Engaging inequality

CHENNAI: World over, there have been a few constants in the way the pandemic and the lockdown have played out. The state of healthcare standing stark against the backdrop of mortality and clinical research, every country’s heavy reliance on designated sections of the society to get by, a dwindling economy pushing jobs and livelihoods over the edge, the importance of news organisations in dispensing vital information — we’ve been seeing it all. Amid such revelatory staples, we also witnessed the rise of domestic violence mere days into the lockdown.

That we did not prepare for what, in hindsight, was such an obvious threat, only serves to indicate how far behind we are in addressing this form of violence. While governments and law enforcement bodies across the world are scrambling to set up hotlines for complaints and develop a code for help through pharmacies and Mask19, the Tamil Nadu police — Crime Against Women and Children unit has managed to include rangoli contests and sharing of household chores into their action plan. If you’re wondering how this has anything to do with mitigating domestic violence, you’re not alone.

The contests were the result of the TN police (CWC) joining ShareChat, a homegrown video-sharing social networking site. There, they asked the women users to “create and post homemade rangoli videos” and the menfolk to send videos of them “supporting women in household chores”. The contests came with the promise of prizes for the lucky few. All this was pitched as a means to keep couples engaged in activities that aim at building mutual understanding and thereby bring down the cases of domestic violence in the state. While reducing the cause of domestic violence to the couples having nothing constructive to do can be pretty harmful in itself, this initiative takes it a step further by building upon the same gendered stereotypes that — in its extreme — births intimate terrorism.

Even here, the women who are already having to manage the increased household work and the new work-from-home routine, have been asked to go above and beyond for a task that does little to aid their many roles in the house. The men, on the other hand, are only asked to help the women out with the chore. They are asked to do something for a contest what they should be (and many probably are) doing in their daily life anyway. Sharing her thoughts on the exercise, Swarna Rajagopalan, founder and director of Prajnya Trust, says, “The assumption here seems to be that domestic violence is happening because people don’t have enough to do. Exclusive to keep couples engaged (it says) but they are not doing anything (towards that end). At least the rangoli, she is doing and he is filming; he is doing housework and presumably, she is filming it. Yet, it could equally be the two of them doing the rangoli together. After all, men and women were drawing rangolis and kolams during the anti-CAA protests,” she points out. 

M Ravi, additional director general of police, who had appealed to ShareChat’s Tamil language users to participate in the contests, thinks differently. “The gender-specific activities have worked out in a positive way. We cannot announce rangoli contests for men also. Everybody is an expert in a certain field. Women are more talented in particular activities and men in others. If you ask men to lift weights, they can lift even heavy ones; we can’t ask the women to do the same. Women are mentally stronger than men is what I feel,” he says. About the ShareChat contests, Ravi says that these projects got the men doing their part in the house. “This got the menfolk thinking about how they can help their spouses. Had we not announced these competitions, they definitely would not have helped their wives,” he surmises. As unconvincing as this reasoning may be, the initiative was welcomed by thousands of users on the platform.

Armaan Azad, ShareChat’s head of Media and Entertainment (South India), reveals that the project initiated 5,000 posts by means of user-generated content. While those on the platform may have responded to the contest, that cannot be our only measure to judge the efficacy of the project. “With a lot of these public outreach campaigns, I think the premise is misplaced. There is this assumption that people beat each other up because they don’t have any other work. They seem to not get to the nub of the fact that this happens because across the board — top to bottom or deep within — relations between the genders are unequal; especially within the household. It is not so much that ‘he does this and she does that, they are both busy and so they wouldn’t fight’; it is that the entire burden of ‘this’ is on her and ‘that’ is on him.

The way the relationships are gendered, structured and cast in stone, there is punishment for crossing over; either there is stigma or mockery or actual punishment. So, they (initiatives like these) are all sweet ideas but they seem to be premised on something wrong,” she says. Anita Mohan, a counselling psychologist, suggests that anything that a couple can do together, sharing the responsibility, goes a long way in binding the relationship. The woman today has her job to take care of and keep the household running; it’s like a double-edged pick. Young mothers, especially, are mostly part of MNCs and their job has them working at the laptop till 8 pm; some don’t even have the time for meals in between. Then, if the husband could pitch in, it goes a long way in showing that they care. Same goes for the wife,” she says. 

Beyond these possibilities, Swarna suggests that there is something to gain from this effort. “The utility of this is that it builds a bridge between the community and the police. Yet, that is not the purpose of the contest. It’s (the connection with the public) an unintended benefit,” she says. Agreeing only partly, Ravi says that this lets people develop a sense of security and allows them to use this as an opportunity to interact with the police. “There were a few cases of domestic violence too that were reported through this forum,” he notes. Yet, it would be nice if the same platform were used to announcing an easy-to-access number; something that the people can punch in quickly in times of need, suggests Swarna.

“Can you assure us that it is run by people who know what they are doing? Can it direct the caller to a hotline where someone will listen or put them in touch with a legal service? Can you tell us that you are setting up something that replicates and scales up the work that the International Foundation for Crime Prevention and Victim Care (PCVC) is doing? While there is only so much the NGOs can do, the government can do much more,” she offers. As much as there is great heart in efforts like this, there is still the need to do more, she says. “Sometimes, we feel so pressured to have a visible response, we don’t think about the actual utility and sustainability of the response, but we should. It’s not like these problems are new to us. It’s time we shifted the way we thought about it,” she says. Here’s hoping that shift comes sooner than later.