The Cooperatives Study

By now, with the ICSSR [Indian Council of Social Science Research] grant having come through, I set about doing the sampling work, questionnaire finalisation and recruiting and training six investigators [all Maratti speaking men] and starting the actual survey.

We had to travel to four or five districts, and to villages or centres within them that housed the Joint Farming, Lift Irrigation, Sugar and other Cooperative Societies that we had in our sample. All this type of travel, accommodation and food was quite familiar to me. But it seemed not go so well with Annaiya. One day, I happened to hear him say to Seetha, my younger sister-in-law, who was then visiting us, that it was fine for a woman to be a teacher, but a job that involved being away from home! Seeing me go past them then, he stopped and I pretended not to have heard. It was after all, a very normal view in India then. I did not mention the incident to Ramu, and the matter ended there.

But I have to admit all was not smooth sailing with the team. One day, on a trip, I got very wild with them, for whatever reason, and ranted at them. Very rightly, they took umbrage and en masse handed me their resignations. I had to climb down and apologise, after which we worked well together.[I really felt ashamed of myself]. The survey finished more or less in time, and we did the preliminary analysis but had not written the report when my work got interrupted for more than one reason. What did we find?: Surprise, Surprise! The members of the Coops did not have any social reason for being in them, but purely economic ones, and the office bearers campaigned and grabbed the votes more for greed and power than from any altruistic motives. In fact, we could sense misappropriations and use of undue influence, though we did not lay our hands on solid evidence. The study of sugar societies, in fact, bore out their reputation for being stepping stones in the power ladder in the state.

one day, Iravati Karve called me in, and I could sense her fury. She told me that the Shiv Sena faction in the college were demanding to have me removed from the project as neither did I have a social science degree nor was I a Maharastrian [ This was in the heyday of Shiv Sena chauvinism. One of their failures was to rid Bombay of all Udipi hotels! That would have been a disaster for thousands of Bombayites as they would have nowhere to go for their daily breakfast – the South Indian idli or dosa!] Pune was the stronghold of the SS and they were now targeting me!

IK had already thought of the solution - I should register for my M.A. in the university as an external candidate and then she could counter the rabid chauvinists by stating that as a post graduate student, I was doing some related research. As I had always been interested in the social sciences and found my lack of a degree in that field a handicap when I had earlier wanted to move out of HLL, I readily agreed.

As per her advice, I attended the head of the department's lectures whenever I was in town. The subject was the fundamentals of Sociology, and the text was a classic by Johnson on the theories of Talcott Parsons. It was terribly boring though very thorough! Luckily I was so often on tour that I missed most of the classes. I read up on the other subjects on my own, and passed this exam with a II rank though again in II class - Good progress considering I had a IV rank for my B.A. Hons and a III rank for my M.A. in English from Nagpur Unversity. This degree and my certificate in Statistics were to stand me in good stead later.

The field work was finished by then, and most of the team were disbanded. One of them helped me with translations from Marathi, and another staff member with the tabulations. These were the days before computerisation, at least in Indian academic circles. so everything was slow, laborious and often had to be corrected painstakingly. In the end, I had to leave Pune before submitting the report. That had to wait two years!