Not Part of the Plan? Women, State Feminism and Indian Socialism in the Nehru Years

Abstract

The 1950s are often derided in the scholarship as a period of welfarist policies which reinforced women’s role in the family and entrenched women’s economic dependence. This paper examines the Central Social Welfare Board, and in particular its Welfare Extension Projects, to provide a new characterisation of the approach to women’s issues during the period. It argues that the Central Social Welfare Board, with its unique administrative structure, its preference for voluntary activity, and its adherence to persuasion as a mode of action reflected many of the characteristics of Indian socialism of the time. It also sketches, from this angle, a partial picture of state feminism in India. In the Central Social Welfare Board, state feminism was concerned with the gradual transformation of women and a radical, if short-lived, makeover of the state.

Keywords:

• Community development
• decentralisation
• Durgabai Deshmukh
• everyday state
• post-colonial nationalism
• self-help
• socialism
• state feminism
• welfare state

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the organisers of the special section, Mytheli Sreenivas, Uditi Sen and Anjali Bhardwaj Datta, for their feedback on this research as it developed. I would also like to thank the participants in the workshop on ‘Women, Nation-Building and Feminism’, held in Cambridge, UK, in September 2018. Eleanor Newbigin, in particular, provided a detailed response on a very early draft of this piece, and Arathi Sriprakash never misses an opportunity to challenge me. Thank you both. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers at South Asia journal for their thoughtful feedback on this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Geraldine Forbes, Women in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 223–6.

2. Nirmala Banerjee, ‘Whatever Happened to the Dreams of Modernity?’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 33, no. 17 (1998), pp. WS2–WS7.

3. Samita Sen, ‘Toward a Feminist Politics? The Indian Women’s Movement in Historical Perspective’, in World Bank Policy Research Report (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000).

4. Eleanor Newbigin, The Hindu Family and the Emergence of Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

5. Uditi Sen, Citizen Refugee: Forging the Indian Nation after Partition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), chap. 5.

6. Anjali Bhardwaj Datta, ‘“Useful” and “Earning” Citizens? Gender, State, and the Market in Post-Colonial Delhi’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 53, no. 6 (2019), pp. 1924–55.

7. Dorothy E. McBride and Amy G. Mazur (eds), The Politics of State Feminism: Innovation in Comparative Research (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2010); and Hanne Marlene Dahl, ‘An Old Map of State Feminism and an Insufficient Recognition of Care’, in NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Vol. 18, no. 3 (2010), pp. 152–66.

8. See, for example, Jenny B. White, ‘State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman’, in NWSA Journal, Vol. 15, no. 3 (2003), pp. 145–59.

9. Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Bargaining with Patriarchy’, in Gender & Society, Vol. 2, no. 3 (1988), pp. 274–90.

10. Wang Zheng, ‘“State Feminism”? Gender and Socialist State Formation in Maoist China’, in Feminist Studies, Vol. 31, no. 3 (2005), pp. 519–51; Katherine Libal, ‘Staging Turkish Women’s Emancipation: Istanbul, 1935’, in Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Vol. 4, no. 1 (2008), pp. 31–52; Kirsten Ghodsee, ‘Pressuring the Politburo: The Committee of the Bulgarian Women’s Movement and State Socialist Feminism’, in Slavic Review, Vol. 73, no. 3 (2014), pp. 538–62; and Rosa Moneiro and Virgínia Ferreira, ‘Women’s Movements and the State in Portugal: A State Feminism Approach’, in Revista Sociedade e Estado, Vol. 31, no. 2 (2016), pp. 459–86.

11. See also Uditi Sen, Citizen Refugee, chap. 5, who takes a few steps towards disaggregating the state, noting tensions between the ministries which devised refugee rehabilitation programmes and the volunteers tasked with implementing them.

12. Akhil Gupta, Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), chap. 2.

13. Partha Chatterjee, ‘Development Planning and the Indian State’, in State and Politics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 271–97; Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (New Delhi: Penguin India, 1997), chap. 2; and Gyanesh Kudaisya, A Republic in the Making: India in the 1950s (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017), chap. 5.

14. Uday Singh Mehta, ‘Indian Constitutionalism: The Articulation of a Political Vision’, in Dipesh Chakrabarty et al. (eds), From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 13–30.

15. Maitreyee Chaudhuri, ‘Citizens, Workers and Emblems of Culture: An Analysis of the First Plan Document on Women’, in Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. 29, nos. 1 & 2 (1995), pp. 211–35.

16. Benjamin Robert Siegel, Hungry Nation: Food, Famine and the Making of Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

17. Daniel Immerwahr, Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); David Engerman, The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018); and Nicole Sackley, ‘The Village as Cold War Site: Experts, Development and the History of Rural Reconstruction’, in Journal of Global History, Vol. 6, no. 3 (2011), pp. 481–504.

18. For a fully fleshed-out version of this argument, see Taylor C. Sherman, ‘“A New Type of Revolution”: Socialist Thought in India, 1940s–1960s’, in Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 21, no. 4 (2018), pp. 485–504.

19. Vivek Chibber, Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialisation in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), chap. 6.

20. P.C. Mahalanobis, ‘Address Delivered as President of the National Institute of Sciences of India’, 8 Jan. 1958, in Talks on Planning (London: Asia Publishing House, 1961), p. 70.

21. Nirmala Banerjee, ‘The Unorganized Sector and the Planner’, in Amiya Kumar Bagchi (ed.), Economy, Society and Polity: Essays in the Political Economy of Indian Planning in Honour of Professor Bhabatosh Datta (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 71–103 [75].

22. Sherman, ‘“A New Type of Revolution”’, pp. 485–504; for a related argument, see Nikhil Menon, ‘“Help the Plan—Help Yourself”: Making India Plan-Conscious’, in Gyan Prakash et al. (eds), The Postcolonial Moment in South and Southeast Asia (London: Bloomsbury Books, 2018).

23. P.D. Kulkarni, ‘Social Welfare in Five-Year Plans’, in A.R. Wadia (ed.), History and Philosophy of Social Work in India: A Souvenir Volume of the Silver Jubilee Celebrations of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1961), pp. 469–80 [472]; and M.S. Gore, ‘Historical Background of Social Work in India’, in Social Welfare in India (New Delhi: Planning Commission, Government of India, 1955), pp. 135–47.

24. In 1964, the Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work became the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

25. Even Jayaprakash Narayan called for ‘scientific training’ for Gandhian constructive workers: Jayaprakash Narayan, ‘Speech at Concluding Session’, in Report of the Seminar on Social Welfare in a Developing Economy 22nd–26th September, 1963 (New Delhi: Planning Commission, Government of India, 1964), pp. 103–10 [108].

26. Durgabai Deshmukh, ‘Presidential Address’, in Report of the Seminar on Social Welfare in a Developing Economy, 22nd–26th September, 1963 (New Delhi: Planning Commission, Government of India, 1964), pp. 7–14 [11–2].

27. V.M. Kulkarni, ‘Social Workers Are Not Revolutionaries’, in Sugata Dasgupta (ed.), Towards a Philosophy of Social Work in India (New Delhi: Popular Book Services, 1967), pp. 112–20 [119].

28. Durgabai Deshmukh, Chintaman and I (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1980), p. 61 [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.172432, accessed 16 Feb. 2021].

29. The Times of India (28 Dec. 1952), p. 8.

30. Deshmukh, Chintaman and I, p. 37.

31. Deshmukh, ‘Presidential Address’, p. 8.

32. This chimes with Srirupa Roy’s characterisation of the post-colonial state as ‘needy’: see Srirupa Roy, Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), p. 111.

33. This was the case, for example, in the push for universal education where school-building was required, but as soon as the scale of the building project was recognised, it was devolved to local communities: see Taylor C. Sherman, ‘Education in Early Postcolonial India: Expansion, Experimentation and Planned Self-Help’, in History of Education, Vol. 47, no. 4 (2018), pp. 504–20.

34. Sherman, ‘“A New Type of Revolution”’, pp. 485–504.

35. Ibid., pp. 490–2.

36. For two of many descriptions of the attributes of social workers, see Gulestan R. Billmoria, ‘Voluntary Social Work’, in A.R. Wadia (ed.), History and Philosophy of Social Work in India: A Souvenir Volume of the Silver Jubilee Celebrations of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1961), pp. 59–70 (59–60]; and Lalita Kumarappa Kotwal, ‘Change of Attitudes’, The Times of India (15 Aug. 1956), p. 22.

37. Rajendra Prasad, The Times of India (12 Nov. 1954), p. 8.

38. One more recent example of this common argument is Gyan Prakash, ‘Anxious Constitution-Making’, in Gyan Prakash et al. (eds), The Postcolonial Moment in South and Southeast Asia (London: Bloomsbury Books, 2018), pp. 141–61 [147].

39. Taylor C. Sherman, Nehru’s India: Seven Myths (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

40. P.D. Kulkarni, The Central Social Welfare Board: A New Experiment in Welfare Administration (London: Asia Publishing House, 1961), p. 72.

41. Ibid., pp. 68–9. This may also explain why it is not often found in official archival records.

42. The Times of India (8 April 1958), p. 9.

43. By March 1956, they had established 294 PICs: see Kulkarni, The Central Social Welfare Board, p. 14.

44. Banerjee, ‘Whatever Happened to the Dreams of Modernity?’, p. WS3.

45. The Maharani of Patiala, ‘Training of Rural Welfare Workers’, in Social Welfare, Vol. 1, no. 12 (1955), pp. 26–7.

46. I. Randhawa, ‘A New Start for PEPSU Villages’, in Social Welfare, Vol. 3, no. 3 (1956), pp. 29–31.

47. P.R. Shinde, ‘Poona Match Factory’, in Social Welfare, Vol. 6, no. 7 (1959), p. 35.

48. Dolly Senapatty, ‘Orissa Chairman Talks about Day-to-Day WEP Work’, in Social Welfare, Vol. 3, no. 9 (1956), p. 13.

49. Tara B. Jadhav, ‘The Story of a Welfare Centre in Saurashtra’, in Social Welfare, Vol. 2, no. 1 (1955), pp. 78–9 [79].

50. ‘WEP News—Winning Over Villagers in Assam’, in Social Welfare, Vol. 3, no. 4 (1956), pp. 29–34.

51. Jadhav, ‘The Story of a Welfare Centre in Saurashtra’, pp. 78–9.

52. Sherman, ‘“A New Type of Revolution”’, p. 496.

53. The Times of India (3 July 1955), p. 14.

54. Programme Evaluation Organisation, Evaluation Report on the Working of the Welfare Extension Projects of the Central Social Welfare Board (New Delhi: Planning Commission, Government of India, 1959), p. 15.

55. Social Welfare, Vol. 2, no. 8 (1955), p. 28; see the photo at [https://lse.academia.edu/TaylorCSherman, accessed 30 Jan. 2021].

56. The Times of India (16 May 1958), p. 8; and Randhawa, ‘A New Start for PEPSU Villages’, p. 30.

57. The Times of India (15 Mar. 1962), p. 8.

58. Programme Evaluation Organisation, Evaluation Report on the Working of the Welfare Extension Projects of the Central Social Welfare Board, p. 15.

59. Lalitha Bhat, ‘India’s New Working Girls’, in Social Welfare, Vol. 8, no. 1 (1954), p. 45.

60. Margaret Chatterjee, ‘Trends of Progress in Employment and Welfare of Women’, in Social Welfare, Vol. 2, no. 5 (1955), pp. 6–7.

61. P.N. Sharma, ‘India’s Working Women’, in Social Welfare, Annual Number (1956), pp. 85–90.

62. D.P.C., ‘Hostels for Working Women’, in Social Welfare, Vol. 3, no. 10 (1957), p. 6.

63. Ibid.

64. The Times of India (19 Mar. 1959), p. 7.

65. Programme Evaluation Organisation, Evaluation Report on the Working of the Welfare Extension Projects of the Central Social Welfare Board, p. 8.

66. Ibid., p. 9.

67. Ibid., p. 22.

68. Randhawa, ‘A New Start for PEPSU Villages’, pp. 29–31 [31].

69. Sherman, ‘Education in Early Postcolonial India’, pp. 504–20.

70. The Times of India (15 Mar. 1962), p. 8.

71. Samita Sen, ‘Toward a Feminist Politics?’, p. 4.