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  • At Last, She Is a Farmer

    Maharashtra challenges a patriarchal history of land, labour and recognition

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    —  •  —

    There are some policy decisions whose significance cannot be understood by looking only at the document they create.

    A certificate can be just a certificate.

    But sometimes, a certificate challenges centuries of social conditioning.

    As Maharashtra prepares to issue its first Women Farmer Certificates, recognising women as farmers irrespective of whether the agricultural land is registered in their names, I believe we should understand this moment in precisely that way.

    Maharashtra has done something remarkable.

    It has challenged one of the oldest equations in our agrarian society: land belongs to the man, therefore the farmer is the man.

    The woman? She works. She sows. She transplants. She weeds. She harvests. She preserves seeds. She tends livestock. She manages household food security.

    But for generations, patriarchal society found another word for her: helper.

    That one word tells us a great deal about how patriarchy works.

    The history behind the invisibility

    Women’s secondary position in agriculture did not emerge because women contributed less. It emerged from a social order in which property, inheritance, authority and lineage were overwhelmingly organised around men.

    In some of my much earlier development work in Bihar, I wrote about the continuing influence of a feudal social order, alongside deeply entrenched caste structures, on women’s position. I described the interconnected workings of patriarchy, patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal marriage: property and family identity travelled largely through men, while women moved after marriage into the husband’s household, often without corresponding claims over productive assets.¹

    That history matters to the present discussion. Because land is not merely soil. Land has historically represented wealth, lineage, security, status and authority.

    When ownership became masculine, authority over agriculture became masculine too. And gradually we created an extraordinary contradiction: women could perform agricultural labour without acquiring agricultural identity.

    The patriarchal system did not necessarily prevent women from working. It depended upon their work. What it restricted was something more consequential: their claim to ownership, decision-making and recognition.

    West Bengal: “Men are farmers. Women are helpers.”

    Years later, while working with women farmers in West Bengal as Gender Specialist under the USAID–PepsiCo Integrated Land and Resource Governance programme implemented by Tetra Tech, I encountered the same structural problem in another form.

    Our work with Gender Action Learning Systems (GALS) and Nurturing Connections looked beyond agricultural productivity to gender norms, household decision-making, unpaid care, productive resources, entitlements, voice and leadership.²

    One of the gender norms documented in the programme could hardly have stated the problem more starkly: “Men are farmers and women are their helping hand.” Alongside it were other assumptions: land belonged to men; women were not seen as property owners; men were expected to make agricultural decisions; technical agricultural knowledge was considered a male domain; and farming meetings and extension opportunities often went primarily to men.³

    Think about the circularity of that system. A woman is not considered a farmer, so she is not invited to agricultural training. Because she is not invited to training or formally engaged by agricultural institutions, the man becomes the recognised farmer. And because the man is recognised as the farmer, resources, information and institutional relationships continue to flow towards him.

    Patriarchy reproduces itself not merely through attitudes, but through systems.

    Even unpaid care becomes part of this arrangement. Women farmers carry substantial household and care responsibilities, leaving them time-poor and less able to participate in training and agricultural institutions.³

    Bihar: knowledge without ownership

    More recently, my work with women in north Bihar brought me face to face with another version of the same contradiction.

    Women involved in food sovereignty, indigenous seed conservation, kitchen gardens and sustainable agriculture possessed considerable knowledge. They could identify seed varieties, understand seasonal changes, preserve seeds, advise others about crops and manage household nutrition. Their participation in collectives expanded their confidence and their aspirations towards enterprise, markets, leadership and a stronger role in local decision-making.

    And yet, repeatedly, the conversation returned to the same place: the land was in a man’s name. Larger decisions around cultivation, sale and investment frequently remained with men. Engagement with banks or formal institutions could still require male mediation.

     

    The woman’s knowledge was visible; her authority over the asset was far less secure.

    From my work on Deconstructing Patriarchy

     

    A woman can know which seed will survive an uncertain monsoon. She can know when it should be planted. She can preserve it. She can teach other farmers. And still the land on which all this knowledge is exercised may not bear her name. This is what I have come to describe as knowledge without ownership.⁴

    Darbhanga: when livelihood begins to alter identity

    In Darbhanga, women had long participated deeply in agriculture — sowing, transplanting, weeding and harvesting — yet much of that labour remained absorbed into household responsibility rather than recognised as economic contribution.

    The introduction of makhana cultivation and more structured livelihood opportunities began to alter this relationship. Women began earning directly. They began handling money. They contributed to household expenditure. And gradually, they participated more in financial decisions.⁵

     

    “Now we earn, so we are also asked.”

    A woman participant in Darbhanga

     

    There is an entire theory of women’s empowerment contained in that one sentence. Now we earn. Therefore, we are also asked.

    But it also reveals how deeply unequal the original relationship was. Why should a woman need to demonstrate income before her opinion becomes worthy of being sought? Why should decades of agricultural labour not have been enough?

    This is precisely why recognition matters.

    Maharashtra: where something remarkable is happening

    And then I come back to Maharashtra.

    Here, my perspective comes not from implementing the programme but from evaluating the Women’s Initiative for Food Sovereignty in Sangamner and Akole. That distinction matters. As an evaluator, I had the opportunity to listen to women, field teams and partner institutions, examine what had changed over four years, and assess the evidence of change with some distance from implementation.

    The initiative reached around 400 rural and tribal women farmers. Eight community seed banks were established, conserving around 4,000 kg of indigenous grains. Women became involved in indigenous seed conservation, organic cultivation, value addition, Participatory Guarantee Systems and market linkages.⁶

    But the most significant shift I saw in the evidence was not simply agricultural. It was institutional and social.

    The community seed banks became collective spaces governed by women themselves — involving decisions about seed selection, preservation, exchange and cropping. Women who had earlier been perceived largely as agricultural helpers increasingly came to be recognised as farmers, seed custodians and decision-makers.⁷

     

    “Earlier we only worked. Now we decide.”

    A woman farmer in the Sangamner case study

     

    For me, those words connect directly with what Maharashtra is doing today. Earlier we only worked. Now we decide. And perhaps now we can add: now the state recognises us too.

    Why Maharashtra’s decision is a challenge to patriarchy

    This is why I hesitate to describe Maharashtra’s action merely as a welfare measure for women. It is potentially much more radical than that.

    Patriarchy survives partly because certain categories have been made to appear natural: the landowner is male; the head of the household is male; the farmer is male; the woman assists.

    But these categories were never natural. They were constructed through social norms, inheritance systems, property relations, institutional practices and generations of repetition.

    My work on Deconstructing Patriarchy has increasingly convinced me that patriarchy does not survive only by excluding women. It can also include women while retaining male authority. A woman may work, earn, acquire agricultural expertise, join a collective and even be celebrated for her contribution. But the crucial questions remain: Who owns? Who decides? Whose authority is recognised?

    Acceptance of women’s participation does not automatically mean acceptance of women’s authority. Development can expand women’s productive role while leaving the final location of decision-making substantially unchanged.⁸

    Maharashtra is now intervening precisely in that space between participation and recognition. That is why this matters.

    A policy recommendation becoming reality

    There is another reason this announcement feels particularly significant to me.

    In the policy document we developed for International Women’s Day 2026, after examining experiences from Maharashtra, Bihar and elsewhere, one of our recommendations to governments was remarkably straightforward: “Recognise women as farmers in official records.”⁹

    We made that recommendation because our own field evidence kept showing us the same contradiction. Women were central to agriculture but peripheral to ownership. Central to production but peripheral to recognition. Central to household food security but peripheral to agricultural institutions.

    In Sangamner, our IWD analysis explicitly noted that women were central to seed preservation, crop diversity and household nutrition management while remaining insufficiently recognised as farmers within formal and community structures.¹⁰

    And now Maharashtra is moving in exactly the direction we were asking governments to move. That deserves recognition.

    But recognition must lead towards power

    Celebration should not make us uncritical.

    A farmer certificate is not the same thing as ownership of land. Recognition cannot substitute indefinitely for inheritance rights, control over productive assets, access to finance or authority over agricultural income.

    My Bihar experience has taught me this particularly strongly. A woman may become recognised as a knowledgeable farmer, community mobiliser or seed keeper and still have limited control over the asset on which her work depends.

     

    Recognition is meaningful, but recognition without redistribution has limits.

    From my Deconstructing Patriarchy work

     

    Maharashtra therefore should not be seen as completing the journey. It has opened an important door. The next challenge is ensuring that recognition becomes entitlement, institutional access, bargaining power, decision-making authority and, increasingly, ownership.

    For today, Maharashtra deserves to be celebrated

    Women’s movements have fought for decades against the assumption that women’s work is secondary simply because it takes place inside families, on family farms or without an individual title attached to it.

    Across West Bengal, Bihar and Maharashtra, I have encountered different versions of the same woman.

    She knows the land. She knows the crop. She knows the seed. She knows when rain is late. She knows what the household will eat if the harvest fails. Often, she knows agriculture as intimately as — sometimes more intimately than — the person whose name appears on the papers.

    Yet history placed her beside the farmer rather than allowing her to be the farmer.

    Well done, Maharashtra.

    Not simply for issuing a certificate, but for confronting a patriarchal definition that should have been challenged long ago.

    For saying that ownership in a man’s name cannot make a woman’s labour disappear.

    For recognising that agricultural identity must arise from women’s contribution, knowledge and work — not only from a male-dominated history of property.

    And perhaps most importantly, for beginning to replace one of rural India’s oldest descriptions — “She helps him farm” — with one that women have earned through generations of labour:

    “She is a farmer.”

    That is not a small semantic correction. It is a redistribution of identity.

    And if Maharashtra can carry that recognition from paper into institutions, resources and decision-making, it may have done something even larger: shown India one way of challenging patriarchy from the ground beneath our feet.

    Notes and references from my own work

    1. Early Bihar development documentation: reflections on the feudal bent of rural and semi-urban society, caste, patriarchy, patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal marriage.

    2. Deepali Bhattacharya, Gender Specialist, Tetra Tech Development Services — USAID & PepsiCo / Integrated Land and Resource Governance (West Bengal), 2020–2022; work on GALS and Nurturing Connections.

    3. ILRG GALS Training Manual (West Bengal): gender norms affecting women’s recognition as farmers, land ownership, participation in agricultural decisions, extension services and unpaid care.

    4. Deepali Bhattacharya, Deconstructing Patriarchy: field vignette on “Knowledge without Ownership” and the distinction between participation and power.

    5. Darbhanga field documentation and case study: “From Invisible Labour to Recognised Farmers.”

    6. Impact Assessment Report 2025: Women’s Initiative for Food Sovereignty, Sangamner & Akole — 400 women farmers, eight community seed banks and approximately 4,000 kg of indigenous grains conserved.

    7. IWD 2026 Give to Gain policy document: Women-Led Seed Sovereignty & Agroecological Transition; Sangamner/Akole case evidence.

    8. Deepali Bhattacharya, Deconstructing Patriarchy: argument on the institutional reproduction of patriarchy and the difference between women’s participation and women’s authority.

    9. IWD 2026 Give to Gain policy document, Policy Recommendations for Governments: “Recognise women as farmers in official records.”

    10. IWD 2026 Give to Gain policy document: Sangamner evidence on women’s central role in seed preservation, crop diversity and household nutrition, alongside gaps in formal recognition.

    Author’s note: This article draws only on my own field experience, evaluation work, programme documentation, IWD 2026 policy writing and research drafts, alongside the Maharashtra announcement that prompted this reflection.

  • Why are women still dying behind the closed door

    https://deepalibhattacharya.substack.com/p/why-are-women-still-dying-behind?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=d9hgp

  • Why The Prophet?

    11 Conversations on parenting, love and letting go

    Inspired by The Prophet by Kahlil Jibran

    A personal Journey

    From a carefree, naive wanderer

    To a lifelong seeker of questions.

    Not because life became easier, but one small book quietly changed the way I looked at the world.

    Walk with us..

    The first conversation begins this friday…

    Welcome to The Prophet Dialogues

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 8

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART VIII

    When Fear Begins to Shrink Our Lives

    “The purpose of fear is to protect life—not to replace it.”

    Fear has a curious habit.

    It begins by asking us to be careful.

    Slowly, almost invisibly, it begins asking us to stop living.

    A young woman avoids evening classes.

    An elderly couple stops travelling.

    Parents no longer allow children to play outside.

    A commuter changes jobs to avoid public transport.

    Each decision appears reasonable in isolation.

    Together, they slowly reduce the size of life.

    TD introduced another important idea here—maladaptive fear. 17

    Healthy fear helps us adapt.

    It makes us alert.

    It encourages preparation.

    Maladaptive fear does something different.

    It convinces us that the safest life is the smallest life.

    Ironically, this is often strengthened by relentless exposure to dramatic news.

    Every notification.

    Every breaking alert.

    Every forwarded video.

    Our minds begin to mistake repetition for increasing danger. 18

    Yet the world is rarely as simple as our news feeds.

    Acts of extraordinary violence deserve attention.

    But they should not become the only stories we consume.

    Because while violence deserves visibility, kindness deserves memory too.

    Every day, people rescue strangers after accidents.

    Neighbours donate blood.

    Passengers intervene to protect women.

    Teachers notice silent suffering.

    Friends stay back after everyone else has left.

    These stories rarely become breaking news.

    Yet they are equally true.

    If we only remember violence, we begin believing that violence is all there is.

    It is not.

    Humanity has always contained both cruelty and compassion.

    Our emotional health depends partly on remembering both.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If fear becomes smaller when we act, what does action actually look like for ordinary people?

    Notes:

    16.  The concept originates with Halbwachs (1950/1992): memory is not only individual but socially framed — communities preserve, transmit and reinterpret the past together.

    17.  On how avoidance sustains fear: Foa and Kozak (1986) show that fear structures persist precisely when avoidance prevents corrective emotional processing — the avoided train can never teach the mind that it is, in fact, usually safe.

    18.  Gerbner and Gross (1976) documented the “mean world syndrome” — heavy consumers of violent media overestimate real-world danger; Thompson et al. (2019) trace a modern cycle in which distress drives further media consumption, which deepens distress.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 6

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART VI

    “That Could Have Been Me”

    “Fear is not only about danger. It is about nearness.”

    A few days after the train murder, I found myself listening to conversations in different places. At a café. In a waiting room. During a taxi ride. People were discussing the same incident, but their reactions were strikingly different.

    One young woman who travelled daily by local train admitted that she had barely slept the night after watching the video.

    An elderly gentleman who mostly travelled by car said, “Terrible incident… but these things happen.”

    Neither response was wrong.

    They were simply different.

    When I mentioned this to TD, he smiled.

    “The mind asks only one question before it measures risk,” he said.

    “Could that have been me?”

    Psychologists call this risk perception. Interestingly, our perception of risk is rarely based on statistical probability. It is shaped by familiarity, proximity and imagination. 13

    A commuter who boards the same train every day does not see a random incident. She sees herself standing in that compartment.

    A parent watching news of violence against children imagines their own son or daughter.

    A young bride hearing of another dowry death quietly wonders about her own future.

    Fear becomes personal long before danger becomes probable.

    This is why two people watching the same news bulletin often walk away with entirely different emotions.

    The event is the same.

    The imagination is different.

    Years ago, while interacting with women in rural communities, I noticed something similar. Women routinely described walking long distances before sunrise or after sunset because they had no choice. When I asked whether they were afraid, many replied, “Yes. But we still have to go.”

    Their fear had not disappeared.

    Life had simply left them with fewer alternatives.

    Risk perception is therefore never only psychological. 14

    It is also social.

    Economic circumstances.

    Gender.

    Age.

    Disability.

    Occupation.

    All shape how close danger feels.

    Perhaps this is why public policy must listen not only to crime statistics but also to people’s lived experiences of safety.

    Because people do not live according to probability.

    They live according to perception.

    And perception shapes behaviour.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If fear grows through imagination, can memory make that fear last long after the event has passed?

    Notes:

    13.  The classic account is Slovic (1987): lay risk perception tracks dread, familiarity and controllability rather than probability. Loewenstein et al. (2001) formalise this as “risk as feelings” — emotional reactions to risk routinely diverge from cognitive assessments and often drive behaviour.

    14.  Kasperson et al. (1988) call this the social amplification of risk: social position, communication channels and institutional response amplify or attenuate how dangerous an event feels to different groups.

  • Podcast Episode: Violence Fear And Youth Inequality

    Pip: Welcome to GyaniNani’s Reading Room — where the questions that stay with you after the headlines fade are exactly the ones worth sitting with.

    Mara: This episode covers two stretches of territory: a multi-part series on how violence travels through public imagination and what it does to our sense of safety and agency, and a close look at youth addiction across the full sweep of class and circumstance in urban India.

    Pip: Let’s start with the violence series — and the uncomfortable question of which suffering we actually notice.

    Violence, Fear, and the Stories We Tell

    Pip: The series opens with a deceptively simple observation: some acts of violence become everyone’s fear, while others stay someone else’s tragedy. The question driving these posts is why — and what that gap reveals about us.

    Mara: Part Two puts it directly: “Not every act of violence enters the national conscience. That, too, tells us something about ourselves.” The piece builds from a field visit where a woman described hearing about another girl dying after marriage and said, matter-of-factly, that life goes on — no anger, no surprise, only acceptance.

    Pip: That sentence is the whole argument in miniature. When violence becomes routine enough that a grieving community greets it with resignation, we’ve moved past shock into something harder to name.

    Mara: Part One sets the psychological foundation. TD, the clinical psychologist in conversation throughout the series, says: “The mind does not count statistics. It remembers stories.” That’s why a single filmed murder on a train spreads fear into every compartment while years of domestic abuse stays behind closed walls.

    Pip: Visibility, repetition, novelty — the mind responds to framing, not frequency. Which is a polite way of saying our collective compassion has a very specific algorithm.

    Mara: Part Two makes that plain. Dowry deaths — the NCRB recorded 5,737 in 2024, roughly sixteen a day — rarely become national conversations. The piece argues that familiarity erodes shock: communities living with repeated violence may stop expecting justice, and what begins as adaptation quietly becomes acceptance.

    Mara: Part Three sharpens the wound further. When TD says “intention changes everything,” the post is getting at why deliberate violence leaves behind not just grief but doubt — a rupture in our assumption that people are basically decent.

    Pip: And Part Four lands on the crowd that watches. The bystander effect means the more witnesses there are, the less likely any one of them moves — responsibility diffuses until stillness feels like the appropriate response.

    Mara: Which brings the series to the question of agency. From the survivor’s side, a neighbor’s silence feels indistinguishable from indifference. The series argues that communities are built when responsibility stays personal — when we stop assuming someone else will intervene.

    Pip: That thread — from public fear to private silence to the cost of not acting — runs through all four parts. The series isn’t asking us to be heroes. It’s asking whether we’re paying attention.

    Mara: And that question of attention connects directly to another kind of invisible harm — one that plays out not in crowds but in the quieter geography of adolescence.

    Youth, Addiction, and the Shape of Emptiness

    Pip: The piece on youth addiction starts with the “trust fund kid” as a way in — not to mock the label, but to dismantle it. Wealth without necessity, it turns out, is its own kind of vulnerability.

    Mara: The argument is that both poles of the class spectrum can damage aspiration. The post puts it this way: “In privilege, aspiration may weaken because nothing feels necessary. In deprivation, aspiration may weaken because nothing feels possible.” One produces excess without purpose; the other produces struggle without hope.

    Pip: So the substance isn’t the story. The absence underneath it is.

    Mara: Exactly. The piece insists addiction is multifactorial — trauma matters, but so do biology, ADHD, peer culture, and the pharmacology of the substance itself. The real diagnostic question isn’t only what happened to this young person, but what function the substance is serving right now.

    Mara: And shame-based responses make it worse. When adults answer with punishment or ridicule, young people hide further. Recovery, the piece argues, requires both accountability and dignity.

    Pip: Which is a harder thing to build than a policy list — though the piece has one of those too, from early screening to community youth programmes to post-treatment relapse support.

    Mara: Both threads this episode come back to the same underlying question: what do we quietly learn to live with, and what does that cost us?

    Pip: Whether it’s the violence we stop noticing or the adolescent we stop asking about — the next conversation is always the one we almost didn’t have.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Epilogue

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    Epilogue

    As I finished writing these reflections, I realised that this series was never really about one train, one crime or one headline.

    It was about us.

    About how we respond when violence enters our lives—not always directly, but through the stories we hear, the images we carry and the memories we inherit.

    The questions in these pages do not belong to psychologists alone.

    They belong to commuters.

    Parents.

    Teachers.

    Police officers.

    Journalists.

    Policy-makers.

    Neighbours.

    And to every one of us who has ever looked at a disturbing headline and wondered,

    “What is happening to us?”

    Perhaps the better question is,

    “What are we going to do next?”

    Because, in the end, TD’s final words remain the simplest and perhaps the wisest:

    “Keep living your life. What you are going to do matters more.”

    References

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    Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W. H. Freeman.

    Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(2), 164–180.

    Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist, 59(1), 20–28.

    Darley, J. M., & Latáné, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4), 377–383.

    Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58.

    Erikson, K. T. (1976). Everything in its path: Destruction of community in the Buffalo Creek flood. New York: Simon & Schuster.

    Fischer, P., Krueger, J. I., Greitemeyer, T., Vogrincic, C., Kastenmüller, A., Frey, D., Heene, M., Wicher, M., & Kainbacher, M. (2011). The bystander-effect: A meta-analytic review on bystander intervention in dangerous and non-dangerous emergencies. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 517–537.

    Foa, E. B., & Kozak, M. J. (1986). Emotional processing of fear: Exposure to corrective information. Psychological Bulletin, 99(1), 20–35.

    Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976). Living with television: The violence profile. Journal of Communication, 26(2), 172–199.

    Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory (L. A. Coser, Ed. & Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1950)

    Hirschberger, G. (2018). Collective trauma and the social construction of meaning. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1441.

    Holman, E. A., Garfin, D. R., & Silver, R. C. (2014). Media’s role in broadcasting acute stress following the Boston Marathon bombings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(1), 93–98.

    International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) & ICF. (2021). National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), 2019–21: India. Mumbai: IIPS.

    Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. New York: Free Press.

    Kasperson, R. E., Renn, O., Slovic, P., Brown, H. S., Emel, J., Goble, R., Kasperson, J. X., & Ratick, S. (1988). The social amplification of risk: A conceptual framework. Risk Analysis, 8(2), 177–187.

    Latáné, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

    LeDoux, J. E. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

    Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428.

    Loewenstein, G. F., Weber, E. U., Hsee, C. K., & Welch, N. (2001). Risk as feelings. Psychological Bulletin, 127(2), 267–286.

    Masten, A. S. (2001). Ordinary magic: Resilience processes in development. American Psychologist, 56(3), 227–238.

    McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187.

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  • Beyond the Breaking News- Part 11

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART XI

    Keep Living Your Life

    “The final word should never belong to fear.”

    As our conversation drew to a close, I asked TD one last question.

    “After everything we have discussed—the violence, the fear, the uncertainty—what would you like people to carry with them?”

    He did not answer immediately.

    Then he said something beautifully simple.

    “Keep living your life.”

    The sentence stayed with me.

    Not because it dismissed fear.

    But because it placed fear in its rightful place.

    Fear has a purpose.

    It warns us.

    It prepares us.

    Sometimes it protects us.

    But it was never meant to become the author of our lives.

    Violence seeks more than victims.

    It seeks to alter the way the rest of us live.

    It asks us to withdraw.

    To distrust.

    To isolate ourselves.

    To become suspicious of one another.

    When that happens, violence succeeds far beyond the original act.

    Perhaps resilience is not the absence of fear.

    Perhaps resilience is quietly refusing to surrender our humanity because of it. 23

    This does not mean becoming careless.

    It does not mean ignoring danger.

    It means refusing to allow danger to define every decision we make.

    As I look back on my years in the development sector, I realise that the people who have inspired me most were not fearless.

    The widow who learnt a new livelihood after unimaginable loss.

    The survivor who chose to testify.

    The social worker who continued visiting difficult communities.

    The police officer who listened with compassion.

    The teacher who believed one child could still change.

    None of them were untouched by fear.

    They simply chose not to let fear make all their decisions.

    Perhaps that is what agency finally looks like.

    Not extraordinary courage.

    Quiet courage.

    The courage to continue caring.

    To continue trusting carefully.

    To continue building communities.

    To continue believing that kindness is worthwhile.

    To continue living.

    Because the opposite of violence is not only justice.

    It is also connection.

    The opposite of fear is not bravado.

    It is agency.

    And perhaps the opposite of despair is not certainty.

    It is hope expressed through action.

    The headlines will change tomorrow.

    Another story will replace today’s.

    But long after the breaking news fades, the deeper question remains.

    What kind of society are we becoming?

    And equally important,

    What kind of society are we choosing to build?

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    What if our greatest contribution is not that we lived in safe times…

    …but that we helped create a safer, kinder and more compassionate society for those who come after us?

    Perhaps that is where every meaningful conversation on violence should finally arrive.

    Not at fear.

    But at responsibility.

    Not at despair.

    But at agency.

    And certainly not at the breaking news.

    But beyond it.

    Notes:

    22. WHO (2009) reviews the evidence that changing cultural and social norms — including the everyday speech, jokes and silences that signal acceptability — is a core violence-prevention strategy in its own right.

    23.  Resilience research supports this quiet framing: Bonanno (2004) shows resilience is common rather than exceptional, and Masten (2001) famously calls it “ordinary magic” — arising from everyday human systems of relationship, meaning and agency rather than rare heroism.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 10

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART X

    Kindness Is Not Softness. It Is Prevention.

    “Violence rarely begins with a weapon. More often, it begins with everyday indifference.”

    When people speak about preventing violence, the conversation usually turns towards stricter laws, policing, surveillance or harsher punishments.

    These conversations are important.

    But they often begin too late.

    By the time the law intervenes, someone has already been hurt.

    TD offered another perspective that stayed with me.

    “Kindness,” he said, “is prevention.” 21

    At first, I wondered whether the idea was too simple.

    Then I thought about the people I have met over the years.

    A teacher humiliating a child in front of the class.

    Parents constantly comparing siblings.

    A husband controlling every decision his wife makes.

    Friends laughing at sexist jokes.

    Neighbours choosing silence when they hear repeated screams next door.

    None of these moments make the evening news.

    Yet they quietly shape the emotional climate in which violence either grows or is challenged.

    Violence is rarely born overnight.

    It rehearses itself.

    In language.

    In ridicule.

    In entitlement.

    In humiliation.

    In the belief that some people deserve less dignity than others.

    Perhaps this is why TD insisted that we pay attention to our ordinary conversations.

    Every joke that normalises dowry.

    Every casual remark that blames survivors.

    Every statement that dismisses emotional pain.

    Every act of public humiliation.

    These may appear insignificant.

    They are not.

    Children are always listening.

    Young people are always observing.

    Communities are always learning what is considered acceptable. 22

    If cruelty can be learnt, compassion can also be learnt.

    If disrespect spreads through imitation, so can kindness.

    I often think of development work in the same way.

    Communities do not change only because policies change.

    They change because everyday behaviour changes.

    One respectful conversation.

    One teacher who listens.

    One police officer who responds with dignity.

    One neighbour who chooses to intervene.

    These actions may never become headlines.

    Yet they prevent stories that otherwise might have.

    Perhaps kindness has been misunderstood.

    It is not a weakness.

    It is one of society’s earliest warning systems.

    It notices suffering before statistics do.

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If kindness is prevention, what ultimately gives us the courage to keep choosing it in a world where violence still exists?

    That was the final question I asked TD.

    Notes:

    21.  Public health reaches the same conclusion: the WHO’s World Report on Violence and Health (2002) locates the roots of violence in an ecology of relationships, communities and norms — prevention therefore begins long before law enforcement. On learned aggression, see Bandura (1977).

    22.  WHO (2009) reviews the evidence that changing cultural and social norms — including the everyday speech, jokes and silences that signal acceptability — is a core violence-prevention strategy in its own right.

  • Beyond the Breaking News-Part 9

    Violence, Fear, Perception and Agency

    Deepali Bhattacharya

    In conversation with TD, Clinical Psychologist  ·  An eleven-part reflection, with notes and references

    PART IX

    Agency: The Antidote to Fear

    “Fear tells us what we cannot control. Agency reminds us what we still can.”

    After several conversations on fear, I found myself asking TD a question that many of us quietly ask ourselves after every disturbing news report.

    “What can one ordinary person possibly do?”

    It is an honest question.

    We cannot eliminate violence.

    We cannot predict every danger.

    We cannot control the choices other people make.

    So where does that leave us?

    TD’s answer shifted the conversation in an important way.

    “Psychology uses a simple but powerful word—agency.” 19

    Agency is our ability to recognise that even when circumstances are beyond our control, our response is not.

    Fear narrows our world.

    Agency begins to expand it again.

    It is the difference between saying,

    “The world has become unsafe.”

    And asking,

    “What can I do to become safer?”

    The difference may appear small.

    Psychologically, it is enormous.

    Agency restores something that violence often steals.

    Choice.

    I have seen this repeatedly while working with women rebuilding their lives after violence.

    The turning point rarely arrives through one dramatic event.

    It begins quietly.

    A woman decides to attend a support group.

    Another applies for a job.

    Someone learns self-defence.

    Someone else files a complaint after years of silence.

    Each decision appears ordinary.

    Yet together they represent something extraordinary.

    They mark the return of agency.

    The same principle applies beyond individual lives.

    Communities become stronger when people know one another.

    When neighbours exchange phone numbers.

    When commuters intervene instead of merely recording.

    When schools teach children not only mathematics and science but also empathy, emotional regulation and responsible citizenship.

    Preparedness is not paranoia.

    It is confidence.

    The purpose of preparedness is not to convince ourselves that danger is everywhere.

    It is to reassure ourselves that if danger appears, we are not entirely helpless.

    Perhaps that is why agency is so deeply connected with hope.

    Hope is not wishful thinking.

    Hope is believing that our actions still matter. 20

    A QUESTION THAT STAYED WITH ME…

    If agency helps us respond after violence, what helps prevent violence from taking root in the first place?

    Perhaps the answer lies much closer to home than we imagine.

    Notes:

    19.  Bandura (1997, 2006) places agency and self-efficacy at the centre of psychological functioning: the belief that one’s actions can influence outcomes is among the strongest protections against helplessness.

    20.  This is close to Snyder’s (2002) hope theory, in which hope is not optimism but the combination of goals, pathways and the sense of one’s own capacity to act.