Running a Family

Chapter 3 details why so many women wished to remain with their abusers and how it was they started moving toward the law despite their best efforts. Using interview and observation data, the author describes how women initially wished to avoid the law. They tried to “run a family” (sansar calano): work things out, make the violence stop, have a peaceful family life with people who had abused them. This chapter asks what it means to “run a family” and examines the social and institutional factors that shape women’s desires. It then goes on to show how, despite their commitments, in the process of seeking help women became enmeshed in kin networks that pushed them toward legal engagements.

Introduction

How do women claim rights against violence in India, and what happens to them when they do? How do law enforcement personnel respond to their claims and why? Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the key questions, major empirical findings, theoretical arguments, and research methods used to write the book. The author argues that women negotiate rights in India not by performing victimhood but by being “capable”: mobilizing organized support, threatening law enforcement and abusers, and taking the law into their hands. Capability is the main pathway toward a semblance of rights in India because law enforcement are simultaneously unwilling to enforce the law and susceptible to organized pressure.

The Allure and Costs of Capability

Chapter 11 analyzes the costs and benefits of women’s “capability.” On the one hand, women who tried to be “capable” became empowered in concrete ways. They gained self-confidence, feeling psychologically better than they had after experiencing abuse. Some of them experienced important forms of social mobility, acquiring stable jobs and respect from friends and neighbors. Some became members of the public sphere, able to navigate government offices, occupy public space, and lead their own organizational efforts. On the other hand, by trying to be “capable,” women also experienced real uncertainty and risks. They became overworked, overwhelmed, lonely, and physically endangered. Trying to be capable had long-term negative effects on women’s health, mental stability, and, for some, the very desire to survive.

Aspirational and Strategic

The act of “running a case,” shifted how women perceived both the law and themselves. Chapter 9 details transformations in legal consciousness, mapping the rise of a dual and seemingly contradictory subjectivity. First, by “running a case” women started aspiring to the life the law promised, a life free of violence where they could exercise a modicum of control over their bodies and material possessions. Second, they began thinking of the law as a strategic field they could engage and manipulate. This “aspirational-strategic” subjectivity arose through their routine encounters with brokers and law enforcement personnel and departed significantly from their initial commitments for family life and fear of the state.

Under Pressure

Chapter 6 takes the reader into the halls of the Indian criminal justice system and into the lives of the police, protection officers, and court personnel who staff its offices. Law enforcement personnel faced administrative constraints on their abilities to process cases and mounting organized pressure around domestic violence allegations. These conditions undermined their ability to exercise discretion, making it difficult for them to reject women they did not like and pick “good” victims they wished to protect. And it bred a sense of victimization, the notion that they were too overburdened and besieged to do their jobs. The main outcome was thus twofold: law enforcement feared alienating organized women and articulated a discourse of disempowerment that rationalized poor performance.

The Business of Mediation

Chapter 4 examines the organizations that intervened in domestic disputes and analyzes their reasons for intervening. These organizations included women’s nongovernmental organizations, women’s committees, political parties, and criminal gangs. Members of these organizations worked as brokers, transforming grievances into the language of the law and mediating between women and the state. Brokers had distinct and at times contradictory understandings of domestic violence and gender inequality, and some were even ideologically opposed to legal claims and women’s rights. Yet, all of them profited from their mediation services. Domestic disputes provided them access to financial, social, cultural, and political capital: opportunities to establish and expand their community presence, appear socially relevant, secure jobs, raise money, and form personal relationships with state officials.

Stalled

Chapter 2 details the landscape surrounding domestic violence, highlighting its contradictions. On the one hand, women face a number of social, cultural, and institutional barriers to rights. Social stigma and limited access to housing and jobs constrain their options outside abusive relationships. Law enforcement personnel are overburdened and sexist, simultaneously unwilling to help them and vulnerable to organized pressure. On the other hand, women have access to a range of organizations that offer legal assistance. NGOs, women’s committees, political parties, neighborhood associations, labor unions, and even criminal gangs get involved in domestic disputes and sometimes help advance women’s claims.

Conclusion

The central finding of this book is that women negotiate rights in India not by performing victimhood but by becoming capable: deploying collective threats and doing the work of the state themselves. The conclusion considers the benefits and drawbacks of women’s capability. The author juxtaposes this citizenship model to victimhood, discussing how capability may create openings for women while simultaneously forcing them to take on a new dangerous burden of labor. The author ends by theorizing the broader implications of her findings and discussing why rights continue to matter to people when criminal justice institutions deny them justice.

Justice by Another Name

Chapter 10 tracks what women actually received from “running a case.” For the vast majority of claimants, the outcome was illicit: not something guaranteed through a court order but rather something outside the law’s environs. By “running a case,” women negotiated cash settlements, repossessed property, secured housing, found jobs, made new friends, enrolled in school and job training programs, learned to use public transport, felt more confident talking to law enforcement personnel, and used their newfound knowledge of the law to become a caseworker themselves. While these gains cannot be dismissed, this chapter also reveals that a mere handful of women actually secured legal rights.

Running a Case

By incentivizing the law and by incorporating women into the daily work of regulation brokers and law enforcement personnel encouraged women to “run cases.” Chapter 8 details the practice of “running a case” and the specific capabilities it engendered. First, to “run a case,” women had to risk estrangement, not only from intimate partners and in-laws but also from agnatic kin. Second, they had to confront and work with law enforcement: courageously demonstrating their organized connections, overcoming insults and neglect, and resolutely pursuing rights despite delays. Third, they had to learn to do the state’s work: either completing case-processing duties or finding a way to acquire a semblance of rights outside formal legal procedure.