By Samar Halarnkar (IndiaSpend) The suspension of two college girls in a prosperous, highly literate small town showcases India’s struggles with female independence and offers some clues to their low workplace presence. The photograph that stirred the small, temple town of Subrahmanya in lush, prosperous coastal Karnataka this week is notable for its ordinariness. Two slim, young women in slacks, t-shirts and comfortable shoes sit on the ground of a semi-finished building and lean against each other. Behind them is a forest. Besides them is a pint of beer, two bottles of cheap wine and a plastic glass. Both appear to be at peace, smiling and lost in their thoughts, sharing a quiet, private moment. It wasn’t to remain private. The photo–it is in our possession, but we will not share it here to spare the women another invasion of their already invaded privacy–got on to Whatsapp and went viral through the district of Dakshin Kannada, better known by its capital city, Mangalore. The moral guardians of Mangalore Mangalore is known for often violent Hindu and Muslim vigilante groups. Targets have typically been mixed groups of men and women, and Hindus and Muslims: at a pub, a home stay, an ice-cream parlour and friends posing in a Whatsapp picture. Last year, a Muslim group called Muslim Defence Force was created to stop “Love Kesari“, a counter to the Hindu bogey of “Love Jihad”. The core philosophy of both groups is the same: Stop women from meeting, consorting with or marrying men of the other religion. With the young women of Subrahmanya, the fact that one girl was Muslim and the other Hindu did not help, or that the Muslim woman’s father was a BJP worker. The wine, beer bottles and the trees implicated the women–if they were men, it would not have mattered–both second-year B.Com students of the Kukke Shri Subrahmanyeshwara College. The evidence indicated clearly they were partying, and that was not acceptable to the district’s moral guardians, in this case the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the BJP’s student wing. ABVP activists brought the photo to the attention of the police, as matter of public order, and pressured the principal of the college, Dinesh Kamath, to do something. He suspended the young women. When IndiaSpend called Kamath, he said the suspension was “temporary”, until the facts were “sorted out”. He confirmed that the photo was not shot in his college but likely two years ago, when the young women and a friend visited the neighbouring coffee-growing district of Kodagu. On August 18, the suspension was revoked. IndiaSpend asked him a larger question: In such a highly literate district, how does a college principal deal with teen hormones and the yearning for freedom? “You see, whatever the literacy rate, there are personal weaknesses,” said Kamath. “We can do anything in India, is it not? The constitution guarantees freedom, isn’t it?” He paused. “But should there not be limits? We should know the limits. Should parents not tell them?” The young women would be released from suspension, Kamath indicated. Their families have grounded them, and–as is increasingly evident across India–the women are likely to learn of new boundaries and restrictions. A good place to grow up female–or is it? As statistics go, Dakshin Kannada appears to be an excellent place to grow up female. The sex ratio of 1,020 women for every 1,000 men is among India’s best (national average: 940), according to census 2011, as is the female literacy rate at 78%, 13 points above the national average for women. The district’s women are among India’s oldest when they get married, at an average age of 24–and this is for women in rural areas, according to state health data. Girls routinely top local exams, many stream out into the professional world beyond their lush district and development has proved to be a great contraceptive. Dakshin Kannada’stotal fertility rate is 1.4, down by half over 30 years; it is now the same as Japan and lower than Switzerland. If it were not for inward migration, the district’s population would decline. The infant mortality is 35 deaths per 100,000 live births (India: 43), better than richer and more developed Iran. Key Demographic Indicators: Dakshina Kannada District, Karnataka Indicators 2001 2011 Population 18,97,730 20,89,649 Decadal Growth Rate (2001-11) – 10.1 Rural Population 61.6 52.3 Urban Population 38.4 47.7 Sex Ratio 1022 1020 Child Sex Ratio 952 947 Literacy (total) 83.4 84.1 Literacy (male) 89.7 89.6 Literacy (female) 77.2 78.4 Work Participation Rate 49.9 42.3 Female Work Participation 41.7 25 Source: NRHM-PIP Monitoring for Dakshina Kannada District, Karnataka Three clues to Dakshin Kannada’s struggle with female emancipation are available in the mean age at marriage, child-sex ratio and workplace data. The first clue: The mean age of marriage for urban areas is lower than rural, since the overall mean marriage age is 23.5, lower than the rural age of 24, as the data reveal. This means the pressure to marry is greater in more literate urban areas. The second clue: In 2011, the number of girls aged below six for every 1,000 boys, the child-sex ration, in Dakshin Kannada was 947, far better than India’s 918. But this is down from 952 in 2001, echoing a larger trend in India’s richest areas. As richer, more educated women have dramatically fewer children, there is pressure on them that these children be boys. Little else explains Mangalore’s declining number of female infants. The third clue to the clipping of female wings is available from Mangalore’s workplace data. The female work participation rate fell from 42% in 2001 to 25% in 2011, according to a 2013 paper from the Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. Globally, this is not an unusual trend: when societies are poor, more women tend to work; as incomes rise, they tend to withdraw, returning when education levels rise. Educated young women: shackled by their societies It is known that India does particularly badly as regard women in the workplace. “Female labour force participation in India is lower than many other emerging market economies, and has been declining since the mid-2000s,” notes a 2015 International Monetary Fund working paper. Within this demographic, the unemployment rate in India is highest for urban women with graduate degrees and above, Shriya Anand and Jyothi Koduganti of the Indian Institute of Habitat Settlements wrote in this IndiaSpend piece last month. More than a fifth of such highly educated women–who could significantly boost the economy–could not find jobs, they reported, quoting government employment data. The conundrum: While Indian companies struggle to fill positions, Indian women with graduate degrees and above cannot find jobs. There are no data for this, but our hypothesis, in line with the observations of social scientists, is that even highly educated Indian women often find it hard to break the shackles of family and tradition. Your correspondent has met many young women who live away from home but are still shackled by the expectations and rules of families, neighbours, teachers, bosses and random strangers. For each woman who breaks free, there are many who cannot. It is unclear what will happen to the two young women of Subrahmanya, but it is clear that them will be informed of what is–or should be–out of bounds. “Whatsapp is killing our culture and education,” K Byrappa, the vice chancellor of Mangalore University, told Bangalore Mirror. “Colleges should ban its use …we have to maintain the dignity of higher education. India is known for excellent education and many foreign universities are following the Indian system of education. Hence, blindly aping the West is not correct.” (Halarnkar is the editor of IndiaSpend.com and FactChecker.in)