Sulking Men Helping to Form An All-Woman Panchayat to Balika Panchayat (BP): India Has Come a Long Way
Dipankar "Dada" Khasnabish
Trustee & Board Member - Heartcrafted Foundation & Heeya
This is India’s first all-women Panchayat. This was the Rama Gram Panchayat?a rural local body in the Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh.
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You may ask, so what? It had been more than three decades since the Narasimha Rao government reserved 33% of the seats in Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies back in 1992 through the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments. Since then many states have gone ahead and reserved 50% of seats for women, pushing the national average of women's representation to 46% at the local governance level.
So what is new about an all-women Panchayat? Yes, it matters. And let us look at how.
As the reservation of 33% came in, the men immediately found ways to circumvent it. The existing members and the aspirant males nominated their woman family members, preferably wives as contesting candidates in the reserved seats. And when the lady of the home was elected, they stayed there only, and men ran the show by proxy. Real members became a trophy to be displayed during the visits by officials, or whenever there is a compliance need. Curiously, there is a term which gained currency for this – Sarpanch Pati. It is perfectly acceptable to other men in the area, after all, patriarchy is deep-seated.
?Where such an option was not possible because the lady demanded her space, or the men in the family had progressive values and wanted women to take up responsibilities, the other male members in the Panchayat ganged up to ensure women members were reduced to titular participants.
?So what happened at Rama Gram Panchayat? Well as narrated by P Sainath, the men in the Panchayat were extremely irked by the presence of women members. It was below their dignity to sit with women to discuss and decide about issues, so they refused to join the Panchayat itself and sent their wives instead. And so came the first All Women Panchayat in India. A progress with regress, right? We have moved a lot from there. Many women struggled in their first terms and were represented by male relatives. But by term too, most of them gained in confidence and took over responsibilities, often fighting hard for it. This also helped overall women’s emancipation, including government schemes specifically targeting women, which enabled them to gain footing at home and then carry it forward to the community. I have personally seen that happening in my Municipal ward in Bengaluru. When it was reserved, the lady corporator was fronted by her husband. He even took her calls. But things changed as the term progressed, and by the end of it, the lady corporator was in full command and her husband was busy finding an opportunity to become an MLA. It is another case though that the BBMP (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) elections have been pending for more than four years, killing the concept of local governance itself.
?While on this, I came across the concept of Balika Panchayat. Launched under the ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ campaign, it enables girls between the ages of 11 to 18 to get a flavor of how Panchayats run.
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?The first ones were started at several villages in the Kutch district of Gujarat. The members are nominated, and the girls take up key roles like Sarpanch (village head), Sachiv (secretary) and essentially operate as shadow Panchayat. They take up issues like alcoholism, health, etc., and work with the Gram Panchayat to implement the plans and actions.
?A significant effort has been launched in around 300 villages in Nanded by IAS Officer Minal Karanwal, Chief Executive Officer of Nanded Zila Parishad. There is significant documentation of this initiative, as well as that in Gujarat. Unfortunately, there are other reports of this initiative set off with fanfare in other places like in Kutch, but are now effectively defunct.
?Recent elections in India have shown that women voters are playing an increasingly material role in the outcomes. And politics are making them a focus, first with schemes and now with Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT). But it will not be long before the women will also seek political representation at the state and federal levels. It is a pity that while women are now outstripping men in votes cast, their representation in the Parliament is hovering between 8 to 12%. Even when all the parties voted for 33% reservation of women in state and union assemblies when it came to vote immediately after that, the nominations by them in no way reflected their commitment. But we know, that power is never ceded but taken. And women will do that too. As we have seen in the local governance, the same will happen at the state and Indian levels. But we need to be ready for it. That is where I think Balika Panchayats can play a much bigger role, in developing a leadership pipeline. It has now moved beyond a concept and needs to be strengthened. It needs institutional acceptance and support across the country.
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