End State Violence Against Women

This story is of another Bhil tribal woman Karoti Bai. She is an actvist in the women’s organisation ‘Kansari Nu Vadavno’. It is active in Khargone district of Madhaya Pradesh, India. Karoti Bai started work with her Barela cmmunity and she first noticed that most women suffered from a lack of reproductive health services. Some of the women even died while giving birth to a baby. Such mortality is painful for their small children and family. It is easy to die because there is no public health care system for poor tribal people. The immunisation system for infants and pregnant women is also not functioning properly. Karoti Bai has seven childern but she didn’t get any reproductive health care from the government health system and had to fend for herself. That is why she is not well and is suffering from reproductive health problem (white vaginal discharge). She wanted to solve that problem and applied to the government for setting up a public health care system in her village along with other rural areas. So the women’s organisation under her leadership asked for a health care center from the Government. This issue was taken up by many of the women and pressure was put on the Government. the Government instead decided take action on the women’s organisation and violently crushed it by sending Karoti and others to jail under false cases. This was easier for the Government instead of providing health facility to the women. So when condemning violence against women we have to speak out against the patriarchal violence of the State against its own women citizens.