TYRANNY OF HOUSEHOLD 129 the question (if not the answer) as to where the food will come from, who is to be blamed for below subsistence consumption pattern among the women he mentions, although he does begin with an understanding that "poverty, the most pressing problem in rural Bangladesh is manifest in socio-economic disruptions, ill health and poor nutritional conditions for all people". Srilatha Batliwala draws up an account sheet of the nature of work and calorie cost and energy expended by the women. She delves into the problems of the programme and implementation of health care centres an<^ their services in relation to the women. These aspects of women's deprivation can hardly open the doors to a discussion on the actual pattern of women's work in different regions. Moreover, where will this search lead us to—the nature of work and wage structure ? An analysis of the mobilisation of women's labour as cheap variable ? Even without burdening the author with such questions which may make the subject more complex than it already is for her, one waited till the end to hear at least one related question arising from the paper—How is women's work and health connected with the exploitative social relations within which they operate Generously using the nationwide official data sources, i.e., the population census and the national sample surveys, the Visaria study does not provide insights beyond the exposition of the biased concepts fised in official data about categories such as 'head of the household'. She is unable to explain the economic and social importance of such households, what are concretely its implications for worn en's status in the country and its relevance for the household as an economic unit within the wider class context Besides, does such redefinition and identification make a difference to women's position as a class of agricultural labourers ? Dutt's paper essentially dealing with the section of scheduled caste/ scheduled trible women, their work division, areas of work, is concerned with the impact of the development programmes on these sections and especially tlieir women. Informative in terms of the nature of work and occupational pattern and attempts to expose the sham of the 'trickling down' impact of the development plans with regard to women, he ends his note with an appeal for special attention to women in programmes formulated, without in any way raising a question about the policy itself and its pretensions about tribal development. K.S Krishnaswamy and Rajgopal, except for making a slight variation in terms of the area of study, and raising objections to specific programmes, pose no new questions about the 'public efforts' as such and their introduction in a social vacuum as it were. The section on the labour market and the household could have offered the scope for an in depth study of the problems of women's employment, exploitation of women's labour in the unorganised sector, and the link between women's role in social production and their status as (a) citizens of the country (b) members of a particular class (c) and as an oppressed sex—and its interconnections which alone can help us to develop a perspective and give a direction to the women's movement. However, all the studies upto now in this book have only taken us on a cyclical journey round such micro-units as