Karmika - Woman Empowerment (Mason Trainer series - 2)

Karm + ika = Woman worker {Etmy. (Karm = Hindi for Work + ika = suffix making reference to feminine)}

Women empowerment is a big and concerning issue, and recently someone floundered with a recent book, think it was a recent NY Times review, titled “Are Islam and Feminism compatible?” Well, I support the issue of empowerment of women in workplaces, but 'feminism' is a little tougher to understand. Maybe, because I am not a woman myself. Tough, was also to interpret the flood of write ups such as top 100 women achievers, interviews with prominent achievers, columnists, celebrities sexy, which followed 33% reservation, almost certain, of women seats in the Indian Upper parliament- now to make rounds in the lower house.

Perhaps, somewhat related to this sometime back, and more focused on my artisans in the construction sector, that on recommendation and curiousness I went to visit the office of Karmika; an offshoot of SEWA which works with enabling and assisting womenfolk in construction work. Karmika also conducts its own Trainings and runs other programmes, through an established training centre it has in Bopal, Ahmedabad (City is the seventh largest city in India) - till now, numbers in thousands have been trained here in one level or the another. And why not, when their corporate office is at an easy distance from mine! Quite approachable and tradition loving people, I could easily get access to their chief, Smt. Bijal Bane (Smt. is an Indian prefix and Bane a Gujarati suffix for adding respect to names). After I said I came to visit her because of Karmika's good work in our field, and would like to know more, she in all humbleness gave me her space and her time to talk. We talked for some good hours.

I recall, our talk focused on the role of women in construction - how good and bad they are doing - current dynamics. I also came to know, how the traditional apprenticeship culture has not been traditionally supportive of normal women who do normal work. And currently the culture is left pretty much to improvidence. The course of our talk went on, and the role of big time governments and big sized corporates came in the picture too. Upper level women, great women achievers - leaders, etc.

PolisWala and Sahib

We both were intoxicated. It was the vapor around. While, I got high on thoughts of righting a blog, he continued to scrape sandpaper on the furniture he was going to shine-polis for me. Sunil is a freelance polis-wala who will charge you exorbitant money if you are not careful. Rupees 2200 is all he asked for a one and a half day job he completed with his assistant.

In addition to his rightful labor, the cost of two chemicals which means the thinner and the polishing chemical, a nitrocellulose based material locally manufactured in the local industrial areas, and other contingencies could not be more than half of what he asked me earlier for. Thankfully, protective gloves, boots or masks don’t figure in the picture.

The locally industrial areas manufactured vapor producing half litre nitrocellulose tin box shows a badly designed cross ‘X’ with ‘HARMFUL’ written next to it. Think the brand is called Taralac. Perhaps, this all was the information that the box gave. I got reminded of COSHH I learnt about in the UK, and how the gov’ment regulates the use of such harmful substances, so I felt pity for Sunil and asked him if he knows the job he does, and if it is bad for his health. He replies in a pitiful and a draggy tone about how he has been doing this work for last sixteen years and has always felt intoxicated while doing it. His eyes rolled unsure why we are talking this as he continued to polish the table leg.

And I think to myself- wow what a nice rare job he does because it gives him a high he doesn’t mind.

Sunil tells me of burning sensation in his hands sometimes because many a times the chemical is harder than usual. Sometimes his eyes get yellowy. Then he tells me the importance of studying and teaching his chillen well in a nice ambitious city like Ahmedabad. He is hopeful and starts to put a pitying tone to extract that extra money.