The benefits of Antyodaya Anna Yojana that ensures supply of 35 kg rice a month at the rate of Rs 2 to widows should be extended to all single women and families headed by women, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has demanded.
Addressing a conference of single women organised by the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) here on Saturday, its patron and MP, Brinda Karat, said that the Supreme Court had directed all the State governments to give the Antyodaya scheme benefits to widows. Around 3.4 crore women in the country lived alone, because of their widowhood or migration or abandonment by husbands. And one-fourth of the families were headed by women.
Ms. Karat said that the women movement should create an impact to change government policies for the benefit of single women. She pointed out that the Left government in Tripura had introduced a Rs. 300 monthly assistance to women who were deserted by their husbands. “It is a gesture just to say that society and government had the responsibility to stand by such women,” she said.
Deploring the cultural practices and rituals that made widows and single women “inauspicious,” she said that such women were making all possible sacrifices for the survival of their families and children. They were the most auspicious mortals for development of the country. Though individual men were to be blamed for the cruelty faced by women, she said it was the culture that inculcated in men that they had the right to subject women to cruelty. “A woman who is made victim of circumstances of tragedy is made a victim of cruelty by society,” she said.
Stating that society refused to see the reality of women’s pain, she said only through continuous struggles that a special law was enacted to deal with dowry deaths which were earlier dismissed as mere “accidents” due to stove bursts in the 1970s.
Speaking on the occasion, the AIDWA State general secretary, U. Vasuki, wanted the government to play the role of facilitator to help single women stand on their own by providing them all opportunities in education, job and government welfare schemes.
Providing ration cards to single women, priority in National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, sanction of widow pension to all eligible women without any age criterion and right for women to share wealth created by husbands after marriage were some of the resolutions passed at the conference.
