Seven Days in India |
VOL. 5, No. 2, 71-82
A conference of women university vice chancellors was held from May 14– 17, 1990, under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), to discuss possible initiatives regarding women in education and development. The participants included fourteen women vice chancellors and four men vice chancellors, fourteen (non vice chancellor) educators and activists, and three COL officials. For a report on this, see Susan Phillips' item in the For Your Information section. Here we have a more personal account. Karlene Faith, the editor of Toward New Horizons for Women in Distance Education (Routledge, 1988) was one of the Canadian participants. The following is an edited version of her Journey diary, excerpted from a transcription of her shorthand notes.
A marble and velvet palace hotel in New Delhi. Delegates from India, Nigeria, Pakistan, England, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica. After his introductory remarks, Dr. James Maraj (President of COL) introduces Senator Lucille Mair, Jamaica's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and former representative to the United Nations. Senator Mair's forceful talk sets the tone for the week and ignites a congenial dynamic within the group. We are gathered to assist the COL with defining the priorities of women in education and development, and to formulate recommendations on which COL project priorities can be based. The previous evening we had been fêted with a splendid reception, welcomed with a dignified hospitality from our hosts and the hotel staff. Now, listening to Senator Mair's words, we are clearly reminded of our purpose in gathering. She speaks of the inevitable and potentially constructive uses of technology, through distance education, as a means of transmitting knowledge, facilitating development, and acting on democratic imperatives. She also raises the inevitable question of money and resources, asking whether women have the power to advance their own interests. She encourages regional integration, with distance learning as the logical means of communicating. She analyzes the women's studies processes of creating, possessing, and using knowledge as analogous to the work of Paulo Freire (whose name is later evoked by other speakers in discussions of women and development). She calls for new egalitarian relationships whereby the teacher is taught, and the researcher is researched. And she recognizes that education that synthesizes cognitive and affective functions can be an instrument of empowerment. Her words ring true and as a group we are enlivened and inspired.
After this opening address, some group members introduce themselves and speak of issues of especial concern to women in our own locations and professional contexts.
A Vice-Chancellor from Nigeria works actively on policy changes and strengthening women's organizations, and she is encouraging female students to enrol in non-traditional areas, especially math, science, and technology. At the same time she works with the market women, whose cooperative activities include making oil and cosmetics, weaving baskets, farming, fishing, making cloth, and organizing markets, and in the process creating a new economy.
Another Nigerian Vice-Chancellor, who describes herself as an "unrepentant and unapologetic feminist," also supports distance education for people who can only study in their spare time. And yet there are no jobs even for university graduates - "the men become layabout husbands, the women educated prostitutes." She wonders whether the Decade of Women brought any gains, and she believes that top-level government policy-making bodies are "what it's all about." In her nation of 100 million people there are 30 universities and university colleges, with only two female Vice-Chancellors. As a law professor, she is well aware of the ineffectiveness of the law in rectifying inequalities, and she suggests taking a lesson from India - going to the grassroots to find out what they need. Generating loans and scholarships to encourage females who want to advance their education. Practical steps.
This exhausting and exhilarating first day is broken by a sumptuous buffet: one great feature of life in India is that vegetarians are a fact of life and very well cared for. Afterwards a small group of us go to the underground market bazaar in downtown Delhi - masses of stalls, masses of people. Oven-hot. Exciting.
The day begins, following Dr. Maraj's instructions to the group, with comments from a woman from India, such as:
A woman has to be more than a man to be equal to a man....The pool from which women can be chosen is an extremely shallow one....Friendship does lubricate official responses. This woman continues with a discussion of the importance of relevant course material, presented in the languages and idioms of the various regions, and the need to correct the media slant against women.
(At this point, a male person at the roundtable, identity unknown to me [us?], is asked by Dr. Maraj to chair the meeting. This man then says, "We are clever people. We can make many points. Try to make new points." He is adamant.)
However, another Indian woman continues in the same vein.
In light of the revivalist onslaught (in Indian society) more and more women are becoming docile. We need to face things squarely.
Development and technology, per se, mean progress for women...? I think that's not so. Technology produced in an inequitable society would increase the disparity. Enrolment is falling in the development orientation program at girls' schools in Punjab. Technology has gone into agriculture. Boys will be given the technical training.
Prosperous Punjabis won't work with their hands. It's done by migrant labour.
A third Indian woman speaks of health professions - there is virtually no medical care in the rural areas.
Professor Trivedi, one of India's most prestigious educators, then speaks of child labor, starting with children as young as three, and women working to pay dowries. "[We need] education for socio- economic change, for justice and peace, and for political awareness."
(The Indian male Vice-Chancellor at the table takes the chair.
We're talking about class and gender war instead of distance education. It's time that we start concretizing issues. In the 1990s all of us would agree that if we have to modernize and develop we should take into account the need for equality between sexes. [Women] need to develop skills and capabilities. How can we go about it? To speak of a struggle for empowerment is a cliché....[Our concern must be] with urban and rural illiterates. Let us forget the rhetoric and get to the point. What can the Open Universities do about it? What would be relevant to urban and rural illiterates? The COL should commission a study on how to develop the capabilities of these sectors of society.)
Later in the day Marnie Girvan of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) speaks of how since 1983, at all stages of CIDA projects, women must be involved in planning, and implementation, and also as beneficiaries. CIDA integrates women into all projects instead of developing special projects for women, with few exceptions. Marnie quotes Lucille Mair: "If development doesn't work for women it doesn't work." She speaks of the Directory of Successful Distance Education Projects for Women that Barbara McCann of Toronto is putting together.
Dr. Maraj then introduces Baroness Blackstone, a late arrival. She is Dr. Tessa Blackstone, Master of Birkbeck College in the University of London, and a Labor peer in the British House of Lords. She describes the Open University from various perspectives and offers a useful discussion of reasons for educational inequities.
* * * *
As with the previous day, our morning and afternoon sessions have been broken by extravagant feasts for vegetarians and others, elaborately laid out by many cordial waiters. The breads are delicious, and the cooked vegetables and cheese and tofu dishes, all of it spiced in radical ways. Most everyone seems to get "Delhi Belly," even if we don't eat the fresh fruit that is delivered to our rooms, or swallow tap water. Helpful women are sharing Imodium with their friends.
What's more, we are a tired group: only the Indians are not suffering from jet lag, and many of us have gone days without proper sleep. We are brought to life again by Dr. Iftikhar N. Hassan, the last speaker for the day, the Vice-Chancellor of Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Dr. Hassan speaks explicitly of education as "Empowering." She has no quarrel with separate curricula if students, both male and female, want that.
She speaks of the basic need for clean water and of the value of the Freire method: "We need to be in the villages, where people can define their own needs. We need to use local languages, attitudes, and methodology. We can introduce audiotape or flip charts, but what is most important is always inter-action." She, too, is concerned with getting women into applied sciences: "Methodologies still need to be developed for women. We need positive discrimination for women."
* * * *
In the evening we are given a special performance of a music and dancing group, of exquisite, spell- binding talent. We are seated at the front of the auditorium in velvet over-stuffed chairs. The music and dancing, which merged, are sublime. This night they give us a BANQUET SUPREME. You stand to eat. Even soup. The room is a sea of beautiful saris.
Our Featured Speaker for this morning is Professor Yashpal of India's University Grants Commission. He says "Emotionally I feel more like a woman than a man." He speaks of the facilities for education in India, which are not evenly distributed - either geographically or in terms of access.
India uses satellites to bridge distances. He says that they had no television until the government launched an educational experiment in Delhi and in one hundred villages, linked by atomic energy.
Until then there were no television sets in the city of Delhi. Education was the only reason for getting television - it was not intended for entertainment. We ended up with 150 social scientists in the Space Centre with this experiment....While you increase your reach there's the danger of showering wisdom from the top and not being in touch with the intimate and personal. Learning thus would not be organic, it would not fit in. We needed to have an experiment within the experiment, to work intimately with the population. We had to have a skirmish with our broadcasting organization to have different people produce programs.
"India," said Professor Yashpal, "produces the technical system but we failed in one respect. Broadcasting was intended primarily for education. But through the tyranny of technology, it was subverted and limited to the already privileged."
Indira Gandhi National Open University will be a major educational intervention in the country, according to Professor Yashpal. He expresses his belief that the whole concept of the university will be transformed. "At one time principles changed very slowly, over tens of generations. Now they change fast."
Professor Yashpal says:
a country like India does not run because we have scientists or teachers, but because we have carpenters in the villages - barbers, smiths, shoemakers, beautiful craftsmen, and weavers, and of course agriculturalists, most of them women - who have learned all these things through an educational system that is not even recognized - apprenticeship, tradition, family. India's best musicians are not trained by universities. Many traditional scholars speak Sanskrit. How cultured we are - all generated outside our educational system. A fantastic amount of education goes on. Craftsmen know the properties of cane and bamboo. They under-stand aesthetics. Yet we (educators) think we have an open slate on which to write. Ordinary people are not ignorant, even if we assume they are.
I have visited hundreds of universities in India in the past few years and invariably the top performers are women. Although only 30% of the student population are females, continually more females are graduating. However, they are still vastly underrepresented in decision-making.
Professor Yashpal speaks of "the windows through which we look, the skills we define for measurement..." as those of the dominant group, and the necessity of redefining values on very basic levels. He then, suddenly, stops speaking, with the endearing quip: "One doesn't have to share all one's ignorance in one day."
* * * *
(Editors' Note: The next part of the conference was spent on the vital and difficult task of producing recommendations for COL. This inherently complex process was complicated further by the need to take into account cross-cultural differences. For instance, while some western delegates proposed campaigns to encourage open admissions for "mature" students, women from India and Pakistan pointed out that age-limits were essential for their university admissions. A 35-year-old woman in North America, just beginning higher education, still has potential for a career ahead of her. In developing countries, with their scarcity of university places and shorter life expectancies, a 35-year-old beginning student would be perceived as an interloper, unlikely to make a substantive long-term contribution to her (or his) society. The social cost of educating such a person could not be justified. Although these discussions were central to the conference we are not able to reproduce Karlene's notes here because of their confidential nature. The final recommendations are with the COL and presumably about to be implemented.)
* * * *
And then, this evening, off in a bus, with little rotary fans above each seat - the temperature is 401/2 C. now - to the Taj Mahal Hotel, a magic crystal palace. There is enough food to feed throngs, though we are only a hundred or so. (Outside, I am told, people are dying of hunger; it's the reverse of the loaves and fishes story.) Dr. Desai tells me a wonderful story of a new women's university, funded by donations left at a temple built in honor of a man who married his wife on credit, because she didn't have a dowry.
The velvet and gold and embroidery, the brilliant colors and the chandeliers, the gleaming marble and the food - it is all too beautiful, too dazzling. Mirrors are everywhere, so you see everything a dozen times over, surrounding you, blinding you. Blinding me. My stomach hurts, and my head...
I'm feeling funny and arrive late for the morning meeting, at which we discuss further the various recommendations. Then, after lunch, comes my presentation. [Dr. Faith modestly says no more than "it was well received, but it was too long." Eds.]
We're all pleased when James Maraj says he has asked Lucille Mair to sum up the four days of meetings.
She says that what is new about this meeting is the particular constellation of persons - a rare and unique group. She speaks of how we identified common factors regarding illiteracy - lack of access to technical training, low skills - that imply that women are located in the traditional areas. She speaks of women's financial constraints, their lack of free time. Although at this meeting we did not stress population growth, that is a fundamental reality that impedes progress. It is reflected in higher costs of education and a corresponding lack of facilities.
Senator Mair notes that we learned a great deal from each other: "We saw the diversity of our experiences but even more we saw the similarities....It is comforting to know that one is part of a global family of sufferers."
How do we apply the technology of distance education. Out of collective experience we are well aware of the great advantages. We got a clear critique of conventional education: distance education is less constrained. It has possibilities for intermittent entries and exits.
We must foster self-knowledge, self-esteem, and self-awareness (and here we must acknowledge the influence of Freire). We need to address the feminization of poverty, the attitudinal base. We need to be confident that there is a strong base of support, a strong infrastructure, a support base at strategic levels, and this implies greater representation of women - women who have that necessary empathy with women's issues. More and more we are identifying men who share women's goals and the women's movement has shown its enormous capacity to cut across racial, economic, and ethnic groups. This is one of its biggest assets. This group carries a great responsibility.
Lucille Mair continues by saying that although it is very encouraging to have shared this week with people who are in the eye of the storm, she is not sure if we have come up with any answers.
Can what we have done here these past few days make any kind of breakthrough? Certainly we hope that COL can become the main human resource, to assist distance education organizations, and to work, for example, with the U.N., as an advocate of justice and equity with responsive, open leadership.
Lucille Mair concludes by saying: "I can't remember when I last attended a meeting where there was so much work and serious attention to the issues - personally, professionally committed. I am grateful for the opportunity it provided for me to be with such nice people."
COL President James Maraj closes the final session with a speech. Amongst other points he says that COL wanted a thinking conference and that this one developed its own rhythm without intervention. "I believe COL has learned a thing or two. If you want to learn you have got to provide an environment in which you can listen. We tried to listen very carefully to what you have been telling us....Ours is a collaborative effort." He concludes by expressing gratitude for the support of the Indira Gandhi National Open University and the Government of India.
But this concluding speech is not quite the end. A woman from India then speaks of how meaningful it had been for us to share our heritages, as women. White-haired, wearing a pink and white sari, she speaks of the rigidities of bureaucracies, the frustrations. And she then suggests that we could end by pleading to God for the courage to change what can be changed, the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference. And, in our various faiths, we did end that way. [Editors' Note: Of course Karlene's notes cover dozens of topics and issues that came up but were not necessarily resolved, including the Women's International Network and its relations to the ICDE Board, and more general questions of power, money, and responsibility, and so forth. The dynamics of the conference were intensified and complicated by, on the one hand, a collective recognition of the damages wrought by patriarchal traditions of authority and, on the other hand, inevitably, by elements of those traditions within the conference itself.]
* * * *
My new friends from Indira Gandhi University, who have found good use for Towards New Horizons for Women in Distance Education, are waiting to take me shopping in the Government Open Market, which has the best selection and guarantees that the crafts person will receive a fair profit share. I like my shopping on the streets - bargaining for the little prince slippers, and the snake charmer's pipe. But the organized government market is an experience of Indian crafts-genius like nothing else I have seen. I ask why, since it is open, everyone doesn't shop there. It has everything and more. It is cool (outside it was 411/2). The answer - the obvious answer - is that most people can't afford it.
En route home from the market we are given a tour of parts of the city, and see the amazing streets and monuments that constitute both old and New Delhi: the many-statued monuments of Mahatma Gandhi leading the protesters against the salt embargo; the Parliament buildings; the Chinese Embassy; the home of Rahjiv Gandhi. And we see a series of political demonstrations. One of them is standard - a large crowd of people representing a minority political party, gathered to protest "broken promises" in general. A second, consisting entirely of men, is protesting sugar prices. Another group is protesting the construction of a dam that will dislocate thousands of people.
And the fourth demonstration has to do with a bear. It's common to see people performing on the street with bears, monkeys, snakes, and other creatures. In this case wildlife officials had impounded Munna Bhaloo (Baby Bear), a 12-year-old performing bear owned by Nasir Khan Qalandar. Mr. Qalandar was accused of mistreating the bear, which provided his livelihood and that of his wife and their children. His family and many supporters maintained that he treated his bear very well and that its health problems didn't begin until it was held in captivity, in the Delhi Zoo. Hundreds of street performers and their animals demonstrate on behalf of Mr. Qalandar. On June 2, two weeks later, I read in the Vancouver Sun (B7) that "the Supreme Court of India ordered the federal government to justify why a performing bear is being detained by wildlife authorities in the Delhi Zoo, and to report on its health."
I have one additional day and night, just time to allow for a journey to the Taj Majal, two hundred kilometres away. Up at 5:30, on a rotary-fanned bus by 6:00. Meet two faculty men from Queen's, doing a CIDA project in Bangladesh. Stop for breakfast after a harrowing ride down a narrow road filled with people, wagons, carts, animals, conventional trucks and cars and other buses, and vehicles constructed from parts of all kinds of machines. Pass thousands of people living on the street, by the sides of the road, in shanty towns, in parks. Pass, and barely avert, numerous accidents - victims dead or alive, no care from an ambulance. On the bus is an Indian family, a grandmother and her daughter in saris, her son-in-law and her grandson, all of them living now in Los Angeles. And a California woman in her twenties who is travelling around the world, alone. And three medical students from Hong Kong. We stop for a tour of a temple, and appropriately remove our shoes. Afterwards I can't get my shoes back on. I hobble in them - the grass is too hot to walk on. It's 461/2 C. Baboons and elephants are staying in the shade.
The Taj Mahal, built by 20,000 people working fulltime for ten years, as a tribute to an Emperor's beloved, in a town that refuses industrial activity so as to avoid polluting the air that surrounds this monument, encrusted with every jewel of the earth, is beyond description.
So are my distracting dizzy feelings, the feeling that I better keep walking, a burning of the eyes.... At the end of the tour, I pass out. Heat stroke. My electrolyte system/balance broken down, dehydrated, fever...I am put on the floor of a restaurant bathroom, with ice placed all over me and water poured down my throat and over my head. I wake to see an Indian woman in a blue sari and veil pouring jugs of water over my feet.
Carried into the restaurant, to a padded bench. More ice, water, and salt. Pass out again. Wake up to an Indian woman with a cool cloth on my brow. She and her husband are from Agra, where we are, but now live in Delta, B.C. They'd planned on a month's holiday with their families, after nine years, but they can't take the heat and are leaving right away. I don't know if anything's real. I ask her if someone could get my camera and take a picture. They do. I pass out again. (Throughout this process, Margaret Cameron of Australia, who had also been present at the COL meeting, kindly takes charge, locates a doctor, and arranges for me to be cared for in her own hotel room.)
I wake again in a wheelchair, looking into a strangely textured field of gray with a wrinkled pendulum swinging back and forth. It's the back view of an elephant. He's there as decoration for the hotel, but to get to the ramp they have to take me out back, to his rear. I ask the man pushing the chair to let me take a picture and to show me the front of the elephant. He does. I pass out again.
I come to life in bed, in Margaret's room, with a Sikh doctor beside me, asking me questions, taking temperature, rigging up IVs for glucose and saline and other electrolyte stuff. He stays there for hours, until I've got enough balance to make the trip. Margaret assists in many ways, and in the end wheels me to the taxi and gets me on the train, in the care of two young North Americans, assisted by my young, new Indian friend. He is assigned the seat beside me on the trip, has a car waiting in Delhi, and transports the three of us to our respective hotels.
Through the illness, and in the day that followed, Indian people were beyond kindness in their care and attention. They might well have saved my life; I surely felt as though I'd had a near-death experience. (I was told, to cheer me up no doubt, that it wouldn't have happened if I weren't so fat and had worn a hat.)
I felt "out of my body" throughout the day and for days after I returned, and felt about India that it was all a dream - that no country is really that ancient and modern, that impoverished and wealthy, that spiritual and materialistic, that political and that resigned.
Karlene Faith, a native of Saskatchewan, received her Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Since 1982, she has been at Simon Fraser University in the Centre for Distance Education and the School of Criminology. She is the editor of Toward New Horizons for Women in Distance Education: International Perspectives (Routledge, 1988).