Developing in a Ditch? : Women, Struggling for the ‘Right to Work’ Amidst Conflict in Garhwa Jharkhand

This paper is about structurally disadvantaged women’s struggle for the right to work in Garwha District in India, a district affected by violent Maoist groups in conflict with the army and other forces of the state. The paper examines the access to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, under which one of the largest employment-creation schemes in the world operates in the District. Using a mixed methods approach to understanding the reality of women’s struggles for work, the study first looks at the database of the Act. Through painstaking analysis of the data, gender and caste disaggregated data were cross-tabulated to produce data disaggregated along both gender and caste lines. In qualitative terms, this study drew on semi-structured and structured interviews with women workers of the Scheme, state officials and experts in the development and employment field. An intersectional analysis of the data is intended to complement the quantitative data analysis. Overall the aim is to find out why fewer and scheduled caste women and scheduled tribal women are being included as workers in the projects of the Scheme. Key findings suggest that women still wish to participate, but that the database used to plan work was not disaggregated in such a way as to facilitate these socially excluded women’s participation in the Scheme and access to employment. The most important finding is that caste, gender, violent conflict and government officials are completely interdependent and can even all be found in one family. This complex configuration of power relations serves to further socially exclude rather than further including the women who were intended to be the main beneficiaries of the right to employment under the Scheme.