Protesting Women in the time of Demonetisation

In the past three classes which were related to our broad subject "Gendered Citizenship", I could really understand the concept of citizenship more deeply. The concept of 'State Apparatuses' and How the State apparatuses create or shape the ideology.  Citizenship is not a card issued by a state in any form. it is furthermore than this very certificate, e.g. Passport, voter ID. However here I would like to discuss  'Civil Society' and 'Political Society': the two concepts developed by the  Indian Scholar Partha Chatterjee, in his book Lineages of Political Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 

Professor Bishnupriya Dutt in her article Performing Resistance with Maya Rao: Trauma and Protest in India (2015) writes, "For Chatterjee, civil society in India resembles an active public sphere, in which a rights-based discourse according to Western normative notions is practised. ‘Political society, in contrast, comprises the vast majority of the Indian population, who negotiate advantages for themselves outside of legitimate rights-based discourses". One fascinating fact Professor Dutt brings up in her essay is that the performance allows these two exclusive communities to come together.

 In this regard, I  believe the utterance of the Indian Prime Minister about the demonetization (₹500 Note and ₹1000 note) on the 8th of November was an instant performance as proposed by Dutt that devalued the currency the same midnight. In the name of the "surgical strike on black money" the policy has affected badly to the larger community of society which is seen as a 'Political Society' by Chatterjee and Dutt.  The site or space of ATMs and Banks changed into protest sites all over India. In one voice, people opposed the action of the Indian Prime Minister.

As Chatterjee suggests that political society negotiates advantage outside right-based discourse, there might be chances that the people suffering from demonization did not want to oppose the PM, and thus forget about the negotiation. However, as Dutt claims that performance allows both to be a part of a group. So here, where no civil society was even, present to raise the right-based discourse, the utterance of the PM that I see as a performative act in fact forced both groups to stand in one line and thus both came together not to protest but suffer.

However, one group of political society that was directly affected by the action were the women as a homogenous group. They were targeted as thieves, and the Indian Prime Minister accused them of hiding money from their husbands. In a feudal structure in India where women are not allowed to go out for work. Whereas their work is not counted as productive inside the home due to not earning money. Thus they save the money in ration containers to use it later for the education of their children and in the period of economic crisis.

However, accusing them of having black money on the basis of holding the economy of the home has not only hurt their sentiments but has also affected their daily work and economic planning.  Therefore in most of cases, Women came out to be the main protesting force against the Indian PM.

As a concluding remark, I would like to introduce the very important archival work of development journalist P. Sainath "Visible Work, Invisible Women". It reflects upon the work of the women in rural India, the citizen who is ignored most of the time has been shot in camera from 1993 to 2003. This is basically a photo exhibition, That is very beautifully narrated and arranged by the journalist himself.