August 2006
India – Five-Year Cycle of Empowering Women's Leadership
Effective bottom-up strategies for ending hunger and poverty combine three factors: gender equality, mobilization for self-reliance, and strong local democracy through which people can meet their basic needs. In India, these come together in our Panchayati Raj Campaign.
“Panchayati raj” refers to India’s local democracy, based on elected local councils known as panchayats. The 73rd amendment to India’s constitution, passed in 1993, mandates local elections every five years and reserves one-third of all seats for women.
Beginning in 2000, The Hunger Project seized this historic opportunity. Our Panchayati Raj Campaign is a multi-pronged strategy that has, to date, empowered more than 50,000 elected women representatives to be effective change agents for the end of hunger in their villages. In each year of a woman leader’s term, we implement specific interventions to empower her to succeed.
When women, who have traditionally been denied a voice in decision-making, come to power, they transform the development agenda toward the human component — focusing on health, nutrition, education, water, sanitation and better family income. They tackle long-ignored problems such as domestic violence, alcoholism and corruption.
Courage in the Face of Subjugation
The Panchayati Raj Campaign is designed to catalyze a transformation
in deeply entrenched social conditions.
In the first years after passage of the 73rd amendment, many women were elected as proxies for their male relatives. Many women would not even attend panchayat meetings — sending a male in their place. If the women attended, they would remain silent, or be subject to harassment. Nearly 10 years later, the women that hold leadership positions in the panchayats are cracking down on village corruption and facing humiliation, abuse and violence.
Shyama Tomar, a panchayat leader in Madhya Pradesh, found that her water-scarce village was not getting financial remuneration from the supply of water to a hotel owned by a male colleague — the 60-year-old vice president on the same panchayat council. She discontinued the free supply of water to the hotel and stopped the corruption. In a backlash to her actions, Shyama was slapped and abused and her clothes were torn off in a public square. Although the attack forced her to take up residence in a nearby village, Shyama did not give up and plans to work for her full term. Under her courageous leadership, increased revenues from the sale of water to small businesses have resulted in improved roads and other facilities for her community.
In India, women — like Shyama — suffer some of the worst subjugation in the world. According to UNICEF, this subjugation is a direct cause of India’s high rates of child malnutrition.
Indian society still believes that only a son can take care of parents in old age, so the birth of a daughter is a sad occasion. Girls are breast-fed up to six weeks less than boys, in the hope that a mother may soon become pregnant again, this time with a son. Girls are taught to eat last and least — saving the best for men and boys. They are more often kept out of school to help with chores, take care of younger siblings, and work as laborers. Often married at the onset of puberty, girls begin having children before their own bodies are fully developed.
Women have almost no autonomous selfhood. Many have never been called by name — they are a daughter, a sister, a wife or a mother. They are often confined to their household, and are not permitted to go out in public, or participate in public life except with a male relative.
However, effective women leaders like Shyama are showing that when women are in positions of power, they can transform their villages for the better. It is in this context that our strategy is under way!
Year 1 — Stepping
Forth As Leaders
In the first year after election, women participate in a three-day Women’s Leadership Workshop that (a) awakens women to their selfhood and human rights, (b) educates them about their powers and responsibilities as panchayat leaders, (c) builds their capacity to create a vision and plan actions to achieve it, and (d) links them with government and other resource people in their area. This is reinforced three months later in a follow-up workshop and through needs-based workshops that women request to strengthen their skills in communication, finances, and knowledge of laws and government programs.
Women leaders are trained to organize the women of their villages into self-help groups (SHGs) for mutual support and economic activity. SHGs become a constituency to stand with the elected leader for women’s priorities. The SHGs are mobilized to attend mandatory open meetings known as gram sabhas, where they can hold panchayats to account. They are empowered to meet beforehand to prepare a clear list of priorities.
Year 2 — Leadership for
Development
In year two, we work with panchayats to create bottom-up plans (or “microplans”) for villages to meet basic needs. These plans are not a wish list; bottom-up planning means assessing available resources and creating strategies for actions that people can take themselves. When resources from local government are required, such as for improving schools or health clinics, planning includes establishing good partnerships with local officials.
During year two, there are additional capacity-building workshops for elected women leaders, particularly about government programs. We take additional action to mobilize women to participate in the gram sabhas, in which panchayat plans and budgets must be approved.
Year 3 — Creating
Federations for a Greater Voice
As villages take action, they inevitably run up against bureaucratic obstacles. The best way to overcome these obstacles — and to sustain villages’ process of empowerment on their own — is to form federations of elected women representatives. These are formed at the block (100+ villages), district and state levels. Block-level federations are able to provide regular monthly forums for mutual support, and state federations are able to rally massive numbers of elected women annually to demand change at the policy level.
Year 4 — Changing Policies/Delivering Results
By year four, with plans and federations in
place, The Hunger Project focuses on ensuring that panchayats have
successfully implemented their plans and that lives have truly
improved on a sustainable basis. In addition, where leaders have run
up against major legal obstacles, this is a year when women are
powerful enough to demand policy changes and sometimes even
engage in public-interest litigation. For example, in Bihar
in 2004, The Hunger Project mobilized 2,000 women to protest the
failure of the state government to implement key provisions of the
73rd amendment, and then followed up with successful litigation for
change.
Year 5 — Increasing
Women’s Participation in Elections
In the run-up to elections, The Hunger Project carries out massive campaigns to encourage the participation of women both as independently minded voters and as candidates. As the reserved seats rotate to different areas each term, new women are encouraged to step forward to run for those seats. In addition, women who have already served are encouraged to stand for reelection against men in unreserved seats. According to a recent poll of elected women we’ve trained in the state of Assam, fully 70 percent plan to run for reelection — an extraordinarily courageous step! In the state of Karnataka, this has resulted in the percentage of women in panchayats totaling as much as 43 percent!
Implementation via
Partnership
Hunger Project partners meet in Bhopal, July 2006.
India is enormously diverse — with 16 official languages and
hundreds of dialects. In addition, since the Freedom Movement days
of Mahatma Gandhi, India has been blessed with the existence of more
than 35,000 local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with highly
committed leadership.
To implement the Panchayati Raj Campaign, The Hunger Project has formed partnerships with 90 of the best of these local NGOs across 14 states of India. Hunger Project state and national staff have trained more than 800 staff trainers of these organizations to lead the Women’s Leadership Workshop and provide ongoing empowerment to women leaders. These organizations make up a national alliance that advocates for change at the state and national levels.
There Is More to It!
In addition to capacity-building and advocacy, The Hunger Project mobilizes the power of the media to transform public attitudes to support women in panchayati raj — including awarding the prestigious Sarojini Naidu Prize. We also provide advanced training to key women leaders through our Aagaz Academy. Details are on our Web site — www.thp.org/india.
Three of the staff members of NEST, our partner organization in the state of Assam.
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PHILANTHROPY IN
ACTION
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Why Am I a Leader?By Mimi Evans, Director of Philanthropy I have been privileged to meet Hunger Project investors from Maine to Florida to California, and each person has a unique story of her or his first involvement with The Hunger Project. It’s not the usual tale, as in, “Well, I just decided to support The Hunger Project.” It’s always a story with a coincidence or a life change or a personal connection. That’s partly because Hunger Project investors are eager to talk about the transformational strategies that make The Hunger Project the organization it is. While traveling by bus from Portsmouth, N.H., to Logan Airport in Boston, Trudy Anderson, one of our New England investors, sat beside a gentleman with whom she chatted and shared a poem during the hour-long trip. As the bus arrived in Boston, a woman sitting in the seat ahead turned and said, “I enjoyed your conversation, and I loved your poem.” The woman handed her card to Trudy and continued, “I’d like to get together with you for coffee and talk some more.” Trudy’s poem, below, is one she wrote while in Ethiopia in February with a group of Hunger Project investors.
You never know whose life you will touch today if you just be yourself. We are all connected, from Boston to Ethiopia, as Trudy found out.
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Hunger Project investor Trudy Anderson with an African Woman Food Farmer Initiative partner in Ethiopia. |
How
can it be