The Hindu : Empower the panel

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Saturday, May 03, 2003

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Empower the panel

By Mythily Sivaraman

Tamil Nadu should shed the dubious distinction of being the only State in the south that does not have a statutorily constituted, autonomous women's commission.

THIRTEEN WOMEN'S organisations in Tamil Nadu wrote an anguished letter to the Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, in July 1993. They spoke of their crushed hope — the hope that the State's women would be strengthened by the creation of a commission that would be a "statutory and autonomous body with adequate powers to act as the watchdog of women's rights". What was created then turned out to be "an appendage of the Government to serve in a purely advisory capacity". The letter cited the State Commissions for Women (SCW) set up by the Governments of West Bengal and Kerala, among others, through a law enacted in the State Assembly, and not by a mere Government Order as happened in Tamil Nadu. And the one-year term for the Tamil Nadu SCW members had virtually turned it into an "advisory committee attached to the Department of Social Welfare". Without mincing words, the letter identified the implication of such a move: "Obviously, the Government does not desire the Commission to perform any substantial function or initiate any form of transformation of the status of women in the State".

The reason for quoting a decade-old letter in detail is that the critique by the organisations that the Government had chosen to "totally ignore the considerable experience and insights built up by the women's organisations over the years" persists to this day. Even consultations with the bureaucracy are routine off-and-on exercises, more symbolic in intent. Such a casual approach betrays lack of awareness of the very considerable progress made in achieving gender sensitisation in policy-making, nationally and internationally, especially from the 1970s, and of the crucial role played by the women's movement in the country in critically guiding Government policies. Every policy document of the Indian Government on gender issues — such as the draft Country Paper for Beijing (1995) — has been bettered/countered by an alternative document by the women's organisations. Politicians at the helm of public affairs also need to be reminded of the vital and sustained role played by the women's movement in bringing to life a reasonably empowered National Commission for Women (NCW), though it does not enjoy a constitutional status such as the SC/ST Commission.

The All-India Democratic Women's Association, for instance, had taken a firm stand that the NCW was to be "a commission with statutory powers, or no commission at all, because women in this country have been at the receiving end of too much empty rhetoric... " and cited the colossal waste of human effort and resources in making excellent proposals in a continuous stream without powers to realise them. Thus the NCW, first recommended by the 1975 Commission on the Status of Women, finally came to be through the NCW Act adopted 15 years later under the National Front Government after a long process of dialogue and consultation with women's organisations. The members of the NCW have to be drawn from streams such as law, industry, trade unions, economic development, health, education and women's organisations. The Tamil Nadu SCW, on the other hand, was to be chaired by a retired judge and included women IAS and IPS officers, a prominent social worker, principal of an educational institution and a woman lawyer. The thrust was thus legalistic, steering clear of the women's movement, betraying a suspicion of organised and socially aware sections of the public. The choice of an educationist with impressive accomplishments as chairperson a year ago was, however, welcomed widely. The NCW's functions are elaborate — and include monitoring the working of constitutional safeguards, reviewing laws and making recommendations, advising the Government on socio-economic development, evaluating women's progress and even funding litigation involving large numbers of women.

Had the Tamil Nadu SCW been given such powers, the case of 18 tribal women raped in Vachchathi 11 years ago, white-washed by the then AIADMK Government, would not, in all probability, have still been hanging fire. Though the Tamil Nadu SCW may well claim to have many of the objectives of the national Commission, it is bereft of the powers needed to realise them. The aforementioned letter by women's organisations drew attention, in particular, to the SCW's lack of powers of a civil court — that the NCW and several other SCWs enjoy — to summon a person before it, call for public records and take suo motu notice of matters inimical to women's interests.

If the present Tamil Nadu Government believes that empowerment is something more than reaching credit to self-help groups, it should soon shed the dubious distinction of being the only State in the south that does not have a statutorily constituted, autonomous women's commission that not merely "looks into complaints", but can take suo motu notice of deprivation of rights or non-implementation of laws and has all the powers of a civil court; Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have such commissions. Among other things, they have the power to summon witnesses and demand production of documents. The Tamil Nadu SCW has no such powers — it does not even have the financial allocation needed for independent functioning. Soon after the present Government was formed in 2001, several women's organisations met Ms. Jayalalithaa and gave her a memorandum of demands, among which empowering the SCW was the foremost. But, to no avail. The Tamil Nadu SCW should be given the tasks of participating in and advising the planning process of socio-economic development of women and of evaluating the progress of women's development in the State — tasks that would give it a role in policy formulation. The other State Acts make their intention clear: "The Government shall consult the Commission on all major policy matters relating to women."

The issue of autonomy is critical if women's rights are to be protected from abuse by the State itself. Vina Mazumdar and Lotika Sarkar, feminist scholars and doyens of women's movement, have emphasised that one of the primary objectives of the Commission ought to be to "restore respect for and re-establishment of people's faith in law as an instrument of social change".

It appears that issues of women's rights have but a modest place in the State's political dispensation — gaining some symbolic attention now and then — as reflected in the fact that no memorandum has so far been presented to the Assembly on action taken by the Government on the Commission's annual reports; the G.O. that gave birth to the commission specifically enjoins the Government to do this, along with providing reasons wherever the recommendations are not accepted. The successive Governments of Tamil Nadu have chosen to play safe, putting their own interests above those of women's rights. In the middle of its last term, the DMK Government issued a G.O. stating that statutory status for the Tamil Nadu SCW was accepted at policy level, but then left it to gather dust!

Now is the time to make a decisive break with the past and publicly acknowledge that women's dignity and rights should take precedence over petty partisan interests. Totally restructuring the State SCW during the current session of the Assembly is a vital chance to empower the Commission so that it can, in turn, empower the women of Tamil Nadu.

(The writer is the National Vice-Chairperson of the All-India Democratic Women's Association.)

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