The Hunger Project's Work in Gujarat

 

Districts where we work

Amreli, Anand, Banaskantha, Bhavnagar, Dohad, Kachchh, Panch Mahals, Patan,

Rajkot, Sabar Kantha, Surat, Surendranagar

Blocks where we work

Bhuj, Dahod, Dhanpur, Ghogha, Talaja, Mahuva, Sojitra, Tarapur, Khamba, Khambhat,

Amreli, Nakhatrana, Morvahadaf, Santrampur, Patan, Santalpur, Halvad, Dhrangadhra

Nizar, Bardoli, Talod, Modasa, Bhiloda, Jasdan, Maliya

Covering 440 Gram Panchayats

Brief Background

The Hunger Project had withdrawn from the state of Gujarat in the year 2004, but started its intervention again as a resource agency in August 2006 on the invitation by a state-wide network in Gujarat: Mahila Swaraj Abhiyan (MSA). The MSA is a network of over 40 organisations working on women and Panchayati Raj. The Hunger Project team visited the network members for a two-day consultation meeting and started work in the month of September 2006. As this was the period when Gujarat was beginning its preparations for the oncoming Panchayat elections in Dec 2006, a preliminary planning workshop was held in the month of August in Ahmedabad which was attended by 30 civil society organizations. A strategy was also developed for the Pre-election campaign.

Women’s Leadership Workshops and Training of Trainers

As this is the first year after elections the partners in Gujarat are concentrating on Women’s Leadership Workshops (WLWs).

The Women’s Leadership Workshop’s of The Hunger Project are capacity building workshops. The workshop seeks to instill and facilitate:

• Creating an understanding of their identity as a political leader
• A shift from a mindset of I cannot to I can
• Critically analyzing social systems and its effect on their own realities: hierarchies of class, caste, religion, gender and so on.
• Understanding political and social citizenship
• Understanding their  role in local governance as stated under the 73^rd amendment
• Articulation of a vision for their communities and themselves
• Emphasis on the importance of the participation of women in regular Panchayat meetings and Gram Sabhas (General Body Meetings)
• Skills to be effective leaders
• Creation of a sense of solidarity amongst themselves (elected women leaders)

12 Women’s Leadership workshops have been organized so far where 263 elected women leaders have participated.

Nettritva Mela (Leadership Convention)

A Nettritva Mela (Leadership Convention) was organized in the month of October where women leaders who had undergone Women’s Leadership Workshops together came to plan and strategize their work for the coming four years.

During these two days, parallel sessions were organized to enable further learning and understanding of issues. The issues identified were:

• The Right to Information Act
• Domestic Violence Act
• Property rights for women
• National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

Resource persons from Gujarat and other states had been invited to conduct these parallel sessions.

Elected women leaders working with Mahila Rajsatta Andolan (MRA), Maharashtra, a partner of The Hunger Project had also been invited come to share their challenges and experiences as elected leaders. This helped women leaders of Bhuj to relate to issues and concerns of faced by women leaders from a neighboring state. There was also an interface organized with the Maharashtra and Gujarat women.

The media played an important role and interviewed the women leaders. All the local newspapers covered event as well as highlighted The Hunger Project’s work and its experience in training women leaders across 13 states in the country.

Overall the programme enabled the women leaders to gain an insight that this was the beginning of their hard work for the coming four years. Another significant understanding the women leaders left with was that experiences gained and learnt through the Women’s Leadership Workshops would come in use in the coming years in order for them to build their dream Panchayats.

Leading up to the Elections

Strengthening Women’s Empowerment in Electoral Processes (SWEEP)  
The SWEEP strategy was developed in consultation with all the member organizations of the MSA network. The main goals set for SWEEP in Gujarat were:

• Eliciting active involvement of women and other marginalized communities in the entire election process.
• Ensuring a healthy election process
• Voter awareness for identifying the right candidate.
• Educating the general public on correct voter behavior.
• Educating the candidates as well as the general public on the rules and regulations for candidate behavior

Areas of Intervention

The entire state was divided into five zones for effective implementation and 86 organisations were involved in the process. 

The campaign successfully covered 18 districts, 58 talukas (blocks) and 1934 villages.

As a strategy five regional workshops were organized to help facilitate in preparing the organizational action plans for the campaign. A total of 84 information centers operated for the duration of the campaign. A core group to steer the election campaign and facilitate important decision-making was also formed.

As a part of the entire process Panchayat Vigilance Committees were also formed. The committees had a mandate to ensure that the elections were held fairly and to investigate and report any incidence of violence or intimidation against women candidates and/or their families.

Advocacy issues that were identified were implementation of two child norm and samras gram Panchayat scheme.

The main focus of the SWEEP campaign was to create an encouraging environment for women to participate in the election process as both voters as well as candidates. This was facilitated by organizing:

• Street plays on voter awareness
• Posters
• Creation of Audio cassettes with songs encouraging women to participate in

training programs for women and field workers

• Setting up of Panchayat Information centers
• separate trainings for Self-Help Group women
• trainers and NGO members for filing nomination forms
• Youth groups involved in activating the election process.

The outcome of the programmes reflected to a great extent in selection of the right candidate, number of women filing nomination increased, more women participated from the general seat, and women who did not win, got motivated and gained in confidence and started participating in the Gram Sabhas. The total number of seats reserved for women in the coverage area is 623 and a total of 76 women who contested from unreserved seats won the election.

Samras – Selecting leaders unanimously

An Undemocratic Process

The Government of Gujarat announced the “Samras Yojana” that encourages nominating representatives to the village Panchayats through consensus in the pretext of creating a positive environment for development in the villages. Under this scheme financial and other developmental incentives are given by the State Government to the villages, which elect the entire Panchayat body unanimously. This scheme was introduced in the early 1990s. The incentive provided under the scheme however has been increased over the years and has gone up to 2.5 lacs depending on the village population. Before the election, the concept of Samras was very intensely advocated. The lure of enhancement of funds and the campaign by the government for Samaras Yojana resulted in declaring approximately 30% of the Panchayats in the State as Samras Panchayats.

Reality, however, is that far from ushering in peace and development in the villages, the scheme in fact, counteracts the democratic values as consensus is arrived at without the participation of women and other marginalized groups of the village community. The operation of the scheme has made a mockery of the democratic and electoral system with the open “auction” of Panchayat posts and bodies; desirous and deserving candidates are forced to opt out of the elections; they and their families are threatened and put under tremendous pressure.  

Providing incentives to have no elections is also a violation of the constitutionally mandated right to political participation. Moreover, incentives of financial and developmental benefits to the Samras villages discriminate against villages that opt for the electoral process for identifying their representatives, which is perfectly legal and does not violate any laws. The Samras scheme is essentially a strategy of the political parties to conjure up their vote bank and ensure that the administrative power is in the hands of people owing allegiance to their particular political party.

THP decided to undertake a study to understand the implications of a scheme like Samras. The purpose is to study the ground realities that facilitated Samras, to document the experiences of people and villages under the scheme and to understand the strategies adopted to promote Samras.

The Study is expected to be complete by the month of December 2007. 

Monghiben Bathvar of Village: Nanimordi, Block Chotila, District Surendranager was elected as Sarpanch in 2001 and had worked hard for the development of her village. Moreover, she was the President of District Panchayat Mahila Manch supported by Mahila Swaraj Abhiyan. When elections were announced in 2006, her Panchayat was again, declared as reserved for a women Sarpanch (President). However, the villagers wanted to go for a Samras Panchayat, as in order to benefit from the cash incentive promoted by the State Government. Monghiben felt that the village should not opt for Samras and decided to file her nomination. Monghiben had a dream to make an all Women Panchayat and for that she had arranged ward-wise meetings and started identifying women to become her panel members. 

Monghiben had decided that she would file her papers on the last nominated day for filing in order to stop the village from electing for Samras. She asked the vigilance committee member (organized by The Hunger Project and its partner organization) to come to the Taluka (District) Panchayat and help her file her papers. However, on the second last day for filing applications for contesting elections the villagers called a meeting and decided to declare the village as Samras. She called the vigilance committee member at midnight and asked him not to come to the Taluka Panchayat.

Early the next day, the member went to her village to look into the matter, talk to her and prepare her to file the papers. She flatly refused. The same day around noon, a team of State vigilance committee members who were in the region went to her house and tried to convince her. While members of her community also agreed that they had been cheated by this decision, nobody came to propose her name to contest the election. Finally, she said that she was now personally frightened to file her papers, as her son who lived in Baroda had threatened to commit suicide if she contested. She declared that this was the true reason for her withdrawal.

Since this was a general seat reserved for women, the college going daughter of the local policeman of the village, who did not reside in the village, was selected as Sarpanch. This was the way the debt to the policeman who had served the village for years could be re-paid was the reason given by the villagers for their decision.

Our Partners

Mahila Swaraj Abhiyan:

The Mahila Swaraj Ahiyan (MSA) is a registered network of 40 member organizations of Gujarat committed to the cause of women’s empowerment. The mission of the network is to address broader concerns of the women’s movement in Gujarat by nurturing gender sensitive local women’s leadership in self-governance.

The main focus of the network has been advocacy and campaign, research and documentation, direct intervention programmes, communication material development, capacity building and networking. One innovative intervention has been the formation of district level platforms or ‘Manches’. These ‘manches’ whose membership consists of elected women representatives, act as tools of advocacy on the issues raised by the elected women leaders at a district and state level.

Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan

Kutch Mahila Vikas Sanghatan’s (KMVS) overarching mission is the total empowerment of rural women through their conscientisation, organization, and mobilization into local collectives capable of independently addressing gender inequities in the development process. Founded in 1989, KMVS has grown from a three person venture into an organization of 40 staff members and 7000 rural members spread over 4 blocks and 150 villages. KMVS has a multiple yet integrated foci on handicrafts, credit, health, education, natural resource management, domestic violence, and capacity building of Mahila Sarpanches in Local self- government institutions.

Link to our history in Gujarat