Meet Labanga, the gender crusader who fights for women’s rights in tribal Odisha

In rural Odisha, a phone call at 9 pm mostly means it is an emergency. So, when Labanga Mohanta, a social worker, received a late call one evening, she was alarmed. On the other end of the line was Jhunu*, a resident of a neighbouring village, who was sobbing as she told her that her drunk husband had mercilessly beaten her up and she had decided to end her life by drinking poison that night.

It took Labanga an hour of counselling to talk Jhunu out of her suicidal thoughts. “I told her to think about her children before taking such a step,” recounts Labanga. The next day, at 7 am, Labanga rushed to the tribal village where Jhunu lived to ensure that she was alright.

This is a typical day in the life of Labanga, a community leader in Nishaposhi village in Thakurmunda block of Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district, whose number is on the speed dial of  the mobile phones of several women in the nearby villages. The 48-year-old has been actively working towards resolving gender issues, encouraging girls’ education, creating awareness on women’s empowerment and health and making women financially independent in her area for the past 22 years.

A Women’s Day event that changed her life

In 1998, at the age of 23, when girls her age were getting married or bearing children, Labanga, originally from Keonjhar district, had rebelled against marriage, asking her father why he can’t spend the money meant for her wedding on her education instead. She said the turning point in her life came the day she chose to attend a Women’s Day programme at a neighbouring village instead of joining her family on a pilgrimage to a famous temple.

“Women from Self Help Groups (SHG) from different gram panchayats had come to the event and every group had a leader who spoke for them. But when it came to our gram panchayat, there was nobody to speak. So, I stepped up,” she recalls.

Between that moment and now, Labanga has resolved numerous cases of domestic harassment, stopped child marriages and coaxed several women in and around her village into being self-reliant.

Initiated into the field by Centre for Youth and Social Development (CYSD), an NGO which worked for the government as part of the Mission Shakti programme, Labanga, who was initially assigned the responsibility of three villages, now looks after 15 to 16 of them – not just in her capacity as a Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV) warrior, but as a community leader who understands the plight of tribal women and has the intellectual wherewithal to solve them.

A harmless ‘threat’ goes a long way  

Most of the crimes or injustice against women stem from the mentality of the husband or the in-laws that women are inferior, says Labanga. For instance, Jhunu’s husband beat her black and blue because he felt she had no right to argue with him when he came home drunk.

It takes a bit of counselling and also passive threatening to resolve such issues from the husband’s end. “Sometimes, abusive husbands don’t listen to local community leaders and question our authority in their affairs. It is then that we pretend to call our higher ups at the government’s One-Stop Centre in Baripada, telling them that they must escalate the case and report it to the police. And, we ensure the husband is within the earshot of the conversation. The plan always works and the husband comes around,” she says.

‘Victims often can’t identify, report crimes’

In many cases, victims don’t know that domestic violence or sexual abuse is a crime, says Labanga. Those who know either are afraid to seek help or don’t have access to a mechanism through which they can ask for help.

“Community leaders like Labanga are the first responders to the violence and try to resolve the issue with the help of the village ecosystem. They are also the ones who sensitise the victim on the nature of the crime and report the issue to the One-Stop Centre in case it goes out of their control,” says Uppali Mohanty, programme manager at CYSD, under which Labanga worked as a SGBV warrior.

Labanga says, women who are belittled as “infertile” by the village or those who are tortured by in-laws for not giving birth to a son, often don’t know that they are not at fault.

“There are women who think they are missing their periods because someone has cast an evil spell on them. We tell them that it is a gynecological issue and they should see a doctor instead. Also, women who are expected to give birth to a son, are taken for a ride by the local quacks who give them ‘medicines’ to bear a male child. We sensitise these women and their families against such frauds and explain to them the chromosome play at work that determines the sex of a newborn,” Labanga says.

Covid intervention

Labanga says the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to labourers returning home and schools  shut down, also caused a rise in cases of domestic violence, child marriages and teenage elopement.

“We stopped at least four cases of child marriages in my village during the pandemic. As schools shut down, parents of teenage girls aged below 18 wanted to marry them off. Some said they didn’t have the money to sponsor their daughter’s education anymore, some didn’t have faith their girls will pass the Class 10 exam and some said they were getting good alliances and didn’t want to miss out on a ‘suitable candidate’,” says Labanga, who is also part of the Child Protection Committee of her village.

Labanga recounts one such success story when along with the SHG of her village, she stopped a child marriage in the Khandabandha village of her block.

“The girl was barely 17 and when we tried to reason with the parents they resisted. We had to warn them that all of them will be put behind bars if they go ahead with the wedding,” says Labanga. The marriage was eventually stopped after the police, based on an anonymous tip off, intervened.

According to data shared by CYSD, an NGO based in Bhubaneswar, 21.3 per cent of women in the age group of 20-24 years in Odisha were married before 18 years of age. The percentage of women from this age group, who are married before the legal age of 18 in Mayurbhanj district, is as high as 35 per cent.

Domestic violence

Labanga says, domestic violence is a major issue in these villages, and most of them happen due to drinking, loss of income or over past enmity. “Drinking is a serious problem seen in the Munda community in our area. We encounter cases of husbands beating up their wives and also that of drunk elderly couples throwing their daughters-in-law out of the house in her husband’s absence. In one such case, the couple threatened to kill the daughter-in-law when she tried to enter the house,” she says.

According to National Family Health Survey 2015-16, at least 37 per cent of women from Scheduled Castes and in the age group pf 15-49 years were subjected to some kind of physical or sexual violence committed by their husbands. The percentage of abused women in Scheduled Tribe communities was 40 per cent, while that in OBC was 33 per cent.

Challenges galore  

In most cases, the resolution doesn’t happen in a day as Labanga and her team spend at least four-five days to get hold of the ‘accused’ itself. “Sounds funny now, but at times, the husband would be so sloshed from drinking that we would have to shake him out of his intoxication before counselling him. Some escape the house before we reach, while others take indefinite loo breaks,” she chuckles.

“Some men are aggressive. They would ask us to get lost, saying it is a husband-wife matter. But I stand my ground and calmly reply that ‘I am here on the complaint of the wife’. In such situations, treating aggression with aggression is not a good idea,” she says.

The interventions come at a price too. Labanga has often been threatened or abused by  families, in which she had prevented a child marriage from taking place or she had helped a woman take a stand against her husband or in-laws.

A resilient breed

If you ask Labanga, what motivates her to fight for women’s rights, she says it comes from within and has nothing to do with her background or gender.

“I was always good in studies, and the girls in my class hated me for it. As a child, I had resolved that I will be different from them and not bow down to pressures of patriarchy,” she affirms. A graduate, Labanga is the first person in her village to have passed the matriculation exam in her maiden attempt.

Labanga’s work also involves counselling women to form SHG groups that would make them financially independent. She has mobilised several women of her block to become ASHA and Angandwadi workers, community leaders and SHG members.

Pratima Das, president of an SHG group of a nearby village, who was initiated into the field by Labanga describes her as a “resilient woman”, who is singularly committed to her job.

“In fact, it was didi who stopped me from marrying off my minor daughter last year. She sat our family down and described why an early marriage will be dangerous for the health of my girl. Thanks to her, now my daughter is pursuing her education,” Pratima points out.

The mother of a 22-year-old, who is doing her BEd in Andhra Pradesh, Labanga says that she has taught her daughter to be self-reliant and brave.

For her, financial independence is very important for women. “You can only raise your voice against atrocities or argue with your husband and in-laws when you have the money to fend for yourself. Having your own income also makes you equal to men and earns prestige in society,” she says.

(*name has been changed)

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