The Indian state, our markets and families have waged a sustained campaign of scrutiny and surveillance over the bodies and spirits of women. Even our money and modernity have failed to win us sometimes the most basic human dignities. And through years of experience and cultural reinforcement, what economists would call a series of repeated games, we have learned to expect very little from any of our institutions, of the great edifices of our society. To borrow language from a 1987 Amartya Sen article on gender relations within the household, women have become ‘habituated to inequality’.
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