Durlabh Agrawal, Week 6

The pleasure of roaming or staring at the sky idly with no purpose gives a number of people a sense of relaxation, making it a purpose in itself, but for State, to roam or access public place or 'loiter' requires coherent purpose. Author Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade & Sameera Khan for their essay conducted an sociological research and analyzed the legislation, which are skeptical and restrictive when comes to movement in public spaces.

To rephrase, as per my understanding, the author says exercising rights in itself is pleasure, and the quest for pleasure and struggle against violence to assert your rights is inter-connected, which is true if seen from an historical perspective such as the movements like Dalit panther to liberate Dalit community.

In the essay, the author asserts the significance of women’s access to public spaces such as streets or panwadi in the form of loitering. Taking Mumabi as their ground work, author has collected data and presented the societal structural deformity that is built to support the patriarchal domination in the name of security from violence, sexual assaults and harassments which instead positions them as victims. While the presence of women in society has increased significantly, there access to public spaces still remains in isolation. Though the State considers loitering around the streets without purpose a violation to public convenience, the same is not taken into account for street rowdies but for women in particular. For the women in Mumbai, this small rebellious act is a way to pursue pleasure.   

Based on their research, authors came to the conclusion that the complexities of accessibility is presented deep into the intersectionality across gender, caste and class. As mentioned above, how State ignores rowdies but question the women, depicts an unspoken but prevalent practice of natural claim through mannerism to justify their ‘intrusion’. However, loitering of a sex worker is normalized with a biased and flawed assumption of them not being an ‘ideal’ women, who do not reflect the status of a women in general.

The structure of the society in itself, according the authors, is a bulwark patronizing intersectional barrier to women nobility as a equal citizen.