Janaki: From rustic to citified

Janaki is a woman in her seventies who works as a maid in a couple of households in Ranchi, Jharkhand. Originally from the countryside, she is one of the many tribals, aka Adivasis, who shifted from the rural to the urban to look for jobs. She shifted about twenty years ago with two of her adopted sons, and is now happily settled in a small one-roomed rented house of her own in a slum.

The freckles on her face tell the years of experience in life she has had. The cracks on her feet tell the many-many paths they have travelled, and her pale, rugged hands recite the years of strenuous labour they have performed. She doesn’t know what her exact age is, since her generation didn’t make a note of birthdays and birth years. She can hence only have an estimation of her age, which she says is in her seventies.

She described her life in the village as one filled with struggles and pains. It was happy for a couple of years when she was married to the love of her life, but he died soon after of an unknown disease. Still determined to give her two toddler sons a happy life, she worked hard on the little land she had to cultivate some crops and vegetables. She made her living that way, and it sustained her two kids and her. But, soon after, her kids got sick and died as well of the same unknown disease.  She was too depressed and poor to find out what it was that took all their lives away.

To find a reason to continue living, she adopted three boys, trying to fill up her deceased family’s void by bringing up a new family. A new reason to live and love. The boys, small in their age, were left orphaned when their parents died of malaria. They were distantly related to Janaki and hence she kindly decided to take them all in.

Her in-laws’ side of the family had turned against her after her husband died. They wanted her out of the family, because they saw her as a burden and were trying to find a way to steal the little land she had to make their own profits.

She says that every day was turning out to be more difficult with her in-laws. Constant verbal fights would lead to physical abuse. Her sister-in-laws would go out of their way to make her life as miserable as they could. They would intervene with her farm work, scold and beat her adopted boys, and burn her portion of the meal. They would force her to do the most laborious of household tasks, which would drain her mentally and physically at the end of the day. She wouldn’t have time to spend for herself or her boys. The men of the house would constantly harass her. They would group together to torment her. They would follow her to her field where she went alone early in the mornings to work on her crops to molest and harass her.

She finally decided to move out. It was best for all of them: her, her boys and her in-laws who acted like they were so disturbed by her presence. She planned to go to the city, find a menial labored job which she would be able to perform properly and pay for her boys’ education. She quite succeeded in her plan.

She rented a room in a slum for her and the three boys, which she paid for with the money she got from selling her crops. She asked help from a couple of acquaintances in the slum, asking them if they knew any employers who are looking for a household maid. At the same time she applied for a ration card, and started getting sustainable rations for her family. She also enrolled her boys in government school to give them as much of an education as she could provide.

Being in a city filled with over-populated middle class families, in no time, she found a lot of job offers coming to her. Everyone could use an extra hand when it was provided in exchange of minimal wages, close to none holidays, and long working hours. It is a deal that everyone is ready to except without batting one eye to how unjustified it is.

She got jobs as a maid in households and as a sweeper in buildings. Her working task has remained the same over the years, where she has to broom and mop floors, dust around the house, wash utensils and clothes, cut vegetables and once in a while she’s asked to cook meals in houses which aren’t caste-biased and which don’t consider meals prepared by a person from a caste lower than theirs as unhealthy and “contaminated”.

During festivals, she is over-burdened with work, but she says that at the end of the day it gives off enough in return as she gets a lot of tips and many people donate clothes and other stuff to her. She also gets to have lots of delicacies from different houses which sometimes become too much to finish for her and her boys, and she has to share it among her neighbors as well. So over-working during festivals pays off well in the end, according to her.

Her working hours are from six in the morning to two in the afternoon, where she works at one home after another, then does sweeping and cleaning around a building. I asked her about her sleep schedule out of curiosity, and she says that it is just like a bird’s. Her eyes open when the sun rises and they shut with dawn.

I asked her if she is ever asked to do work related to scavenging, and unfortunately, she said yes. There are times when people approach her, asking her to take away their pets’ carcasses. She is also asked to clean away dead birds, rodents and the waste produced by them. In general, she is hence asked to do the work of a scavenger, but it is definitely not up to the extent some particular workers of this field have to go to.

She said that she refuses to work tasks which appear too gruesome and too unhygienic, but mostly she accepts to do all of them. Initially, being uneducated about hygiene, she used to be directly in contact with the waste when she used to clean it, but some of her employers told her about it and gave her the appropriate equipment to deal with it. Since then she has always demanded for equipment to be provided to her when she is asked to do such work. If ever refused to be provided, she also refuses to perform the task.

I had initially decided to write this report to talk about Janaki’s struggle with land, as I used to hear her complain a lot about it to my mom. I had seen many news articles where Jharkhand’s tribals would get their land seized away by MNC’s and the government for it to be overly exploited for resource extraction.

In one instance, Jharkhand's Saranda forest, mining companies like ArcelorMittal and SAIL were granted leases to extract iron ore, leading to displacement of tribal communities and destruction of their traditional forests and water sources. The tribals resisted the mining, leading to violent clashes with the state government and police forces.

In another instance, the Jharkhand government's decision to acquire land for a thermal power plant in Nagri village in Ranchi district was met with protests by tribal villagers who claimed that the acquisition violated their land rights and would lead to displacement from their ancestral lands.

These disputes between Jharkhand tribals and MNCs or the government are rooted in historical injustices such as displacement, land alienation, and loss of livelihoods, as they are completely dependent on their lands and forests’ natural resources.

Land conflicts, which have been ongoing for decades, have led to the displacement of thousands of tribals from their traditional lands, which in turn has forced them to move to urban areas in search of livelihoods. The acquisition of tribal lands often takes place without proper consultation or consent of the affected communities, and compensation offered is often inadequate or not provided at all. As a result, many tribals are forced to migrate to urban areas, where they struggle to find employment and adequate housing.

The displacement of tribals from rural to urban areas has significant social, economic, and cultural implications. It leads to the loss of traditional livelihoods and knowledge systems, and breaks the connection between the tribals and their ancestral lands. It also disrupts the social fabric of tribal communities and can result in loss of cultural identity and practices.

I had assumed that Janaki’s case would be the same, having never actually heard to her struggles related to land. But when I finally inquired her about it, it turned out to be completely in contrast to what I had imagined. She is among one of the exceptions, who is in favor of the mnc’s and the government here. She has acquaintances who have happily and agreeably sold off their lands to the government. The government, in exchange has given a hefty sum of money to them. Hence, she also wants that if ever she gets the opportunity, she would also sell her land off to the government. She says that she doesn’t want remain connected to that village anymore, because of the terrors that it has given to her. She wants a proper source of income and is happy with what she is doing even if some people might consider it a “small job”. She is quite liberal with her opinions and says that she gets good access to food, education and health care services here in the city and would never want to go back to the village life. The only thing which keeps her going back to her village is her small piece of land. She wants to sell it off at the first opportunity she finds because she trusts the government, that it would pay her an equal sum in return.  Till then, she would continue working hard for her boys and give them the best life that she can provide, even though she accepts that she is sometimes underpaid for the work that she does. She says that she has too much life still left in her for to retire, and she would do so happily when her limbs give away.

Janaki’s story is one which is much unexpected. One never thinks that a person coming from her background would turn out to be so liberal in thinking. She gives off hope for the betterment and making a better future for oneself. She is an inspiration in her own many ways and would continue to be one to the many people she has interacted with throughout her life.