Govt prepares to battle sexism in panchayati raj

MUMBAI: A couple of months ago, Sumitra Kanhat, a deputy sarpanch in Dolari Khurd village of Thane district, was roughed up by goons and later voted out of office. The reason: She had taken the lead in fighting corruption in the panchayat. Ms Kanhat isn’t alone in her ordeal.
Hundreds of women sarpanches are routinely discriminated against by men in village bodies and voted out of office through no-confidence motions.This has prompted the Maharashtra government to frame an ordinance to provide more protection to elected women in rural areas.
The ordinance, which will be issued shortly,will make a threefourths majority necessary for women to be voted out. At present, they can be voted out through a simple majority.
The introduction of reservations for women in December 1992 led to many becoming sarpanches, often to the chagrin of village men. “Women sarpanches rouse the ire of men, especially when the women scrutinise revenue records or seek to expose corruption,’’ said Nirmala Samant Prabhavalkar, chairperson of the State Women’s Commission.
Sangli collector Manisha Mhaiskar said men are loath to accept the fact that women have moved out of their shadow. “When reservations were introduced, men acted as a proxy for women members,’’ she said. But now, she said, women are proving to be as good as men in governance at the zilla parishad and municipal levels. “This is irking men,’’ she said.
Ms Mhaiskar spoke of a couple who had come to see her when she was commissioner of the Amravati Municipal Corporation. The man did all the talking, even though the wife was the corporator. The woman had taken over from her husband after his ward was reserved for women. “Four years later, the woman had blossomed into an excellent corporator,’’ Ms Mhaiskar said. “Her husband waslooking after the house.’’
There is a consensus that women representatives have come into their own. “My interaction with them shows they are in no way inferior to men,’’ said Sneha Palnitkar, the director of the Institute of Local Self-Government.
Muzaffar Husain, deputy mayor of the Mira-Bhayandar Municipal Corporation, said, “Women corporators can no longer be treated as rubber stamps.Many work effectively, especially in their second term.’’
Women are asserting themselves in local selfgovernment following the introduction of reservations in 1992 State is framing an ordinance to protect elected women
According to the ordinance, a three-fourths majority, and not a simple one, would be needed to vote women out of power.