6554.pdf

Media

extracted text: Role of Women
in Decentralisation

By

C.P. Sujaya and Devaki Jain

May 2000

L.

Table of Content

Section I
Introduction and Summary

1 -5

Section II
Review

6-11

Section III
Some Question and Answers

Section IV
Notes
Reference

12-18

19-21
22-24
25-27

1

Role of Women in Decentralisation
By C. P, Sujaya and Devaki Jain *

May 2000

SECTION : I
Introduction and Summary:

While much has been said and can be said about decentralisation especially as conceived
by the 73rd and 74th Amendment to the Indian Constitution in India, and what it has done
for women's inclusion in politics and administration; much more can be said and needs to
be said about what women bring to the understanding and improvement of the system of
local government.
Thus, this paper argues that women's experience of local government and panchayats
cannot and should not be used only in a limited for gender focussed way to enhance the
participation of women; or to ease their way through the political undergrowth, or even to
improve women's contribution to the panchayat's product. Ii must be usefully utilized to
redesign the very substance of the decentralisation system and process.

What are some of these pointers that women's participation in local government in India
are making? Given below is a summary of the items which have been identified by the
women, the elected women, as points for attention. These will be further supported with
references td studies, reports, meetings - and several articles in the rest of the paper
1. While quota has in fact been an important breakthrough for women's participation in
politics, it has also been able to yield, out of ground level experience, ideas for reform
of the very system. An elected woman in Andhra Pradesh, at a conference called by
• the Dept, of Political Science of Osmania University in February 2000 said "the quota
system for women has become a policy of reservation for men". What she meant was
that beyond the 33 1 /3rd percent reservation, all other spaces now are “reserved”, i.e.
held on for and by men (M. Meera, ISST, 2000). In other words, women are
contained into that quota, and are not permitted to enter the unreserved constituencies
because of the rules as well as because of the entrenched male power as part of a
project to associate women politicians in to a federation at the local level.

At a consultation with elected members of the Zilla Parishad in Tumkur district,
(Karnataka) convened by the SSF (Singamma Sreenivasan Foundation) May 2, 2000 in
collaboration with the Tumkur Zilla Panchayat and the Chief Executive Officer, the vice
president of the zilla panchayat whose five year term was over said that "Five years ago I
was in the kitchen, and I only knew the four walls of the kitchen, today I am able to Chair
a meeting like this one and know how to handle administration and the public.
Tomorrow I will be back in the kitchen for the rest of my life” - because the system
‘ Assisted by Ms. Nageena Nikhat Khaleel, Research Assistant, SSF.

2

devised for reservation namely the roster is such that she cannot be renominated to the
same constituency or even renominated to stand for elections.

2. At consultations on May 2nd and 3rd, 2000 in Karnataka (Ref. SSF Report) women
pointed to, what could be called, the hard core of entrenched political patronage
systems which had been developed over decades and which still rule the political
processes including selection of candidates, support systems etc. Thus one of the
important aspects of women's advice to political processes in India is the need to
reconsider the present electoral system. They have many recommendations which
need to be addressed to the Election Commission in its rules, procedures including to
the People's Representation Act. “Women want to transform politics”, (Revathi
Narayanan, Mahila Samakhya, 2000)

3. Another area to which women's experience points and which can be considered more
theoretical - is the role of politics based on identity. Many women who have come
through the quota, perceive themselves as representing the area and not necessarily
women. While this attitude is legitimate, it also invites criticism as whether it is
women dalits or backward caste, reservation is supposed to enhance the
representation of that particular group be it women, dalit, backward caste or
minorities. If the representatives or the person who takes that ticket does not
necessarily identify themselves with that particular social category, it is perceived to
be "unrepresentative". The question of politics based on “identity”, its positives and
negatives is debated in several layers of political discourse and this experience of
local women politicians needs to be taken note of in the discourse. We need new
yardsticks to measure performance. (Revathi Narayanan, Mahila Samakhya).
4. A fourth finding or pointer, in a sense, speaks to the earlier point but also contradicts
it. Where women have found that they are able to assert their voice whether it is a
voice for an issue or for woman kind, analysis reveals that this is either due to the
effective availability and access to support structures such as proximate women's
organisations, proximate women's awareness programmes or sustained interaction
with training orientation programmes. (Mahila Samakhya, SEARCH, IS ST) where
they operate in isolation, they are truly alone. Thus the cushioning of the elected
person whether it is dalit, woman or minority - by support structures derived from the
same social categories, seems to be an enabling necessity.
5. Further broadening this point, it also seems that for the voices of these groups which
have had historical discrimination to have what can be called the transforming impact
namely to redress or rearrange the hierarchies in politics, the hierarchies of power,
backup is necessary from the broader social and political movements or struggles.
Struggles which are fighting for the rights of dalits, or women or displaced persons or
tribals - socio political struggles which attract the attention of the political leadership
if they ally themselves with these group who are fighting for a voice of these groups
within the local government structures can become more powerful. Therefore the
pointer here is to an from alliance between these political personnel and the broader
struggles of power of the historically subordinated groups.

■

3

6. A sixth pointer coming out of the women's experience is one which has also been
affirmed and elaborated by many of those who are working in the field of
decentralized government, namely that the current structure of devolution is
inadequate. In a brilliant paper, Nirmala Buch (ISI, April 2000) describes the fault
line in the very Bill and Act which led to the 73 and 74 Amendment. She points to
the lack of clarity in the handing over of funds and powers for administration to the
local government. Further (Search 2000) the only schemes which are truly in the
hands of the Gram Panchayat are infrastructure schemes. Since this is all that is given
to them, whether it is men or women, they are involved in the implementation of
infrastructure. This has two flip sides. One, the limitation of not being able to
participate in the design and implementation of social development and anti poverty
schemes. Two, the accusation from the "non believers" in Panchayat Raj that the
elected representatives in local government are not interested in development but only
interested in contracts because it gives space for corruption. A trap.
It is interesting that in Kerala the people’s campaign for decentralisation has in fact taken
this point already on board in the sense that the science movement is the partner to the
movement for decentralisation and in the districts, it is the members of the People's
Science Movement and other volunteers who are providing technical services to the
elected persons in their efforts to design and manage the fund s which have been
devolved uniquely in Kerala. However, the fault line in Kerala is that the movements
which have been harnessed for enabling local government do not include the women's
movement and other such struggles. Thus Kerala which is often acclaimed for its social
evenness as reflected in the human development indicators and indices such as GDI and
GEM is unfortunately notorious for the socially deprived status of its women.
Whether it is Suguna Kumari of the State Commission on Women or Aleyamma Vijayan
of SAKHI or other social scientists and activists, the appalling powerlessness of Kerala’s
wbmen, the high rate of suicides, the high rate of dowries, the low participation in
leadership and governance, raises the significant question or the proposition that gender
equity while it is a necessary condition, is not a sufficient condition to recast hierarchies
of power - domination and subjugation. The relations of power, the scope for affirmation
of rights, especially autonomy, and what can be called real equality - are not completely
provided by merely having equality in education, health status or even earnings.

The hard rock of patriarchy historically embedded, requires a greater knock than levelling
social development. This is starkly revealed in the Kerala experience.
7. At another level of debate - where ideas such as subsidiarity are discussed, women’s
experience cuts across the “whys and buts”. Proximity of place of work, of agencies
of governance, of social amenities to place of residence, is clearly preferred by
women for the obvious reason, that they are still (despite so many changes in rhetoric
and perception), home-makers, carers. Hence a government, especially an elected
council, a people’s agency, proximity is an undiluted value. In addition, its powers in
women’s perception have to be broader and deeper, rather than distracted with

4

conceptual constraints. For example, representatives of the anti arrack movement in
Andhra Pradesh recommended that the district government (zilla parishad in
Karnataka) be imbued with judicial powers to arrest arrack vendors, rather than go to
a court (NCW 1996). Similar suggestions have come from other “sectors” such as
those working to reduce domestic violence against women (ICRW 2000) or those
working to provide social security including worker land security to home based
workers, and others in the informal economy (SSA, 2000).

8. Women are pointing to the importance of working out the linkages between
institutions outside of the local self government itself , such as cooperatives, trade
unions, Mahila Mandals, other registered societies, educational institutions and sector
specific associations and the elected body suggesting that these have to be more
specifically worked out so that the skills of these agencies can be of use to the elected
agencies. (Renana Jhabvala, SSA, New Delhi, 2000).
9. Women’s experience is pointing to the need for new yardsticks to measure
progress, new methods of using monitoring frameworks for stimulating progress
towards social justice ( gender Audit ) monitoring frameworks, measures of equity
and inequity as now being used are not adequate , not appropriate for measuring the
democratization of government.
10. The contradictions between local and global (WDR 1999) are also being “melted
down” by women’s efforts. In an area called Ulloor in Kerala, women had taken credit
and started producing what are called basic consumer products - like soap, processed
foods like pickles and papads. These conventional foods often get competed out in the
market because of the larger food manufacturers, who have a better marketing and
packaging skills and who invade all the super markets. I was surprised that they had
survived. I was told by the District Collector, who is the civil servant in charge of a
district, that they had survived and expanded because they were doing mutual support
networking in the neighborhoods. In other words, one neighborhood group decides to
produce certain items and the other neighborhood group decides to only buy from
them. So by making the production - consumption cycle amongst themselves, they
have managed to quadrapulel their initial financial turn over from and 12,000 to and
50,000 within one year on the basis of the first credit that was given to them in the
beginning of the year.
Even the Collector and of course the economists who are doing research on this
project, were surprised, as was I, because we all believed that producing conventional
products like soap and semi processed traditional food stuffs, garments, leather bags,
leather shoes from local leather would all be competed out by the mass produced
goods in the markets.
11. People led, people centered localizing government - these terms and their
aspirations, need the backing of stake holders : and what is more stake holders who
are organized into collectivities who can make that claim, backed by numbers, themselves and allies.

5

Women, more than men, by the very domain they occupy in the social and economic
landscape, have appeared as the most vivid, interested parties in this effort — from
their own experience of working in the panchayati raj system in India.
12. International experience or the experience of other countries, reveal women s interest
in proximate government, in quotas to ensure their presence (UNDP, International
Conference on Women’s role in politics, New Delhi, 1999).

In the following pages, we give evidence from a wide range of sources to support there
propositions.

6

SECTION : II

Review:
I here has been a quantum jump in women’s representation in rural local bodies
following the 73rd Constitutional amendments. From a miniscule 2%—4% overall in the
country, women have now reached impressive percentages ranging between 33% to 40%.
In terms of absolute numbers, they constitute a mind-boggling figure of next million.
When the Constitution was being amended for this purpose, there were many non
believers as well as those who wanted to believe in women’s roles in local governance,
but had too many doubts, who scoffingly asked “But where are the women? Today, we
are told that hundreds of women in a few districts in Karnataka want to, contest elections,
have offered their candidatures, but have not been able to get into the fray for a variety of
reasons related to the mechanics of the electoral process, but not for want of trying.
Could these women have entered these elected bodies in such a large numbers, without
the reservations of seats, and there considerable pressure it put on the parties to field
women candidates? There is evidence to suggest that women would not have entered
there councils in these numbers were it not for this constitutional mandate. It was the
pressure of national law, combined with the political imperative of winning elections, that
changed political parties perception of women limited capacity for public office.

PRI: Transforming Women

Women’s experience of PRJ has transformed many of them. The elements of this
transformation include empowerment, self confidence, political awareness and
affirmation of identity.
Empowering women

Women have gained a sense of empowerment by asserting control over resources,
officials and most of all, by challenging men (jain 1980 : anveshi 1993).
Men and their habits, long outside the relam of female influence, seem to be a major
concern of elected women. For example, Deviramma, a 50 year old woman from the
Golla or cowhard community, kept cattle and sold curd until recently. Today she is
president of the Yeliyur Gram panchayat, one of the 5.611 Gram Panchyats constituted in
December 1993 under the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act 1993. As quoted by Raj et al
(1995), she states:

If we are outspoken they- the men call us brazen and dub us shameless. But now we don 7
care because we know we have access to people who will have to hear us. The day we

7

have our Gram Panchyat meeting, the men and the people at home mock us- that’s when
we bring out books and show them what we know.
Nevetherles, Devirramma report that: “Our secretary , who is a male, doesn’t let us talk
at the meeting”. , a complaint that she has already made to the Deputy commissioner.
Similarly, 50 years old subammaa caste member of the Brahmasahra Gram Panchayat,
she says (Rai et al 1995):

The men have always ridiculed us, and perceived us as incapable of the management of
public affairs, we now make up on third of the councils. This adds to our sense of
strength. We must be 50percent or more. We .must overpower them with our numbers.
Women are also aware that their strength comes not only from their numbers but also
from their knowledge and skill, for example literacy. Thus, women see training as a
important part of their empowerment. Many NGO’s have sized on this a s fundamental
issue and have begun to focus on the training of women. Clearly this is necessary, but the
danger of too narrow a focus is to suggest that it is only women who need training. What
the presence of women politicians has done is to invert the conventional hierarchies as to
who are the teachers and who are the taught. Such women are making it clear that it is the
male extension officers who need training, and not just the female representatives. This is
an important message for donors and other funders of training, who have tended to
assume in the past that the objects of their support must be women.

Women s empowerment challenges traditional ideas of male authority and supremacy. It
is unsurprising, then, that PRI has been opposed by some men. Ratanprabha Chive
(Ratna) is the sarpanch (head) of the seven hamlets that comprise the Ghera Purandar
Panchayat. Ratna was beaten up as soon as she assumed office by her rival who could not
accept the fact that a female had outwitted him (Rai et al 1995). Today Ratna puts
forward proposals in this male-dominated office and poses questions when she is
unsatisfied. She says:

Whenever there is any tension in the villages, they come to me and I have learnt
how to sort out the problem. Many people have realised that it is indeed a waste of time
to make a complaint to the police chowki(station).

She has launched programmes for adult education, digging wells for drinking water
and repairing school building. She seems to have tackled the political and
bureaucratic system which is complicated for a women who has studied only upto
standard 7 (the public education system runs from standard 1-12), As Ratna says:
It is not the education that matters so much here. It is the grit and determination
which a woman has in plenty.
Self-confidence gained through belonging to local organisations seems critical to
enabling women to step out of unequal relationships (Antrobus 1985; ISST 1992). This
sense of freedom is even more profound when the group to which women belong is the

8

PRL This freedom is carried into the very activity of politics by these women. There is a
visible difference, a sense of excitement, in the women of rural India.
We are better representatives than men, as we can always be found at home in the
kitchen or in the nearby fields. Men wander about, they are either in the town or the beer
shops.
Nagamma was an elected member, from a reserved constituency, but she won against a
male scheduled caste member, which was a very unusual occurrence in the Panchayat Raj
elections. The villagers in the area who were interviewed during this study were
unanimous in their view that this women was the most effective among all the female
elected members of the mandal, a view which was also shared by the Pradan (the head of
the village).

Not all men have opposed PRI and the changes it has brought. Kultikori, a big village in
West Bengal, elected an all-woman Panchayat in 1993. When it was time to decide on
party candidates for the May 1993 elections, all the members of the male-dominated body
stepped down. They asked their party, the CPI(M), to field the young women of the
Ganatantrik Mahila Samiti (the women’s wing of the party) who had done remarkable
work in eradicating illiteracy in the village. The CPI(M) fielded women candidates in all
11 seats of the Panchayat, and they won (Rai et al 1995).
Understanding Politics

PRI has given many women a greater understanding of the workings of politics, in
paiticular the importance of political parties. Vijayalakshmi was a Congress-I member of
the Mandal, a homemaker, of munnuru village. She wanted party politics to operated in
the elections to Mandals because the party bureaucracy (at the State level) usually
controls its members in the Mandals. Without the party, no one else would be able to
control them. The party functionaries and the leaders are well-informed of the activities
of the Mandal members, and they take some care to see that they function in such a way
as not to jeopardize the outcome of elections, which since 1993, means that female
members must be respected.
Kamalamma is a Scheduled Caste member and belonged to the Janata Party. She used to
roll beedis to earn <some money, and remained at home most of the time. She says that
the influence of the political parties is such that now

... persons from deprived groups have a better chance of being elected members.
Earlier, only persons with money and of the upper castes could be elected to any position
of importance.

Affirming Identity

9

On the other hand, some women’s involvement in PRI has helped them affirm their
identity as women with particular and shared experiences. A woman at a Panchayat
meeting in Karnataka stated (SSF 92):

When we meet we work together as 'women, for our lobby. We don’t notice party
identities.
Such women seem to be drawn to an identity above caste or party. This self
perception arises from two sources: from women’s own sense of their shared experience
and from attitudes and imagery imposed on them by the men. The men see these new
political actors as women not as party colleagues. Party politics, a necessary condition
for classical democracy, is competitive, but the women bring a non-competitive or
cooperative ethic as they are drawn to work together across party lines and seem to have
similar interests. Gender can supersede class and party lines. Women have opened up
the possibility for politics to have not only new faces but a new quality.
Women Changing Governance

PRI has helped to change local government beyond simply increasing the numerical
presence of women. There is now a minority of women who are in politics because of
their leadership qualities or feminist consciousness, for example, the owmen who were
formerly part of the Sanghas of the Mahila Samakhya Programme, an awareness-raising,
group-based programme. Visible changes in the articulation of ideas and leadership
qualities exhibited by this minority were noted in the survey between 1987, the first year,
and 1990 (ISS 1994). The difference women are making to local government is
becoming evident in different priorities and different priorities and different values (Jain
L.C. 1994).
Changing Priorities
Some of the ways in which women, through PRI, are changing governance are evident in
the issues they choose to tackle; water, alcohol abuse, education, health and domestic
violence. For example, forty teams of women in Sonbhadra (Uttar Pradesh) area had
carried out systematic yatra, or processions, covering ten villages each, or 400 villages in
all, to explain the salient features of the 73rd Amendment and the place given in it to
women. In the discussions that took place during these yatras, women voiced clear
priorities. For nearly 90 percent of the women, the top priority was water. They
expressed a need for clean water for fields, for their cattle and for their families. They
said life was unbearable and cultivation impossible without developing the water
resources of the area. Even as they were determined to prevent the outflow of water from
their areas, they were equally determined to prevent the inflow of liquor into their area.

We have been ruined by liquor. We are being ruined day after day. The day's
wages are drunk by the men-folk. There is no money for groceries hence no cooking.

10

Alochana, a centre for documentation and research of women in Pune, found that
only two of the nine members in Bittargaon could sign their names. However, in this
village which has a 16,000 population, Alochana found out that the women have “learnt
to keep accounts from the local school teachers and the gram sevaks (rural workers).
They have put an end to gambling and have come down heavily on liquor dens”. The
policy they adopted was to “shut the door on every drunken husband”. Any protest made
by them or children is met by physical assault.

We will not hear it. Once we acquire some position and power, we will fight it
out. We know that it is not going to be easy because this battle will be carried out in
each home. But the fact that the Panchayats will have a minimum number of women we
will use that strength for mobilising women at large and keep liquor out, as a priority.
Women are also taking action against child marriage and child domestic labour,
whilst promoting girl-child education, as is evident from the many success stories from
Nellore, the heart of the successful anti-arrack struggle (Rohde 1994; Anveshi 1993).

But the enormous expansion of women’s representation in decentralized
government structures has highlighted the advantages of proximity, namely the redress of
grievance and (most important of all) the ability to mobilize struggle at a local level
where it is most meaningful, for example, the anti arrack movement.

We want education for our children. There are schools and teachers who draw their
salaries regularly. They mark the attendance of non-existence students in their registers.
But they scarcely come to the schools. With this sorry state of affairs, how can you have
education for your children? We are going to tell those teachers: either teach or go.
As with education, women have used their elected authority to address quality
health care as a critical issue. In Maharashtra, the Indian School of Political Economy
organised 60 workshop at Pune under the project of “Leadership Training for Rural
Women”. The chief conclusion of these workshops was that family planning, drinking
water, schools and bio-gas plants are the priorities of women, rather than the TV set or
temple.(Manipal 1994). Women,. Too, have brought domestic violence onto the agendas
of political campaigns. In theses and other ways, the issues women choose differ from
conventional political platforms, which are usually caste/ ethnic/ religion-based.

But not only do women choose different issues, they appear to choose less corrupt
practices as well. Kogendranath Mohato, Panchyat secretary of Kultikori, says :
The men I had worked under formally passed on their expenses in cigarettes and
paan(bread) to the Panchyats. But the didies (sisters)n here are not only clean on this
score, they are more dedicated

Women value proximity, whether it be to a drinking water source, a fuel source, a creche,
a health center, a court of justice or an office of administration. Poor women have to walk
to access these facilities. Which is exhausting and consumes valuable time. Moreover
when there us an attack, a rape, a burning, a witch hunt or other violence against a

11

women, seeking redress from councils. Which are located far away, may not be feasible,
But if these Councils and the people in them are near, the chances or redress and effective
action are greater.

The decentralization of government structures has, however, been regarded with
suspicion and anxiety by progressive groups. Decentralisation can exacerbate lack of
local resources and perpetuate regional disparities. It has often been misused by central
government to offload social security provision. It has also been misused political by
dictators or single authority regimes to control from the Centre through decentralized
mechanisms.
But the enormous expansion of women’s representation in decentralized government
structure has highlighted the advantages of proximity, namely the redress of grievance
and (most important of all) the ability to mobilise struggle at a local level where it is most
meaningful, for example, the anti- arrack, movement. Thus women critique of macroeconomic polices is about equity, then what better responses can there be but to put
political power in the hands of those most in equitably treated, namely women? In this
sense, PRI may be conceived as a macro- political adjustment whose effects are felt at the
micro-level.

Women are beginning to change not only the issues and values of governance but are also
adopting different methods to those of men. They do not let official protocol stand in
their way Narayanan (1993) recounts the story of one Panchayat official, Suman
According to them (the officials) the area was not a catchment area and hence not
suitable to construct a tank. They could not think anything beyond that. But Suman
wanted to keep up her promise to the electorate of reviving the old tank. She mobilized
necessary resources through other sources , and was able to fulfill her promise, After a
good monsoon, the tank was flooded with water much against the scientific thinking of
the bureaucracy.

12

SECTION III

Some Question and Answers :
How well equipped are the women to take part in this act of administrative
reconstruction? One unanimous feed back received from the field during the electoral
experiences of the last 6-7 years is that women have learned to look at themselves in a
new light. They are more confident, (what does this mean, how is it seen and measured?
A recent story heard is that elected women representatives from very poor communities
have started using coconut oil to rub into their hair, and not remnants of used cooking oil
as heretofore, (record of documentation committee meeting of KWIRC Project, Laxmi
Krishnamurthy’s statement) Another woman (Susheela Kaushik's study of Haryana) said
that even her adversary in the village has sent her an invitation to a marriage in the
adversary’s family. Phis was seen as a status jump. Other stories refer to dalit women
raising their voices when talking to upper caste men of the same village, whom they
would not have even dared to address directly in the past. Many other stories are
available, which speak of personal transformations within the psyches of women as a
consequence of working in local government)

Many women, when confronted with the question of their own capabilities, turn round
and blame the external environment (their lack of powers, authority, financial resources,
information, less exposure to training, etc.) for their not being more successful in their
work—it is rarely that these have a poor self image of themselves as panches or
sarpanches; nor do they feel they do not have the inherent capability for carrying on the
work of the panchayats. They feel that if most, or at least some of these external
constraints are removed, they would be able to function better, even within the
constraints of their social situation. These external constraints have been generally
articulated as lack of co-operation and devolution of powers from the State, lack of
finances, lack of information, lack of legal powers and authority and non-involvement (at
the best) and enmity and friction of the local bureaucracy and panchayat staff. (Susheela
Kaushik—) The Haryana study showed an interesting correlation between women’s
feeling no change in status even after the elections to the non-devolution of powers from
the state government. Some women in Haryana (same study) went further. They
explained that they did not feel a rise in status after their elections but they felt it was
because their husbands did not allow them to participate in the panchayat meetings!!!
[In other words, their participation means their status rises.
Grass roots research have helped to invalidate the many myths that have sprung up in the
last decade about the quality of women’s participation in running the panchayats.

Nirmala Buch (Women’s Experience in new Panchayats: The emerging leadership of
Rural Women—Occasional paper no.35, CWDS, 2000), surveying three large states of
India, has produced figures of elected women’s awareness and knowledge about

13

panchayat related matters, of elected men’s and women’s attendance in panchayat
meetings, on weekly time spent by elected men and women in panchayat work, on efforts
made by women representatives to solve problems presented to them in panchyats, on
efforts made by the elected women to carry their view point in meetings, etc. Her
findings are that the level of participation of women is quite high, while not reaching the
performance levels of the men. In the three states (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar
Pradesh), for example, the women’s attendance in the panchayat meetings ranged from
55.5 to 74.4 as against the men’s attendance range of 68.7 to 95.6. The findings relating
to the other quality aspects of women’s work, similarly, brought out that women were by
no means laggardly, ignorant or lazy. Majority of the women surveyed had a good
awareness level and knowledge about the working of the panchayat. A substantial
proportion of the women devoted time to panchayat activities. In order to argue their
views strongly and to convince the panchayats in the meetings, they took other members
into confidence, held informal discussions, repeated these efforts, took help of others,
including husbands, etc.
A study from Tamilnadu (Women’s Participation in Panchayati Raj: A case study from
Tamilnadu—V.B.Athreya and K.S.Rajeswari, paper presented at the IX National
Conference on Women’s Studies, 8—11 January 2000, Hyderabad) where the sample
was 100 women from district panchayats in two districts, showed that 95% of the women
studied, stated that they had actively participated in the meetings. 63% of the women
responded that they also spoke in community meetings and put forward suggestions.

Elected women keenly feel the lack of what is termed (for want of a better and more
inclusive word) training or “capacity building”. They invariably express their felt need
for this type of support. Wherever elected women have received the benefit of innovative
training and support, their performance has exceeded expectations, collectively, as a
group.
Swayam Shikshan Prayog, which works in Maharashtra with grass roots women and
communities on issues of economic empowerment and local governance, reports that
alliances between elected women and women’s collectives, which are strengthened
through focussed training, result in new institutional arrangements for improved
governance. As a result, women are participating in village assemblies and gram sabhas
in larger numbers, demanding greater accountability from all elected members. Village
women and elected members participate in dialogue platforms at block and district levels
so as to give feedback to local officials. SSP believes that capacity building exercises
should involve state officials and planners so that they recognize women’s capacities to
participate in governance.

Mahila Samakhya in Karnataka, has provided an accountability mechanism to the
elected women who were earlier, Sangha members. The elected woman treats the sangha
as its reference and validation point. Where the elected woman does not break her trust
with the sangha, she gets benefitted, as the women of the sangha constantly support her
with information of what issues she should take up in the meetings of the panchayats
what are the burning issues in the village/ward which affect the women collectively and

14

which need intervention at the local government level. The sangha guides the elected
woman in this way, a hand-holding and step-by-step consultation process where the
sangha’s collective energies are at the disposal of the elected woman.

The training efforts of RUWSEC based in Chingleput, Tamilnadu, helped the elected
women to prioritise reproductive health concerns of the women in the community. Such a
concern for their own bodies and reproductive matters did not come naturally to them.
Women are used to neglecting their bodies because of their own perceptions of low value
attached to their bodies. The training received has now challenged the elected women to
think of activating the panchayat structure to make it accountable to the people.

Do the elected women affirm their collective identity as women, do they push for a
women’s need-based agenda and programme? There appears to be a quality difference
between the priorities of elected men and elected women. Dr. Shanta Mohan (National
Institute of Advanced Studies) found that the elected men wanted immediately “do-able”
things such as taking up construction activities, building of local infrastructure. These
items were not only visible, they were costly and caught the attention of the public
quickly. The elected women wanted different things, they could be lack of water, dealing
with alchoholism in the area, increasing the access of children to schools, coping with
domestic violence and marital conflict. She found that generally, the women’s prioritised
programmes had a longer time perspective than those of the men. The immediacy and the
visibility of the men’s suggestions, however, generally carried the day and therefore she
found that the men’s programmes generally subsumed those of the women.

Anti-liquor campaigns in Haryana and Andhra were spear headed by women. 84 out of
100 women in Haryana who were studied by Susheela Kaushik, proudly said that they
took up the liquor issue in their constituencies and panchayats.
Is there a danger of women being type-cast, of getting stereo-typed as a “woman panch”?
One Zila Parishad Pradhan in Haryana said (Susheela Kaushik) “Women can only speak
to women”. Whom do women represent? SUTRA in Himachal found, somewhat to their
surprise and concern, a commonality in elected women’s perceptions just after they were
elected. The women felt that they represented only the ward in which they stood for
elections. They did not feel responsible for the Gram Panchayat as a whole. They were
wary of stepping into the other wards. They called themselves ‘ward members’ and not
panches or members of the panchayat. Similarly, do women feel that only women’s
issues should concern them?

The evidence from the field is a resounding no. Women may not yet have the space to
think out their own priorities slowly and carefully, but they have no intention of getting
type cast. But here, the dominant culture of panchayati politics and administration also
play a role, both for shaping men’s as well as women’s day to day ‘bread and butter
issues’.

15

ISEC study (1982) on panchayats in Karnataka in fact, showed that both men and women
elected representatives, spent more time on items of infrastructure such as roads, lighting,
drainage, other civic amenities than on more basic concerns, say, poverty or employment
creation or micro-planning.
Many other studies show that women are not really happy to be restrained into a ‘womanand-child’ folder or box. They would like to be involved in all the activities in the
Panchayat. It is another matter and a rather significant one at that, that mostly all Gram
Panchayats as well as the other two tiers are given the responsibility of infrastructure
works rather than planning and development of the panchayat as a whole, or social justice
or employment or agricultural, horticultural or animal husbandry production. The old
habit of entrusting only local civil or physical works to the panchayats is still very much
around.
Thus the working orientation of the panchayats in general, has had the inevitable effect
on the elected members, both men and women. There is an overwhelming focus on
‘village works’ being taken up. This prevents the women (and the men) from getting into
the more crucial area of planning for the village as a unit, into the complexities of natural
resource management, etc.

But here and there, we hear of many women being led by their intrinsic concerns with
depleting resources. UMA PRACHAR [September 1995] recounts the story of an elected
member of a Gram Panchayat in Bangalore (Rural) who is also, simultaneously,
President of a local self-help thrift group as well as a member of the Water Management
Cooperative Society involved in a participatory tank rehabilitation scheme since many
years. This woman is deeply concerned with the degradation of village resources and sees
clearly that the gomal cannot support grazing activities much longer, since the vegetation,
the trees, etc. are fast disappearing. According to Madhav Gadgil, [see interview in the
same issue o f UMA PRACHAR], the village level institutions [i.e., the water
management society, in this case] should be properly linked up to the Panchayati Raj
institutions. It is the concern of women over the fast depleting natural resources, [water,
trees and grass] that can bring in these different frames of reference and these
institutional linkages into action and planning.

In a study of Rajasthan panchayats and women’s participation in them (1995, ISST), it
was found that elected women and village women have responded to mobilisation
round food, water, work, housing, violence, etc. This study notes that there are more
women’s groups in Rajasthan than men’s groups or mixed groups.
Another story from Andhra Pradesh, to show the synergy that is created with the linking
of different institutions through the agency of women. The concern here is food security
in a poverty context. Neela Mukherjee stresses the point that ‘the indigenous knowledge
about the varied dimensions of food-livelihood security lies with the local
communities
It is the local-level panchayat which can initiate and implement plans
along with the local community for appropriate interventions in approaching food
livelihood security at the local level’.

16

Women’s good management of grain banks has been exemplified in the experiences of
Agragamee in Kashipur and Gram Vikas in Kalahandi, both in Orissa, a state vulnerable
to food shortages and natural calamities.

A poor semi literate woman farmer, who is the Sarpanch of the Gram Panchayat in
Medak Distt. has built up an impressive food security scheme in the village with the help
of an NGO which has encouraged the setting up of Sanghams, or women’s organizations.
She became a member of the sangham and attends the weekly meetings regularly. Thus, a
three-way relationship has developed amongst the Volag, the women’s group and the
PR1.

( 'Food Security and Panchayati Raj’, pages 219—221)

The women’s movement has the biggest stake in building up powerful and dynamic
leadership of women in pri’s. The 'empowerment’ of grass roots women (though the
word itself was coined later) has been an imperative with the women’s movement ever
since the renewed debate on the women’s question started in the seventies. The debate
threw up various models of grass roots organizations, of which one of the important were
the mahila mandals, which had been legitimised by the Government already, in the
Community Devlopment programme. But they were seen as inherently weak in both
functioning and coverage.
In 1974, when the Report of the Committee on the Status of Women recommended
statutory all-women’s panchayats, it was as a transitional measure to ensure greater
participation by women in the political process, especially in the area of development
planning. This suggestion did not find favour and today, all women’s panchayats are
found in very isolated numbers, in just a few states.
(Grass roots Empowerment [1975—1990] A discussion paper by N.K.Bannerjee, CWDS)

Today, a large number of women’s organisations and women’s volags support the elected
women in panchayati raj structures, mainly in the areas of capacity building and
awareness raising. Compared with the lakhs of women who are holding elected office,
even these efforts are very thinly spread. Nirmala Buch has found that the training
resources go in a reverse order to the actual training needs— the village panchayats get
the least, the intermediary level gets more and the district parishads take the lions’ share.
(Marg Workshop) The voluntary sector has, on the whole, been successful in forging
linkages with the elected representatives. The other movements such as the trade union,
the workers’ movements, etc. are able to find linkages only through the committed work
of voluntary organizations or when they themselves act as link organizations.

Neither the women’s lobbies nor any of the other people’s movements or the workers’
movements or campaigns have been able to prevail upon the state in the form of a
sustained force or campaign, to fulfil the constitutional commitments it has made in 1993

17

of turning panchayats into effective units of local government. This is perhaps the biggest
failure of the movement.

The basics of “planning from below”, that is the crucial exercise of integrating the plans
prepared by the panchayats at district level into a district plan, has still not got off the
drawing board. Pointing out this as a very serious gap in the Ninth Plan between
commitment and practice, D.Bandhyopadhyay terms it as a “wilful disregard of the third
tier of governance at the district level”. [“Planning from below—Is Planning Commission
Performing its Role?” EPW March 18 2000] Many of the elected women have echoed
their unhappiness on the irrelevance and uselessness of many of the schemes and the
general lack of congruence between them and the needs of the villages. (Asha Ramesh’s
study) It is not just a change from co-option or nomination to election, that has taken
place in the quality of women’s representation. A change in mind set has taken place in
the country between the fifties and the nineties on what exactly panchayats stand for. It
has been summarised as a change from the search for a more efficient delivery system to
a basic change in administration, whereby a non-representative autocratic and
bureaucratic regime is being replaced with a representative and responsive elected system
of governance. [D.Bandhyopadhyay —Man and Development, December 1999] “Exercise
of power was downwards and the nominal accountability upwards”. This was sought to
be reversed.
The unwillingness to part with power is nowhere more graphically illustrated that in the
institution of the district collector and the collectorate. The 73rd amendment to the
Constitution has brought in a third tier of government, below the state government. But
no review or redefinition of the collector’s role vis-a-vis the Panchayati Raj institutions
has taken place so far. The collector has so far, since the British era, been the “pivot of
the district administration”. But with so many functions having been now decentralized
and devolved under Article 243—G of the Constitution, a new look at the old institutions
is very much over due. (‘Pioneer, 4th December 1999, “Collector versus Panchayat” by
Rahul Arun and Samir Arun)
Another upcoming debate is whether “decentralization” as a concept, takes us far enough.
Writing in the Hindu on this theme, Vinayak N. Srivastava points out that
“decentralisation” refers only to the transfer of ‘functions’ and not transfer of ‘power’
whereas “devolution” encapsulates transfer of functions as well as of powers.
(“Decentralisation without devolution is meaningless” Hindu, 23rd February 1999)

The framework of the Act and Rules of the Panchayat can be tested on the touchstone of
women’s experiences, especially in those states where the second elections have taken
place. Euphoria has given place to disillusion. The roster, first hailed as an effective
mechanism to bring in large numbers of women into the electoral fray, is now being
exposed as vulnerable to misuse, to the disadvantage of women. Large numbers of
women who have completed one term, are unable to continue their engagement with local
governance, (meeting of 3rd May)

18

The Act has been used as a “hold all” or a portmanteau to push in the Government’s
priorities. The small family norm has been introduced to the greater disadvantage of
women rather than men. More than half a dozen states in India have introduced this into
the statutes. There are stories of men divorcing their wives, of families giving children
away in adoption, (reference either Marg or ISST, to find out)

The “no confidence motion” is a black law that is contained in most of the State Acts.
The women and the dalit sarpanches have been at the receiving end. In Maharashtra, the
law is so obtuse that the sarpanch’s vacancy caused by a woman sarpanch being asked to
leave as a consequence of the no confidence motion, does not go to another woman for
the remaining part of the term. It invariably goes to a man. (Rohini Gawankar in her
Hyderabad paper)
In Karnataka, the posters put out by the Government wrongly show that the seats not
reserved for women, as per the roster, in the recently concluded gram panchayat
elections, are ‘reserved’ for ‘men’. The fact that women can offer their candidature
against open seats along with men, is just suppressed by the election, machinery. No
campaign has been mounted by local groups against this type of insidious propaganda by
the organs of the State, (personal communication from Asha Ramesh).

Meera Saxena, Secretary, Women and Child, GOK, in the meeting on 20th March 2000
(SSF), hinted at field officials wanting only ‘somewhat’ literate women alone being made
eligible to stand for elections. The failed experiment of restricting eligibility to contest
elections to households having a latrine brings out the same tendency to use the Act to
restrict the benefits to the asset-owning class. Women, who are at the bottom of the heap,
have to constantly keep running if they have to stay at the same place.
Mainstream policies, such as those on population, total literacy, legal reform and others,
proceed along conventional lines of reasoning and thinking.

19

SECTION : IV

The paper has deliberately been called ‘Role of women in decentralisation’ and not
uexperience of women in local self government’ because we wish to make a larger point.
We have already mentioned one aspect of this larger point, namely that women have been
influencing the understanding and direction of decentralisation, that women are perhaps
the stronger stake holders in decentralisation. But what we wish to add here is to broaden
the argument to include the discourse, even at the global level.
Some of the skepticism about local government and its value in terms of improving the
possibility of achieving development with social justice; or put in another way,
eradication of poverty and access to development rights by the ‘people’ etc. has been
because of negative experiences, almost worldwide. Whether it is (Pinochet Chile ,
Ayub Khan Pakistan , Zia Bangla Desh , Ujaama Nyerere, Commune China and many
more ) there have been hidden motives , or fault lines , where the local becomes a pawn
or a system in order to strengthen central control; and in India the basic critique is that
the civil servants, the bureaucracy and the politician at the higher level of elected council
. are unwilling to disable their positions of power, patronage and direction this alliance
with struggles for power, for wresting power from the traditional bastions becomes
crucial for the achievement of the stated goals of local government ,namely a more
participatory and perhaps more efficient if not more equitable system of government.
The notion of enabling power to develop at the local level has been abused. There have
been hidden agendas and these have put people including those who have commitment to
the idea of people led government of the idea of localising power into a skeptical mode.
Other arguments are well known such as local is more conservative and central is more
progressive. Feminists are worried about highly localised governance, as it gives space
for conservative cultural, traditional attitudes and practices to be exercised at the village
and community level.

These anxieties are genuine and to them one can also add, from the Indian experience,
many negative notes. In the Indian case, as has been pointed out almost ad nauseum,
devolution has not really taken place and most of the State governments have found
innovative back door means to obstruct the localisation of government. The list of such
experiences have been recorded in other forums of the same seminar namely
bureaucracy and its unwillingness to hand over its patronage, State level and national
level politicians unwilling to hand over patronage, the skepticism that elected persons do
not represent the poor or the subordinate and in women’s case that they are proxies for
men. A further allegation is that local politicians do not necessarily represent local
interest but sectional interest, which are nothing more than a clone of the problems at the
national level.
Other scholars have pointed out the complete lack of devolution of development funds
and schemes to the local government. Except for Kerala, no state government has passed
on its development funds to be actually designed and implemented by local government.
A study by Dr. Vinod Vyasulu made of two districts in Karnataka also emphasizes the
impotence of the district in carving its own development. A report that was submitted to

20

the Karnataka State Planning Board by one of the authors of this paper, Devaki Jain, who
was the Chairperson of a Sub Committee set up by the Government of Karnataka to look
at district level planning for social development also pointed out that not only were there
no devolution of finance, but the departmental schemes which try to reach out to the
village were so multitudinous and so tied up with the departmental accounting systems,
that no locally elected body could possibly have any space for design. This Committee
made several significant recommendations ranging from the importance of rationalizing
the schemes to the importance of giving what is called untied funds, to be utilized by the
elected body. This is what Kerala has already done namely to give funds to the locally
elected body and have them design it for their own use with the help of volunteers.
Unfortunately in Karnataka, even though this recommendation was made and the P.R.
Nayak Committee on Panchayati Raj also recommended the same procedure, the State
government has continued to hold all the strings in its hands.

A study conducted by the ISEC in Bangalore on an experiment to give funds without
specification to the gram sabhas has revealed that the choices made by a local council
have not only greater relevance, but also mobilize greater resources than when a scheme
is handed down -(Gram Panchayats have the wisdom to manage their own funds”, Indian
Express, dated April 16th, 2000)
Thus it could be argued that by and large the aspiration of localizing government has not
been achieved, except perhaps with a few flaws in Kerala.
Yet in the World Development Report 1999, the themes are local and global and
economist such as Stiglitz laud the importance of people led government, which means
local self government. They argue that it is only local led government which can be
efficient, which can provide growth with equity, which can reduce disparities, which can
provide the institutional framework for globalization with justice. However, the same
document also flags the importance of a liberalised political economy without showing
the design by which a federation of local self government can in fact be a challenge to the
careless invasion of globalisation into a country.
fhe importance of participation by ‘People’ is highlighted in the WDR 1999, in Stiglitz
1998, in Bhagwati 1999, in Norgaard 1999 and the Human Development Report 1999.
The intention of this inclusion may vary from those who see it as more just, to those who
see it as promoting more efficiency, to those who are interested in preventing breakdown
and civic instability. But the accommodation of “people” is seen as a necessary
component even for the hard headed single mind, “growth” generation. The 1999 WDR
has two pillars, globlisation and localization, is valuable for participation, and for the
Ownership, claiming what Stiglitz talks about. But as the report also admits, globalization
disconnects with the “local” often trampling over it. Localization can create problems for
what is called national consensus on say the fiscal deficits. And yet national consensus on
such items as fiscal deficit is almost a necessary conditions for the foreign Direct
Investments (FDI) and Multinational Corporation (MNC).

21

Yet, there is an example from the state of Kerala in India, where women’s groups have
actually dealtgh with this disjunction and used localization to deal with what are called
the market forces of globlisation.

Responding to this black hole in the discourse on decentralisation, the importance of
people local government, four institutions in the four states of southern India have set up
a programme to build a Federation of local women politicians - a clone of the Indian
Federation of Women Lawyers or Women Journalists. This will be a Southern Indian
Federation of Women politicians in local government.
It is hoped that through such Federations such collectivities of political personnel who
have a freshness, and a stake in redesigning development there will be one more
important actor to pull down state structures which are impeding local government.
Il is hoped that this Federation will also inform itself of not only technical skills like
budgeting, designing fiscal policy, utilizing funds such as the component plan for
women, use new promoting framework like the Gender Audit but will start a process of
revisiting or redesigning development with women. It might be called women designing
or redesigning development planning and implementation through the local self
government institutions (see SSF Project Report)

The Gender Audit, a module a Performa which can be used every three years (or two
years) by the local administration to collect fresh data on some crucial variables, derive
indices like from them, which can monitor development impact. G-D-I & G-E-M
disparities (SSF : the gender audit 2000). Thus audit can be made into a dalit audit also.

It is such initiative which might in fact “pull up” Local government into a key player in
development with social justice.

100

Joo

r'
I

I

|8<
is i XA*,

22

Notes:
In Kerala, they have launched in support of their local self government programme a
people’s campaign for preparing a five year plan’. There is a gazette notification by the
state government to this effect. The elements of people’s campaign are as follows:
• they have formed neighbor hood associations, called in Malayalam, ‘Ayil Koottam’.
‘koottam’ is gathering. Neighborhood gatherings which take place almost every
week.
• they have ‘employed’ resource persons from the area, retired school teachers,
engineers, nurses, civil servants, functionaries, even students, post graduates working
towards their Ph.D., unemployed as volunteers.

There are key resource persons, conveyors of neighborhood groups, members of task
force. For every village which could be in Kerala a population of 10-15,000 there is a
panchayat, namely a local elected body with these ‘enablers’ who are the volunteers.

The neighborhood group discusses what they think are their needs, the issues in terms of
development and sets out a plan of action. Every month, the Conveyor and co-conveyor
of the neighborhood group meet together in something like a conference at the village
level, in which they are divided into task forces according to sector. Then in the
afternoon, it is summated by the Chairperson of the Gram Panchayat. The minutes of this
conference are then carried forward to a District Level meeting for district planning,
convened by the Chairperson who is an elected person and that prepares the district level
plan. Parallel to this process of designing what are called the nuts and bolts of
development, namely budgetary allocation, there is a process of accountability. If a
particular work, what is called civil works has been sanctioned after this process, the
actual detailed expenditure allocations are written by hand in a big chart and nailed to a
tree,’ wherever the neighborhood group meets, as well as on all the boards of the
Panchayat for everyone to see what is the expenditure. Second, there are beneficiary
committees in every village. We have what is called BPL which is “below poverty line”,
where we define the poverty line as being something like US $ 150. The Beneficiary
Committees are composed only of these BPL households and individuals. They decide
who should have the priority in getting the benefits of a development programme,
whether it is an animal, a house, credit, pension, according to the budgetary allocations
under these heads. In other words, the beneficiaries decide on what they want as benefits
and in the order of ranking in terms of who comes first.
One of the resource persons I met is a man who owns and runs a private college for 700
students. He comes from the area which is a tribal hilly area. I asked him why he is doing
this full time unpaid job. He said he loves it because it makes him feel he is participating
in a social justice movement. He in turn is a product of another movement which took
place in Kerala, which is the People’s Science Movement. The People’s Science
Movement (KSSP) was one of those “walks” which is very common in India, where a
leader decides to walk (padayatra) from one part of a province to all over the province

23

with some message, stopping overnight as a guest with free hospitality for himself and
his fellow marchers. Gandhi’s salt march which many of you have seen on the screen,
Vinoba Shave’s land gift (bhoodan) walk are part of our tradition : as I know they are of
yours. The great march of your kings and chiefs.

This march for the KSSP carried with it scientific knowledge, - knowledge about land,
water, traditional medicine, both natural resource and technological skills. They would
stop in villages and demonstrate through posters, talks, audiovisuals and as they moved
from place to place, more people gathered to join them. It was of course a political
ideology driven movement namely to level up knowledge and ensure that science and
technology should not be the privilege of the technocrats and the elite. That shared
information on scientific and technical knowledge can be the most powerful tool for
people for building equity. This movement was so successful that it inspired a national
movement called the Literacy Movement in India, which was also one of those, walks,
where the movement believes in what is called peripatetic or mobile ‘march’ type
processes to mobilize people.
Most of the “volunteers”, resource persons whom I met were people who had come out
of these movements and who had seen both the effect of this movement on those for
whom it was meant, but it also inspired them to stay with it, as it was to them, a way of
serving the people. Three post graduate students joined a neighborhood group when I was
there, and this neighborhood group was mainly composed of women, who seem to
represent all the classes that we have in rural areas, from the very rich to the very poor,
including the single old woman who is the widow, left behind by everybody else. I could
not believe that 100 such women could sit and listen under a tree for nearly one hour in
sweltering heat of 40 degree centigrade to a man who was explaining to them a new
programme called kutumba sthree', i.e. woman of the household.

1 his programme is a financial assistance programme where if a ggroup
r of women,
_
minimum ten, decide what they would like to do, the district level government will give
them all the necessary support - finance and technical help. I asked these three young
men who were sitting there, who they were. They said ‘we are local students’. I asked
them ’why are you here’. They said that ‘we are interested in seeing that these
programmes are put on the ground. We are inspired by the enthusiasm of the people to
learn and to do and we would like to be involved in that’.

Some of the innovative projects that the beneficiaries have chosen and which the district
elected persons had implemented were even for me, first time. For example one
women’s group was running a tiny ‘hotel’. Hotel in India does not necessary mean
residential accommodation, but something more like a cafe. They were giving coffee tea
and one square meal. It was run by a group of “BPL” women. The local govemment’had
given them money tor putting up a small building on private land and the owner of the
private land had leased it out for five years at rent which the women paid out of their
Pr°fits- This shack or the little building.was the grant given by the local government.
Within two months, the cafe was beginning to attract 100 customers a day. The customers
were drawn by the fact that when women run a kitchen, it was assumed that the food

24

rnXbltdSshe^ddW°Uld
‘a"thenti.C’- The woman wh0 was keeping the accounts was
to run th^ hotel’
UP 3
atlVe nUrsing j°b and J°lned these other nine women
Another was where a women’s group packed into a bag all the ingredients that were
alKheS f°r he SeaS°ning °f food for a family for one week. There were little packets of
all these spices including the Indian favourite red chilly. These packets were sold for 15
rupees, which is 30 cents of a US dollar and was vended on a bicyd in a ba k t
the ZIl
relief jUSt t0 Pick UP that packet’ rather than to struggle for
condiments
’eS
Y reqUirC
Weekly needs °f about 8 or 9 “sPic^” or

26

18. Towards Political empowerment - Profiling women elected to the rural and urban
bodies in Karnataka and Gujarat - Asha Ramesh and Bharti Ali.
19. Towards a New synergy in Political Consciousness - C.P Sujaya —Paper (work in
progress) prepared for associating elected women representative in PRI Institutions one day consultations with Karnataka based organisation - March 20, 2000.
20. Panchayats and Development Elite’s Vs Dalits - Man & Development, December
1999.

21. Collector Vs Panchayat- strengthen local self- governing bodies to increase popular
participation in administration, says Rahul Arun and Samir Arun- pioneer, 4
December 1998.

22. Decentralisation without devolution is meaningless -Vinayak N. Srivastave - Hindu,
23 February 1999.
23. Changing the Text of local governance - grassroots women’s leadership in
governance - women and political participation 21st century challenges.

24. How important is the Private Public dichotomy - the case of the EWRs - Devaki Jain
- Seminar - women in Panchayat raj - 27-28 April 2000, New Delhi.
25. Grassroots-Vol. 1 No.4 (12) - April 2000.

26. Grassroots -Vol.l No.3 (11) -March 2000.
27. Grassroots -Vol.l No.2 (10) - February 2000.
28. Grassroots-Vol.l No.l (9)-January 2000.
29. Participation of women in Panchayati raj - Devaki Jain - December 1998.

30. From Margin to Mainstream - Building stakes in the SHG-BANK linkage
Programme- Gayatri A. Menon & Suranjana Gupta - Swayam Shikshan PravogOctober 1999.
°
31. Panchayat Raj - women changing governance- Devaki Jain- September 1996- Gender
in Development Monograph series #4 - UNDP.

32. Women Leadership and the Ethics of Development - Bella Abzug and Devaki Jain August 1996 - Gender in Development Monograph Series #4 - UNDP.
33 i5<i999ThOU8htS Fr°m Abroad”’ Devaki Jain> University of Westville, Durban, May
r

34. Censorship And Silence - Vasanth Kannabiran - Review Of Women Studies - Ws-2EPW-Vol XXXV April 29lh, 2000.

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