Janaki is a woman in her seventies who works as a maid in a few households in Ranchi, Jharkhand. Originally from the countryside, she is one of the many members of the Adivasi community who migrated from rural areas to cities to look for jobs. She relocated about twenty years ago with two of her adopted sons and is now happily settled in a small one-roomed rented house in a slum.
The freckles on her face tell the years of experience she has had in life. 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. Hence, she just has an estimation of her age, which she says is her seventies.
She described her life in the village as one filled with struggles and pains. She 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 young 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. But, soon after, her kids got sick and died as well of the same unknown disease. She was too depressed and poor to seek the diagnosis of the disease that took all their lives away.
To find another purpose for living, after her family's demise, she adopted three boys, trying to fill up the void by bringing up a new family. A new reason, she claimed, 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 husband’s 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 profits.
She said that every passing day after the adoption of the boys was proving to be burdensome with her in-laws. Constant verbal fights would lead to physical abuse. Her sisters-in-law would go out of their way to make her and her boys' lives miserable. They would interfere with her farm work, scold and beat her boys, and deliberately burn their portions of meals. 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 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 and they would 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 pretended to be disturbed by the family's presence. She planned to move to the city of Ranchi, and find a menial job which required physical labour within her capabilities 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 for help from a couple of acquaintances in the slum, if they had contacts with employers 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 a 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, she soon found a lot of job offers coming to her. Everyone could use an extra hand when it was provided in exchange for minimal unfair wages, nearly no holidays, and long working hours. It was a deal that everyone was ready to accept without batting one eye about how unjustified it was.
She got job postings as a maid in households and as a sweeper in buildings. Her working tasks have remained the same over the years, where she has to broom and mop floors, dust around the houses, wash utensils and clothes, cut vegetables and once in a while cook meals in houses that weren’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 overburdened with work but she thinks that at the end of the day, it gives off enough in return as she gets many tips in cash.
People donate new clothes and miscellaneous to her as well for the sake of goodwill. 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 with her neighbors. So overworking during festivals pays off well, 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 buildings. I asked her about her sleep schedule out of curiosity, and she said that it is just like a bird's. Her eyes open when the sun rises and they shut with the dusk/moon rise.
I asked her if she had ever been asked to do work related to scavenging, and regrettably, she said yes. There are times when people approach her, asking her to take away their pets' carcasses. She is also ordered 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 not up to the extent some particular workers in this field have to go to.
She has always remained confident and has had the self-respect that prevents her from being dominated by her superiors. She said that she refuses to work on 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 come into direct contact with the waste when she used to clean it, but some of her employers educated her on it and gave her the appropriate equipment to deal with waste.
Since then, she has always demanded equipment to be provided for her when she is asked to do such work. If anyone refuses to provide it, she also refuses to perform the task. She is convinced that turning down jobs won’t stop new offers from coming her way because she has established herself as a sincere worker who wouldn't delve into wrongdoings, and would perform all jobs with a good moral ground.
I had initially decided to write this report to talk about Janaki's struggle with her land, as I used to hear her complain a lot about it to my mother. I had seen many news articles where Jharkhand's tribals would get their land seized away by MNCs and the government for it to be overly exploited for resource extraction.
In one instance, in Jharkhand's Saranda forest, mining companies like ArcelorMittal and SAIL were granted leases to extract iron ore, leading to the displacement of tribal communities and the 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 on-going for decades, have led to the displacement of thousands of tribals from their traditional lands, which in turn have 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 obvious 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 a loss of cultural identity and practices.
I had assumed that Janaki's case would be the same, having never actually heard of 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 presumed. She is among the exceptions, who are in favour of the MNCs and the government. She has acquaintances who have happily and agreeably sold their lands to the government. The government, in exchange, has given a hefty sum of money to the owners. Hence, she also wants if ever she gets the opportunity, she would sell her land to the government.
She says that she doesn't want to remain connected to her village anymore; because of the terrors it has given her. She wants a proper source of income and is happy with what she is doing even if some 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 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 if it is underpaid work.
She says that she has too much life within her to retire, and she would do so happily when her limbs give away.
Janaki's story is very 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. Finding a purpose, no matter how small it is. She is an inspiration in many ways and would continue to be one for the many people she has interacted with and would continue to interact with in her life.
Written by
Satakshi Niraj.
