Enhancing Women's Mobility in a Forest Economy: Transport and Gender Relations in the Santal Parganas, Jharkhand

This paper, based on a study of three villages in Dumka district, Jharkhand, attempts to under line some of the linkages between transport provisioning, livelihoods and changes in the socioeconomic and environmental context of the transport components of the roles and responsibilities of women and men. Transport needs are largely local in nature-to the fields, forests and mar kets. Distance and time factors seem to play an important role both in determining livelihood choices and the gender division of labour within the household. The state provisioning, however, has primarily related to the construction of roads and setting up of bus routes catering to the major markets rather than local needs. The paper advocates a combination of non-transport interventions for providing basic services in the village itself, along with innovative transport and organisational interventions to ease the transport burdens on the local tribal population, particularly women.