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.