Shall Sita Smile?

-------Atonu Chatterjee
Ancient questions rarely die. Rather they re-emerge. The aspect of
reservation of fifty percent of seats in the rural local bodies i.e. in
panchayats has thrown up an old question. Shall we be able to field apposite
candidates for these bodies? This facet of the historic 73rd constitutional
amendment has already seen the political parties' scurry for covers, both for
logistic reasons (whom to nominate?) and otherwise. The present proposal of
quantitative increase thus requires intense soul-searching and exploring
possibilities of whether Self Help Groups can act as a repository in this
regard. Reference point of our discussion will be West Bengal.
Foreword
Generally, ‘Self HelpGroup’ (SHG), a long standing concept, is
formed when members of a neighbourhood, having somewhat identical set
of problems, come together, meet, share experiences, discuss, and thereby
arrive at solutions. Basically this is an effort to link and sort out micro level
problems with collective resources, be it financial, or otherwise. Loosely
SHGs are of three types in rural milieu; SHGs composed of BPL (Below
Poverty Line) members, groups where majority BPL members coexist with
APL members and groups of APL members. Swarnajayanti Gram
Swarojgar Yojna (to be renamed as National Rural Livelihood Mission from
2010-11 with some additional features) caters to first two types of SHGs.
Further in West Bengal a full fledged ministry, 'Self Help Group and
Self-Employment' is exclusively catering to different needs of SHGs right
from 2006.

On 27/8/2009 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. Thus amendment of Article 243(D) (3) is imminent.
Government of West Bengal has expressed their commitment to implement
it during 2013 Panchayat General Election. Rajasthan, however, has
implemented it in their Panchayat General Election held during January
2010. It is perceived, that this quantum rise of members will bolster the
efforts of empowerment of women.

Empowerment, necessarily a political construct, simply means the

ability to decide one’s own course of development by analyzing the
problems faced. Empowerment hinges on making of 'informed choices' from
the options provided by the existent political structure. When the method of
making 'informed choices' becomes a regular feature a profound change in
the system is ushered in to the advantage of the empowered social group.

Quantitative Performance
Seventy third Constitutional Amendment marked a departure from
the erstwhile tokenism rampant in regard to participation of women in the
panchayats. West Bengal however adopted this reservation of seats for
women, SC and STs through Section 15(a)(ii) of the West Bengal Panchayat
(Amendment) Act 1992 prior to the implementation of the Constitutional
Amendment. Consequently the numbers soar. From a mere 9.64% in the pre-
reservation days, numbers of women representative sky rocketed to around
35% after the 1993 election. Again, women members got elected as
chairpersons sans reservation, from 1993 itself (reservation of chairpersons
was implemented from 1998 panchayat election).

Table-1 Position of Office Bearers held by women before relevant

reservation
Tier As Chief of the Body As Deputy chief
Zilla Nil 2
Parishad
Panchayat 8 84
Samity
Gram 186 567
Panchayat

In all the subsequent elections the statutory reservation percentage for

women has more or less been surpassed.
Another interesting feature emerged afterwards. Panchayat Samity
and Zilla Parishad in West Bengal operate through ten work-specific-
standing committees (Sthayee Samities). The state government through an
executive request (memo no-2757 dated 23/11/1994) made it desirable that
half of the elected members of 'Sishu-o-Nari Unnayan, Janakalyan-o-Tran
Sthayee Samity', (the standing committee dealing with women, child
development and social welfare programmes) shall be women and that the
posts of chairpersons of this committee in both the tiers be earmarked for
women. WB Panchayat Act (Sec 32A) extended this principle to the Gram
Panchayat level by constituting Upa-Samities and half of the members and
chairperson of the upa-samity dealing with women and child welfare has
been reserved for women.
A stock opposition, of course, pops up immediately. "Women and
child" welfare are soft subjects which are generally assigned to women. The
moot point however is that, this effort for reserving of seats at a more micro
level is su generis. And with West Bengal registering second highest women
torturing cases in the country (17571 cases registered between 1/1/2009-
29/2/2010-Chief Minister in Legislative Assembly on 15/7/2010) the matter
hardly remain 'soft'!

Qualitative Performance
Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Petia Topalova, Apurba
Mukhopadhyay and many others have conducted several surveys on the
effectiveness of women participation in the local self government especially
in the context of West Bengal. The Panchayat Department of Government of
India has also conducted one, with by far the largest sample size. Culling the
observations certain common points emerge-
1. Participation of women in the Gram samsad meetings increases when
the Prodhan is women. This corroborates the general worldwide
perception that political communication improves when the citizen
and the leader are of the same sex.
2. Since women panchayat representatives consistently demand for
adequate supply of drinking water, housing and social welfare
programmes, expenditure on these counts are relatively high in
women headed panchayats.

3. Women headed panchayats score brownie points in construction of

roads, upkeep of drinking water facilities and administering
government loan schemes. However their diligence falters while
ensuring irrigation avenues.

4. Women headed panchayats generally take more interests in

negotiating social evils like child marriage, indiscriminate sale of
liquor, witch-hunting and such other problems.
Loopholes and Problems

Certain major hindrances can be identified in the path of functioning of the

women members and functionaries.
1. Dual responsibility: Women traditionally burdened with domestic
work face difficulties in balancing the official work with their home.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Communication problem hinders performance as most of the
correspondences, rules and regulations are in English.
5. 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.
6. Owing to rotational policy women can scarcely continue their
relationship with politics. This is a country wide phenomenon and
West Bengal is no exception to this.

Repository of candidates

Women, the erstwhile excluded actors have found their way in the
arena of decision making via reservation policy. Now with the increase in
reserved seats of women another issue is in the offing: issue of fielding
adequate number of able candidates for nomination. Till now the source of
participation of women in majority cases oscillated between intricate kinship
networking and stark clientelism. As a departure, the political parties now
can explore possibilities of picking up candidates from Self-Help Groups, a
force which has already acquired momentum in West Bengal.
A SHG member, irrespective of gender, acquires appropriate social
capital and imbibes an acumen in social bargaining through a process of
1) elaborate training ,
2) detailed and incessant exposure to external actors and
environment,
3) evolving through a culture of intra and inter-group symbiotic
relationship dotted with collaborative activities like decision
making and conducting of meetings
4) a capacity to earn and expend according to priority and choice
makes them an endowed personality.

Micro-level Performance

District Human development Report of North 24 Parganas observed

that "North 24 Parganas is a leading district in the formation and
development of SHG". Apart from one Zilla Parishad the district has 22
Panchayat Samities and 200 Gram Panchayats. Upto March 2010, 17173
SHGs were working under SGSY and of them 15283 (88.99%) were women
groups. The district can boast of another 12000 odd groups operating beyond
the scope of SGSY.
Scanning the results of the 2008 Panchayat General Election we find
that 5 SHG members have been elected in Zilla Parishad (8.77% of the total
seats) and 57 (9.93% of the total seats) in Panchayat Samity. One women
and one male SHG member have won from unreserved seats at the Zilla
Parishad tier while in Panchayat Samity level two women and ten male
SHG members come under this category. At the Panchayat Samity level
maximum number of SHG members was elected from Sandeshkhali-II,
Sandeshkhali-I and Hingalgunj Block. At Zilla Parishad level this credit
goes to Hasnabad Block. It is also evident that male SHG members have
been picked up for contesting elections in different blocks. The fundamental
malady of not nominating women members in the unreserved seats also
persists here despite the district's recording second highest female literacy
rate of 71.72% (overall literacy rate is 78.07%) in West Bengal.
 Gradual 'gendering of local democracy' is opening up a new vista in
the rural areas. Numerous Sitas are getting a chance to shape the rural
politics which previously was pegged on peasants and rural power cliques.
J,Dreze &Amartya Sen in 'India-Economic Development and Social
opportunity (1995)' opined that "It is not merely that more justice must be
received by women but also that social justice can be achieved through the
active agency of women…. The emancipation of women is an integral part
of social progress, not just a woman's issue.' The existent social patriarchy
and the party bureaucracy need to realise this and sooner they perceive this
brighter will be the smile of sitas!

_________________________X_________________________________

Data Source-
1) "Study on Elected Women Representatives in Panchayati Raj Institutions" Published in 2008 by
Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India
2) Election Results as published by 'The West Bengal State Election Commission"
3) 'Information on West Bengal Panchayats' Published by State Institute of Panchayats & Rural
Development'(SIPRD) .
4) Data on SHG from the monthly reports of DRDC North 24 Parganas.

Author, a member of West Bengal Civil Service, is currently posted in WBIDC. He is also a Guest
Faculty in Department of 'Rural Development and Management' Kalyani University West Bengal.