A Question of Agency

The survey brings up concerning trends for women whose competence, qualification or potential agency are blunted in order that they conform within the patriarchal stronghold

- By Rakhee Kalita Moral

Understanding social behaviour is, admittedly, not an easy task. Unlike GDP or AQI numbers that are flashed in our everyday spaces, it is difficult to quantify social responses even when established theories, mechanisms and research methods attempt to calibrate them. There is a complex web of factors that drives humans to act, interact and react within diverse social contexts: the four broad planks in the India Today Gross Domestic Behaviour survey, thus, are indicators of likely behavioural patterns and can at best be considered relative. Gender attitudes assessed in the survey predictably reflect behavioural choices over a wide spectrum disaggregated along urban/ rural segments across the states and six key prompts directed to elicit ethical, informed and sane responses.

What is surprising however and, happily so, is that for nearly all the questions there is a near concurrence between urban and rural India, indicating a social transformation that closes several gaps in what is typically regarded as the great divide. Fifty years on from the historic ‘Towards Equality’ report, this survey, however, brings up certain concerning figures on the status of women despite the proliferating women's movements of the ’70s and ’80s.