Devaki Jain is one of India’s best known feminist economists, with a long career working closely with institutions to first recognise and then mainstream women’s issues.
Born in 1933 in the erstwhile princely state of Mysore where her father was a minister, Devaki has degrees from the University of Mysore and the University of Oxford and taught economics at Delhi University.
In this episode of Grassroots Nation, Devaki speaks of how walking with Vinoba Bhave influenced her early work, her lifelong friendships with Gloria Steinehm and Iris Murdoch and her marriage of over forty years to the Gandhian economist Lakshmi Chand Jain, a relationship she greatly credits her long life and career to.
Across her career, Devaki has held a range of positions in the United Nations. She founded the Institute of Social Studies Trust in Delhi, and was associated with the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), DAWN, or the Development Alternatives for Women for a New Era and the Central Social Welfare Board, or CSWB to name a few.
One of Devaki’s early realizations was the importance of systematically counting the contributions of women because their work was seldom recognised. Throughout her career as a feminist economist, Devaki has consistently tried to influence and talk about the circumstances of Southern women and women in developing country contexts to raise their status and to value their economic contributions.
Her work has inspired generations of women’s rights academics, workers and activists. Devaki has authored a number of books including a perceptive and comprehensive book on Indian women for the first UN conference on women in 1975, The Journey of a Southern Feminist, and her memoir, The Brass Notebook.
At 90, she plans to write the definitive book on feminism. The Padma Bhushan awardee is in conversation with Navsharan Singh, a friend and Delhi-based researcher and human rights activist. Navsharan has worked extensively on informal-sector workers, especially women workers and the precarity of their work and lives. Navsharan was previously the Senior Program Specialist for the Women’s Rights and Citizenship Program at the International Development Research Centre’s Asia office, New Delhi.
This conversation was recorded at Devaki Jain’s office in New Delhi.
Women in (Recognized) Work | Feminist Economics Part 2 by New Economic Thinking CC BY 3.0 Inspirational and Omnipotent Leader of Bhoodan Movement- Acharya Vinoba Bhabe by Argus News CC BY 3.0
TRANSCRIPT
[THEME]
INTRO
Welcome to Grassroots Nation, a podcast from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, a show in which we dive deep into the life, work, and guiding philosophies of some of our country’s greatest leaders of social change. Devaki Jain is one of India’s best known feminist economists, with a long career working closely with institutions to first recognise and then mainstream women’s issues.
Devaki was born in 1933 in Mysore where- her father was a minister in the princely state of Mysore. She earned degrees from the University of Mysore (graduating with gold medals in Mathematics and English) and the University of Oxford before embarking on a teaching career at Delhi University. In 1975, she was invited by the Indian government to bring out a perceptive and comprehensive book on Indian women for the first UN conference on women in 1975.
One of Devaki’s early realizations was the importance of systematically counting the contributions of women because their work was seldom recognised. She has had an extensive career for various positions in the United Nations; she was the Chair of the Advisory Committee on Gender for the
United Nations Centre in Asia-Pacific, a member of the South Commission founded by Julius Nyerere, a part of the 1997 UNDP advisory panel for the 1997 Human Development Report and the 2002 report on Governance. Jain has also been a member of the Eminent Persons Group of the Graça Machel
Study Group appointed by the UN to study the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. In Delhi, Devaki Jain founded the Institute of Social Studies Trust in 1980.
In this conversation, Devaki also talks about the era she was born into, where it was hard for a woman to be seen and heard publicly. Throughout her career as a feminist economist, Devaki has consistently tried to influence and talk about the circumstances of Southern women and women in developing country
contexts to raise their status and to value their economic contributions. Devaki Jain was married for over forty years to the Gandhian economist Lakshmi Chand Jain, a relationship she greatly credits her long life and career too.
In 2006, Devaki Jain was conferred with the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award from the Government of India for her contribution to social justice and the empowerment of women. Her work has inspired generations of women’s rights academics, workers and activists. Today, Devaki Jain is 90 years old and she is in conversation with Navsharan Singh, a friend and Delhi-based researcher and human rights activist. Navsharan has worked extensively on informal-sector workers, especially women workers and the precarity of their work and lives. Navsharan was previously the Senior Program Specialist for the Women’s Rights and Citizenship Program at the International Development Research Centre’s Asia
office, New Delhi.
This conversation was recorded at Devaki Jain’s office in New Delhi.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
So if I begin. Devaki Jain – feminist economist, development economists, activists who brought into the public spotlight the conditions and contributions of ordinary women. What got you started in your journey?
DEVAKI JAIN
But you missed out one thing – you didn’t add good wife, happy mother.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
Absolutely. So you can, yes.
DEVAKI JAIN
So much of my journey and its particular nuances when you call it success or happiness or even sorrow or breakdown, is in my view tethered in my romance and love, life, marriage. So the partnership with this man up there, is really what create the particular life that I had So which? When I reflect on that, I find it strange because I was such a fighting feminist, walking out of the house, not willing to marry whoever was supposed to marry, etcetera, and having sex before marriage. All that. And yet to come to asking me what makes you tick. It is a very conventional thing like like love of your man, so.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
There was such a wonderful start and because our listeners are not seeing the man on the wall, tell us a little bit about Lakshmi.
DEVAKI JAIN
It’s one of those things that where you find it difficult to describe it and yet it is exactly what people talk about conventionally. It was love at first sight, that is a kind of, you know, when people say love at first sight – I fell in love with him. It looks like theatre, but it is actually reality, and I have now since then seen
people say that.
So here was I, recruited by the Indian Cooperative Union as a research assistant. And that story is all by chance, by chance, by chance. And I’m interviewed by this man who am I married later and two of his colleagues. One of them, Professor Rajakrishna, is very well known, the economist, and I don’t think they were serious about the interview because I don’t think they were a formal organization yet. So I was interviewed and then we there was a process which I think most of you should hear that these organisations like the Indian Cooperative Union which emerged in the Indian scene due to post-war, post-independence, rehabilitation of refugees, that is how the cooperative union was the refugee rehabilitation structure putting the refugees into cooperatives. They built Faridabad, they supported crafts. So they had a research division to which applied and I got the job.
But there was a tradition in that cooperative union organization where once a week the person who was the perhaps the most important executive of that organization, which is the man I married, was called General Secretary of the Indian Cooperative Union, would speak to employees. Remember, the employees was all very informal because the organization did not have enough money to give you what is called TA DA PA, but just people who were brought in to do various things, particularly social mobilizers, health workers who would be helping the refugees in many ways. So there I was with the panel with Raj Krishna, the man I married, and others, and they just wanted to know what brought me to work with their organization and I said “looking for a job”. But then, since I was a single woman and I didn’t have any particular place to stay, I was boarding with my brother who was in the IAS and was the joint secretary in the government. I’m sorry, some of these details are not really valuable, but I have to tell the story that way I remember it. And then it will carry on.
So every evening after work there was how to go back to where I was staying, which is with my brother. So there were like all of you must have experienced in your life, looking for somebody will give you a lift. Because not enough money to hire a taxi. It was always scrounging around and the Cottage Industries Emporium at that time was a hub, a hub of many things. Refugee rehabilitation, cooperative movement, so many things. So we all used together to hub, we meaning young women who are working but didn’t have enough support. And so it became a tradition that this man whom I married had the, was the only one had a vehicle which is belonging to the office. So I’d hang around saying, can you give me a lift? So this habit of giving me a lift became a kind of informal habit. And it was, I couldn’t believe it. I was just falling in love like a ton of bricks. But he didn’t know it. He was very inscrutable person right up to the time he died. You couldn’t by seeing his face, know what he is thinking. So then we became friends and then it this shock which have written about was that as told that he got engaged and that just broke my silence. And so, as you know, I did ask him to break his engagement and got married to him.
Now you may say, why is this part of the story? That Indian Cooperative Union then was not the place I worked in, but they had other research divisions and that is where I made my understanding of India, that at that time the big thing was the Bhoodhan movement and I just decided to walk with Vinoba.
AUDIO – Remembering Acharya Vinoba Bhave, the first individual satyagrahi chosen by Mahatma Gandhi
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQD1qZDOvaI)
Add some friends who had met in Bangalore in the seminar and they guided me how to join Vinoba. So once that walk with Vinoba was an experience and both the kind of people walked with us and the ideas, why was I so fascinated by the idea. I had come back from Oxford the previous year and we talked about Rousseau and his idea of the village. We talked about ideals of collective struggles, when you come back from Ruskin College its all about trade unionism. So just struck me that here is something – a live show of all that you studied in Oxford. Village giving itself into itself. If you remember Rousseau, it was all about the general will. So I’m not saying that while I was engaged in this walk of mine, I would thinking of Rousseau, not at all. But I’m saying somewhere in the machine which is your head, those things are all there.
So plunging into working with Vinoba was really quite unusual, in a way, if I may say so, for somebody like me. But happily for me, the Indian Cooperative Union and this man I married, they agreed to support me, which is the train fair. And then the time off. And then I wrote about what was Bhoodan and Gramdan. That article, which unfortunately in those days we did not have techniques of storing anything, attracted the attention of visitors. Now this is one part of the environment of that era. The era being the early late 50’s, early 60s was a India had a lot of visitors from abroad, especially Americans, interested in this fantastic thing they thought that was happened in India. That is a peaceful… they were curious. New York Times should be here meeting people who had participated in the freedom struggle, like my husband who had been a student leader. And so there was a kind of eyes of professor of Chicago, people from the USAID wanting to meet the young people of India who were participating and so called post-freedom reconstruction of India. So that way I met an American professor called Bert Hoselitz from Chicago. And he was quite fascinated by the fact that I wanted to walk with Vinoba. So those kinds of stories led to an interesting thing. He recommended me to Henry Kissinger, who was having a seminar in Harvard every year. With, for young people, Not young but 25 to 40 year old people who were in some sense changing the the scenario. Not only India, all over. And apparently my husband who is that that time not my husband, Lakshmi Jain had been selected earlier. Again, the Americans were a very important lobby in New Delhi. I must tell you it was great source of conflict in India at that time. Because you have Aruna Asaf Ali, you have the communists who was so much about of supporting India.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
Which year is this?
DEVAKI JAIN
1956-’57. So US aid was there. Aruna Asaf Ali was there fighting against American presence and Russian presence was very strong. There was a journal called What Was It Called? The one that was Aruna edited… Patriot. And the Patriot carried the stinging criticism of the man who became my husband, saying he was stooge of the Americans. So that abuse was going on at that time, like it does now between the left and the non left. So anyway, so when I said I want to walk with Vinoba, the Indian Cooperative Union set, go ahead. And so I walked, you know about for couple of maybe for 10 or 15 days. And I must tell you that I cannot say now how much of which became a driving nucleus in my life. I cannot say that I dont know whether it influences me, but certainly it was the first experience for a middle class bureaucrats daughter who had been literally brought with brought up within a compound to be walking on the roads of India’s villages. Sleeping in you know those platforms we have in village cement platforms where people sit for their panchayat meetings. That is all you had for sleeping. And so there were about two women and the others were men and we walked. I think I did 10 days of that, sleeping on that and then getting up. Toilet in the field bathing while one woman holds a saree and the other one works inside. What I find when I look back interesting is I don’t want to use the word impressive, but it’s also true that, that one could just swing into that even though one was brought up in a pampered house. I mean, how wonderful we are as human beings, even like Navsharan, she goes up there in the truck when the farmers are agitating outside Delhi. And I feel so excited to see person hop out of what their comfort zone and go into that. And you and I have heard a lot about struggles and
people in the frontline protesters, not only in India but all over the world. This was not protest. This was death participate. So I think I just loved the fact I was walking and just two sarees, and we used to bathe in awkward taps holding sarees around us. I don’t even remember how I managed to do defecation and so on the field because one if I think of it now, it seems unbelievable but that’s all we could do. Where got the water. There were about two women and the rest were men. So I think I have walked with him for about 7-8 days, then came back and wrote a essay on Bhoodan and Gramdan and that attracted the attention of various people. And then I got invitation to go to Harvard to a seminar. Why do I say that? Because that seminar at Harvard was also an exposure to me of many young people who were brought in by Henry Kissinger. A mix of 32 people – a great artist, a great poet, writer and trade unionist journalists. I was the youngest and some time I will give you a photograph of all of us sitting there and that’s where something I don’t know whether you want to record that. You can decide to delete it if you find it in uninteresting but that is where I am and broke the out of my tradition of girls and boys not meeting and
having love affairs. Because I was young I was quite good looking as because they from the pictures and everybody fell in love with me – the German novelist, the French poet and I didn’t mind. So we had broke out of all the inhibitions of a Brahmin girl, so that was, but that exposure was growing up exposure for me actually.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
So Devaki, this was fascinating introduction to how you began your journey coming from a very protective home to the public domain. And you also describe the political, economic, social landscape of that time. Starting a journey with your job in Indian Cooperative Union and then walking with Vinoba Bhave and then writing that essay with you took you to Harvard and exposed you with other people who were influential. So is this what you say is your journey which began and never looked back? And where did you go from there? From from walking with Vinoba Bhave to starting the next steps in your
journey?
DEVAKI JAIN
Yes, that is a good turning point. One step that was clearly, I would clearly affirm the as it happened is that I was attracted to Gandhi and his ideas and his ideas on lifestyle. That lifestyle idea somehow grips me and I don’t. I still want to pump that into the minds of every young person I meet, including you. Just that the idea of wearing clothes which were made by people for home, that livelihood was so critical that that link between livelihood and consumer, I can’t tell you for the next 20 years I tried so hard to get my colleagues and people like the people I met to buy into that idea. Buy what the poor make. Let demand be the driver of life livelihoods and not the way it is now. So it was a turning point in my life that afterwards, for nearly 15 years, I pumped and did various programs with Modern school, with everywhere I went saying buying habits of the poor, I called it, and so buy from the poor. Now in sophisticated society, they don’t like to use the word poor about the poor. It’s supposed to be demeaning. So what you are supposed to say?
So I was confronted with that by Marxist friends, and this is a very dirty word to use. But it is true that bank habits of the poor and buying goods that produced by the poor can be a very good cycle for relieving poverty at that time. So okay, so what happened. After the walk with Vinoba? I came back and worked with the Indian Cooperative Union for several years and then when the Indian Cooperative Union had a connection with Kissinger because the man I married had been to the Kissinger Conference.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
You’d finished your studies. By then, you had already become an economist.
DEVAKI JAIN
Yes I came back and joined of course the organization I was with. We were being paid something like ₹150 a month. There was a news that the Swedish economist called Gunnar Myrdal wanted to write a book on Asia. I don’t know if you have seen it is called the-
NAVSHARAN
Asian Drama
DEVAKI JAIN
And so this American guy who was here called Bert Hoselitz, the Chicago professor told me about it. So I applied. And that was the beginning of the most disgusting experience I have in my life. That Gunnar Myrdal interviewed me. His wife, Alva Myrdal, was the Swedish Ambassador to India. And of course I was chosen. Looking back, everybody is… Many people are criticising me and also in a way abusing me by saying that Myrdal chose me because of my looks and because he was a womaniser and he saw me as attractive product for that. When I went into the interview, I had no such idea at all. Alva was a wonderful ambassador to India. She was very affectionate, gave me tea, coffee and pampered me. And then this silly Swedish chap said yes, and then I went away to Oxford as his assistant. Though I have been to Ruskin College before that, and I knew what it was like to be in Oxford. I knew what it was like to be free, but so I was feeling so good.
But I think you know that he made a very disgusting pass at me. Can you imagine a driving with somebody and they put their middle finger into your vagina. You know, it’s really, you could put it in, because you have underwear, but it is. And what was I was about 20 or 19 years old. So when I quit the job, that’s when my real life started because I didn’t want to come back. I have entered around and I was very fortunate. The details of that we will leave now that how to get into a College in Oxford without being eligible, eligible. But this didn’t happen because of sex. I think it was just that my passion to not go back but to study became so obvious that when the faculty of one of the colleges interviewed me, they all gave me admission and money. So I get admission and money. And that was when I met people who later became great friends… Iris Murdoch, and other economists. So thats one chapter of my story.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
What made you a development economist? You were studying in Oxford and when you came back you called yourself in your memoirs, also a development economist. Why do you think you thought that was an important thing to do?
DEVAKI JAIN
One thing Navsharan, which is maybe I haven’t said it anywhere else, my first degree was in Bangalore, Mount Carmel College. I went into college, I think 18 or something, and the subjects I took were mathematics and economics, so mathematics and economics. We’re already my professional disciplinary choice, so when I applied for admission in Oxford the fact that done mathematics 2 papers and got a gold medal for it in Mysore University and done economics was the selling point. So they said okay, she has done mathematics, she has done economics. So we will take her in.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
So you you started studying economics, development, economics. When did
you become a feminist economist?
DEVAKI JAIN
In the middle of all there is. What I have not mentioned is that in 1958, at the
time that I went to Harvard for that seminar, Gloria Steinem was visiting India.
Not visiting, she was a Fullbright student attached to Miranda House. She was
not yet a feminist. She was not Ms, and she had the same she was connected
with Bert Hoselitz in Chicago who then took me out to Harvard. So I met her in
the house of the man I married in later because these Fullbright scholars were
being taken round to meet people who are being so. I say that to you because
when you ask about feminist, the arrival of myself as a feminist, seeing women
as an issue, I think definitely was birthed by my friendship and Gloria. I don’t
think it happened to me when I was walking with Vinoba or any other place it
was. She was not yet known feminist but when she went back to America then
couple of letters, years data after, had married and had children, I saw her
picture in the front of Ms. Magazine saying she is founded Ms. It so happens
that I went to America for the Kissinger seminar the next year. So I contacted
her. And then you. It was a ball. My journey with the feminist movement really
started in that most serious way with her, that she showed me everything,
argued with me.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
So that was one way of learning to actually become or gaining gender lens. But
when did you start using it? The some point in your memoirs, you say that
actually perceiving the world through a gender lens really shook you up. And
that’s when you started to see the same things with the different lens and
came up with the new vision. And would you like to describe that journey
which shook you up?
DEVAKI JAIN
I’m so glad you asked that, because I’m trying to think quickly and see the
connection between my eyes being opened in the Ms. movement and then my
eyes being opened by statistics. Because the two are not connected. I did not
think that my quest to establish that women were being under counted by the
statistical system, which is my contribution to statistics, came through the Ms
route. It came through just economics and my interest in data, so I can’t make
that link.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
So DEVAKI JAIN, when did you start seeing society, economy, polity from a
gender lens?
DEVAKI JAIN
Does 3 or 4 triggers Navsharan. One is I think the United Nations announcing
1975 as the Women’s Year, I think transformed many of us from what we wear
to what we became. So we were doing whatever we were doing, but then
what we became, and the whole lot of us, including you now the generations,
is the turning point, was announcing that conference. You may say crazy that a
conference should make a difference. But you know it gets so much media
attention you get people government supporting you for digging out data.
UN declaring 75 I think transform not only me, but you know transform the
space transformed intellectual space on what are issues. Just like later on,
much later, we have the issue of Dalit now coming up. And remember in the
West it was Gunnar Myrdal’s The American Dilemma, bringing up race. So I
think these classifications of race, gender, caste are all big sign posts.
Milestones in the in the road of intellectualism. I think scholars took up issues
as they came up in the public space. So United Nations declaring 1975
Women’s year and there is a whole story why that happened And then some of
us being invited to Mexico and then governments taking interest. Remember
government commission that Committee on Status of Women in India report
to be prepared for Mexico. Then Publications Division asked me to write a
book, and I did that for Mexico.
Mexico. Mexico is 75, Beijing is 95, right? By that time, 20 years of women’s
rights are already taken the journey so that and then being financed to go to
Mexico. So then you have this galaxy of people that you meet and issues that
just come to you. And then Esther Boserup who is one of the most outstanding
demographer statisticians in the world. She was in Mexico and I have just done
a study as well as time you study to show that women were workers are not
being counted. So some of these marriages or these coupling between her
work, my work, location Mexico. You have to see it like a drawing that there is
Mexico conference declared by UN there is work that we are doing scrubbing
utensils and you get together. I didn’t meet Esther, but I got gripped by her
work.
So then coming back, remember I was married and had a child, child and no
formal job by that time. So I was floating as a housewife. And then it struck me
that I could do some work. And then Veena Majumdar was a great, was a great
luminous, enabling elder. You know, she is about 10 years older than me. But
though she was left and I was zero, she was always encouraging. She was, you
will be interested to know in the funding side of something or the UGC I think.
Alright ICSSR, She was in charge of the funding for something and remember
going to help say I want to count, I want to do something on statistics. It is not.
It is not right. And she encouraged me and she got me a small honorary
whatever it is called, money to do my research. So she hasn’t come to CWDS.
CCWDS did not exist, nor did ISST. We were all working as individuals. So I
think that idea that women’s as workers were being neglected in statistics and
thereby losing out not only on wage but as you saw in my work later, how
many issues they were they were opting out of because of not being
recognised. No support for housework, no support for anything, Just the most
exploited, uncounted people in the world where the women in India at that
time. So to open that box and to show that they were workers but they were
not being counted correctly became a journey which I think kept me busy for
nearly two decades. And even now people refer to me to ask Devaki what do
you think of that? Which makes me feel that at least there was something.
AUDIO
[Jayati Ghosh talking about Devaki Jain’s contribution in the second lecture in
the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s “Feminist Economics” series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l9yiFaFme8.]
Devaki Jain, the Indian economist and Malini Chand way back in the 1970s, they
were just gone and studied the work that women do.
And they found that all kinds of things, weeding, cutting grass, threshing, carrying
produced items from one place to another. All of these were simply not recognized
as economic activity. They’re doing all the things that men do, but they’re just not
called workers.
I wrote an article in many articles at that time in EPW, but one statement
which people remind me of, I said when I die and I am being buried, please say
she counted correctly because counting becomes such an important tool. And
even today I think feminist economists are working on counting on measures,
on recognition through data, through feasibility. What Ashwini and others are
doing is giving visibility, so I think that was the turning point.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
So when when you visibility women’s work you counted them and you made
them visible, you show the demonstrated that here are women who are
working and in working in all kinds of conditions and work and yet not
counted. Then what did you do? We know that you, your research actually
took you to a different path, also, of an activist, of a political actor. When did
that change happen? And what did you do with your research, with your
numbers, with your evidence? How did you change it or use it to start another
part of your journey?
DEVAKI JAIN
The Statistical Journey is a different track. But on Statistical Genius, just to
finish off that, it’s important for us when we do this biographies or life, life,
writings or whatever for us to bring the individuals walk but the environment
available. The two intersect, they marry, they fight. But without that
intersection between what was outside and what you did, you cannot explain
anything. So the environment was very enabling, curious and also the actors at
the power level were few and you could access them easily. Today you cannot
access it. I had this question in my mind. The women are working under
counted. I go straight to the chairman of the National Sound Sample Survey,
which was a man called VM Dandeker. He comes home. What can you do that
just to get an I was not known. I was not at Kamala Devi or Rukmini Devi… and I
say this counting wrong.
What do you want Devaki? I want to access to the NSSO’s fieldwork and ability
to partner with them, he says. So I rush to Narula at the ICSSR. I want money to
do that. Yes. So you know it is. I did not have an institution. I didn’t have
political power, but there was interest and I think that era of the 1960’s, 50’s,
late 50s, others have written about, the era was very malleable. It was curious,
it was accommodating. It was not divided by too much ideological conflict.
There was no Hindutva to all, nor was there any strong pressure to be a
socialist. You could be anything. So that if one was emphasising something one
should say in India, the environment for intellectual pursuits, the
accommodation of difference in the 60’s, 70s, 80’s was brilliant. It is after that
that we have become what we have become. So so I get a little money then I
find Andre Beteille was a great friend of mine, sent me a young woman who
said yes I will go and live in the village and thereby hangs the story of my first
time you study. And though now many more people are doing that, I still claim
through this looks very piggy to do say that that that studied really opened the
door to how to collect statistics with challenges mainstream statistics. And so
you are able to show that accounting was wrong.
DEVAKI JAIN
And then they then getting the NSSO to have a conference, which I have
written about – can you believe it? The Ford Foundation funded a conference
by which all the big shots Pranab Bardhan, Amartya Sen, Sukumar Chakravarty
all attended it, Raja Krishna, and we presented a paper saying that the data
collection was wrong. It was accepted and so the NSSO began to listen to us. In
my opinion, looking back if I did, if you say that one shot that you take which
was most effective, it is that one. Not all the other books I wrote about
women’s organizations, NSSO and the statistical system open the doors and so
we change the questionnaire. We count the counting system. Now it is even
training investigators. So everything has become now good people like Ashwini
are really working on that.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
And then you became members of the state planning boards and and you
didn’t stop at being policy influencer only in India but also ventured out and
you are rightly now recognised as most influential Southern voice as well. So
tell us about the part that took you to beyond India talking about Southern
women’s work and how it was hidden. It was not only in India that women’s
work was hidden from history, it was also all other women. So how did you go
and talk about all women, Southern women?
DEVAKI JAIN
You know Navsharan, I think it may be I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but
I think we have to take, maybe you should take think of 2 roads. One road is
just hold reform of statistics. I got deeply into that and even now if you go to
UNSO in New York, they say yes. So statistic being accurate information about
what women do. So if you ask me what is the most important thing you did in
your life, I would say to open up the door to what women do. So and now of
course it’s such a big space so many nuances are being made, but I think it was.
And even I am not very sure that so many nuances are necessary. But anyway,
so I think that open doors to other things. You have got known but I dont know
about the other things that you saying. The era had a bubbling up of UN
institutions. So all institutions wanted to bring gender after making after
Mexico. So you had your UNESCO, FAO, ESCAP. They were all told bring gender
in who? How do you bring gender in? You bring it at some women who have
been talking about. So I was everywhere. To my shame, I tell you I was Paris.
There. It was a lot of criticised. She is always got a suitcase packed. So you
mean those people who have their suitcase part as opposed to people who
worked in India on the ground. So lot of gaali took place. But I don’t think I
worried because it was so interesting to go in influence data the Bangkok to
interesting to change the perception of women’s in a Scandinavian Funding
Agency to show that we were not what you think we are just dumb wives. In
fact, its your wives who are dumb and doing baking bread in the house. We are
actually working, weeding, cutting.
So that that pushing the image of women as an economic agent was quite
interesting and I think valuable at that time. Because if you look at the
European writing on countries like India and so on, except for Esther Boserup
and what she wrote on Africa, we are not seen as economic because we are
not counted. So that is when this idea that if you want to change the
perception of what women do, to give them more dignity and you have to
show what they do. So showing what they do, what they huge exercise,
because what they do is usually invisible, invisiblised. So how to make it come
as work? So I can tell you the number of processes that we have broke up to
show where it was economic and not housework was just fantastic. I mean
silkworm rearing was one of my favourite ones, that women were working on
the silkworm, rearing them in their houses, not recognised. Hundreds of
activities which were economic were not… to activate that became a passion
for the next 10 years.
HOST
A pioneer in the field of womens studies, Devaki Jain is also known for building
institutions and working across all levels from the grassroots to national,
international. She has worked with a staggering list of institutions:
Devaki Jain founded the Institute of Social Studies Trust in Delhi, was
associated with the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), DAWN,
or the Development Alternatives for Women for a New era and the Central
Social Welfare Board, or CSWB to name a few.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
So looking at work from a gender lens and with the feminist mind led to a
whole new opening up of economics and policy in a very, very different,
profoundly different way. So then what if we go back to the question of several
institutions were created later on to cement that work that began with
visibilising women’s work. And several institutions were born both in India and
also at the global level. Tell us about some of those. How was, for instance,
Indian Association for Women’s Studies came about? How was ISST, and
DAWN. And you’ve been part of all these institutions. Tell us how were these
born.
DEVAKI JAIN
You know, there is a kind of dynamics between an idea and a person. I think
there was some wonderful women leading the national institutions, like the
Not Social Welfare Board, but vice Chancellor of Bombay University.
What was the name so they would take interest in it. But how did it happen?
I’m just trying to think. I don’t know Navsharan. I think once 75 took
place, there was an order in which people found it worthwhile to bring in the
gender issue. You would be amazed and amazed to know that between 80 and
90 Veena Majumdar and I were on at least 8 if not 6 committee setup by
ministries which do not exist anymore which was to bring in gender into their
work. I cant believe that it existed. You go to Labour ministry. There was a
small committee of women who tell what to do on the Labour ministry. You
can interview woman could Girija Ishwaran. She is still alive. She will tell you
that impact. Then if I go to Girija and tell her after that, I could tell you, could
you find this? Could you find that? So she funded our study of women prawn
peelers who are being taken from Kerala to Gujarat and then put into rooms
where they were raped. And that study shook that whole business of migrant
labour being caught like fish by contractors. So in a way, I think my work on
ISST’s work as different from CWDS at that time was we were always doing
little studies to shift policy. We were not doing studies for scholarship, so we
got left out of the academic thing. So ISST never came in that, but we were
very busy showing the field, like showing Kurien that women work from 4:00 in
the morning, slept, slept at 4:00 in the morning, got up at 6:00 and therefore
the lot of death amongst women of reproductive age. So that was something.
So each time it was doing a study, then pushing it down the throat of the
people who organise that. So we had influence on the dairy, we had influence
on silk, but influence on so many productions processes by just tweeting. So
we didnt never published any big deal.
I think that was an important thing that struck me after you ask that question
is IAWS and the idea of women studies got embedded around that time
because it was serving a purpose. It was opening the door of gender but I don’t
know where they were not been alive what she would say. But I think
somewhere one be opened it to big things like every university has a women
studies department and people join it and do emphasis and emails and all that.
I think somewhere they the core of advocacy, politicising, the issue, fighting for
that has become more subdued and it is more scholarship, and that
scholarship is valuable. But the route that scholarship takes, as I see my good
friend Ashwini Deshpande, is good work. Is that you change at a level of
intellectual work, then it change a little bit on perception and policy. But the
journey is very different. The journey at that time was directly to change either
a trade unions behaviour or a policies define or government behaviour like
Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Site. We did that study with Chhaya
Datar. It opened the door to the fact that these women were working
sometimes night and day with no creche, and they were mostly women in the
reproductive age. So we did an infant mortality study with funded by UNICEF
and found children were dying and women were actually dying much earlier. It
transformed the MEGS. Chhaya Datar will tell you then the immediate that is
Maharashtra Employment Guarantee which is now called the employment.
Employment opened heart to open a creche. We put a labour legislation into a
public policy program. So you could actually do it like flipping the fish or the
other side, you know, you could make a study and screw driver it into policy. I
went and talked to Mr Pragya, thank you. Was the minister for in Maharashtra
shows his hands and said you must put creches. And they then started insisting
that an open a sight you open a creche. You can imagine that really you feel
that when you actually do a study and then seed being effectively impacting
the women who studied it. Now let us go back to your question. When you
shift that kind of work and it is and the route it takes to women’s studies in
universities and colleges, it is different. It’s done a study for a study. I think
there are activists like my young colleagues, but that is not the that’s not the
screwdriver.
Yeah, it’s scholarship, PhD and all that, but it’s not a proactive moment. So I
dont know about women’s studies. But now I feel that that proactive, doing it
for policy, doing it for public action, is not so much the the ethos. What do you
say?
NAVSHARAN
Right, no, no, absolutely. And at your time, you were trying to influence public
policy in a profound way. And I think you should tell us about how you actually
went about because as we know, for instance government departments, they
always had a small womens wing which did its own work and then a
standalone thing would be produced. But it will not be mainstreamed and
we’ve seen it with respect to the work of Planning Commission also. A little
desk somewhere doing too small studies, but Planning Commission also never
integrated work through gender lens. But I’m sure you have more to tell us on
influencing public policy in a big way.
DEVAKI JAIN
But you have touched all the right soft spots, like you know that when you
listen its a natural change, I think. If I look back. You have a passion that you
have a women’s wing, you have woman in the ministry of rural development,
agriculture, industry who have mandated to consult women. You don’t have
that anymore. Then we shifted to Planning Commission, Planning Commission
for nearly 5 or 6 plans, as you know, and a consultative group on women. But
now that’s gone. Now why should it go? It should go partly because it’s
happening elsewhere. Or it could be going because the state of the nation and
its politics have changed. But I think it’s going elsewhere. So I don’t think
governments now can be the key drivers to getting gender justice. What do
you think? May be in some ways, maybe they should.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
Every government have actually talks about gender equality bringing more
justice, but things are happening differently and you would know from the
hindsight what has changed. So how did you influence public policy? What was
your experience of trying to do it? It’s not easy public policy as we say, as many
would think of it as a neutral arena, but we know it’s highly gendered.
DEVAKI JAIN
Could we say that structures are important? Like there was something called
Planning Commission which does not exist. There was a Women and
Development joint Joint Secretary in the in Shastri Bhavan. I don’t know if
there such a thing exists anymore. That state planning boards were like, I was
a member of 2 state planning boards, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. I don’t know
where the state planning board exist anymore. I think planning as a tool for
policy and program has died with the dies an important space where we could
enter. And if you say planning died, that also shows that planning was backed
by a socialist kind of political mind, which is gone, it is liberal now. Liberal
means no planning. No planning means no space where you can influence the
plan. So it is like the House that Jack Built. So we have to look at influence,
tools, people against that broader macroeconomics, institutional system. So
we had a wonderful system, doesn’t exist anymore. So there is no place you
can knock, knock to make change. I think that must be very frustrating for your
generation. Women studies people.
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We have to start with something else. I think the global space has changed and
with the global space changing its really driven by economic theory.
Unfortunately, and I think economic theory, economic arguments for what is
success, what is prosperity has changed enormously I think. I mean you have a
wonderful intervention in discourse with Thomas Piketty talking about
inequality. You have other wonderful intervention by poor Amartya also show
but but the most governments and the UN system are not interested in the
conceptualising of what should be the drivers of economic growth, the drivers
of economic growth are what? I would like you to answer that question can’t
be simplistic and so its profit motivated. That’s like the old fashion dialogue
between Marxist and non Marxist that cannot hold any more. Its finance
driven. Yes, definitely. Socialism that is justice where everybody has a piece of
cake, I don’t know.
So how do you in such a situation? I ask you, there was a time when we could
have a women’s ministry with bureaucrats and civil servants who were
mandated only to do something on women like you have fund Dalits or Tribes.
Then we had regular conferences called by the UN and by regional UN agencies
like ESCAP and UNIDO and FAO all the time saying bring gender and bring
gender in. So you have river like the Ganga, which was always going through
other spaces. So the women’s issue could be seen is something for justice, for
equality, for well being. I can’t see what that world is where we could do that.
So there is a change which we are not writing enough about. So we can go on
talking about this, but we cannot make the change. But the other good thing is
that you have women struggling together.
NAVSHARAN
Yeah, sure. Actually 90s is when the big changes began to happen,
privatization, globalization, but but also in terms of building alliances. When
was DAWN born 19-?
DEVAKI JAIN
Nairobi 1985.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
‘85. Okay and in the 90s post liberalization because 1995 when Beijing
happened, what was the women at that time seeking what was the big
gender? Gender equality was the main issue at that time, but but in terms of in
the overarching environment.
DEVAKI JAIN
If you if we decide to, sorry to interrupt you. If we decide to see time periods in
terms of the women’s conferences, it would be very different from how I have
seen history. You know, I have not taken this as milestones. That could itself be
an illustration to you. That the women’s conferences were not making
difference to either individual leaders like myself. And sorry, but I’m claiming
to be a leader or institutions it. I think in some sense what came out of Beijing
was very much Sarkar must have done more, but I don’t see.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
No, I was only trying to prompt you of the work in the 90s. What were you
doing?
DEVAKI JAIN
Kicked out.
When you do change in power like I was director of ISST and there were many
people like Vimala, Ramachandran, Sujaya and that’s it Dekhiye should not go
on. You can’t. And I also agree that I didn’t want to be one of those permanent
features. So you then let’s go and you start letting that institution become
freer of the overarching presence of the founder. And so ISST now has become
more normal, which is has a director whose employed for 3 years. So there is a
question there which have not been able to answer. It’s awkward for
somebody who is let go on her own and said you should never have this strong
personalities always standing over because then the institution doesnt have a
separate identity except in those days you should be are you going to Devaki’s
institution or Veena’s institution, it was like that in the 80s to run that off, I just
give up.
Many other ISST has survived. Because of that. Because of not having
figurehead who is associated with. I am completely out of it. I’m not on the
board, I’m not. But they have survived. They are able to get money for their
own work. I think others institutions who did not chop off the head of the
leader did not quite survive so well. Now CWDS is not in the big picture at all, if
I may say so. And then when Kamala Bhasin was the star again, the institutions
that she sort of blew life into, so we are also at fault. The civil society, women’s
organizations, we are not able to let go. So why did I do that? I I don’t know
why I was so convinced that this institution will die unless I let go. And I had
good friends like CP Sujal, Vimala Ramachandran, who’s appointed by Ford
Foundation to evaluate the ISST. And I said come out strongly that there has to
be a change in leadership. And they did that. And then we went into the board,
The board interviewed people. We had some calamities, like when Swapna
came, she destroyed all her books. Someone else came. But then I looked
away. I said don’t touch it. So we lost a lot, but we gained the sense that the
institution has survived. Why did I say that? I think now those institutions
which Veena and myself, others founded don’t have a fire in their belly.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
So is this the, you think, the loss of movements, the loss of bearing of people
or people who are coming into these institutions, it’s the professionalization of
the field?
DEVAKI JAIN
I don’t know what to say. It looks very disgusting to say that. It shouldn’t
happen. It should happen. Transfer of power should happen. All those
situations like they lost legitimacy because they wouldn’t let go of the icon.
Icon has to go. But if one could have had space where we could discuss how
the head of A feminist or women study centre is oriented towards some kind
of politics of feminism. But it doesn’t happen. My successes were not
feminists. They were academics. And so over the time, the organization has
become a research. It is not a women’s leadership conference. So we were
women leaders. There is no leadership coming out of the institutions. Its a its a
very interesting dilemma. You can’t have those passionate people sitting on
the top of others forever do. Is it afford that we didnt inculcate, orient others
to be politically active feminist?
So I would like, I mean as to have some discussion on that sometime. Be
interesting to see what’s happening in America and other places. You know
some of the best people who are now voices from England and America are
academics. They are not the they are not the kind of names that you see in
Cambridge, Oxford. You don’t see those names of those women who are
passionate on women. They are academics. Tell me Navsharan, does it mean
that if you have a an academic was not come out of a political or social
movement running these institutions, does it make a difference?
NAVSHARAN SINGH
And I think how I see it, it makes a difference actually because in some ways,
especially in India, women studies was always had a movement, women’s
movement informing the studies, and studies were opening the analytical
grounds, feeding back into the movement. So there was a very live linkage
between movement and studies and that is what IAWS has for at least for the
first decade represented that. And then later on if you try to see the kind of
panels that happen there was a shift there was a shift it became a gender
studies as the core area of interest and it lost sense of politics. So once you lost
sense of politics then your questions are also, not informed by the field but
they come from somewhere else correct its I mean they are different things –
DEVAKI JAIN
Absolutely the right analysis and this circumstantially I don’t think because
have any other thats also true unless I don’t know this. You so you ask me the
question, You will laugh at my answer. What am I preoccupied now with? Ask
me?
NAVSHARAN SINGH
What are you preoccupied with, Devaki?
DEVAKI JAIN
I am going on a road where I am going to write the definitive book on
feminism.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
Wow.
DEVAKI JAIN
I have got the title, haven’t got the publisher because after the book is ready
then I will get a publisher who bombed the world and the book will be called
Feminism as I see it.
MUSIC BREAK
NAVSHARAN SINGH
We didn’t get to talk about your work with Women’s Grassroots politicians, the
panchayati trade system and your work with local level elections, etcetera, but
would you like to talk?
About decentralised planning women’s elections, to sarpanches, sarpanches
and the movement of when reservation happened, would you like to say
something about the Panchayati Raj?
DEVAKI JAIN
No, I mean Navsharan was partner at the time, so I’m glad she raised it. It was
really exciting, you know. It was an exciting thing to be able to take a map and
then see how to bring the gender into it in terms of policy and program that
we could do it. And I tell you the excitement of taking every chapter of the
plan, showing how the gender lines should come to it. You feel not only
excitement, but that you are doing something useful because unless you put
women in the macro policy or framework, there always be there a chapter
called Women and Children. There should be a chapter in the planning and
plans saying Women and Children, but then we shifted them into manufacture
infrastructure. That was the IT was actually revolutionary in many ways. But
you don’t choose those words. And we had of course it was, a plot that I had
and Navsharan was very excited by too. But we then had the advantage of
having Syeda Hameed, who had an open mind but who didn’t know much
about economics, willing to host us.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
Syeda Hameed was at that time member of the Planning Commission. So tell
us about it. She hosted you. Then what happened?
DEVAKI JAIN
No, I think you know that the particular way in which we intervened on behalf
of gender, I don’t know if you know, as you are such young people, that the
Planning Commission, the plans always had a chapter called “Women”. It is
usually a welfare chapter and that’s how it went down for several plans. This
was 11th Plan that Syeda Hameed came into the picture. So add this idea that
says Syeda had come to me and said Devaki, what shall I do? I said let’s see if
we can get women into the other chapters. She was game in that, which meant
bringing the chapter and then bringing women who knew how to handle it.
That is my friends in the women feminist economics. So she was open. So we
set up that group with all are type of people, you know, Bina Agarwal, Indira,
Rajaraman, Padmini Ramaswami, the names are all there.
What a tremendous difference it made to how you look. But then the plan
itself and the Planning Commission collapsed. Let me give you one example,
how simple and civil it sounds. How crucial. In infrastructure, the chapter
Infrastructure you talk of bridges, roads, money to be put aside, state level.
Then Renana Jabhwala comes up and says toilets for women. Look at that. So
every infrastructure building a road, she said. Women have to do susu all over
the place. So the contractor when he built the bridge road had to put in a. But I
think it looks so silly, but it’s such a… Like that everybody had a had a needle.
Everybody was a specialist on anything like health, employment, put in
something and Kirit Parikh was doing agriculture at that time. So he was able
to make a very big difference to the chapter on agriculture, because you know,
this idea that women are farmers, though poor Swaminathan and others said
it. We were able to bring that in, which means credit, which means training,
and things like that. I think this some day you should do that. Also that every
manufacturing process, including the rearing of silk worms on which I have
written a lot, it’s difficult to know. Nobody puts the the women labour inward
in the growing of worms, but we showed that so immediately you have that.
Cashew nut husking. Then maybe men is not recognised as an occupation, so
there is no wage fixation or labour laws. So about 30-40 such occupations, if
you bring it as an occupation in automatically bring it on the labour ministry,
which means automatically the protection of labour. You have no idea how
important is. You have no idea the cashew nut husking women. They burn all
their fingers because the oil is so… once you identify it, then you unionise that,
then you give protection. It’s a huge line of what you can say intervention on
behalf of women, but it was not done till we intervened. Thanks to Syeda, a
group of us.
So I’m very excited by that kind of thing. I feel that if you are in the women’s
movement fighting for gender to make those transformations for working
women… So I never got too involved in dowry and rape and bride burning, but
which are very important. But recognition of women workers, you should see
the Occupational Classification according to gender if you are interested. You
will see how many occupations women are predominate and they don’t come
up for matrixation, unionization.
MUSIC
NAVSHARAN SINGH
So Devaki, what was the childhood like born in privileged household, both cast
and professionally. Tell us about your childhood.
DEVAKI JAIN
I think that introductory description you gave is wrong, so I don’t want to
locate it in that at all. Privilege in economic gifts like karan, that cannot be a
the landscape for me to talk about myself. For example, I would challenge that
privilege. My father was, earned his schooling by selling books, so he came
from a non-rich family. My mother of course was even worse. Father was the
manager of the Tirupati temple and they lived off the prasadam that is given in
the temple. So it is not a capitalist or even a bureaucratic financial… But in
those days, and I am sure many of your grandparents will tell you, the civil
service as it is now, also was the road that every parent wanted their son to
follow. So my father passed the civil service exam of the princely state of
Mysore and therefore had a regular salary. No property and he had 8 people
living in his house when he was what you call a sub division officer. Because
everybody was hard up. His sisters were hard up. His His brothers had no job.
His mother was. We don’t. So you have this picture of a Brahmin family, but
not Brahmanism. That is, we had Muslims come and eat in our house and
things are that’s so there is not a…
So my childhood, therefore, was happy because my father was a civil servant in
Mysore and had and I was free… go to school. And then from civil service my
father went and there was a gang of.. Iam going, I’m digressing a bit, but I will
come to the point after 5 minutes because I have to put in this context. There
was a time when India got free when the the government or even even before
she got free was looking for people who could advise the government. So
Mirza Ismael. Who was the Diwana Gwalior Diwan of Mysore became the
Diwan of Jaipur. My father came at Diwan of Gwalior. So a 40 year old civil
servant. Retiring from the state of Mysore comes as the Diwan of Gwalior. In
that critical year when India negotiated the states to surrender themselves and
made indent of federal state from A conglomeration of Princely State. My
father was the convener of the Chamber of Princess and his recorded in
repugnance book as the one man who enabled India to get rid of the princes.
But he was not a Marxist, and he was just a bright fellow. No, in that I have to
say that to you to say that there was not a money was not at all. There was no
property ownership. Nobody owned any house, nobody owned anything. What
he had was what the government provided – car and driver or a rent for the
house. So for most of our youth we were living in a civil servants house. Then
when the he ceased to be a civil servant and he went to the private sector, it
took him time to make enough money to afford things. So for a long time, my
mother, his her mother was a widow, looked after the kitchen, and we went to
school by bus or walk or something. So we are no no money in terms of… when
we get back from school we had dahi baat as a food and that was not
deprivation. That was the way people lived, even if you go to Malleswaram in
Bangalore and a whole lot of people living in the so it was not a capitalist
house for another socialist house, just an ordinary lower middle class
household. So thats it.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
And where they are more women in the family? You mentioned your
grandmother and mother, but did you have sisters?
DEVAKI JAIN
Yeah, I have two sisters, one older, one younger. My mother’s mother lived
with us because she got widowed. My mother’s younger sister lived with us.
That was another pattern that you must all be knowing, that widows and
unmarried women need somebody who will feed them. RK Narayan’s book The
Dark Room is a picture of what happened to my aunt. I have written about her
in this who remains single and who really was doing nothing but maids work.
Okay. So come back to childhood.
But there is one thing that I think I have also mentioned. I have sisters are all
very close to me, like 4 years older, 4 years younger and 4 brothers. So the
family was a large cohort of, and maybe sort of muddled and lived together.
There is no kind of uniqueness. Are you a girl? Just somehow, I don’t know if
any of your grandparents have talked to you, but society in those would
families are not talk of the Dalit. I’m not talking of Rich. I’m talk of middle, just
31
live does families. I’m sure you also, the family just lived like that. So my sisters
also just like me convent school. But the big thing that was the cruelest thing,
was I was light skinned. My sisters were not, and light skin made a big
difference to how people looked at me. Even within the family, uncles, aunts.
It’s the most disgusting thing and therefore there was venom in my sisters
minds towards me when I was 12, when they were 14, just because you
vallathol means white. I was getting so much pampering by my father because
I was light skinned sometimes previous the lions skin that enabled me to
negotiate going to college because my sister got married pre puberty. So to
checked a sister who is only 4 years older than me getting married pre puberty
and I married at the age of 30 is partly to negotiate my freedom. Because of
this, he was not worried that I will get not get married because my wife still
will get me whoever I want is. I didn’t want you to say it like that in the book,
but it seems that an assault and I think even know you said wanted fair. Thats
why Fair and lovely came up.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
Fascinating have the colour of skin actually was pathway to higher education
and-
DEVAKI JAIN
Absolutely. Colour means therefore there is no fear that get a husband.
Somehow every boy, I’ve written about being taken to Boys houses when I was
13-14 and they would say can’t you sing. Can you clear? And my mother would
say don’t say… “She can sing”. Then they put a harmonium in front of me and I
had to belt out of song. And there was this guy for whom I was being taken to
be sold to sitting on a chair and my mother sitting on the floor with
harmonium. It was unbelievable but I’m sure it’s happening even now in
traditional India. I got through it all Navsharan only because of the colour of
my skin, my sisters were darker and they didn’t have to, they was so worried
about marriage.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
How did you break the news of your marriage to Lakshmi?
DEVAKI JAIN
I’ve written about that. I mean, I think I told you that. I told my father. Just
most vulnerable time, that is his nap after lunch. Mind you, I was already out
of the house at already worked, gone to Oxford everything. So he said I’ve
cremated you in Tamil, he said. Nan suttute unne, And you know, I never
bothered because I had worked so hard to keep that open. I had made Lakshmi
wait for 8 years and he had been so good waited, waited, he could have easily
been.. and then my father says he wont accept. So I love that moment. You
know, when I just walked out with a bag out of the. I walked out of the gate
literally like it Jayalalitha film. It’s so melodramatic that it’s shocking. It’s just
like a Tamil film, he walked out.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
Are you allowed back in that house?
DEVAKI JAIN
Yes, about, after first child I was not allowed to go into the house, but my
younger sister marriage was fixed and my mother was panicking because she
wanted help. So she said, come, but don’t tell your father that you married so I
mean creeped into the house to help her. And then of course my sisters have
always had this grievance against me he didn’t want you, He asked. You die
and then you come back and you take over. Because my father then just I
became his favourite because I was a bright… I was doing things.
So this caste, colour are all very important classifications. Would you say so as I
survived on colour?
NAVSHARAN SINGH
True. Ohh right, right.
DEVAKI JAIN
I’m digressing too much.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
No, no, no. This was fascinating.
DEVAKI JAIN
Please stop me and don’t don’t that disgrace myself.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
So, so there is one more thing we wanted to ask you about your years in
Miranda. When you came back from Oxford, you said you were single and you
were Oxford educated and you started teaching in Miranda House. Yes. Who
were the year like?
DEVAKI JAIN
It was wonderful. I was being with a bachelor brother at that time, but other
faculty members in Miranda, who I befriended, theu let me come and live in
their house on Miranda House had some quarters for them. I just loved it. I
love the teaching. And then, as you know, Delhi School had the best stars.
Amartya Sen had come back, Sukhamoy, Amartya, K N Raj, Jagdish Bhagwati,
Padma. They are all there at that time. That was 1962-63. It was a feast! And
you just have to step out of college and work for about 100 yards and there
were D school with this festive, wonderful people. And then K N Raj was there.
And then he sort of adopted me as a waif and stray. Often used to stay with
him. His wife got to friendly with me, so I had a ball just.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
With there any other women professors who were teaching economics at that
time because you were an economics professor?
DEVAKI JAIN
No, just imagine,..Rohini, she was my student. Indira Rajaraman who was was
my student, actually my student, in the sense that all the 4 years I taught from
second year to 3rd year. So they moved with me, and it was a a feast, a
wonderful… Rohini…Indira Rajaraman. Who is it with that TV person who
makes us herself look very beautiful? She was Nalini Singh. They all got first.
We got 9 first that year. Like claim that is because I was a good teacher. They
never got 9 first ever after or ever before.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
Wow! Were you the only economics professor who was a woman.
DEVAKI JAIN
I mean, it was in touch with them for a long time. Vimala Raghavachari. There
was a Punjabi woman, and it was a nice common room and they don’t done
more in terms of post graduate work, whereas I had come straight from a
degree. We continue to be friends for a long time, even though I stayed at
Miranda only for 2 or 3 years. All those 3 years, that one stream that went and
35
so it was a good because one of the best experiences my life to be at Miranda
House and that university at that time. It was liberating. It was intellectually
very exciting. And even now people like Indira Rajaraman, Nalini Singh, they
are in touch with me. So it was a good experience, probably best professional,
in my professional graph, I would say my most happy for profession was when I
was at Miranda and I could never ever replicate that again.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
It’s great. Let’s talk about now. Now that you mentioned you are 91, what is it
like to be aging?
DEVAKI JAIN
Do you know, Navsharan, you will understand this because you have known
me for a long time. I feel every day that is a great mistake to be alive without
Lakshmi. It’s a it seems such a Bollywood think of statement that I am making
because you see that a lot in Hindi films. But it’s true. It’s so demeaning,
actually, to live now dependent on my sons. They’re nice men. Not being
myself, so it’s difficult to describe, but I think the loss of my husband and then
living so long, now he has been dead for 10 years. I think has been a very big
strain and writing books and having a small office and friends like Shaista and
others has kept the candle from being snuffed out. But I would like to go. I
dont feel any anything that would want to keep me alive have no kind of. So I
think that this widowhood business is not a joke.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
But you have been so productive, writing books, almost every year there is a
book coming out. You are alive, you are still going and talking. You are
delivering lectures. You have friends like Professor Romila Thapar. You spent
almost every week. You spend time together for intellectual.
DEVAKI JAIN
Thats the therapy you need if you are still breathing. I mean, I don’t want to
invite death, but when death comes, I will be very welcome. But if you if your
destiny is that you still breath and live. Nothing like keeping your mind alive.
Nothing. People who don’t keep their mind alive, they really suffer because
they think of all the things they have been deprived has been the stigmas that
are attached. But fortunately, in Delhi and in Bangalore now, there is no stigma
attached to widowhood. So you are free of that particular thing. And my sons
are earning enough to support me so I don’t need a job and the international
space still cherishes me so thats give me a lot of tamasha so.
NAVSHARAN SINGH
You are loved by so many.
DEVAKI JAIN
Including you
NAVSHARAN SINGH
Yes. So we are so happy and fortunate and privileged to have you around
sitting front of me. I am so happy and you are smiling Devaki sitting in front of
me talking about her life. What more? Thank you, Devaki. It’s been a wonderful
conversation. You took us through so much and give us given us an
opportunity to actually go back into history and see where we began and
where we are heading. Lot of food for thought and lot of hope. You remain an
inspiration and I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much.
Grassroots Nation is a podcast from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. For more
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