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Accepted Paper:

Negotiating Consent: Forging 'Sexual Contracts' for Non-Agrarian Futures  
Rama Srinivasan

Paper short abstract:

This paper links conversations around consent to societal moves away from agriculture in the north Indian state of Haryana. It examines how the rising aspiration for new educational and professional opportunities outside of agriculture contribute to changing expectations from intimate relationships.

Paper long abstract:

In April 2015, the main opposition party in India organised a massive farmers' protest against the Land Bill Acquisition Ordinance, which proposed to remove the 'consent clause'. The massive presence of Haryana's farmers in this mobilization pointed to land rights having a resonance in local politics, distinct from the debates surrounding it at the national level. Haryana, a showcase 'Green Revolution' state, has in the past quarter of a century witnessed rapid urbanisation, rural-to-urban migration and spatial mobility. But it is also a state marked by high rates of violence against women, including sexual violence, low sex-ratios and 'honor killings' of couples defying caste and kinship norms of marriage. My doctoral research, which tracks the widespread phenomenon of 'love marriages' and elopements in Haryana, attests that consent and choice are recurrent themes in everyday discussions.

This paper juxtaposes these two different registers in which the debate on consent is being conducted in Haryanvi society to explore possible connections between the socio-economic transformations and new notions of personhood as seen in intimate relationships. Based on my ethnographic findings, this paper will link the conversation around sexual consent and choice with societal moves away from agriculture. It will examine how the new aspirations for educational and professional opportunities outside of agriculture contribute to the changing expectations from intimate relationships. The paper will also link spatial mobility with social mobility and flesh out the processes through which social change is resisted and negotiated and personalised through conversations on consent.

Panel P34
Mobility and belonging in South Asia
  Session 1