decades than in the last several millennia. Gender empowerment is no longer a distant dream but a palpable reality. It is the progress we as women have made that must encourage and spur us to higher levels of achievement. Complete gender equality, nothing less, must be our over-riding goal. There must be neither compromise nor complacency. The struggle is joined. It must be brought to full fruition.

Women in India have, through history, been the victims of a cruel paradox. On the one hand, woman power is celebrated as Shakti - the source of all energy, the life force of the cosmos. Yet, in actual social practice, an oppressive dependence was encouraged as the social norm. Independence of both thought and action were frowned upon, indeed, even prohibited on pain of punishment and ostracisation. Of course, there were exceptional women. They are celebrated in myth and legend, in saga and history, in verse, in music and dance. But the very exceptionality of these women underlines the unfortunate condition of the vast majority of womanhood.

That is why Gandhiji saw the liberation of women as the necessary precursor and desired consequence of the liberation of our country. Freedom for women was tied in by him to freedom for India. It was the Mahatma who brought women into the Freedom Movement, signaling the commencement of a process of emancipation through participation. And not only Gandhiji. Let us not forget on this auspicious day to salute the hundreds and thousands of men and women reformers and patriots across the country who pioneered women’s education and emancipation. It is thanks to them that we see the women of our country take their place in so many professions and vocations.

For close to a quarter of a century, starting from 1959 when she became President of the Congress Party, Indiraji was the world’s most visible symbol of what women could achieve. She knew both triumph and tribulation, both adversity and success. Golda Meir and Sirimavo Bandarnaike had preceded her as women leaders of their respective countries, but in terms of her duration of office and the drama of her life, few could parallel the inspiration she gave to millions of women in India and elsewhere of inner strength and qualities of leadership.

Brought up by such a mother, my husband never questioned women’s equality, their enormous talent and capability. He felt that a great asset of the nation was being neglected in keeping women out of the task of nation-building. Rajivji will forever be associated with their political empowerment at the level where it matters most - the grassroots. The reservation of one-third of the seats in the panchayats and nagarpalikas was his constitutional innovation. He had intended to complement Panchayati Raj with the Indira Mahila Yojana, based on village Mahila Sabhas. These would select from among themselves their saathins or companions who would speak on their behalf to the administration and act as a pressure point on the panchayats through women representatives. I would like to share with you Rajivji’s observations on the role of women in our lives and as part of it, in a speech he delivered to a conference of chief ministers on Panchayat Raj. He said - and I quote:

"It is women who undertake much more than half the economic activities in rural India. It is women to whom are entrusted the welfare and, often, the finances of the household. It is the women of rural India who are the main repository of India’s great cultural traditions, of the moral values which are fundamental to the survival and efflorescence of our civilization... Should we not begin the process of reservations for women at the lower tier in the hope that it might in due course expand upwards to the higher tiers?"

We hope this vision will be fulfilled in Parliament during the current session. In the Congress Party, we have not waited for the Parliamentary process to wend its way to the inevitable end. We have already amended our Party constitution to reserve a third of all party posts for women.

Important as these developments are in themselves, they will amount to nothing if we do not embark with all deliberate speed on a programme for the educational emancipation and economic advancement of women. The education of the girl child is of the essence.

Recent research has shattered the myth of mothers holding their children back from school. In Himachal Pradesh, neither poverty nor custom have stood in the way of girls in very large numbers enrolling in school and staying the course. In Tamil Nadu, the comprehensive mid-day meal scheme appears to have played a decisive role in spreading girl’s education. In Goa too, elementary education for girls has become virtually universal. In Kerala, as is well known, girls of all communities have been educated through all of the twentieth century. The Education Guarantee Scheme, evolved by the Congress Government in Madhya Pradesh, has become the exemplar for other states to follow. If in so many diverse states the education of the girl child is an undeniable reality, there is no reason why this cannot be achieved across the country.

As for economic advancement, the Seva experiment in Gujarat and Gramin Bank experiment in Bangladesh has shown that access to micro-credit for asset creation and mutual self-help through cooperatives are the single most effective way of economic empowerment for women with limited means. The example of Anand in Gujarat is a legend of our time. Of course, when it comes to hard physical labour - in the fields, on road construction, on building activity - economic activity is to a great extent women-driven. Curiously, however as one moves up the economic scale, the share of women drops off dramatically. This must be rectified.

The Joint Action Front for Women has emerged as the arrow-head of our struggle for emancipation and empowerment. You have raised several issues about the Bill pending in Parliament for reservations for women. It is because of our principled insistence on the Bill being introduced that the legislative process has reached its present stage. Issues that have been raised will have to be debated. That is the democratic way. And politics is the art of the possible. So we shall have to be pragmatic. But, on the essence, please rest assured we will be unflinching. The Congress has every intention of seeing the Bill passed in the Budget session of Parliament. This, however, is Government business, and it is our earnest hope that the Government will not be found wanting.

This is the last International Women’s Day of the century. We enter the new millennium with confidence in ourselves and faith in our future. I congratulate my sisters the world over on this occasion and pledge not to rest till we have redeemed the promise we have made to ourselves.

Thank you.