COVID-19 Webinar Series: Voices from the Margins
4th Edition – Nat, Bediya and Bacchara women speaking on the intersectionality of gender, stigmatisation, migration and caste
Press Release
Situation of Entertainment Workers
It has been three weeks now since the government announced a lockdown across the country which has now been extended to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The Central and the State Governments have been making attempts at mitigating the existing scenario where several schemes are being provided to communities in order to lessen the impact on their livelihood.
The National Alliance Group for Denotified, Semi Nomadic and Nomadic Tribes is a collective of community led organisations which works towards challenging the stigma against Denotified and Nomadic tribes. The NAG research team including the community fellows have been in touch with and facilitating relief support to members of several communities in Delhi and Mumbai which has in turn, contributed in understanding the unique situation of the community members.
The NAG along with Praxis organised a rapid assessment of the situation’s impact on the Nat, Bediya and Bacchara communities. The interviews were organised from April 4th and 13th, 2020.
The research team performed the assessment focusing on the objectives of
- The receipt of their salary
- Loans they have taken during the lockdown period and
- The challenges faced by these communities while accessing reliefs and entitlements.
Overall, 106 workers from which 44 belonged to Nat community, 38 to Bacchara community and 26 to Bediya community. The study comprised of 58 women and 48 men from the various professions including the Entertainment sector (40), Daily wagers in entertainment (30), Farming and agricultural labourers (7), Driver (2) and not stated (27). The data was collected from 28 in Bihar, 52 from Madhya Pradesh, 16 from Rajasthan, 5 workers from Maharashtra and 5 from Delhi. Within these states, respondents were Mumbai (5), Araria (21), Neemuch (38) and Ajmer (11). City-dwellers formed 10% of the sample. Amongst the overall, 29 were elderly or disabled or caregivers, who were not into any remunerative work, a week before the lockdown.
Key findings from the study:
Entertainment Sector –
A total of 70 interviewed workers out of 106, worked in the entertainment sector. 30 others referred to themselves as daily wage workers associated with the entertainment sector. As a result of the lockdown, the community’s major source of livelihood, which is from the entertainment sector, took a big hit with the banning of gatherings. The impact on the industry surfaced over weeks beginning early February, but many weddings and gatherings were banned abruptly once lockdown was announced. Thus, the week into the lockdown created a sudden fall in work and income, which affected the workers monetarily as well as psychologically.
Wages during lockdown –
None of the 106 interviewed workers were able to access any kind of wage for their work or services through the employer or vendor or client. The lockdown has affected their work in entirety. Even those into agricultural labour have not been able to access any farm employment during the period. The entertainment industry was entirely shut. The access to patrons and clients has almost been nil.
The workers also carry a fear that the entertainment industry, especially weddings and religious gatherings are going to be prohibited for some months. For these communities, to try and experiment horizontal mobility in terms of new occupations has always been a challenge. Many have tried and failed individually and collectively. They also feel that society has been ostracizing them and their acceptance is limited to certain occasions and for certain activities only.
Access to Food during lockdown –
The NAG team received several distress calls from community members in metro cities who were not able to access food. While there were shelter homes, the community members fearing retaliation did not even attempt to go there for food.
The challenge that the community faced with access to food on the first few days of the lockdown has been unprecedented. 58 families were forced to take loans just to fulfil their basic need for food. Of the 106 people interviewed, at least three workers stated that they stayed hungry i.e. went without food for at least one day. 38 workers have stated that there were days when they got a maximum of only one meal in the day; and 61 others stated that there were days when they got a maximum of only two meals. There were only 4 who said that they were able to access three meals during the lockdown
Access to PDS –
In terms of the public distribution system all 106 interviewed workers were eligible from which 80 had registered and have ration cards but only 9 have accessed PDS during the lockdown. Some of respondents shared that they lived away from the registered shops, but others were not able to access rations even in their own location because accessing was very difficult.
Support from the Government –
Three schemes were explored with the 106 respondents from which 29 have registered with old age / disability pension and 19 of them have received pension for the month of March. Under the Jan Dhan account 80 have registered from which only 57 have received the money. Many of the respondents are also into multiple occupations, and engage in agriculture during the sowing and harvesting seasons. Under Kisan Samman Nidhi 45 have registered and 28 have received the money up to the month of March.
With the old age / disability pension, most of them are yet to receive the April month pension, which according to the central government, is to be provided in advance. Many of the women seem to have received it, but have not accessed it yet from the banks. Further, a number of women have never used Jan Dhan account before. The accounts were non-operative. The community felt that there has neither been any time for preparation before the lockdown nor was any proper information.
Alarming rise in Indebtedness –
In many cases, people ended up resorting to taking loans. The worrying fact is that 79 of the 106 workers have accessed loans to meet their expenses. 58 workers were forced to take loans to fulfil daily needs for food. 14 of them took loan to meet their need for food as well as medical expenses, which also indicates high morbidity and low immunity among the community members. One of the respondents had to take a loan in order to meet the expenses related to the delivery of their child, during the lockdown period. A few respondents (7) had also taken loans for farming.
Of 79 who took loans, 41 got the loan from money-lenders or contractors or employers. This easy credit from private players has been beneficial for them to meet immediate needs, but it is also worrying given the potential impact this can have on trafficking and bonded labour in future.
Key discussions with community research fellows –
In order to gain more insights into the different aspects that affect the lives of these entertainment workers and their families, the team had in-depth discussions with the Community Research Fellows. These fellows were part of a fellowship programme supported by NAG-DNT which was focused on research methods. The six fellows are from the Nat and Bediya community living in Bihar. The key points from these discussions are listed below
Relief is not reaching community –
- The community is not receiving food and PDS. They face problems of lack of identity documents and also the challenge of revealing their identity to the relief administration. The community is used to concealing their identity to access rights and entitlements. They rarely used to access PDS in non-lockdown circumstances. They preferred to pay higher ‘rent’ to get entitlements than suffer or be stigmatised by revealing their identities. During this relief period, this has not worked
- They are able to get “direct cash transfer” into bank accounts, as this does not require interface. But without an ATM card, they have no access to banks to get cash – which is a challenge.
Fear of rising indebtedness, which could lead to increased trafficking –
- When the community’s access to relief is restricted, and their ability to sustain themselves through livelihood options is restricted, they resort to credit to survive. Given that the community is close knit, are all affiliated with the sex industry and their relationships are close, members are able to get loans from money lenders – traditional means of access to easy credit is not going to be affected much.
- The community might have to repay the debt by contributing to the trafficking industry – directly or indirectly. This fear is not yet commonly owned by the state or civil society organisations.
Caste matters and its impact is not reducing at all –
- Everything boils down to the community that one belongs to. “Once it is established that a certain person belongs to one of these communities the attempt is to keep us where we are”. Immediately, every stereotype gets associated with us “prostitution, criminals, immoral, not capable of doing anything else, will come back to same thing later”.
- It is also because of our caste, that no one wants to actively engage with us. No one wants to support us. Officials try to avoid us. Only those NGOs that regularly work with us continue contacting us. During relief time, there were many new NGOs, but they were ‘scared’ to approach us.
- The community also reacts based on their past experience. So they would also not proactively approach relief administration officials and claim their entitlements. Further, community dining, even at shelter homes, is not going to be easy, because if anyone deciphers their identity, we carry the fear of unnecessary backlash by any fellow sufferer from other communities.
- Unless there is an attempt to look at abolishing overall caste system, things would not change fast
Patriarchy is cruel and defies any attempt to empower the community –
- There is no doubt that sex work is a direct product of patriarchy, which objectifies and commoditises women. Further it imposes a set of moralities, which make victims feel guilty and locates them into “irreparable situations”. Victims fault themselves and sustain patriarchy.
- The support even from neighbourhoods and progressive institutions get affected given that no one wants to associate with us directly.
Criminalisation continues – the administration does not recognise this process –
- The association of the community with its traditional occupation and of the occupation with the community; along with criminalisation; and a lack of support from the government to help them with alternative livelihood options – is in itself a criminal act by the state.
- The administration conveniently believes that the “occupation” and “community” are criminalised. Either way, the fact is that the occupation is continuing and a large segment of the community follows that occupation which has been criminalised. This happens with a convenient nexus with administration as well as the industry and society at large. However, the blame and responsibility are on the community.
- A large section of the community is fighting the sex industry as well as the morality norms of the society.
- Under this circumstance, when relief has to be administered by the state administration, which criminalised the community, there is going to be a challenge. The problem is that this si not even recognised as a problem by the Government.
Quotes from the community members –
A community member quoted, “Who will sex workers complain to when the police come and have sex with women and go away without paying? Is that not called as rape? Her laws are being broken every day and do they think it’s normal? I have never heard of a woman police officer accompanying for arresting women after sun down. “
Roshini Khatoon said, “People are being told that they belong to a lower caste community and hence they face a lot of discrimination. The senior citizens also face a lot of trouble. The ASHA worker and the Anganwadi’s are not functional. Now we don’t have access to medicines and those who are single mothers are also struggling.
A community member quoted, “You are asking about rape to sex workers? When these women go to police with complaints of physical violence they are ignored. Do you think there would be rape reported here? For a woman it is internalised with stigma, she thinks about her daily earnings and not about these issues.
Rohini said, “Even for the basic survival the SC and the ST communities are not completely dependent on doles. The culture has gradually been diluted like the people from DNT groups. This is a result of the Brahminical control prevailing in the society and the government.
Rani said, “We just saw announcements made by the Government. We had no idea how to access them. Relief was announced in crores but we did not get any penny.”
Rakesh said, “We are used to staying within our community. We avoid getting into wider community dining, especially in scenarios like this. Further, there are no shelter homes close by which are providing meals.”
The effort is a part of the COVID-19 Pandemic “Voices from Margins” Webinar Series, wherein, a group of organizations {Praxis Institute for Participatory Practices (www.praxisndia.org) and Partners in Change (http://www.picindia.org/), the National Alliance Group for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic communities (NAG), Vaanavil Research Collective (VRC) and Krishnagiri Development Programme (KDP)} have joined together to get the real picture from the ground through continuous and periodic rapid assessments and support communities at the margins to access government and non-government relief programmes during the COVID – 19 lockdown.
For details, please contact Mayank at nag4dnt@gmail.comfrom National Alliance Group or Anusha at anushac@praxisindia.org from Praxis.
English