Role of Women in Indian Politics

7/29/2019 Role of Women in Indian Politics

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What Is the Role of Women in Indian Politics? Growing

Stronger...

India should work towards empowering women

economically -- through microfinance programs -- andalso encourage greater participation of women leaders

in panchayats, or village councils, writes author Shoba

Narayan in this opinion piece.

The ink-stained polls of the world's largest democracyhave delivered their verdict and India waits with batedbreath to learn whether Prime Minister ManmohanSingh's second administration will be different than thefirst. While India exults after yet another peacefully concluded election, one question remains:What is the role of women in Indian politics? The answer is both big and small. Typical of India,

it contains contradictions.

On the one hand, India falls in the lowest quartile with respect to the number of women inparliament (9.1%). Even the UAE, with 22.5%, has more women representatives, according tothe UN's 2008 survey of women in politics. That said, the recently concluded 15th Lok Sabhaelections have delivered a record 59 women as members of Parliament, the highest sinceindependence, raising their parliamentary participation to 10.9%. Seventeen of these women areunder 40. And representation of women leaders at the grassroots level in India is nearly 50%,especially since the passing of the 73rd amendment in 1992, which allotted one-third of all seatsto women. Thepanchayati raj, that bedrock of rural government, has fostered more and morewomen participants and leaders. (Apanchayatis a five-person elected village council.) Some

states, like Karnataka, had inducted women into rural politics even before it was mandated by theconstitution. Several states, including Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and mostrecently, Uttarkhand, have allotted not just the required 33% ofpanchayatseats for women butincreased it to 50%.

Beating the Odds

The rise of Indian women aspanchayatleaders is a spectacular achievement given that India hasone of the worst records with respect to the way it treats the female sex. Malnourished,suppressed, uneducated, violated and discriminated against, Indian women have the odds stackedagainst them. Even birth is a hurdle, thanks to widespread female infanticide in rural areas. Butfor every Saroja who will be married at 13 because her mother, a devadasi (prostitute) inChikanahalli Village, Karnataka, cannot afford to pay a dowry, there is a Lakshmi, who isserving her second-term as thepanchayatleader of Kadinamala village in Kotagiri district. Thereis a Kenchamma of Nereleke grampanchayatin rural Karnataka, who survived life threatsduring her two terms as council leader. An illiterate Dalit, Kenchamma could not read or write.Perhaps as a result of her personal travails, she made sure that she brought education to all thechildren in her village, including a disabled child.


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Talking to these women is a lesson in humility. Instead of the outrage and anger that urbanfeminists project, these womenpanchayatleaders speak with clear-minded realism aboutopportunities and costs. For many women, attending apanchayatmeeting means sacrificing aday's wage. It means assuming leadership for the first time in their lives and then subsuming it athome to serve in-laws and husband. For Kenchamma, it meant leaving her one-year-old son to

other caregivers while she learned the ropes of politics.

Ask these women about political reform, and their answers reflect concerns that every womenand mother can relate to. They focus on three things: healthcare, education, and the funds tomake these two things happen. Kenchamma, a trained midwife, established health camps toimprove awareness among the villagers. She also knew from personal experience that, often, it isthe mothers who neglect their health the most. Simplistic as it seems, solving health andeducation is a common thread amongpanchayatleaders, whether they are men or women. Thethird concern is figuring out how to save or raise enough money to accomplish their goals.

Most villagers -- in India and across the world -- either don't go to banks or don't have access to

them. Instead, they borrow from each other, buy jewelry and save in what Melinda Gates calls,"risky and inefficient ways" in a recent piece she wrote in Newsweek. For most of thesevillagers, a child's illness, even something as treatable as malaria, can wipe out several months ofsavings, sending a family spiraling deeper into debt. The answer, according to the GatesFoundation -- no slouch when it comes to solving global problems in an accountable manner -- is"bringing safe financial service to the doorsteps of the poor." As a means to that end, theFoundation has pledged $350 million for microfinance, whose beneficiary is primarily women.

Microfinance and Economic Empowerment

Geeta, 32, would be a typical candidate. An orphan at age three, Geeta was raised by her elder

sister. She didn't go to school and was married to an alcoholic uncle when she was a teenager.Today, she works as a housemaid in Bangalore to feed her family of four: Her husband, her twosons and herself. Geeta's life goal is to educate her two sons. But she lives in a cycle of debt --borrowing to repay past loans, to make annual school payments for her sons, to cover familyevents like weddings and every time someone in the family falls sick. Geeta, it so happens,works in my house.

Two years ago, Geeta heard aboutJanalakshmi, a microfinance company, from some women inher neighborhood. She joined a group of women and borrowed Rs. 30,000 (about $600) with theunderstanding that they would help each other not default on interest payments and take turnsreaping the benefits of the loan. Each group has a leader who guarantees the interest payment tothe microfinance institution and in turn, the leader invites women she trusts into the group so thatthey can borrow larger amounts. For now, Geeta's microfinance loan is only allowing her to payback her previous debts, but she dreams of the day when she can borrow enough money for adown payment on a home.

More and more entities are recognizing the power of micro-loans and how they can elevate anentire segment of society. And the route to the underserved is frequently through women, thanksto models based on Grameen Bank and others. Chennai-based Equitas, for instance, only works
http://www.janalakshmi.com/http://www.janalakshmi.com/http://www.janalakshmi.com/http://www.janalakshmi.com/


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with women. In March, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) launched Stree Shakti, a platform fortraining women entrepreneurs at all levels of Indian society. Goldman Sachs's ambitious "10,000Women" program aims to train and develop women entrepreneurs across the globe by pairingthem with resources in the West. In all these cases, women serve as the lynchpin for programs,whether they are rural Self Help Groups (SHG) or global programs that aspire to foster

entrepreneurship.

Microfinance is not the only answer to solving the poor's problems but it is one good way to helpwomen help themselves. Women self-help groups are burgeoning all across India, and studyafter study shows that they successfully impact women and bring them out of poverty. In anarticle that appeared in the December 2007 issue of UNDP'sPoverty in Focus, researchersRanjula Bali Swain and Fan Yang Wallentin of Uppsala University in Sweden examine the linkbetween microfinance and women's empowerment using household sample data collected fromfive states in India in 2000 and 2003. Their results "strongly demonstrate" that there is a clearlink between women's participation in a Self Help Group (SHG) and their empowerment.

The good news, at least in India, is that these microfinance initiatives are reaching biggerswathes of the underserved. The Indian School of Microfinance for Women (ISMW), forinstance, goes one step deeper into the problem. Based in Ahmedabad and chaired by socialactivist and SEWA founder Ela Bhatt, the school recognizes that borrowing money is only onepart of the triangle. Among other things, the school teaches women how to deal with the moneythey borrow through capacity building workshops, networking and providing knowledgeresources. Simply put, it takes Goldman Sachs's global vision for women entrepreneurs andtranslates it into a deeper regional focus. The school's website lists 'hand-holding' as one of itsgoals. Participants of micro-credit schemes are taught financial planning and investingtechniques that they can use on the ground and in their business.

While microfinance works to eradicate poverty, the next generation of Indian leaders, includingRahul Gandhi, has made social sectors its calling card. The rural development portfolio, whichtraditionally was one of the less-prized posts, has now vaulted to the top of the pecking order,thanks in large part to the Gandhi family which has aligned itself with the aam admi (poorpeople) in both its campaigning and future promises. When Manmohan Singh was asked in arecent television interview if he had any regrets about areas that he couldn't concentrate on in hisfirst term that he would focus on in his second term, he said, "I'd like to work on agriculture,education and rural health."

Reforming Education

Panchayatwomen leaders have been especially active in bringing education to their villageseven though they are frequently held hostage by caste politics and quotas. Rural education is aquagmire of poor policies that nobody in government seems to have the will to change. Therecent Administrative Reforms Commission repeats a long-standing recommendation that theselection of school teachers in rural schools be delegated to eachpanchayatinstead of making itstate-wide and therefore subject to caste-based selection. Deploying state-selected teachers torural schools in areas where they have no caste-based affiliation makes it a losing propositionfrom the get-go, according to some experts. Detractors contend that delegating teacher-selection


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to eachpanchayatwill make it subject to bribes and corruption. But as one official in theAdministrative Reforms Commission put it, small-scale rural corruption (with someaccountability) is better than the large-scale corruption (with no local accountability.)

Panchayatleaders who don't have a say in the kind of teachers their village-schools attract end

up focusing on infrastructure and other issues within their purview. Womenpanchayatleaderstalk about building separate bathrooms for girls, which studies have shown will reduce thenumber of female drop-outs after puberty. They bring safe drinking water to their students. Allthese are not just palliatives, but are necessary developments in rural education.

It is easy to be cynical about yet another federal election that promises improvements to localgovernment and to the lot of women. This time may be different, not just because of the numberof women in parliament and thepanchayats, but also because Rahul Gandhi, a rising star inCongress politics, is tapped to oversee the rural government portfolio. One can only hope that theGandhi scion will free the portfolio of its state-level stranglehold and pass along more power tothe people. Non-partisan economists have long called for decentralized local governance as the

only way to speed up the impact of reforms. To that, I would add two other objectives: wideraccess to micro-loans as an enabler, and genuinely empowering women in local governments tosucceed.


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Role of Women in Indian Politics