Bijayalaxmi Panda
The Ministry of Panchayati Raj has been engaging with the Elected Women Representatives (EWRs) through a series of workshops, conferences, committees, and expert groups on the issues of women empowerment and women leadership[i]. Elected Women Representatives (EWRs) have been instrumental in driving positive change at the grassroots level. India’s remarkable success stories, where EWRs have driven positive and impactful change through community leadership and engagement, advancing SDG localization.
During its G20 Presidency, India reaffirmed its commitment to gender equality and women-led development by establishing the Working Group on Women’s Empowerment. Embracing a thematic approach, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj has endeavored to localize the SDGs through Panchayati Raj Institutions, consolidating the 17 SDGs into nine overarching themes. Notably, ‘Theme 9: Women-Friendly Panchayat’ underlines the pivotal objective of safeguarding and promoting the interests of women, while ensuring their survival, protection, development, and participation rights at the grassroots level.
Role of Panchayat in rural development activities
Panchayats had been assigned 29 rural development activities ranging from poverty alleviation to improving health and ensuring family welfare. The panchayats had the mandate to address the larger issues such as livelihood, migration, and overall development of the rural population. These responsibilities and functions entrusted to Panchayats were classified under different heads such as agriculture including agriculture extension, animal husbandry, dairying and poultry, Fisheries, Social forestry and farm forestry, minor forest produce, fuel, and fodder, Khadii, village and cottage industries, rural housing, drinking water, roads, buildings, bridges, waterways and other means of communications, rural electrification including distribution of electricity.
Shifting towards increasing women’s political participation
Women are changing the nature of governance in India. Women’s increased political participation has yielded positive results—development issues such as education, health, nutrition, increase in family income take center in interventions by PRI. Women representatives have demonstrated that they have critical information about community resources, learn quickly about how to lead effective community-centered development, are inclined to be more inclusive, and are adept at managing funds.
Challenges faced by Women leaders: Reflections from studies
Despite such positive results, women remain largely excluded from the PRI and local governance structures. Proxy politics, power brokering and gender-based discrimination continue and many women sarpanch have had to face extreme violence for challenging existing power centres in their communities. Often, male family members deliberately position women in their families to stand for elections so that when they win (under representative quota for women) the men can influence and control the PRI through the woman from their family.
Nambiar (2001)[ii] in her study of ‘Making the Gram Sabha Work’ noted that majority of the women reported that they were not informed or invited to meetings of the Gram Sabha and were hesitant to attend meetings either due to the presence of village elders or because attending meetings would cause them to lose their day’s wages or neglect household duties.
[iii] Bhabhor, et al. (2013) studied all the 88 tribal women sarpanches working under the Panchayati Raj System in Dahod, Zalod, and Limkheda talukas of Dahod district, Gujrat. It shows that the most important problems faced by the women sarpanches in performing their role at the village level were lack of funds from the government for development work, lack of training for women sarpanches, delay in sanction and permission for development works from the upper level and lack of experience as a leader.
A study was conducted by Sisodia Singh Yatindra (2004)[iv]in two districts (Shajapur and Dewas) of Madhya Pradesh. Five-gram panchayats were selected wherein representation had been accorded to women-headed Gram Panchayats. Regarding problems, 23.3 percent of respondents felt that the major problems were social evils and traditional practices in their functioning. Less than ten percent of respondents reported the problem of the inadequate fund and non-co-operative attitude of Sarpanch, officials and caste-based representatives.
[v]Women have an important role in the development and growth of a nation. They are vital for the progress of a civilized society. Due to several obstacles, including a lack of awareness, experience, knowledge, talent, leadership quality, low level of education, lack of exposure, etc., it has been unable to provide better governance under the leadership of women representatives across India. Rather, data indicated that the biggest obstacles to women sarpanches performing their role at the village level were lack of experience as leaders, lack of funding from the government for development work, lack of training for women sarpanches, and delays in sanction and permission for development work from the upper level.
| The Silent Struggles of Mahila Sarpanch in Rural India: Captures from SMART NGO Initiatives. Ayesha is the Sarpanch of Shahpur Nagli village in Haryana’s Nuh District. In this deeply patriarchal society, her role as a village leader is overshadowed by her duties as a daughter-in-law. When Ayesha’s father-in-law says, “I handle village matters. We only call her for her signature,”. In addition to being deprived of their rightful political representation within their community, women sarpanches also grapple with age-old problems of domestic violence in their personal lives. This is how SMART NGO’s initiative ‘Hinsa Ko No’ is helping them break their silence. |
Despite the 50% reservation for women in all three tiers of PRIs, empowering women to play their roles in PRIs actively, productively, independently, collectively, and sustainably, is a big challenge due to prevalent gender inequality and gender-based discrimination in outreach and service delivery mechanisms. There is a gap in assessing the role of women PRI in promoting the health and nutrition of women and children in Madhya Pradesh.
Despite challenges and hurdles, one of the women’s Sarpanch in Madhya Pradesh has created an exemplary model in front of all in terms of education, health, roads, housing, drinking water, sanitation, environmental protection, and the overall growth of the village with community-oriented services.
Model Panchayat led by Women Sarpanch[vi] (Transformed Below Poverty Line panchayat into Model Panchayat: Ms. Nhakti Sharma from Barkhedi, Nera capital city of Bhopal, MP.
| Despite gram panchayat funds flowing in, the villages dealt with terrible road connectivity. More than 80 percent of homes were kaccha make-shift cottages. Heavy monsoons flooded the road to the school making it inaccessible to students for months. Most homes lacked basic access to electricity and water. The cases of malnutrition and school dropouts too were at an all-time high. Due to strong involvement, passion and efforts for five years, this panchayat is known as Adasha Gram Panchayat. Bhakti highlights the challenges that women in power face, “Naari ek shakti hai. Aur jahan shakti hai wahan virodh toh hoga. We cannot deny the fact that we live in a patriarchal world. We need to fight and be confident that what we are doing is right. If people like us, young women and youth don’t come into politics, how will we turn archaic systems around?” |
References
- [i] https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2003193, 6th Feb 2024.
- [ii] Nambiar, Malini. (2001). Making the Gram Sabha Work, Vol.36, Issue No.33, https://www.epw.in/journal/2001/33/commentary/making-gram-sabha-work.html.
- [iii] Bhabhor, S.M., Kunchala, K.D. and Patel, J.K. (2013). Problems faced by tribal women sarpanches in performing their duties and exercising their power under panchayati raj system, Adv. Res. J. Soc. Sci., 4 (1) : 109 – 111.
- [iv] Sisodiya, Yatrindra Singh (2004). Experiment of direct democracy: A study of gram swaraj in MP, Madhya Pradesh institute of social science research, Ujjain, ICSSR, New Delhi
- [v] chrome extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.ijfmr.com/papers/2024/1/12135.pdf
- [vi] https://thebetterindia.com/213499/madhya-pradesh-woman-sarpanch-return-usa-transform-village-inspiring-india-jov30/
About the contributor: Dr Bijayalaxmi Panda is a fellow at YWLPPF 2.0 Young Women Leaders in Public Policy Fellowship 2.0 at IMPRI and State Lead Partnerships, The Antara Foundation, NHM, Bhopla.
Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.
Read more at IMPRI:
Gender-Responsive Budgeting in Maharashtra: Strengthening Equity-Driven Governance
Acknowledgment: This article was posted by Bhaktiba Jadeja, visiting researcher and assistant editor at IMPRI.
