The 20-odd women are part of a larger group that includes men — all of them are farmers, and have come to meet this journalist keen to know their views on FDI in retail, and whether it will help or hurt Indian farmers.

As the men wax eloquent on “ ek East India Company ne sarey desh ko ghulam bana diya ” (there was one East India Company that enslaved the whole country) and how the foreign companies will first give them good prices and then ditch them, there is not a beep from the women.

At my behest, Rajdhani, the supervisor from the Lupin Human Welfare and Research Foundation, asks them to lift their ghunghats , to enable conversation. They comply, but only partially. Bhim Singh, the Project Coordinator, orders the men out of the room. The women relax and reveal their faces.

Sunita is the leader of one of the self-help groups assisted by the Foundation, and stands out from the group for the confident manner in which she answers questions. She is not only bright and articulate, but beautiful too with a glowing complexion. Dressed in a bright orange sari, she has turned out in all her finery — and is wearing both lipstick and nail polish!

“I may be 30, 35 or 38, what does it matter,” she smiles. She has five children, three of them daughters. From their 2.5 hectare farm where Sunita and husband Bunty Ram manage to get a good income, the couple sends all five children to a private school in Bharatpur. Proudly, Sunita reveals that she spends Rs 5,000 a year on the education of each child. All five children — including her 18-year-old daughter now in Class IX — cycle to the school, which is 8 km away.

Is she not worried about allowing her eldest daughter to cycle to school and back?

“ Dar kahe ka Madam; sab bachchey sath mei jawe aur sath mei aawe , ( Why should I worry, all the children go together and come back)”, she says boldly. More hearteningly, she is in no hurry to get her daughter married. “ Abhi na karoo Madam; abhi toh padhaoongi… (not now; I will educate her first). I got married early, but I won’t allow my girls to get married so young. I send my children to school in the hope they’ll do much better than us… get good jobs. If they don’t, then anyway farming will be their last resort.”

‘No’ to mobile for children

She is proud that all the five can speak in English, but is firm about not giving them a mobile phone — particularly the girls. “ Aisi choot nahi di hei; aaj kal ko jamano kharab hei, mobile-vobile gram mei nahi chaley . (I haven’t given them this kind of license as there are dangers. Anyway, there is no need for mobiles in villages!)”.

When she clarifies that she doesn’t allow her daughters to help with housework as she wants them to study hard — and she also heads a self-help group — that brings us to her working day. This amazing woman gets up at 4 a.m. and her day ends at 10 or 11 p.m. The family owns five buffaloes, and her duties involve milking them. “I get 5–7 litres of milk a day from each; on a good day, a buffalo can even give 10 litres…so every day, I get about 60 to 70 litres of milk, which we sell to the dairy for Rs 24 a litre.”

Rajdhani adds that despite doing so much work, Sunita keeps her house sparkling clean, and has taken the Foundation’s advice to grow vegetables like pumpkins, bitter gourd, tomatoes, maize, chilli, cucumber and greens in her farm. And, along with her husband, she also wades through chest-deep waters of the Chiksana canal every day to fetch fodder for her animals. Sunita grins and adds, “We have to carry the fodder on our heads; yes, it is tough but I’ve got used to it.”

She has her own bank account, which now has a balance of Rs 27,000. She is not enamoured of gold jewellery, “particularly because it may fall in the water; and then if you have jewels you have to guard them.” But she admits that when her daughters get married she will have to buy some for their dowry.

But won’t she defy such a custom as her daughters are educated?

“No Madam; who am I to defy such firmly established social traditions? I will have to give dahej (dowry) or else my daughters will not get married.” When I ask her if it would be around Rs 1 lakh, she laughs. “What is one lakh today? Aaj toh padho-likho samaj hei , (everyone is educated today); the more educated they are the more money they want.”

Well, there are some evils which education makes worse!

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