Saminasha vs KKKandK...

I think everybody on this board - representing a wide spectrum of opinion ,from dumbo-psuedo-macho-men like KKKandK to the ardent-scholarly-well-meaning-but-naive feminist Saminasha , are WRONG in one way or the other. So wrong , that I dont know where to begin.

Firstly , it is stupid to see ’South Asia’ as a single entity. There is a vast difference between India and Pakistan. It is foolhardy to club together these two countries , which differ so much from each other in terms of socio-economic realities as well as mentality ,under one tag - ’South Asia’. I am not in the least bit concerned about Pakistan and its brand of honor killing , punishments decided by the tribal/islamic courts like stoning the rape victim to death and so on. I will focus on India.

Very few people understand India. There is no single ’reality’ that describes India or its people. India is this giant melting pot with a hundred realities. Is it not a fact that some women in the villages of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have never been to school and are treated like ’property’ by their menfolk ? Sure it is.

But it is also true that over 50% of over a million employees at India’s fast growing and high performing IT/Telecom sector , which earns revenues in the excess of $20 billion , are women. Ranging from highly educated software developers , project managers , engineers , to the fresh out of college or college drop outs working in call centers......India has also seen a new wave of self-made mega-rich lady entrepreneurs especially in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical sector. (One of my ’heroes’ , the self-made $ billionaire Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw , founder + ceo of Biocon India Ltd., a rising star of the global biotech industry comes to mind.)

These women earn much more than the national average , and so are in control of their own destiny. They are supremely confident and make as much if not more $$$ than their boyfriends/husbands. They drive their own cars , buy their own apartments before they turn 30 and then perhaps consider the option of marriage - preferably to equally qualified professional men who can also help out with the cooking. Gender inequality ? Discrimination ? They wouldn’t understand that. And neither do they feel the need to shout at the top of their voice about being a part of some international sisterhood or a feminist union. Thats what rich housewives or useless academics teaching ’Diasporic Narratives’ and ’Gender Relations’ do.

Today , a woman cannot get a decent match in India if she does not possess a decent engineering or medical degree....Even looks are only of secondary import. So there is a tremendous pressure on parents to make sure their ward spends more time on books than in beaty saloons. A woman’s capacity to earn is as important as that of a man’s. Which is only natural given the hidden materialism that has always characterised the Indian society and the demands of the market forces which today place more value on a woman with a cushy job earning $$$ every month for life rather than one who can only get a own-time-only retainer as ’dowry’.

My point is , equality in all forms , whether gender or societal , and elimination of all societal evils , will come automatically if and when there is economic development . Economic development will happen if the right policies are in place - free trade , liberalisation of the national economy and integration with the internation market. Female empowerment is directly and intrinsically linked to economic performance.You cannot force a change in mindset of a third world society by simply quoting Virginia-whatever or even worse , by debasing the local cultures - which is counter-productive. A change in the societal mindset will only happen if there is a change in the economic realities.

But generally , our feminists and promoters of International Sisterhood , being more often than not of the leftist outlook , out of touch with reality and bereft of common sense, are also at the forefront of anti-globalisation activity and opposition to the concept of free market and capitalism.

So the Arundhati Roy idolising well-meaning kind hearted Saminashas of the world actually present a greater roadblock to a little girl in a village in Maharashtra dreaming big about having her own software company than the likes of empty-headed-insecure-inferior-male-chauvinist-pigs like KKKandK.