By Preeti Prakash
At work, often I have to go through multiple newspapers, trying to find a theme to talk about the next day. On one such evening recently, when the newspapers seemed to be dry as dust, I chanced upon a quote by Kaushik Basu in the Times of India. The name didn’t immediately ring a bell, but Mr Basu was identified as Chief Economist & Senior VP of the World Bank.
A quick search about the man threw up no major surprises. His resume is peppered with references to econometrics and game theory, and trying to wrap my head around the ‘Traveler’s Dilemma’, formulated by Mr Basu in 1994, leads me to believe that he is very smart indeed.
Surprising, then, that on November 4, this kindly-looking distinguished professor tweeted: “It’s great to be Chief Economist of the World Bank but if I were given a choice in my next life I’d opt for the wife of the Chief Economist.”
Har de har
How condescending, I thought to myself.
But when I read this out to some acquaintances, their reaction was muted and far less unanimous. The lone man in the room asked, “What’s so wrong in that? He’s only saying he’d rather do the role his wife does.”
The unspoken suggestion, then, was that I was the one reading ‘sexism’ into this. My outrage seemed to amuse my audience, because only somebody who secretly perceives women and their contributions to be inferior would find anything wrong in this well-intentioned statement.
“So, what’s so bad in what he said?” the man directed the question to the other woman in the room. I waited for her to explain the obvious, but she said, “Umm, I don’t think it’s patronising, I think you are taking his quote out of context.”
For when a man says, “Of course I would love to do what my wife does,” the context and subtext is clear. It means that he is progressive enough to be completely okay staying at home, that he is evolved enough to not put much stock in the breadwinner bullshit. That he would love to have the opportunity to do something more noble and important with his life, like taking care of children. That he truly believes that women are equal, almost superior in their function. And who can argue with that?
Nobody, least of all another woman.
I wondered if this was my cue to dance with joy, to celebrate the fact that Mr Basu, a man – a powerful, successful, overachiever at that – had inadvertently paid us all a huge compliment. He was, after all, saying that in his next life, he would rather be a woman!
This also begged the question, so who was the lucky woman? “Kaun hain? Dekh na,” someone urged. Yes, finding her Facebook profile might perhaps resolve everything.
Turns out, Mr Basu’s wife is Alaka Basu, and as my male friend pointed out triumphantly, a professor at Cornell, no less. If there was any doubt in our minds about her worth in light of the economist’s remark, her resume put that to rest.
She’s no intellectual featherweight herself: a sociologist, journalist and teacher, she writes about topics as varied as demographics, reproductive health, gender and culture for scholarly publications like EPW. A Maharashtrian, a feminist, a woman, a wife, a mother. Bravo.
At this stage, everyone in the room, including myself, felt a sense of collective relief that Mrs Basu didn’t appear to be someone who treated her life like it was one big chill out session. Because like we all know, that, of course, is just unacceptable. For isn’t it so much easier to get all het up about ‘woman power’ when the woman in question is doing more than making rotis – when she is storming boardrooms, discovering miracle drugs, reporting from the frontlines of war or championing the next revolution?
And when my friends laughingly suggested that I was just reading too much into this quote, I imagined what it would sound like if the former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Anne Osborn Krueger (the lone woman to have held the post), had said, “It’s great to be Chief Economist of the World Bank but if I were given a choice in my next life I’d opt for the husband of the Chief Economist.”
I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one.
Preeti Prakash is a radio professional and amateur documentary filmmaker based in Bangalore.