Women in Rajasthan’s Jalore, almost disconnected

Deshu Chaudhury’s dupatta tactfully hangs from her shoulders in a way that it hides one of her hands. In it, she carries her smartphone. She says it is a crucial tool that helps her keep up with tuition centres that train students for competitive exams. They are almost two hours away, and she cannot always attend.

In her village, though, in Rajasthan’s Jalore district, a smartphone in the hands of a woman, especially a young and unmarried one, is seen as an indicator of bad character and loose morals.

“The village elders need to know that you are using a smartphone only for educational purposes. If they catch you smiling while looking at your phone’s screen or speaking to anyone over a call, then they feel your freedom needs to be curbed,” says Chaudhury. The 19-year-old, who is pursuing a Basic School Teaching certificate course from a Rajasthan University college, says that in her part of the world, women’s virtuousness earns them their right to freedom ‘within permissible limits’.

“I am a (school) teacher in Pawli (village), and since teaching is seen as a noble profession, people believe I use a phone only for good things,” she said. While marking her case as an anomaly, Chaudhury says that smartphones have been under the scrutiny of village elders for a while.

Earlier, the scrutiny had been on an interpersonal level, but on December 21, the men of the Chaudhury community in Jalore met in Gajipura village and declared that all women were to use only basic phones from January 26.

On December 25, the caste panchayat, an extra-constitutional body, retracted the order. “The video was interpreted in the wrong context, so we took back our decision,” says Sujanaramji Chaudhury, the panch (head) of the body.

Under a shiny pink shamiana standing amid men in white shirts, dhotis, and turbans, all part of the Chaudhury caste panchayat, Himmataram read a diktat from a piece of paper: “Samaj mein bahu-betiyon ke pass camera wala phone nehi rahega. Mobile bina camera wala jisse baat-cheet ho sake woh rakh sakti ha,” (Women and girls from our community will no longer use phones with cameras. They can use phones sans cameras, on which conversation is possible),” he said. He added that girls who are studying can use smartphones at home, but not step out of their houses with one, not even to a neighbour’s house.

His diktat was recorded and circulated among the members of the community. One of them uploaded it on social media and it went viral. Viewers across the globe condemned the decision, and some even compared it to the functioning of the Taliban in Afghanistan. When word about the diktat got out, the press descended on Jalore to speak to women and men.

Days after the video went viral, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) took cognisance of the diktat and issued a notice to the District Magistrate of Jalore. The Bench, headed by Priyank Kanungo, directed the DM to interrogate the “allegations made in the complaint” about the incident. The body further instructed that a report be submitted for the commission’s review within two weeks that details the action taken against such a diktat.

NHRC issued the notice after it received a written complaint from Manish Jain, who runs the non-profit West Bengal National Crime Investigation Bureau.

Pradeep Gawande, Deputy Magistrate of Jalore, said the day after the video went viral, he , sent a team to speak with the community to retract the order. “The community soon after retracted their order, following our directions and taking cognisance of the backlash it had received,” Gawande said.

India’s Comprehensive Modular Survey, Telecom 2025, found that 80.7% men own a mobile phone, compared with only 48.45% women, in rural India.

Sujanaramji says that the decision was taken after multiple women from their community complained about their children being glued to screens. “Humare samaj ki bahu-betiya humein bol rahi thi ki humara mobile lelo aur humare baccho ko bachalo. Toh humne socha ki waise bhi mahilayein smartphone ka kya hi karengi, daftar toh inhe chalana hai nehi,” (The women of our community kept telling us to take their phones to save our children (from overuse). So we thought, anyway what will women do with smartphones; they don’t need to run offices),” says Sujanaramji. “The boys have to use it because they need to get used to the ways of the world. What will women do knowing about all these things?”

A stone’s throw away from the sabha (gathering) of the community’s male elders, women sit in the courtyard of Sujanaramji’s two-storey pacca house, with their ghoonghats (veils) drawn to their midriffs. Some make tea and supply snacks to the panchayat, while tending to their toddlers and tossing mathaniya red chillies onto a sheet to dry in the sun.

Between managing household chores and answering media queries over what this new rule means to them, Kanko Kumari, 29, in a partly annoyed tone, clarifies that all the women around her support the decision. “After completing the day’s work in the fields and in the kitchen, when we finally try to use our smartphones, most of the time our children would have exhausted our data. Our husbands are glued to their own phones. So, we anyway don’t get to use these phones much,” she says.

Joining Kumari, her sister-in-law Rajni Devi, 25, exclaims that at least this would ensure that the children stay away from phones. “The children keep crying and asking us to give them our phone; we’re fed up. They should play outside,” she says. Pointing at her 5-year-old son, she says, “Just look at him right now; he is glued to the screen watching one video after another.”

Sujanaramji is listening to what the women have to say. “Tell them that you all gave your consensus over this matter,” he says, loudly.

Chuckling, the women say they are prepared to hand over their phones right away. The panch explains that such a rule is only for women because the children usually bargain with their mothers, not their fathers, whom they fear. To the media, whose vehicles stand along Jalore’s narrow roads dug out of farming fields, Sujanaramji authoritatively says that rules made by the caste panchayat are flexible and take into account different opinions of members of the community. Their jurisdiction, though not constitutional, is accepted by the Chaudhury community in 14 villages across the area. “Instead of understanding where the new rule came from, people started saying negative things about us,” he says.

Across the world, several countries have banned mobile phones for children. France, Italy, South Korea, and New Zealand ask students to put away their phones throughout the school day. Several countries, like Australia and Malaysia, have banned children under 16 from creating or operating social media accounts.

In Gajipura, the village where the sabha was held, Anju, the only woman from the Chaudhury community who is pursuing a degree from a college, says that women are seldom taken into consideration while making such decisions. “If men my age can be glued to their phone screens, why can’t women like me use it beyond academics?” she questions.

While Anju is enraged with the diktat, Deshu who lives 5 kilometres away, in Pawli village, says that the decisions taken by the caste panchayat are binding. “If you fail to abide by their diktats, then you are cut off from the community. On several occasions, they have even levied fines,” she says. She also explains that in these villages, and especially in her community, the women either work in the fields or migrate with their husbands to do household chores.

“Nobody has dreams because no one has encouraged them to pursue a career or develop an interest in building their lives. Now, a growing number of young women are very active on social media platforms like Instagram, where they upload photographs and meet new people,” says Deshu. This has bothered the elders, she says, adding that on social media, women wear pants and skirts, talk of their feelings, and get intimate with men from other communities.

Over the past few months, Deshu says many families that have engaged in satta-watta marriages – a system where a brother-sister duo from one family gets married to a brother-sister duo from another – have been bearing the brunt of social-media exposure. In these villages, marriages are fixed when both girls and boys are young, but while most men migrate after Class 10 and 12 to work in cities, the women remain in the village.

With social media, women finally feel they have a window to the world, Deshu says. Relationships formed online have resulted in women leaving their marriages to be with other men. While the breaking of marriages is not seen kindly, such incidents also hurt the satta-watta marriage system. “When a woman leaves her marriage, the other couple’s marriage is also impacted. The panchayat started imposing a fine on the woman’s family,” Deshu adds.

In the meantime, the panchayat also realised that women in their 20s were using the Internet liberally. “Women make reels, take photographs of themselves, and aspire to become models, while living in villages, where even wearing pants is looked down upon,” says Anju.

Shweta Acharya, a teacher at the Shantipura senior high school, laughs about the panchayat’s interest in educating girls who are studying. “Parents stop girls from attending school if a toddler needs help at home, or if it is farming season, or even if the cows and bulls need care,” she says.

India’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2024, conducted by the non-profit Pratham Education Foundation, found that in the 14 to 16-year-old age group, 32.2% of boys and 26.9% of girls own smartphones across India. In rural Rajasthan, of those who can use a smartphone, 42.7% boys and 34.6% girls own one.

Acharya adds that in a decade of her experience as a teacher, the women in these villages have been controlled by the elders. “Even the most brilliant girls have dropped out of school, because families fear that they will be more educated than their male counterparts, who mostly go up to class 12,” she says. Acharya adds that a combination of diktats and limited exposure makes women see marriage as their only growth.

More than 1,500 km away in Karnataka is Halaga, where the village panchayat started a digital detox initiative where parents and children refrain from using screens from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. every day. A siren goes off in Halaga village at 7 p.m. when all households are expected to turn off their television and mobile phones. During this period, he gram panchayat patrols the area to monitor whether the directive is being followed or notA similar initiative was also started by Mohityanche Vadgaon, a village in Maharashtra, where a similar methodology has been adopted to counter addiction to cellphones. Both of these are gender-neutral.