P. Sainath, in his essay ‘Where There is a Wheel’, remarks that “people find curious ways of hitting out at their backwardness, of expressing defiance, a hammering at the fetters that hold them”. All these phrases make a reference to how the rural ***** of Pudukkottai district defied the challenge of the male bastion and broke the fetters that chained them to the confines of their homes by learning to ride a bicycle.
Sheela Rani Chunkath was the district collector of Pudukkottai. In 1991 as a part of the female literacy drive, she wanted to train female literacy activists so that literacy would reach in the interior. She had realized that the lack of mobility among played a big role in undermining their confidence. Therefore, she included ‘mobility’ as a part of the literacy drive. Naturally, literacy activists learned cycling first. This inspired the neo-literates also to learn cycling. This, in turn, inspired every woman in the village to learn cycling. The literates, having become neo-cyclists, encouraged every woman in the district to learn cycling, by organizing ‘cycle training camps’. Thus, Sheela Rani Chunkath became instrumental in ‘cycling’ becoming a social movement in Pudukkottai district.
Cycling brought many benefits to rural in Pudukkottai. Besides instilling a lot of confidence in rural , it also helped them economically. A large section of the rural womenfolk were small producers who used to wait for buses to carry their produce to sell in other villages. Even to carry their produce to the bus stop they had to depend on fathers, brothers, husbands or sons. Once these learned cycling, they became mobile and independent. Learning cycling enabled them to visit the number of villages and sell their produce. Secondly, after learning cycling they were able to combine different tasks with nonchalance. Consequently, one can see many a young mother riding a cycle with a child on the bar and the produce on the carrier. She could also be seen carrying two or three pots of water hung across the back and cycling towards work or home. Besides helping the economically, cycling brought a sense of self-respect to them. He quotes the opinion of Fatima, a secondary school teacher.
She opines that learning cycling is not economic in her case at all. She cannot afford a bicycle, yet she hires one every evening just to feel the goodness, that independence. What she means to say is, when a woman learns to ride a bicycle, she enjoys a sense of achievement. do not need to depend on their husbands to help them physically in carrying their produce to the market. Secondly, nothing can bind them to their homes. They go out, fetch water and provisions and come back home to attend to their domestic duties and responsibilities at the right time. This way they enjoy a lot of freedom. It is this feeling that gives a sense of self-respect.
