Date:05/09/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/09/05/stories/2006090501670500.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

`Brave politicians' share ideas

Staff Reporter

Women panchayat members narrate their struggle at a workshop

EMPOWERING WOMEN: Devaki Jain (standing), trustee of Singamma Sreenivasan Foundation, explaining a point to Mani Shankar Aiyar, Union Minister for Panchayati Raj, Youth Affairs and Sports, at the convention of elected women representatives from Panch ayati Raj institutions, organised by the foundation, in Bangalore on Monday. At left is Sayeeda Hamid, Member of Planning Commission. — Photo: K. Murali Kumar

BANGALORE: The statistics are impressive: 67 per cent of the Scheduled Castes-Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) elected representatives in the State's Panchayati Raj institutions are women. And though the reservation for women is 33 per cent, in Karnataka they constitute 43 per cent.

At an interaction with women panchayat members organised by the Singamma Sreenivasan Foundation here on Monday, Union Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said the question no longer was whether women in these panchayats could deliver. But whether they felt empowered.

Aruna Kannur, a woman member of Dasarahalli Gram Panchayat on the outskirts of Bangalore, has had a college education, and seems an unlikely candidate for contesting panchayat elections. Yet, she did and won, and it has been a struggle to get funds released for her projects from the panchayat.

After she went ahead and tried to reclaim some government land for a park, she was told funds could not be released since the other members had not signed the proposal. Legislators' plans and men's ideas get approved fast, but her wish to provide a solid waste management system is finding no takers.

Mr. Aiyar, who had received a letter from Ms. Aruna earlier, asked her to share its contents with the delegates. "Politics needs people like you, so the best way you can thank me is to become an MLA and interfere benignly in the panchayat," he told her.

Several women from Bijapur, Koppal and Chamarajnagar, where the Foundation works, shared their experience as panchayat members. There were many success stories, and many were articulate on subjects such as gender budgeting, health care and even road-cutting.

Ratnamma of Chamarajnagar spoke of how difficult it was for women to be in the system. Although not a panchayat member, she and fellow sangha members took up the challenge of repairing an 800-metre road in the village after the Deputy Commissioner awarded them the contract. People jeered, and tried to talk them out of doing it, but women went ahead and finished the work. But more than a year later, they had not received payment, since there was no record of their being given the contract. Mr. Aiyar asked the Principal Secretary to the Government, Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, M.R. Srinivasamurthy, to explain to the gathering the institutional mechanisms that could ensure that such things were avoided. Mr. Murthy said it was important to put down everything in writing, and take photographs of the progress at several stages, and now there was recourse to the Right to Information Act. The former High Commissioner to South Africa and member of the Planning Commission, L.C. Jain, suggested that the Act should be a duty as far as disclosure by officials was concerned. Devaki Jain of the Singamma Sreenivasan Foundation and Planning Commission Member Sayeeda Hamid were present.