EMPLOYMENT, INCOMES AND EQUALITY 105 woman's exclusive responsibility for'protection of chastity5; discrimination in religious rituals; unequal access to educational opportunities and, most barbarous of all., the killing, rape and burning of poorer women, particularly Harijans. These are the legacies of the traditional obscurantism in a precapitalist society. Does modernization of the kind we come across in western industrial societies show us the way out of the mess? Male domination in the west manifests itself in the subtle forms of an all-round commercialization of sex, the mad competition for mini-skirts and bikinis, the market price of film siars fluctuating with their box-office appeal. There is a total disappearance of what Lenin called 'culture' from man-woman relationships. This is indirectly reflected in art and literature. To a certain extent, has it not already become a feature of Indian society also? The creeping decadence in Indian art and literature, particularly in films and fiction with morbid emphasis on sex, is all too flagrant. The plight of working women, particularly among those doing white collar jobs but unable to accept commercialization of sex as a value, is not difficult to understand. The pseudo-Women's Liberation of moribund monopoly capital and the feudal right of the first night are in peaceful co-existence in India. But this is the inevitable trait of a society that suffers from superimposition of capitalism on precapitalist relations and forms of exploitation. What the Committee Saw Only 18.7 per cent or about 49.3 million women were literate in 1971. Of the total literates, 19.7 millions had not achieved any educational level and only 17.5 millions had attained primary school level. Women's literacy rate in rural areas was 4 per cent in Rajasthan, 6.4 per cent in Bihar, 6.1 per cent in Madhya Pradesh, 7 per cent in Uttar Pradesh and 13.2 per cent in India as a whole. Urban literacy rates varied between 28.4 per cent injammu and Kashmir and 60.6 per cent in Kerala.2 Women in India belong to different religions, communities and castes. The largest proportion of low-caste Hindus, tribals, and Muslims are among the poorest of the poor. Occupationally, the scheduled castes and tribes in particular constitute the bulk of poor peasants, landless labourers including bonded labour, migrant labourers including casual or contract labour,handloom weavers, domestic servants, sweepers, scavangers and so forth. Regional variations in agricultural wages, employment and poverty generally tend to be correlated with literacy rates and low-caste or tribal proportions in the population. In other words the degree of poverty and the extent and forms of social oppression go together. A more concrete picture of women's oppression can thererfore be drawn only if regional, class or group positions are examined in detail. The influence of religion or religion-based norms varies from one social group and region to another. Except in abstract terms, or at superficial levels, characterization of all Hindu women or all Muslim