Being an uneducated lower middle class woman, with no means of earning a livelihood, she represents a large chunk of the female population who go through life as financial dependents on men.

				“Ma” in Padmanabhan’s Harvest. All of them had to lead submissive lives with their husbands. They were subjected to humiliation and even physical abuse. Consequently, they now take revenge by wielding power over their sons and daughters-in-law. They provoke their sons into ill-treating their wives and derive sadistic pleasure from this.

				“Ma in Padmanabhan’s Harvest hates her daughter-in-law, Jaya, and lavishes all her love on her elder son, Om. But as a result of her over concern, Om turns out to be a weak-willed, cowardly, spineless man.

				This gives rise to a dual personality in such women, sycophancy toward the male holding the purse strings and tyranny toward the other dependents.

				While Om (the earning member) is addressed with endearments such as “my only delight”, Jaya, her daughter in law and Jeetu, her younger unemployed son, are abused. “ho-you”,“barren dog”, “pimping rascal”, “soul’s disgrace” are some of the words she uses for them.abused. “ho-you”,“barren dog”, “pimping rascal”, “soul’s disgrace” are some of the words she uses for them.

				oppression can warp, undermine, turn us into haters of ourselves

				But this kind of survival comes at the cost of loosing ones self and one can survive only by developing a sense of detachment to people and surroundings. By the end of the play Ma is “through caring for or about anybody ”. Even when the guards drag Jeetu away(mistakenly) for his organs, she is interested only in watching T.V. The distaste which women  feel  for their restricted life is well dramatized in the method that Ma chooses to escape from this kind life. She buys a Super Deluxe Video Coach. Once she lies down in it tubes are attached to a recycling and bio-feeding processor that takes care of all her needs.  Ma, who appears  a tyrant but is herself a victim of a repressive patriarchal society chooses to cut herself off mentally and physically from it. She chooses total silence as a route of escape.

				The gest which underlines the effects of the vice like grip  of poverty and patriarchy is where Jaya angrily wipes off the kum-kum mark on her forehead saying “ my forehead burns, when I say the word sister”, when she comes to know that Om, without her knowledge, has declared her as his sister to the company employing him to donate his organs.

				Jaya, in Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest, is the only person to survive the power play between the First World and Third World countries. While her husband and brother-in-law give up the fight soon, and her mother-in-law succumbs to the material charms offered, Jaya alone maintains her identity and establishes her right to be thought of as a human being.

				Om does this to circumvent the precondition of the company that the donor has to be unmarried. This gesture, usually associated with widowhood, is useful in making the audience critique the mental anguish of Jaya who does this when her husband is still alive.

				Out of a job for over two years and hemmed into a tiny house, the couple are increasingly frustrated over the quality of their lives when Om finally gets an interview call for a job. The catch being that it is from a company, Interplanta Services, that promises a luxurious life in exchange for signing up as an organ-donor for its wealthy clients.

				For Jaya the word ‘sister’ being used in connection to herself and Om is like a death knell to her marital relationship. Her actions create an empathy in the audience as it is on the basis of this relationship, a large part of her identity, that  Jaya is living in that home. The pain that this distortion of relationships causes is reinforced when Ma says “ But these aren’t words! They are people”. The word ‘sister’ negates the very  foundation of her life and so the gest forms a point of enquiry into the circumstances forcing Om to take such a decision. For a person like Om, unemployed and struggling to provide two square meals to his family, calling his wife ‘sister’ on paper is a  small price to pay if it ensures financial solvency. The gest  problematizes  the desperate situation in modern day society which forces a man to choose between being cut up/ dying one day at a time and abject poverty.

				when Jaya’s life seems to be at stake. Jaya comes to know that she has been the actual target of the organ buyer, Virgil, and that after using the bodies of both Om and Jeeten, he is now intent on impregnating her with his seed mechanically to propagate his race, irrespective of her wishes.

				Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest tells the futuristic story of a family in a third world country which becomes the “donor” for a member of a first world country. Jaya, “passionate and spirited (2) is the only strong character in the play. No other character, except Jaya, shows any development. The play begins with Jaya and her mother-in-law waiting for the arrival of Om, Jaya’ What characterizes Jaya is her boldness. She is the only one bold enough to ask questions during the mtallation of the contact module and the food supply. She puts up a resistance as her kitchen utensils are thrown away. Being dissatisfied with her marital life, she seeks distraction with Jeetu. She is aware of her sexual urges and finds fulfilment with him. Her compassion for him :makesher take care of him when he comes back sick and covered with sores. Again, she is the only one to protest when Jeetu is taken away instead of Om. It is in the final scene of the play that Jaya evolves into the towering figure. When Virgil appears before her as an illusion created by the contact module, in Jeetu’s body, Jaya realizes that Jeetu’s body has been used by Virgiltoprolong his life:. Virgil had observed Jaya through the module and had grown to admire her spirited nature. He needs Jaya-”We’re interested in women where I live, Zhaya (sic).Childbearing women“ (95).His country has lost the art of having children and is now in the process of getting bodies from poorer countries to populate it. He entices her with sweet words and with the promise of sensual pleasures to accept the implant which will make her insemination possible. However, though she wants to attain motherhood, she is not ready to get it by sacrificing her womanhood. She demands that if he needs her, he come to her in person. He refuses because her world would be a health hazard for him. She inslsts that she will not deal with a phantom any longer. Finally, she blackmails him by threatening him with suicide. The play ends with Jaya setting the terms and conditions. She will take pills for staying awake. If he does not come when she runs out of them, she will kill herself. ”. . . I’ll die knowing that you, who live only to win, will have lost to a poor, weak and helpless woman. And I’ll get more pleasure out of that first moment of death than I’ve had in my entire life so far!“ (102). In the meantime, she tells lum to learn to pronounce her name correctly. Thus, ”her spirit remains unconquered even in the face of insurmountable odds“ (Molly 30). She fights for her rights as a woman and as a human being. The dramatist ends on a positive note ”that hope still lies in this woman, a symbol of procreation’’ (Purohit45). Thus, Jaya emerges victorious in this power play between man and woman. She does not ciuccumb to the panoptic gaze of the contact module. The reproductive power of women, often seen as a debilitating factor, is made by the dramatist into a trump card. She seems to stress the point that in this matter, women will always score over men. “Penis envy” is supplanted by “womb envy”.

				In an interview with Sunita Paul, Manjula Padmanabhan savs that the play talks of the power equation between the first world and the third world : I hope it does try and address the duality of this relationship. It isn’t purely first world-third world, power-porverless. The power equation does flow back and forth. There is a dependence of the first world on the third world which is wecognised in real life. As people living in the third world we are encouraged to think that we have nothing to give, but in fact even today, we are actually giving our minds, our body and our labour to the first world all the time. (39) If we replace the first world with man, and the third world with woman, we have b3re the relation between them. What needs to be acknowledged is the interdependence of man and woman. In the same interview, Padmanabhan stresses this point: “The Ardhanarishwar concept appeals to me greatly. The idea of a joined consciousness that borrows from both sides” (41).

				As Ma and Jaya await Om’s return, Jaya, knowing what the job entails, hopes that he will not.