This is no ordinary suicide. The money that she received from the government, as a part of scheme meant to help young women get married, was first attacked by her brother who took a substantial amount to pay off his loans and then by her father in-law, Ganesh Gaonkar, of Malkarne, Quepem, who allegedly harassed her to cough up at least half the amount.
Malkarne is in the deep dark interiors of Goa, and Vanita’s death has not resulted in the outrage which is reserved to oppose projects and mobile towers, or the anger which is witnessed in Gram Sabhas. No one took to the streets, not even the people of Quepem who have not stormed the police station demanding the arrest of her in-laws. A suicide by a young woman for reasons so cruel isn’t really enough to move those who protest for their land, their water, their forests and their roads. But why isn’t there a sense of outrage that a young woman, a fellow Goan, had to die because her in-laws made her life a living hell for the want of money she received under a scheme of the Goa government, to empower her?
This sense of outrage will not erupt overnight. But her death is a severe indictment that when this scheme was announced, albeit with very good intentions, the capacity of family members, especially in-laws of young married girls, to misuse this and make it an instrument of harassment and torture was not thought out. There may be thousands of disbursements under the Laadli Laxmi scheme but when there is even one Vanita who has to pay the price for being a beneficiary if this scheme, with her life, then this has to be re-thought.
Asking for a withdrawal of the scheme is in nobody’s interest. This will also not lead to a drop in the cases of dowry related harassment or torture. But rethinking the manner of disbursement of the money may help in ensuring that the young woman beneficiary is in control of her money and not a mere puppet being used, to corner Rs 1 lakh. The processes need to be re-evaluated and re-validated.
Perhaps the scheme should be made valid for education and not marriage, with the money being disbursed by the government directly to educational institutions much like banks do for housing and car loans. If the direct disbursement to the woman is stopped and the government steps in to take care of expenses that the woman might want to incur, without the funds directly going to her, we may prevent more taking the route Vanita did.
But all of this is meaningless, unless an intense investigation is conducted against the husband and in-laws of Vanita Gaonkar and if enough evidence is found, charged for abetment and the case dealt with in a manner reserved for murder cases. For far too long people in Goa have either believed or conveyed that these “things” do not happen in Goa and is in the domain of the badlands of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. To start with these myths need to be exposed and this scheme needs to be tweaked substantially.
