Women in Panchayats: A Review
Introduction
Anno Domini 1993 saw history in the making. After a protracted exercise, in the summer of 1993 (24th April 1993) Presidential assent was accorded to the 73rd constitutional amendment bill which inter alia ensured the entry of women into rural local self-governing units i.e. the panchayats, both as members and as functionaries. This was considered a gigantic step towards empowerment of women.
The 73rd constitutional amendment spelt a sea change in the arena of women’s representation in PRI. It brought in a total departure from the erstwhile system of token nomination or co-option of one or two women in panchayats as advised by B. R. Mehta Committee (1957) and Ashok Mehta Committee (1978). Further, it also partially complied with the recommendation of the Committee on the Status of Women which, way back in 1974 mentioned that earnest efforts should be taken for “… establishment of statutory women’s panchayats at the village level with autonomy and resources of their own for the management and administration of welfare and development programmes for women and children, as a transition measure, to break through the traditional attitudes that inhibit most women from articulating their problems and participating actively in the existing local bodies”
On August 27, 2009 the Indian cabinet approved a proposal for enhancing the reservation of directly elected seats for women from one-third to fifty percent in all the tiers through an amendment of Article 243(D) (3) of the Constitution.
- Article 243 D(3) enumerates that ‘Not less than one third (including the number of seats reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes) of the total number of seats to be filled by direct election in every Panchayat shall be reserved for women and such seats may be allotted by rotation to different constituencies in a panchayat’.
- Along with this, rotational reservation of at least one-third of the total number of offices of Chairpersons at all levels of panchayat was ensured through Article 243D(4). The proposed amendment seeks to replace this phrase of “not less than one third’ with the words ‘not less than half’.
Once this move is implemented, the number of women members will go up to 4.4 million from the present three million. As per the official version, this provision will apply to the total number of seats filled by direct election, offices of chairpersons and seats and offices of Chairpersons reserved for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, hill areas of Manipur and tribal areas of Assam and Tripura will remain outside the ambit of the amendment.
The performance of women in PRIs
General Observations
- Despite several stumbling blocks women PRI members have generally performed well throughout the country. Several surveys indicate this. The Ministry of Panchayati Raj of the Government of India has also conducted one, with by far the largest sample size. Culling the observations from all the sources certain common points emerge.
- Participation of women in the Gram Sabha meetings increases when the Pradhan is a woman. This corroborates the general perception that political communication improves when the citizen and the leader are of the same sex.
- Since women panchayat representatives consistently demand adequate supply of drinking water, housing and social welfare programmes, expenditure on these counts is relatively higher in women headed panchayats.
- Women headed panchayats score brownie points in the construction of roads, upkeep of drinking water facilities and administering government loan schemes. However, their performance is not as effective in ensuring irrigation avenues.
- Women headed panchayats generally take more interests in negotiating social evils like child marriage, the indiscriminate sale of liquor, witch-hunting and such other problems.
Certain major hindrances can also be identified in the path of the functioning of the women members and functionaries.
- Dual responsibility: Women traditionally burdened with domestic work face difficulties in balancing the official work with their home.
- Lack of security: Sometimes due to lack of security women members fail to visit remote areas in odd hours or attend meetings in far away places. Gradual criminalization of politics also is arresting their participation.
- Lack of information and knowledge about government programmes especially for women and child development poses problems. Again limited exposure to formal education breeds information gap and dependency on second-hand knowledge. Consequently, political lineage determines the distribution of benefits of different schemes.
- Communication problem hinders performance as most of the correspondences, rules and regulations are in English.
- Due to lack of exposure and experience women, members face difficulty in asserting themselves. The fact that majority of women enter politics through reservation and kinship arrangement only accentuates this problem.
- Owing to rotational policy women can scarcely continue their relationship with politics. There are three points to be noted in this kind of rotational reservation. First, a very small percentage of first time women members/ pradhans get elected for the second/third time. Secondly, as all these seats were previously held by male members, they often manage to fix these up in favour of one of their women relatives. Thirdly, women candidates are scarcely nominated from unreserved seats. Thus this rotational aspect of reservation begets a short-term gain mindset, leading to a lack of accountability among the PRI members. Women who have got in simply through family connections are also not effective in asserting themselves and bringing about meaningful change. The process also entails a huge wastage of resources on the part of state governments as with every election they have to start the process of training and other related activities ab initio for the women members. These are issues that need to be sorted out if the participation of women is to be made effective in the real sense.
Comments
Post a Comment