Stories from the Field #1. Women in Jharkhand weave grass, discuss norms, and inspire hope.

A turbulent flight to Ranchi, a friendly conversation with our cab driver, an interesting meal of dry rotis, and a wet sabzi (including some fried chickpeas), and a quaint check-in to our rooms. Our journey to Jamshedpur where we were traveling for field work started eventfully. My colleague and I from the Design team at Good Business Lab (GBL) were on-ground to conduct qualitative scoping for the Female Labour Supply project (or FLS as we know of it in GBL). We settled into our room, preparing for the next few days; we charged the batteries of our recorders, went over our data collection questionnaires, and chatted informally about the ins and outs of our lives. The next few days would be spent traveling to a small village called Nimdih, where participants of the FLS pilot program would be convening to learn how to make small handicraft items for corporate gifting out of sabai grass – a grass that was found aplenty in and around them. The project aimed at, as the name suggests, improving female participation in the workforce by providing opportunities for them in their vicinity as opposed to requiring them to travel far to earn an income. 

For the week that we were there, every day we would have to take an approximately two-hour cab ride to the ashram-like setup that our implementing partner organization had set up to train 50 women from Ketunge, a village nearby. On the way to the ashram on day one of fieldwork, with the breeze hitting my face, my head spinning from the sharp turns on the winding roads, and the driver’s phone ringing “Jai Shri Ram” every 20 minutes, I pondered. I thought about how the airport security guard asked me, “Deborah? Yeh kya naam hai? Aap Indian ho? (What name is this? Are you Indian)?” while examining my very Indian Aadhar card. I thought about how hot it was, and how different the city was compared to my hometown in the south. I thought about how we prepared for the qualitative scoping as well. We planned to interview around 15 women from this pilot to understand the social norms that surround women’s decisions to work within their cultural context. We were attuned to the possibility of women being biased in sharing how they feel about this. People in researched areas long since have learned what urban researchers like to hear, especially in collectivist countries where socially desirable responding is more likely. 

Over several coffee cups and video calls, we had brainstormed ways to minimize social desirability. Inspired by methods such as the Thematic Apperception Test and the Metaphor Elicitation Technique, we had decided to incorporate photos in our interview. Photo elicitation methods have been around for a long time; participants are either asked to collect pictures on a topic and participate in an interview to answer questions about these pictures, or they are asked questions based on pictures researchers collate. The constraint with these two methods was in the logistics, costs, and ethics. Most available photos from stock images need to be purchased, checked for copyrights, and licensed before we could use them. Moreover, asking participants to take their own pictures could introduce different logistical challenges, especially in rural settings (for instance, where do we procure sufficient cameras if they do not have smartphones?). To overcome this, I suggested using AI to generate images for the thematic areas we had identified around social norms of women’s and men’s work. We used free credits on available generative AI tools to create photographs of women and men in an Indian setting across three categories: norm neutral, norm expected, and norm unexpected. There were nine themes including home roles, decision-making, and finance. The images were just OK: we could tell that they were AI-generated when we scrutinized them, much to our repeated iterations, prompts, and chagrin. To quote my fellow Design team member’s review of one of the images: “Why does this woman in the picture have a rupee coin for a bindi?!” That pretty much summed up our thoughts too. 

“Jai Shri Ram”

The driver interrupted my reminiscence with his loud ringtone, his thoughts on our country’s political landscape, and how the only person he trusts is Tata ji. Tata and Sons remain a prominent figure in Jamshedpur; their omnipresence is evident in the people and the place. Finally, with the scent of mango trees and the hoot of a distant incoming train welcoming us, we arrived at Nimdih. We were also greeted by our field consultant, translators, and our exuberant point-of-contact from Bangla Natak, who introduced us to the women. She also said: “Your name is Deborah? How unique and lovely!” She greeted the others, leaving me with my thoughts on the difference in opinions on my name in just one day. Picturesque and almost an exemplar of a glimpse into the past, the women were seated under a large tree, chatting and weaving the sabai grass into pen stands. The air was thick with the sounds of children laughing, crying, and babbling, as they leaped and rolled around the scene while their mothers worked. 

To start with, we explained the procedure to the translators who would be assisting us in translating the interviews from Hindi to Bengali. We then split up and started interviewing women, randomly selected from the working group. The women looked at us with curiosity; it was clear we were not from there with the air of privilege we carried. Regardless, the interviews were smooth – under each theme, women were first asked to pick the images they most wanted for their lives, followed by the images that represented their lives at present. After they chose, we probed them with why’s and how’s, as is the norm in qualitative interviews. The images we created greatly facilitated the interview process, especially given the language barrier between us; they seemed to build a bridge for common understanding. Importantly and much to our pleasure, none of the participants had any qualms about the AI-generated images and understood what they were depicting. I guess the “coin-bindi” did not matter much, after all.

At the end of the week of fieldwork, I had much to reflect upon. Amidst the searing heat and the dripping sweat, I enjoyed eating mangoes picked right off the ground and drinking Ber juice for the first time, courtesy of the lovely translators and field consultant. Especially between my patchy Hindi and my forgetting to pack sufficient pants for the trip and buying some nearby, we managed to explore the city a bit. The lack of women on the streets after 6 PM, the observations of Tataji's name emblazoned everywhere (including bricks!), and the overt saffronization made us curious, and we managed to hunt down a few good meals and some rasgullas. On the flight back, no less turbulent than the previous one, some women stood out to me when they had shared their experiences. One woman was much older than the others and had done MGNREGA work in the past. She described how even her older sons made decisions in her house more than she did. Another woman breastfed her child as she spoke to me, much to my pleasant surprise. Yet another woman, was so soft-spoken, it was tough hearing her above the din of the passing trains and children, though I was seated right next to her.

Lastly, a young girl who had just turned eighteen and was about to complete her inter (12th grade) distinctly occupies my mind to this day. She was ambitious, expressing her desire to become a nurse and “stand on (her) own two feet.” She was steadfast in telling us that if her future husband did not want her to study or work, she would nevertheless insist on pursuing her passion for studying nursing: “I’d tell him (future husband) that I will do it. My father has struggled and made me study. I will tell from the beginning before marriage that I will work.” More than what she answered during the interview, it was the questions she asked after that stood out to me. She asked us for more details on where we were from and how we got to where we were. She asked us how much we studied, what we learned, and what a master’s degree entailed. She told us she thought the training would be about learning to use computers, with thinly veiled disappointment at the lack of it. This left me to reflect on the realities of promises, kept and un-kept, and the little power people seem to have over things like this. The flight landed, and I was whisked back into Bangalore with tedious thoughts of getting a ride back home. Rubbing my eyes to erase some of the exhaustion, a fleeting image of her flashed. The people we interview often stay with us even beyond the conversations and the surveys; and that is just one of the small things that can keep us going.