Zee TV’s Home Minister

 This highly popular serial is going to close down on 13 September 2024 after continuous telecast of 20 years!

The home minister is the lady of the house and the anchor, Adesh Bandekar, visits her in her home, gets to know her and her family by asking a few standard questions. Then he asks her to play a game or produce given items from her kitchen in a short time and rewards her generously by giving her a Paithani saree.

Imagine travelling all over Maharashtra to do this, 5 days a week and for 20 years. The programme is so popular that Bandekar went abroad with it among Maharashtrians settled abroad.

The serial targeted the neglected large segment of Marathi women - housewives and made them visible. It did not entirely ignore working women but the focus was on homemakers, singly or in groups. It also probably enhanced their status. It made the anchor insanely popular and launched his political career.

If you haven’t watched the programme, do so quickly: Zee studio, TataPlay channel no. 1204 Monday to Saturday 6 to 6.30 p.m. Catching it alive should be worthwhile.

Women send their invitations to the organisers before they are selected. The chosen one decks herself, beautifies her home and introduces her family members and friends. They welcome Bandekar with a puja tray and niranjan.

You should watch the women talking lovingly about how they met their partners or how marriage was arranged. They describe their partners: all are quiet and helpful. They identify one weakness in themselves, usually getting up late or having a short fuse and promise to do better. They remember their parents and seek their forgiveness. They also include their in- laws sometimes. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for all the women.

The programme is a sterling example of the power of the medium and its capacity for audience participation.

One is exasperated by the rote answers. It is so easy to sidestep truth and push it in the background! Listening to these women makes you forget that Maharashtra also has problems like domestic violence, dowry deaths and gender discrimination.

For all that, it is still heart-warming to see the women playing simple games on TV and winning.

The underbelly

 That India is doing well and is registering good economic growth is well-known. The new-age technology sectors and urban middle classes have done well but agriculture, rural economy and women have not. Labour force participation rate of women has actually declined.

The country has self-sufficiency in food but otherwise agriculture has declined in a significant way. Climate change has made matters worse. Subsidized inputs and credit, loan waivers, administered minimum prices for many crops, diversification into horticulture, dairy industry - everything has been tried out but there is widespread distress resulting into farmers' suicides.

Sadanand Deshmukh, a young Marathi writer has captured the ruined rural economy in his Sahitya Academy winner novel 'Baromas'. Call it the Indian 'Grapes of wrath'.

All this ran in my mind while I was reading Jaideep Hardikar's lead article in the Times of India on 23 May 2024. He has described in it the totally hopeless future that young men in Beed and Yavatmal districts of Maharashtra and in Vidarbha, Marathwada regions of Maharashtra have staring at them. Most of these young men are post graduates (in social sciences and commerce, subsidized degrees available in small towns) and have been to big cities in search of employment. Many have wasted a number of years preparing for civil services examinations. They have worked as contract and casual labourers but could not sustain themselves because of the low earnings. They have been forced to come back home to till the family land and have found that farming is just not viable.

They cannot get married because they do not earn enough. Last year, these forced bachelors had taken out a march in Solapur to highlight their plight.

This is the situation in the prosperous state of Maharashtra. Matters are worse in Bihar, UP, Bengal and Orissa.

Migrate to cities, somehow make do with abysmal living, working conditions and take to self employment - is that the only way out? 

Progress

 The sweeper in our society did not turn up for two days. Garbage piled up. There had been complaints about his shoddy work and he was pulled up. I thought, he had resigned and no replacement could be found. So anxiety ensued.

However, he turned up yesterday at 4 p.m. He was grinning from ear to ear. He was just back from a trip in a hired car to Ganapati Pule in Konkan. His family and his wife's family had gone there together to take advantage of the long weekend. He was very pleased. The temple at Ganapati Pule is very nice and it is located right on the sea shore.

The sweeper is a pious man. However, the temple did not appeal so much to him as did the shore. He saw an ocean for the first time and was very impressed.

A few years ago, when he joined, he wore torn clothes, did not have footwear and was afraid of society rules. He did other cleaning jobs at offices in the 'Mega center', a nearby office complex. He ran around cycling from the society to these offices. He settled down as he is a sincere worker. However, during the lockdown, all the offices were closed and our society work was his only means of sustenance.

Now the offices are open and in full swing. It is difficult to get cleaners who make decent money as compared to the past. Their stamina and time are the only constraints. So the sweeper looked around and decided to have a family vacation. Progress indeed.

Our gardener has 2 daughters and 2 sons. The daughters are clever, sons less so. However, due to reservation policy, all of them have jobs and are doing well.

One of the maids in the society has 4 daughters and 2 sons. The daughters are educated and have jobs in Amazon! One son is a driver for Amazon. All are doing well. So much so that they have rented a 2-bedroom flat in our building in addition to their flat in a multistorey slum rehabilitation building nearby. The daughters wear capris, trousers and T-shirts and ride 2-wheelers.

So with progressive government policies, with the spread of digital technology and with demonstration effect of television and social media, the bottom is coming up.

This is progress and not Ambani's/ Adani's joining the club of the world's richest persons.

Adverse sex ratio

 So what is to be done to solve this problem? (Continuation of post of 2 January 2023)

• Create more jobs. Demographic dividend is going waste as young people do not have jobs and cannot contribute to society.
• Empowerment of women so that we do not go backward and get rid of female foetuses.

After reading yesterday about the agitation of men who cannot get brides, I have been thinking continuously about this situation. I have become aware of the myriad ramifications of the issue.

So I read with interest this news item in today’s newspaper:

A newly married man recorded the phone conversation of his bride and came to know that she was planning with her relatives to decamp with valuables from the marital home. The man had paid a large amount as bride price already. He complained to the police and the lady, raised as an orphan, was caught.

There have been quite a few cases of newly married women running away with their jewellery.

When an imbalance or disequilibrium exists, touts will first step in to exploit the situation.

Progress throws up difficult problems!

Maharashtra Times, 1 January 2023 featured a disturbing article. It is published with a photo of bridegrooms in Solapur who took out a public march to draw attention to their plight of not getting  brides. The marching men were in the age group of 28 to 40 and all hailed from rural areas. They have been trying but unable to get married for a long time. The article claims that almost every village in Maharashtra has young men who are unable to get married. Sadanand Deshmukh had mentioned this problem in his Sahitya Academy prize-winning novel Baromas.

Most of these men do not have jobs. However, they are economically active. Many are engaged in farming, in agro-based industries, in small businesses or are followers of political leaders. Just a handful are dependent on their parents but feel that with marriage, their prospects would improve.

I remember times when getting their daughters married off in time and avoiding social approbation was the biggest priority of parents. How did this complete about turn happen?

There are many reasons.

• Girls are better educated and want husbands who have equivalent or higher education. Girls have made good use of educational opportunities open to them and they are striving to be economically independent. Boys have lagged behind in rural areas. Many have just matriculated or done graduation in Arts. These courses have no job prospects. Girls shun these boys.
• Girls do not want to live in villages and small places. Urban life is hectic and crowded but it is considered open to new ideas and liberating in many ways.
• Girls prefer husbands with steady jobs. They frown on farming because of its risks and uncertainties. There are cases of young men taking up indifferent jobs in towns just to get married. After marriage, they leave the jobs and return to farming. Then the girls approach courts to dissolve the marriage! There are cases of young men who are prosperous farmers and earn handsome income from farming but they too, find it difficult to get married.
• Female infanticide was practised on a large scale in rural and semi-urban areas in Maharashtra a decade and two ago. There was rampant misuse of amniocentesis tests till women's organizations agitated against the practice. So the sex ratio is adverse in all the districts, advanced and backward, in Maharashtra. Therefore there is a real shortage of girls. Because of this shortage, looks and financial background of girls do not matter any more. In fact, older, separated and divorced women are also acceptable in marriage. Issues of caste, religion and region are also not important!

The article makes a plea that this has become a pressing social problem and it must be redressed satisfactorily. It does not outline how it is to be done.

A few years ago, I read reports of Jat farmers in Haryana facing a similar problem. In a few cases, Keralite women travelled to Haryana for marriage and in spite of linguistic, cultural barriers, the marriages were successful.

There was also a movie starring Tulip Joshi who had to become a modern day Draupadi after she marries into a family of five unwed, grown up brothers. The image of Tulip Joshi, all pale and confined to her bed is seared in my memory.

Goodbye to Chitale milk

 It was an essential part of middle-class life-style when we came to Pune fifty years ago. It appeared that its quality and the fat content were beyond comparison. Chitale Bandhu Sweets, a shop of the same people, was another Puneri hallmark and long queues of customers formed in front of the shop since early morning on festive days. The sweets were fine but expensive and the very idea of spending so much time for them was too much for us. My father always ridiculed this obsession with Chitale milk and sweets. 

We abandoned the sweets but my mother stuck to Chitale milk. Boiling it, keeping aside the cream, making curds, making buttermilk from the special curds from accumulated cream, keeping aside butter and finally making ghee from accumulated butter - these time-consuming activities were a part and parcel of her kitchen work and she was very proud of them. I followed in her footsteps and did it all when she was not around which was rare.

With old age, my mother started finding it difficult to keep up and father advised her to give up Chitale milk. We could buy readymade butter and ghee, he suggested. Sacrilege, she thought and stuck to them. He gave up after repeated attempts to reduce her workload failed.

The quality of Chitale milk has worsened now. The milk is fatty but curds and buttermilk are full of casein. During the rainy season, milk quality goes down. Market grapevine says, they have scaled up and they use automatic machinery to get milk. Their marketing, helpline etc. remain poor.

In the month of May, Chitale milk which I was boiling on the gas stove suddenly turned sour and something snapped in me. I said goodbye!

For the next two and half months, I made trips to an Amul shop I found out nearby, every fortnight and bought 5 or 6 liters of Amul milk in plastic pouches at a time. I also bought cartons of milk. I found that Amul Gold was even more fatty than Chitale milk. It had few takers in our locality. Everyone preferred Amul Taaza, a low-fat variety. Amul shop had lots of milk-based products such as buttermilk, curds, ghee, flavored drinks, ice-cream etc. However, their supply was never assured.

We are used to getting milk delivered at home every day. This man said, Amul was not available with him and he had no substitute for Chitale milk. Amul has its own distribution and selling system and it does not cater to people like him. I had heard of milk delivery apps. I searched and found out that they  served Amul Gold or cow's milk or expensive organic milk. Complaints about their delivery were legion.

I realized that the market for home delivery of milk was imperfect.

I contacted our delivery man and asked him to supply Katraj milk every day. Katraj is our local co-op milk collection and delivery dairy and its milk is highly popular among common people. It is not possible to make proper, thick curds or buttermilk from this milk but many brands of these are available in the market. I have started buying them now. I have always liked the taste of Katraj curds though.

Surprisingly, my mother has supported me in this transition. She does not talk of Chitale milk now and we are happy. There is less work in the kitchen and what my father wanted has come about fourteen years after he passed away.

The technology quarterly of The Economist (2 8 June) has mentioned the names of more Indian scientists than any other nationality. Now this is something we should be proud of.