The Money She Cannot Keep

The Annapurna Bhandar scheme is meant to put money in women’s hands, but where husbands control the purse strings, it could become another source of domestic tension and violence.

Mariam’s husband used to beat her when she was pregnant. She suffered a miscarriage. The abuse escalated after she gave birth to their first child. On one occasion, he refused to give her money to buy formula milk for their six-month-old baby. She had to feed the child cow’s milk instead. He constantly put her down, telling her she was nothing more than an uneducated Indian village girl.

Riddhima had a well-paying job with the railways. Soon after her marriage, she was made to hand over her passbook, cheque book and all her financial documents to her unmarried sister-in-law for “safe-keeping”. The family assumed complete control over her earnings. She had to ask for permission — and money — even to replace her tattered sandals. She suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent back to her parental home. Counselling eventually saved the marriage, with the couple advised to establish a separate household.

These two cases are merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to domestic violence against women in India. For women like these, financial dependence often becomes another instrument of control. The question now is whether new welfare schemes that place money nominally in women’s hands will actually give them greater financial autonomy — or simply create another reason for husbands to demand control over their wives.

Household Flashpoint

Late last week, a young woman in West Bengal reportedly committed suicide after the instalment under the Annapurna Bhandar scheme was not credited to her bank account. Her husband lodged a police complaint claiming that she had taken her own life because she had not received her first instalment of Rs. 3,000.

The following day, however, the woman’s parents accused her husband of subjecting her to continuous physical violence and making incessant demands for dowry.

The case illustrates how easily the question of welfare money can become entangled with the much older and uglier question of domestic power.

Domestic violence can, of course, be linked to Annapurna Bhandar only indirectly. But in West Bengal, reports have emerged of household disputes involving the scheme, including arguments over its application process, documentation and delays in receiving money.

In Malda district, another woman reportedly died by suicide following a major quarrel with her husband. Preliminary police reports suggested that the immediate dispute had been sparked by the process of filling out the lengthy welfare application form, against a background of regular domestic violence.

Political parties have also raised concerns about administrative delays and the bureaucratic complications surrounding the scheme. What begins as paperwork can become, in a household already strained by poverty, dependency and domestic abuse, another source of friction.

The Annapurna Bhandar programme provides financial assistance to women, but accessing it requires detailed family and income-related documentation. Verification procedures and delays in disbursement can create additional complications.

My maid has decided not to apply again because, she says, it is impossible for her to fill out the detailed form by herself. Agents willing to do the paperwork charge anything between Rs. 100 and Rs. 500. Some applicants do not know the answers to all the questions on the form. Others allege that agents demand a share of the Rs. 3,000 monthly benefit as their “cut”.

The irony is hard to miss. A scheme intended to put money directly into the hands of women can become yet another arena in which somebody else decides what happens to that money.

“Tensions” are one thing. They become something altogether different when they lead to violence.

My driver registered his wife for Annapurna Bhandar. He is not a violent husband, does not smoke or drink, but the application itself, he admits, is nothing short of fraudulent because his wife is not eligible for the Rs. 3,000 monthly payment. He is reasonably well-off and runs a private taxi service.

Disturbing Pattern

There is another, more disturbing pattern. Eight to ten women working as domestic workers told me that they had been beaten by their husbands when they refused to hand over grants received under the previous Trinamool Congress government’s Lakshmir Bhandar scheme.

The underlying problem is straightforward. The benefit is available to women, but the husband may still regard the money as his.

Many of these women did not previously have bank accounts. Accounts were opened specifically so that the government payment could be deposited. Yet the account may effectively remain under the husband’s control. The wife either stays silent, fights with him or is beaten. Whichever route she takes, the fundamental problem remains: she has money in her name but no meaningful access to it.

That is not financial independence. It is financial control wearing the clothes of empowerment.

The problem does not end with Annapurna Bhandar. There are also households in which husbands routinely take the earnings of wives who are not eligible for the scheme.

I use the word “dole” deliberately because that is what the payment amounts to in the eyes of some critics. Others have described such schemes as a way of “bribing” women voters before, during and immediately after elections.

But whether one approves of welfare payments or disapproves of them is almost beside the point here. The more important question is what happens to the money once it enters the household.

One upper-middle-class woman told me that she had employed eight domestic workers over the past five years. The husbands of four of them, she said, drank heavily, spent money on alcohol and beat their wives.

Money in a woman’s hands can itself become a trigger for violence when a husband believes that every rupee entering the household belongs to him.

“Why does the wife need money of her own? Don’t I run the family and give it whatever it needs?” is the refrain one hears from husbands who eagerly wait to appropriate whatever their wives bring home — whether it is a government benefit, earnings from a corporate job or wages from working in several households.

Recently, I met an upper-middle-class husband filling out the Annapurna Bhandar form for his wife. He abandoned the question of Income Tax returns in her name because, if she files returns, she would not be eligible for the benefit.

The wife knows that if the money arrives, her husband will pocket it. She says nothing because, in her experience, nothing will change.

False Empowerment

A bank account in her name means little if somebody else controls the passbook, the ATM card, the PIN or the withdrawal. A government benefit cannot automatically liberate a woman from economic dependence if the household power structure remains unchanged.

And that is where the Annapurna Bhandar debate ought to go beyond the familiar arguments over freebies, electoral politics and fiscal prudence.

One woman wrote in understandable anger: “People are acting so entitled in these posts as if it’s their birth right to get free money every month. How the hell did we stoop so low that the people of West Bengal, even from middle-class families, cannot run their homes without freebies?”

It is a legitimate question. But there is another one that may be even more important: if the State gives a woman money, who gets to decide how she spends it?

If the answer is still her husband, the welfare cheque may have changed hands without changing the household balance of power.

And that is when a scheme designed to empower women can become, perversely, another source of domestic conflict.

(The writer is an award-winning film scholar who writes extensively on social issues. Views personal.)