Family life in the rural villages in Tamil Nadu (South India)

Mahatma Gandhi observed that India is not to be found in its few cities but in thousands of its villages. This is equally true today as it was during Mahatma’s lifetime. It is in rural India that overall literacy and specifically literacy of women and their empowerment is particularly crucial for the transformation of India. At present most rural women’s lives are limited to taking care of their homes, husbands, families and farms, a role that requires little or no formal education. The challenge of rapid development of India’s villages can be accomplished only with the education, empowerment and emancipation of these women, and their full and equal participation in society.
While, in general one cannot generalise how the standard family in India functions, as India is a world in itself (- its several states, each with a different culture, language, religions, politics, as well as system of caste), to describe contemporary family life we will only concentrate on south India, Tamil Nadu and particularly on the casteless (Dalit) families in the villages where many of the girls come from. However, we can also draw up some general features of the role of women in the Indian society.
In contrary to the spacious houses in Auroville, or the city houses of Pondicherry or Chennai, in the nearby villages, most of the L.E.C girls families live in one- or two- room houses covered by a keet roof (made of palm leaves). Sometimes families of eight to ten members live (father, mother, children, father’s parents and unmarried brothers/sisters of the father) together in a two-room house.
When the parents are working fulltime, the girls, even young of age, do the household, guided by the older sisters. Day to day life is a struggle, and never reaching the balance is quite normal. The day starts at 4am, to make kolams (floral patterns) outside their doors, to fill the water pots at the local taps near the road. Because of discrimination sometimes the local taps are far from the houses of the Dalit-families (and taps belonging to the upper castes are not accessible to them).
Also there is a waiting line, and a waiting order for filling the water pots. Sometimes this task will take one hour.

Some houses, to avoid this delay and the resultant-fighting at the