Spotlight
New Delhi, 7
September 2020
Panchayati Raj &COVID-19
RELEVANCE MUST BE ENHANCED
By Moin Qazi
The COVID-19 pandemic
has taken a massive toll on the economy: broken supply chains, record unemployment,
failing small businesses. Much the same way it is affecting people with
pre-existing health conditions more strongly, so is the pandemic-triggered
economic crisis exposing vulnerable communities to greater distress. COVID-19
has magnified the existing inequality, and an effective response will require
solidarity and partnership. The crisis is a stress-test of our ability to
cooperate, learn and adapt in the face of deep uncertainties and rising risks.
The experience of
development practitioners in handling such crisis informs them that community-driven
development (CDD) programmes, which encourage people to design their own
solutions, can be a critical part of the response to the COVID-19 crisis. We
need an equitable, whole-of-society approach to tackle a crisis of this
magnitude and scale. CDD programmes are usually driven by such approaches.
During a crisis of
the covid type, local governments are normally flooded with demands that cannot
be met with their limited resources. In this context, CDD programmes can play a
critical role in providing consensus-driven support to prioritise and optimise
the resources.
We also need multiple
interventions across sectors to address the different dimensions of the crisis.
CDD programmes often complement traditional safety net systems by delivering
cash and in-kind transfers as well as basic services such as water and
sanitation. They do so through participation from communities, people’s
representatives, and local governments
Prime Minister
Narendra Modi had also emphasised that the pandemic has taught us that we need
to be self-sufficient. “It has taught us that we have to be self-reliant and
self-sufficient. It has taught us that we should not look for solutions outside
the country. This is the biggest lesson we have learnt. Every village has to be
self-sufficient enough to provide for its basic needs. Similarly, every
district has to be self-sufficient at its level, every State has to be
self-reliant at its level and the whole country has to be self-reliant at its
level,” he said while interacting with heads of gram panchayats (village
councils) through video conferencing on the National Panchayati Raj Day on
April 24.
India has a huge
social capital of empowered women belonging to self-help groups many of whom
form the backbone of the grassroots leadership of Panchayat Raj Institutions.
These women are already in the forefront of relief work and are producing face
masks and other protective gear for both the people and corona warriors. With a
huge reverse migration of populations to villages, these women leaders can play
a vital role in transitioning these communities through this extraordinary
challenge.
In 1993, India
introduced the Panchayati Raj (Village Government) Act, mandating a three-tiered
structure of local governance at the village, block and district levels with
reservation of one-third of all posts in gram panchayats - village councils at
the bottom tier of India’s decentralised governance system - for women. The
vision was that these female-headed councils would bring greater transparency
and better governance in their villages. It revitalised an age-old system of
rural local government whose name “panchayat” is drawn from the Sanskrit for
“council of five wise men”.
The introduction of
the Panchayati Raj, and the strong space for women which it provides, has
dramatically increased the political representation of women at the local
government level and spurred one of the greatest successes globally for women’s
empowerment and grass-roots democracy. The hope was that such a quota system,
beyond its immediate impact on gender balance among leaders, will have
long-term effects on women’s status in society by changing perceptions of their
leadership capabilities and shaping beliefs about what they can achieve.
Through years of
exposure and several new official policies later, most elected women now don’t
seem to be tokens. Women, especially those from the “untouchable” community,
are slowly able to use the affirmative action quotas to attain power that would
once have been unthinkable. They tend to be better educated and more
knowledgeable than the average woman in their districts. When these seats are
coupled with new skills from public speaking to budget management, they are
better prepared to negotiate within the political space that has opened for
them.
The experience in the
electoral office has also created a pipeline of diverse people who have gained
representational experience and are able to better represent the needs of
people. These women have slowly learned to climb the greasy pole of politics
and are actively exploring all the options available to them as citizens of a
democracy. Some of the ways in which women are changing governance are evident
in the issues they choose to tackle: water, alcohol abuse, education, health
and domestic violence.
At the functional
level, politics aims at maintaining law and order in society, resolving
conflicts, achieving justice, and providing good living conditions for all.
Against this background, is there a nobler activity and profession than
politics? However, we all know how murky
politics has become over time. But these women are using this opportunity to
make politics benign.
While several
voluntary organisations and government agencies have been playing a critical
role in building capacities of women to improve rural governance, there is
scope for incorporating best practices gleaned through insights from some of
the more successful villages. In these villages, organisations have been able
to build women’s perspectives in the context of development and decentralised
planning, enabling women to get a sense of enhanced agency so that they can
claim influential space in the political, economic, and cultural systems.
Women have become
problem solvers and change-makers who are mentoring and successfully
transferring learning, strategies, and replication of innovation to other
contexts and across high-impact sectors. They are able to influence and change
government policy from “inside the system, creating a micro-macro” balance.
This has made leaders and institutions accountable, thereby promoting equity
and inclusion, and making the government sensitive and transparent.
In some of the
progressive and so-called “smart” villages, women groups have been equipped
with technological skills, training that has enabled them to design, build,
operate, and maintain water and sanitation systems. Once they gain experience,
women handle service contracts for building storage tanks, toilets, stormwater
drains, and drainage lines. Thus several new livelihood avenues are becoming
available to local women. Rural women are the human face of poverty and
development. They toil on their farms but lack access to land titles and are,
therefore, not recognised as farmers. This, in turn, denies them access to
finance, state entitlements, training technology, and markets. This needs to
change.
In several dry areas,
women are reviving the traditional knowledge and skills of local ecology-based
farming. Multiple crops are grown to cope with the caprices of climate and
boost, soil fertility, nutritional security, farm biodiversity, and income
viability. Several gram panchayats are building a cadre of “seed guardians” and
“seed mothers”. Empowering women farmers to manage their own seed enterprises
is enabling them to become decision-makers in the community.
India’s experience
demonstrates that putting women in leadership positions can catalyse the change
process. Although the first generation of women leaders had to cope with
entrenched mores and traditions that left them locked into purely domestic
roles, their successors have convinced the Indian masses of a woman’s ability
and potential to lead. The COVID-19 crisis and its handling at the panchayat
level will be another test of their leadership. ---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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