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India is giving
common women opportunity, but how!
 ALLAHABAD:
Just have a look at the jobs that Indian government offers to young
women, and the way the recruitment is done. Indian Railways has said
it will now be recruiting women porters, called coolies, and the
recruitment procedures involve asking a woman to carry some 25
kilograms of weight on her head and ask her to run and compete
against other women.
Reeta Devi, 20,
of Handia, Allahabad, six months pregnant whose husband of a year is
physically handicapped competed against Nafisa Bano, 43, of Tundla,
who has a Masters degree in History and whose husband has now been
ill for a long time. Both of them also competed against Renu Singh,
22, of Rae Bareli, who lost her parents in an accident and now has
the responsibility of bringing up her younger siblings.
On Thursday, all
three women sprinted 200 metres carrying 25 kg loads on their heads.
Those who finished the run in under four minutes were cleared to
compete in the next stage of the entrance examination to become
railway porters.
“I was married
to Udai Pratap a year ago. This is my first baby,” says Reeta. Her
face is flushed from the exertion, she is panting a little after
completing the test.
Reeta and Udai
have no land of their own. Udai, poor and disabled, has a small shop
in their village near Allahabad, but it can’t sustain the family.
With their baby on the way, Reeta decided she needed to add to the
family’s income doing whatever she could.
Last year, the
Railway Board issued guidelines that women could be licensed to be
porters if they met specified eligibility criteria. North Central
Railway (NCR) has now announced 344 vacancies in the
Allahabad
division.
Reeta, Nafisa
and Renu were among 19 women who turned up for the test on Thursday.
Seventeen of them attempted to run the 200 m qualifying distance
carrying 25 kg sacks on their heads. The qualifying time was 4
minutes, a minute more than what it was for male applicants.
Some 4,800
people have applied for the 344 posts; 27 of them are women. The
women have come from places scattered around UP:
Allahabad,
Fatehpur, Tundla, Lalitpur, Aligarh, Mirzapur, Etawah, Ghaziabad,
and even Faridabad in Haryana.
It should be a
matter of concern how women are being pffered opportunities, what
kind of opportunities these are, and what they are being made to
undergo.
Courtesy:
Indian Express
5
August 2009
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