Manasa, Bangalore, declines UNFPA award for Gender Sensitivity

[Guest guest]

Dear Ms Chamundeshwari

Thank you for your phone call informing us that Population First has selected

Namma Manasa for the UNFPA-Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity 2006-07

(Southern Region). Thank you also for all the efforts you have personally made

to reach out to us thereafter. However, we regret to inform you that we would

like to decline the award and take this opportunity to explain our reasons for

doing so.

Namma Manasa, as you are aware, is a non-funded women's collective, bringing

out a monthly Kannada-language magazine on women's issues for the past 23 years.

As part of the autonomous women's movement in India, we have a strong critique

of the politics of funding. In our experience, donor aid creates unfortunate

divisions within movements; co-opts and blunts the radical edge of struggles;

and leads to a narrow single-issue focus where, typically, the issue is stripped

from the larger context. We regret that the last point is particularly evident

in the approach advocated by Population First.

Although your website states that " population is not an issue of numbers alone " ,

contradictorily, a key objective of Population First is listed as " reaching the

goal of family size of two children per couple " . You would no doubt be aware

that women's groups have consistently denounced the dangerous elitism of the

two-child norm. In a context where the majority of women are totally

marginalised from decision-making processes, the two-child norm is an added tool

of oppression. It leads to the abandonment of women and children particularly

among the most vulnerable sections, and forces sex-selective abortions. We

cannot see how you can reconcile this objective with your simultaneous call to

" save the girl child " .

The elitism, we fear, is also manifest in the central message of your Youth

Campaign: " The enormous Indian crowds reduce the quality of life and cause

ecological and social problems in the country. " The 'enormous crowds' that you

speak of are the poor of this country: the poor, who no doubt have more children

but do so to meet basic survival needs; to deal with higher infant mortality and

almost non-existent health care; and also because of patriarchal control over

reproduction. Avaricious resource consumption and monumental waste generation

are not, however, by the poor but by the profligate elites. The highest income

group in India, merely 1.44 per cent of the population, typically consisting of

families with one or two children, are the consumers of 75 per cent of the total

electricity, petroleum products and machine-based household appliances: products

that have a particularly pernicious global environmental impact.

We are also alarmed to note that Population First takes no stand on hazardous

contraceptives. Today, a range of long-acting, hormonal contraceptives are

available off-the-shelf. Promoted as " spacing methods " , these in fact have the

potential to permanently destroy fertility, to create birth defects among future

offspring, to lead to cancers and a range of other health problems among women.

Undoubtedly, effective contraception is a burning necessity but not at the cost

of women's safety and wellbeing. We fail to understand how your

population-related advocacy and communications can ignore this critical point.

From " family planning " to " family welfare " to the more current " reproductive

health " , India's population reduction programme has always savagely targeted the

poorest and the weakest. It has diverted attention from the real reasons behind

poverty, environmental destruction and social unrest, which include the lack of

genuine land reforms, of equitable resource distribution, of basic services and

social security. There is nothing to suggest that Population First is in any

way, working to change this unfortunate reality: a core issue of the women's

health movement in India. In the circumstances, we would find it difficult to

accept your award without compromising our basic beliefs and politics.

With kind regards,

Champavathi

(for Namma Manasa Women's Collective, Bangalore)

Bangalore, 26 March 2008

Saheli

Women's Resource Centre

Above Shop Nos. 105-108 Under Defence Colony Flyover Market (South Side) New

Delhi 110 024

Phone: +91 (011) 2461 6485 E-mail: saheliwomen@...