86 Time March 15/March 22, 2021
SPECIAL REPORT
WOMEN and the PANDEMIC
The message To women was clear:
Go back home. Since November, hun-
dreds of thousands of farmers had gath-
ered at different sites on the outskirts of
the Indian capital to demand the repeal
of three agricultural laws that they say
would destroy their livelihoods. In Jan-
uary, as the New Delhi winter set in, the
Chief Justice of India asked lawyers to
persuade elderly people and women to
leave the protests. In response, women—
mostly from the rural states of Punjab,
Haryana and Uttar Pradesh— scrambled
onto stages, took hold of microphones
and roared back a unanimous “No!”
“Something snapped within us
when we heard the government tell the
women to go back home,” says Jasbir
Kaur, a sprightly 74-year-old farmer
from Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, who has
been camping at the Ghazipur protest
site for over three months. She was stung
by the suggestion that women were mere
care workers—though she does do some
cooking and cleaning at the site—rather
than equal stakeholders. “Why should
we go back? This is not just the men’s
protest. We toil in the fields alongside
the men. Who are we—if not farmers?”
Questions like this have rarely been
asked by women like Kaur, long used to
having their contributions to farming
overlooked as part of their household
duties. But this wave of protests—the
world’s largest ongoing demonstra-
tion and perhaps the biggest in human
history—has prompted thousands to
make their voices heard. Indians of all
ages, genders, castes and religions have
been united by a common goal: to roll
back new agricultural laws passed in
September by Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s government. The laws, suspended
in January by the Supreme Court but not
yet repealed, would allow private cor-
porations to buy directly from farmers,
which they say would leave them at the