Noah Stanton
Desi Girls in an Un-Natural World: Contextualizing India’s Women, Environment, and Urban Spaces
Throughout the past century, globalization has completely transformed the way in which humans interact with the natural world. As industrial development spread from region to region and nation to nation, factories replaced forests, cities replaced villages, and state priorities shifted from sustenance to material wealth. The new social order that emerged from this period redefined what it means to be prosperous, to be powerful, and, most importantly, to be progressive on the world stage. Why, then, if so many countries have either achieved or made significant strides toward this ‘developed’ status, do indicators of women’s wellbeing remain dismal into the present day? Ecofeminism examines the implications of globalization on two key actors that, lacking proper protection against the dangers of development, have suffered from its advancement: the environment and women. This paper will first explain the ecofeminist narrative and then utilize its critical lens to explore the history of development in India, focusing on how the country’s rise to global power impacted its natural resources, its women, and its urban-rural composition. By following the developmental path of one of the most heavily populated, geographically expansive, ecologically diverse nations on the planet, this paper sheds light on the status of urban, Indian women within the natural world today.
Ecofeminist theory argues two major assertions: first, Western-style development cannot occur without the simultaneous exploitation of people and nature, and second, this exploitation predominantly affects vulnerable populations such as women. The modern notion of ‘development’ originates from a Western conception of progress that focuses primarily on economic growth vis-à-vis industrialism, capitalism, and materialism. Colonial powers designed this development process to work within the colonial system: by exploiting the natural resources and human labor of their colonies, powerful nations such as the U.K., France, and Spain externalized the costs of industrial development across the globe, rendering it seemingly limitless. When their colonies gained independence, however, forming what is commonly referred to as the ‘Third World’ or ‘Global South’, the new nations accepted this same framework as the universal development ideal. Striving for capitalist growth yet lacking the traditional colonizer-colony dynamic to channel its negative effects through, new countries followed the development pattern by creating new forms of exploitative relationships within their own populations. Dr. Vandana Shiva (2014) argues that this process, though adapted to suit a new generation of countries and run by a new group of national leaders, nevertheless extended past colonial abuses into the present day: “Development thus became a continuation of the colonization process; it became an extension of the project of wealth creation in modern, Western patriarchy’s economic vision” (p. 73). By generating internal pseudo-colonies, the political heads of Third World countries proved that this capitalist development process, even in the absence of traditional colonial systems, intrinsically relies on exploitation to occur.
Furthermore, because Western development misconstrues economic success as the primary indicator of human wellbeing, it forces itself onto all components of society, overlooking the fact that those lacking power not only do not experience its benefits but are negatively impacted, and often impoverished, by its effects. Focusing purely on financial benchmarks to evaluate progress, governments believe that greater market success will lead to less subsistence poverty and, thus, an improved standard of living. In line with this mindset, they strive to bring every potentially profitable facet of society into the market economy, commodifying not only their nation’s human labor but also its natural resources such as water, soil, and biodiversity. However, in so doing, these development-oriented governments generate deprivation poverty for traditionally subsistent populations, whom do not hold the political sway necessary to procure their day-to-day needs from the capitalist production system and therefore do so from their environments. Of the groups afflicted by this deprivation poverty, tribal peoples and women bear the biggest burden (Mies & Shiva, 2014, p. 73). Hence, while the ecological costs of development are inflicted onto nature as deforestation, pollution, and poison, the social costs are externalized onto women, and societies lack the necessary systems to protect either actor (Mies & Shiva, 2014, p. 59). A host of environmental preservation laws have emerged since the dawn of modern development, but these policies create nothing more than what sociologist Ulrich Beck terms “organized irresponsibility” (Munshi, 2000, p. 257): no single person, country, or institution is truly held accountable for the damages inflicted onto both the environment and those dependent on it. For these reasons, as industrialism advanced in the Global South in the late 20th century, the position of women decreased, in complete opposition to the expectations set by the United Nations Decade for Women resolution (Mies & Shiva, 2014, p. 73). Western development is inherently uneven: although it may lead to positive outcomes for the rich and powerful, for others––primarily, agricultural women––it generates poverty, disenfranchisement, and irrevocable change.
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