Economy & Society · March 2026
The Degree and the Dead End: Why India’s Most Educated Generation Is Also Its Most Unemployed
India has just produced the largest generation of educated young people in its history. Nearly 40 percent of them cannot find a job. A landmark new report from Azim Premji University maps the widening chasm between a classroom revolution and an economy that was never rebuilt to receive it.
Rajan is twenty-four years old and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from a government college in Gaya, Bihar. He graduated two years ago. Since then, he has appeared for the Bihar Public Service Commission examination twice, the Railway Recruitment Board test once, and a state bank clerical exam. He is currently studying for the fourth attempt at the BPSC.
Rajan is not a failure story. He is, by any reasonable measure, a success of India’s education system — the first in his family to attend college, the first to hold a degree.
A new report from the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University — the State of Working India 2026, titled The Youth in the Labour Market: Pathways from Learning to Earning — has spent the better part of a year mapping what happens between the moment a young Indian graduates and the moment, if it comes, when they find stable work. What it found is both a story of genuine achievement and a crisis hiding inside it, and the two are so tightly wound together that separating them is itself an act of policy.
I. The Numbers That Should Be Good News
Start with the real achievements. India’s tertiary enrolment ratio — the share of young people attending university or college — stands at 28 percent, broadly comparable to countries at similar income levels. Over the past four decades, the number of colleges has increased from 29 per lakh young people in 2010 to 45 per lakh by 2021. Women, in particular, have made extraordinary gains: female educational attainment among the 15-to-29 cohort has risen faster than male attainment, and young women are increasingly finding employment in sectors — IT, automobile manufacturing, textiles, business services — that were largely closed to them a generation ago.
The caste-based occupational lock that once made certain jobs hereditary — and certain people invisible to other sectors — has weakened. In 1983, young Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe workers made up 40 percent of their communities employed in the leather and footwear industry. By 2023, that share had fallen to 24 percent, as more SC and ST youth entered manufacturing, telecommunications, and paper industries. Young people are moving out of agriculture and into the formal economy faster than any previous generation.
These are not small things. They represent decades of investment in schools, in reservations, in public college expansion, in shifting social norms around who belongs in a classroom. Azim Premji University president Indu Prasad said, on releasing the report, that more young people today are educated, informed, and ambitious than ever before — and that these are real achievements worth acknowledging.
The problem is what happens next.
II. The Degree and the Dead End
Between 2004 and 2023, India added roughly 5 million graduates to its labour force every single year. In those same years, the economy created approximately 2.8 million graduate-level jobs annually. The gap — 2.2 million disappointed graduates per year, year after year — is not a blip. It is a structural feature of the economy. And its consequences are now visible in the unemployment statistics.
The Youth Employment Crisis — Key Numbers (SWI 2026)
- Youth (15–29) population: 36.7 crore — nearly one-third of all working-age Indians
- Unemployment among 15–25-year-olds: ~40%
- Unemployment among 25–29-year-olds: ~20%
- Share of unemployed youth (20–29) who are graduates: 67% (up from 46% in 2017)
- Of male graduates who find work within a year: only 7% secure a permanent salaried job
- Of all graduates: only 6.7% are in permanent salaried employment; only 3.7% in white-collar roles
- 5 million graduates added annually | Only 2.8 million graduate-level jobs created — a 2.2 million annual gap
- Private college student-teacher ratio: 28:1 | Government college: 47:1 (AICTE norm: 15–20:1)
Read those numbers carefully. Two in five young Indians between 15 and 25 who are actively looking for work cannot find it. Among those aged 20 to 29 who are unemployed, two-thirds now hold a graduate degree — a share that has risen sharply from 46 percent in 2017 to 67 percent in 2023. Unemployment in India has not retreated from education. It has followed education upward. The more the country has expanded its colleges, the more it has produced graduates who cannot find work commensurate with what those colleges promised.
Of the young male graduates who do find some form of employment within a year, only 7 percent secure a permanent salaried job. The rest land in casual work, self-employment, or the vast, informal, unprotected grey zone of the Indian labour market — gig deliveries, construction labour, unregistered teaching — where the degree they spent years and money earning provides no premium at all.
What Is a Structural Employment Crisis?
Why This Isn’t Just a “Bad Economy” Problem
A cyclical employment problem is when jobs disappear in a recession and return when growth resumes. A structural employment problem is different: it means the shape of the economy doesn’t match the shape of the workforce, even during periods of growth. India’s economy has been growing at 6–7 percent annually — yet graduate unemployment has risen. That is the structural crisis: the sectors that are growing (technology, high-end services, finance) are not large enough to absorb the millions graduating from general arts and commerce colleges each year. The sectors that could absorb large numbers (manufacturing, construction) are not growing fast enough or are relying on machinery and contract labour rather than permanent employees. Growth and joblessness are, for a specific section of India’s youth, coexisting — and that is a structural problem that no business cycle correction will fix on its own.
III. The Geography of a Skewed System
India’s education crisis is not evenly distributed. Its best institutions — IITs, IIMs, central universities, premier medical colleges — are clustered predominantly in southern India and in a handful of large northern cities. The rest of the country makes do with what remains: general degree colleges in small towns, running three-subject BA programmes with lecture halls built for forty students and classes attended by one hundred, staffed by faculty hired on ad-hoc contracts who are themselves waiting for a permanent government appointment.
The student-to-teacher ratio at private colleges averages 28 students per teacher; at government colleges, it is 47. The All India Council for Technical Education recommends a maximum of 15 to 20. The gap between what exists and what is required is not marginal. It is the gap between a classroom where learning happens and a classroom where attendance is taken.
The subject composition of Indian graduates makes the regional problem worse. Over 30 percent of India’s graduates hold degrees in social sciences — a proportion vastly higher than in China and significantly higher than most comparable economies. Specifically in northern states, the dominant qualification is a general BA: a multi-subject degree that touches History, Political Science, Geography, and sometimes Economics across three years, going deep in none of them. These programmes were originally designed as preparation for public service examinations. Decades later, they still function primarily as that — waiting rooms for government jobs that may or may not materialise.
The consequence, as economist K.R. Shyam Sundar, who has studied the report’s findings, points out, is a vicious cycle in education itself. The shortage of qualified STEM teachers at secondary and higher secondary levels — itself partly a product of the dominance of general arts programmes — means that too few teenagers study science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. Which means that the next round of graduates is, once again, disproportionately arts-trained. Which means that the teacher shortage in science perpetuates itself across generations. The shortage creates the shortage.
IV. The Government Job That Became a Lottery
Ask almost any unemployed graduate in north India what they are waiting for and the answer arrives quickly: a government job. The Union Public Service Commission exam. The state PSC. The Railway Recruitment Board. The public sector banks. The defence forces. These are not just jobs. They are the destination that the entire architecture of general arts education in northern India has been orienting students toward for the better part of five decades.
The preference is not irrational. Government employment offers something that private employment in India, particularly for people without elite college degrees, rarely does: security. Pension. Protection from arbitrary dismissal. And, for those from marginalised communities, something else that the SWI report identifies carefully — protection from discrimination. In private markets and administrative systems, caste and community identity can close doors. Inside a government institution, a hire protected by reservation and seniority rules is harder to dislodge. The preference for government work is not only about the salary. It is also about whether the system will treat you fairly.
The problem is that the vacancies have not kept pace with the aspirants. Since 2016, evidence from government surveys shows a dramatic fall in non-farm private sector job creation — precisely the years when the number of graduates entering the labour market was growing fastest. The result, Shyam Sundar’s research finds, is that the number of young people competing for Union and state civil service, railway, and public sector bank posts has more than doubled from the early 2010s to today. Government jobs, always scarce, have become something close to a lottery.
What Is the “Polycrisis”?
When Multiple Crises Hit at the Same Time
A polycrisis is when several distinct crises occur simultaneously and make each other worse — not just two problems happening at once, but two problems feeding each other. The term was popularised by historian Adam Tooze. India’s current situation fits the description: an employment crisis (not enough jobs for graduates), a structural economic crisis (low aggregate demand — not enough consumer spending to drive growth), and an education quality crisis (degrees that don’t build employable skills) are all interacting. Low-quality education produces unemployable graduates. Unemployable graduates stay out of the workforce, depressing consumer spending. Low consumer spending means businesses don’t hire. Which worsens unemployment. Each crisis deepens the others.
V. The Inequality That Persists Inside the Progress
The SWI 2026 report notes, carefully and with data, that caste-based occupational segregation has declined. This is real. But it also documents, just as carefully, how uneven that progress has been — and how the baseline disadvantage of marginalised communities shapes not just what jobs they get, but whether they get any at all.
Among Scheduled Caste youth aged 15 to 29, 33.5 percent work as casual labourers — hired by the day, with no contract, no benefits, and no security. Another 41 percent are in self-employment. Compare this with young people from other social groups: 9.8 percent in casual labour, 51 percent self-employed. The self-employment numbers look similar on the surface, but the composition is very different: SC and ST self-employment is more likely to be subsistence — small repairs, marginal trade, family agriculture — while other communities’ self-employment includes more viable small businesses. The sectors tell the same story: 26 percent of SC youth work in construction, 31 percent in agriculture. Only 12 percent are in modern services. For other social groups, the modern services figure is 25.5 percent.
The educational gap compounds this. Among Scheduled Tribe members aged 15 to 29, just 7 percent hold a graduate degree. Among Scheduled Castes, 10 percent. Among other social groups, 18.3 percent. These gaps exist not because of individual choices but because of dropout rates that remain high in marginalised communities — pulled by economic necessity, pushed by the inadequacy of elementary schools in regions where these communities are concentrated. Low-quality primary education feeds low secondary retention, which feeds low higher education access, which feeds low employment prospects. The cycle is closed and self-reinforcing, and it runs along caste lines with a consistency that no amount of aggregate progress fully dissolves.
Case Study
The Migration That Isn’t in the Headlines
India’s internal migration stream — the young men from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh who work construction sites in Haryana, lay tiles in Bengaluru, drive e-rickshaws in Delhi — is, by the SWI report’s reckoning, one of the primary ways the employment crisis is being managed rather than solved. Youth make up approximately 40 percent of all informal migrant workers. Poorer, younger states serve as net senders; richer, ageing states are net receivers. This migration balances regional labour markets, but it does so informally, without social security, without housing rights, and without the portability of any welfare benefit. When a construction site shuts in Haryana, the workers from Bihar go home with no unemployment insurance, no severance, and often with wages that were underpaid or withheld. The migration absorbs the pressure. It does not resolve the problem.
The share of young men leaving education early — from 38 percent enrolled in 2017 to 34 percent in 2024 — is partly driven by exactly this calculus. For families under financial pressure, a son who leaves college at nineteen to migrate and earn is more immediately valuable than a son who stays four years for a degree that will not, in all probability, deliver a stable job. The education system is losing young men not to indifference but to the rational arithmetic of poverty.
VI. AI and the Jobs That Aren’t Coming
The crisis of graduate unemployment was building long before artificial intelligence became a mainstream concern. But the SWI report, and the commentary around it, flag AI as a new variable that makes an already difficult equation harder still.
Technological leaps — digitisation in the 2000s, platform economies in the 2010s, AI in the 2020s — consistently favour the well-educated and the well-connected. They create high-value jobs at the top, eliminate mid-level jobs in the middle, and leave low-skill manual work at the bottom largely unchanged. For India’s vast middle tier of general-degree graduates — not elite enough for the high-value AI-adjacent roles, not manual enough to be unaffected by automation of clerical and administrative work — the squeeze is intensifying. Data-entry jobs, basic accounting, routine legal research, customer service — the sectors that have historically absorbed arts graduates in the organised economy — are the exact sectors most exposed to AI-driven displacement.
The irony is bitter. The graduates who were already struggling to find stable jobs are now competing in a market where the mid-level jobs they might have occupied are evaporating at the same moment they arrive to fill them.
VII. What Could Actually Change Things
The SWI report, and economist Shyam Sundar’s commentary on it, converge on a policy argument that is simple, specific, and somewhat counterintuitive: stop paying unemployment allowances to graduates, and use that money instead to fund mandatory apprenticeships in organised industry.
The logic runs as follows. A graduate receiving a modest unemployment allowance from a state government — a policy that several states have either implemented or discussed — has a rational reason to remain unemployed, or at least to defer the decision of what to do next. The allowance sustains the waiting game. Redirect that money toward paid apprenticeships in manufacturing companies, logistics firms, healthcare providers, and technology businesses — as the Apprentices Act of 1961 already requires, though rarely enforces — and you create a different incentive. Employers get subsidised, trained workers. Graduates get work experience and a paycheck. And the economy builds a pipeline between the education system and the productive sector that currently exists more on paper than in practice.
The Policy Agenda — What Would Help
- Replace unemployment doles with apprenticeships. Redirect state government allowance funds into employer-backed apprenticeship programmes in organised industry — as the Apprentices Act of 1961 already mandates, largely unenforced.
- Hire STEM teachers. Fill existing faculty vacancies at government colleges and schools. The shortage of science and maths teachers at the secondary level is producing a generation with no pathway into technical employment.
- Fix elementary education first. The dropout rates that keep SC and ST youth out of higher education are downstream of poor quality in primary schools. Structural inclusion requires good schools, not just reserved seats in colleges that students can’t reach.
- Diversify what colleges teach. Redesign general arts programmes to include research skills, data literacy, and vocational modules — not to eliminate the humanities, but to make them employable.
- Strengthen National Career Services. India’s employment exchange system needs investment to reduce the friction between young workers looking for jobs and employers who cannot find qualified candidates.
- Portable social security for migrants. Internal migrants who make up 40% of India’s informal workforce need benefits — health cover, provident fund access — that travel with them across state borders.
India’s demographic dividend — the economic advantage of having a large working-age population — will begin to shrink after 2030. That is four years away. The window is not closed, but it is closing. The generation that will determine whether the dividend becomes a dividend or becomes a burden is already in college. A large share of them are, right now, staring at a timetable of competitive exam dates and wondering when their degree will finally count for something.
Rajan, in Gaya, is preparing for his next BPSC attempt. He will be among hundreds of thousands sitting the same exam for the same few seats. He is educated, ambitious, and completely clear-eyed about his situation. “If there were jobs,” he said, when asked why he keeps trying, “I would take a job. There are no jobs.” That sentence contains, in compressed form, everything the State of Working India 2026 takes four hundred pages to demonstrate. The report is thorough and important. But Rajan already knew.
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INTRODUCTION
Since most of the early scholars, researchers and historians were men, many aspects of society did not find a place in history books. For example, child-birth, menstruation, women’s work, transgenders, households etc. did not find much mention.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Rather than building a holistic picture of the past, some select aspects such as polity and the different roles of men became the central focus of history writing. Women were confined to one corner of the chapter where a paragraph or two was devoted to the ‘status and position of women’.
Even the details of these paragraphs were hardly different from each other. This made it look like as if history (and thereby society, polity, economy and all culture) belonged to men while women were only a small static unit to be mentioned separately. Of course, there were some exceptions, but these were however rare. This practice is being corrected now and the roles and presence of women are being read into all parts of historical questions.
SOURCES FOR UNDERSTANDING GENDER HISTORY
Sources are the bases of history writing. From simple pre-historic tools to abstruse texts, everything can be utilized to understand life and roles of women in history. The presence as well as the absence of women from sources needs to be duly noticed, deliberated and argued upon and only then to be theorised upon.
Certain objects being directly related to the lives of women or depicting the ideas of the female principle are of central importance. These include but are not limited to female figurines, art objects, texts attributed to or authored or compiled by women, monuments created by or for women, various objects relating to their lifestyle, objects associated with women on account of their cultural roles and so on.
It has been rightly pointed out by Uma Chakravarti that much of the gender history written in early phase was a ‘partial view from above’. This referred to the utilization of select textual sources and focused only on relational identity of women. There were, however, a few exceptions.
GENDER HISTORIOGRAPHY
Amongst the many narratives propagated to denigrate Indian civilization and culture by the British colonial rulers, the condition of Indian women became a point of central reference. Various social evils that made the life of women miserable were pointed out and efforts were also made to introduce ‘reforms.’ Sati, child-marriages, imposed widowhood, polygamy, dowry, educational and economic inequality, purdah (ghoonghat) and many other practices prevailed during the colonial period that made the life of women difficult and pitiable.
Some practices affected women of higher social and economic households while others led to misery for poorer women. Many social reform movements were started in the 19th century to address these issues and contributions were made by Indian reformers as well as British officials and other Europeans.
Women in India came to be treated as a homogeneous category and over generalisation became the norm. While many communities in India practised widow remarriage and did not practise (much less forced) sati and while some practised divorces or separation, the image of the Indian woman who had been subjugated as woman, wife and widow became a dominant theme in history writing.
Secondly, a western vision was placed over the non-western societies and hence interpretations were far removed from the context. For example, notion of stridhan was equated with dowry and little regard was paid to the provisions regarding its use and ownership by women.
The huge social stigma that came along with the selling of jewellery of the household (one of the main components of stridhan) was paid no attention to. Similarly, penal provisions listed by ancient texts for misappropriation of women’s property were not even looked into.
During the Paleolithic age, hunting and gathering was norm. However much importance was given to Hunting than gathering in all literature of history. Studies, however, show that hunted prey formed only 35% of the diet while gathering fruits and other edible material supplied the major portion. Gathering of food resources was ordinarily done by women. Since gathering was an important activity, more than hunting for game, it could point to significant role playing by women.
The gendered understanding of Harappan civilization is being built upon and various archaeological remains have been studied in this respect. The female figurines, idols of pregnant women, the statue of the ‘dancing girl’, various pieces of jewellery and personal belongings that have been discovered at various sites and offer useful insights on the public and private lives of women and men.
The statue of a girl obtained from Mohanjodaro has been called a ‘dancing girl’ on grounds of familiarity with the institution of devadasis in the later times. Such backward looking explanations are problematic.
There is a wide variety of terracotta female figurines that have been found at different sites right from the pre-Harappan times. Women figures are found suckling a baby, holding utensils, kneading dough, nursing infants, carrying objects like drums, seated figures for board games, with steatopygia (fat deposition on the hips and elsewhere), with floral head-dresses and in many other forms.
Even figurines of pregnant women are quite common. However, most of these have been uncritically associated with fertility, religiosity and reproductive ideas, and have been passed off as representations of the Mother Goddesses. While some of them were votive objects, others are held to be toys or other utilities. The focus on female form has been so stereotypical that women have been seen as associated only with home, hearth, fertility, sexuality and divinity. So much so that sometimes even male figurines in assumed womanly roles were classified as female figurines.
POSITION OF WOMEN IN EARLY INDIA
The first literary tradition in the Indian subcontinent (and the oldest in the world) is that of the Vedic corpus. From the four Samhitas to the Upanishads, we find many interesting references to women in various roles. Some of these women have left their mark on the cultural heritage to this day and are remembered in various ritual and social contexts. Their names, stories, some highly revered hymns, and other interesting facets are mentioned in the Vedic corpus.
The Vedic literature has been classified as Early Vedic and Later Vedic. The Rigvedic society and polity seems to be teeming with life and agro-pastoral economy was enmeshed in close kinship ties. Women as well as men participated in society, economy and polity. Some of the most revered hymns including the gayatri mantra are ascribed to women.
Various natural phenomena are depicted as Goddesses and they are offered prayers. While quantitative analysis highlights the predominance of Indra, Agni, Varuna and other male gods, the power and stature of the goddesses is equally well established.
Women participated in all three Vedic socio-political assemblies viz. Sabha, Samiti and Vidhata. They had access to education and were even engaged in knowledge creation. They could choose to be brahmavadinis with or without matrimony.
Hence, there is no reason to believe that they were only confined to home and hearth. T. S. Rukmani attempts to understand if women had agency in early India. Her work has highlighted many interesting details. The author acknowledges the fact that though the patriarchal set up put women at a loss, there were instances where women found space to exercise their agency.
She points out that though the texts like the Kalpasutras (Srautasutras, Dharmasutras and Grhasutras) revolved around the ideology of Dharma and there was not much space to express alternative ideas, still these works also find some leeway to express ideas reflecting changed conditions.
For example, there is a statement in the Apastamba Dharmasutra that one should follow what women say in the funeral samskaras. Stephanie Jamison believes that in hospitality and exchange relations, women played an important role. She says that the approval of the wife was important in the successful completion of the soma sacrifice. In another study it has been shown that women enjoyed agency in deciding what was given in a sacrifice, bhiksha to a sanyasin. The men had no authority in telling her what to do in these circumstances.
Vedic society was the one which valued marriage immensely. In such contexts, Gender Perspectives if a woman chose not to marry, then it would point to her exercising choice in her decision to go against the grain and remain unmarried.
Mention may be made of Gargi. She was a composer of hymns and has been called a brahmavadini. This term applies to a woman who was a composer of hymns and chose to remain unmarried, devoting herself to the pursuit of learning.
Similarly, in the case of Maitreyi, she consciously opts to be educated in the Upanishadic lore and Yajnavalkya does not dissuade her from exercising her choice.
The statement in the Rigveda that learned daughters should marry learned bridegrooms indicates that women had a say in marriage. Though male offspring is desired, there is a mantra in the Rigveda, recitation of which ensures the birth of a learned daughter.
Altekar refers to the yajnas like seethayagna, rudrayajna etc. that were to be performed exclusively by women. Some of the women were known for their exceptional calibre, for example, from the Rigveda Samhita we find mention of women like Apala, Ghosha, Lopamudra, Gargi, Maitreyi, Shachi, Vishwavara Atri, Sulabha and others.
Women have not only been praised as independent individuals but also with reference to their contributions towards their natal or marital families.
The Later Vedic literature shows the progression towards a State society with a change in the organization of the society and polity. The chief comes to be referred to as bhupati instead of gopati. However, within the twelve important positions (ratnis) mentioned, the chief queen retains a special position under the title mahisi.
The importance of the chief queen continued as gleaned from several references to them in the Epics, Arthashastra and even in coins and epigraphs from early historical times.
The other Samhitas also refer to women sages such as Rishikas. The wife is referred to as sahadharmini. Brahmanas or the texts dealing with the performance of the yajna (Vedic ritual), requires a man to be accompanied by his wife to be able to carry out rituals.
For example, Aitareya Brahmana looks upon the wife as essential to spiritual wholesomeness of the husband. However, there is a mention of some problematic institutions as well.
Uma Chakravarti has pointed towards the condition of Vedic Dasis (female servant/slave) who are referred to in numerous instances. They were the objects of dana (donation/gift) and dakshina (fee).
It is generally believed that from the post Vedic period the condition of the women steadily deteriorated. However, Panini’s Ashtadhyayi and subsequent grammatical literature speak highly of women acharyas and Upadhyayas.
Thus, the memory and practice of a brahmavadini continued even after the Vedic period. The Ramayana, Mahabharata and even the Puranas keep the memory of brhamavadini alive.
Mention may be made of Anasuya, Kunti, Damyanti, Draupadi, Gandhari, Rukmini who continued to fire the imagination of the poets. Texts show that the daughter of Kuni-garga refused marriage because she did not find anyone worthy of her.
The Epics also mention women whose opinions were sought in major events. For example, after the thirteen years of exile, while debating upon the future course of action regarding the restoration of their share, the Pandavas along with Krshna asks Draupadi for her views. Similarly, when Krishna goes to the Kaurava’s court to plead the case of Pandavas, Gandhari is called upon to persuade her sons to listen to reason.
Since a woman taking sanyasa was an act of transgression, one can explore women’s agency through such instances. In the Ramayana, Sabari, who was the disciple of Sage Matanga, and whose hermitage was on the banks of river Pampa was one such sanyasin.
Such women find mention in Smriti literature and Arthashashtra. Kautilya’s prohibition against initiating women into Sanyasa can make sense only if women were being initiated into sanyasa. He advises the king to employ female parivrajakas as spies.
Megasthenes mentions women who accompanied their husbands to the forest, probably referring to the Vanaprastha stage. Another category of literature called Shastras that comprises of sutras (aphorisms) and the smriti texts (‘that which is remembered’) becomes important in the postVedic period.
These textual traditions cover many subjects relating to the four kinds of pursuits of life referred to as purusharthas (namely dharma, karma, kama and moksha). In all these texts we find very liberal values and freedom for both women and men.
The setting up of a household is seen as an ideal for men as well as women (though asceticism for learning is equally praised for both). For example, Apastambha Sutra opines that rituals carried out by an unmarried man do not please the devatas (divinities). Similarly, Manusmriti provides that ‘for three years shall a girl wait after the onset of her puberty; after that time, she may find for herself a husband of equal status. If a woman who has not been given in marriage finds a husband on her own, she does not incur any sin, and neither does the man she finds’
Thus, we see that women enjoyed choice in matters of matrimony. It is interesting to note that unmarried daughters were to be provided for by the father. In fact, daughter is stated to be the object of utmost affection. Should a girl lose her parents, her economic interests were well looked after. It was provided that from their shares, ‘the brothers shall give individually to the unmarried girls, one-quarter from the share of each. Those unwilling to give will become outcastes’
With regards to defining contemporary attitude towards women, Apastambha Sutra prescribed that ‘All must make a way for a woman when she is treading a path.’ Later Dharmashastra also makes similar statements.
Yagnavalkyasmriti mentions that ‘women are the embodiment of all divine virtues on earth.’ However, there are several provisions that look problematic.
On one hand, we have reverence assigned to the feminine (divine and worldly) and important roles being played by them, on the other hand we have questionable provisions and descriptions like right to chastise them through beating or discarding.
The post-Vedic phase from 6th century BCE onwards is also rich in literary traditions with ample depictions of women. Interestingly, we have an entire body of literature that is ascribed totally to women who became Buddhist nuns. These are referred to as Therigathas i.e. the Songs of the Elder Bhikkhunis (Buddhist Women who joined the Sangha).
The Arthashastra Gender Perspectives gives us information on women who were engaged in economic activities of various kinds. They formed a part of both the skilled and the unskilled workforce. They were into professional as well as non-professional employment.
Some of their vocations were related to their gender, while the others were not. There were female state employees as well as independent working women. Similarly, some of them were engaged in activities which though not dependent on their biological constitution are nonetheless categorized as women’s domain, e.g. domestic services etc. Some of them were actual state employees, while some others were in contractual relations with the State. For example, we have female bodyguards and spies in the State employment.
Jaiswal suggests that these women perhaps came from Bhila or Kirata tribe. Female spies were not only to gather information and relay it to proper source, but also to carry out assassinations. However, a closer look at the text shows that there were different classes of female spies engaged for different purposes. Amongst others ‘women skilled in arts were to be employed as spies living inside their houses’. Others were required to work as assassins. Some were to the play the roles of young and beautiful widows to tempt the lust of greedy enemy.
We also have various Buddhist and Jaina traditions giving us some glimpses of the ideas and institutions of the times. Apart from the orthodox (Vedic and Brahmanic) and heterodox normative tradition we have many popular texts like the Epics in Sanskrit and Jatakas in Pali.
Even Prakrit language has many interesting narratives and poetic texts. The Therigatha by the Buddhist nuns are an interesting literary source that provides us with a glimpse of various women who attained arhantship or similar other stages of Realisation.
The deliberation on the age and deterioration of the body by Ambapali, the non-importance of sensual or bodily pleasures by Nanda, Vimla and Shubha etc points towards the intellectual and spiritual engagements and attainments of women.
It is interesting to note that an absolutely contrary picture is presented by the Jatakas wherein more often than not, women are depicted as evil. It is important to note that women were given an evil aura mostly in their roles as wives or beloveds.
Both the texts and the archaeological remains have been studied by various scholars and opposing interpretations are not rare. For example, on one side Sita (from Ramayana) and Draupadi (from Mahabharata) have been seen as victims of the patriarchal order; on the other hand, they are also represented as selfwilled women.
Draupadi after the game of dice presents herself as a forceful and articulate woman. It’s her wit that saves her husbands from becoming slaves of the Kauravas. Her incensed outrage at the attack on her modesty, her bitter lamentations to Krishna, her furious tirade against Yudhishthira for his seeming inability to defend her honour and many more such instances show her to be an aggressive woman. This persona is juxtaposed to her representations as an ideal wife elsewhere. However, Draupadi is never idealised as a perfect wife who endures the most severe trials without complaint. This honour is reserved for Sita in the Ramayana. She is also presented as a victim like Draupadi and voices her concern at her fate openly. However, her aggression is directed inwards as indicated by her action against the self which culminate in her union with the mother Earth.
Are the limited number of hymns ascribed to the Vedic women a signifier of their general status? Are the goddesses merely representational with no connection to the ideas and behaviour towards women? Did only princesses choose their spouses? Are the warrior women an exception? Such searching questions need to be addressed with due diligence.
While women studies are a good development there is a need to expand the horizons to include other varieties of human existence. We have narratives of fluid sexuality in various texts. The one year of Arjuna’s life spent as Brihallana and rebirth of Amba as Shikhandi are some interesting instances. The artefacts found at the site of Sheri Khan Tarakai include visibly hermaphroditic figurines. There is a need to understand the notions of the feminine, masculine, neuter, and other forms of gender and sexual identities. These will have ramifications for understanding the ideas of conjugality, family, community, society and even polity and spirituality.
CONCLUSION
Human civilisations were built by men as well as women, however, history writing has a huge male-bias. Women were confined to questions of status and position that were largely evaluated in terms of their roles in the domestic sphere.
Their treatment as wives and widows became a central focus of most research alongside their place in ritual or religious context. This made them peripheral to mainstream history. This was questioned by various scholars from time to time and led to the development of gendered understanding of history. Focusing attention on women’s history helps to rectify the method which sees women as a monolithic homogeneous category. Writing gender history has helped in building an image of the past that is wholesome and nuanced.