[Reader-list] monthly posting

[rohini patkar]

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move to the city and initial experiences- a brief  

The women interviewed have a typical story to tell. No one is very happy leaving the village where they were born and coming to an unknown cit. But all of them come to Delhi because if offers their children and them chances of survival. Most of these are women whose family did not own any land, neither they had any business. They used to work at home itself back in the village and the husbands often had lost work because the factories and the small economies have been destroyed. So much for Globalization! The meager earning of daily wages etc in the villages is not sufficient to sustain the entire family.
There are other reasons like marriage which is often called in migration theory as “associational migration of females”. Although it hardly remains only ‘associational’ once they start earning and sustaining their families. Over time they are the ones who become the principal bread -winners of the family. There are others in the village whose some or the other family member is also in the city, so they provide the option to these women as well. “if you go to the city, you will be able to feed your children, why don’t you go”- is the advice given to her.
They start living with some or the other relative in the beginning- for a month or so. After that most of them rent their own space. They have to give an initial deposit- almost all of them have to take loan from someone. They have to take loan even when they come to the city form the village. 
Most of them have quite sketchy memories of the journey they made to the city- mostly by train and without much stuff that they brought from the village. Most if them remember the initial place in which they stayed when they had come to the city. Most of them found work within a month of coming here- as domestic workers. Although not considered the best of them options for all of them- they took it because that was the work that was available. There was work available in the ‘big kothis’ of Delhi.