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अनुसूचित जाती जनजाति नेत्रित्व का सशक्तिकरण |
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| Empowering SC/ST Leadership | | Rationale: | The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs/STs) communities have been traditionally deprived of the developmental resources entitled for them. Since Independence, variety of initiatives have been undertaken to build their capacities and mainstream them in the social and political system. But unfortunately results are far from what has been envisaged. Building leadership of the SC/ST communities in local governance institutions is one of them. | | | The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts (CAAs) provided an opportunity for mainstreaming of SCs/STs in political, social and economic decision-making process. Article 243(D) makes provision for reservation of SCs and STs in every panchayat in proportion to the population in that area. Such seats will be filled by direct election and shall be allotted by rotation to different constituencies. After almost 16 years of these Constitutional provisions, it has been noticed that except a few encouraging results in small pockets, SC and ST leaders still have to overcome from the social barriers and system to perform in the interest of their community. They are still deprived of their powers as elected representatives, and even now they are not allowed by the upper castes to sit and chair the proceedings of the panchayats. A number of no confidence motions against them are also one of the consequences of their social exclusion. For women belonging to these communities, it is dual oppression; especially when they try to assert their leadership they face incidences of sexual violence. | | | Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are the old locations of the PRIA’s project activities. Last year efforts were made to organise elected representatives (ERs) of SC/ST communities. Capacity building initiatives were undertaken after assessing the needs and requirements of the representatives. Similarly different networking initiatives were undertaken for ERs and civil society groups. The initiatives taken in last year showed that the participation of ERs from the SCs/STs had been nominal or by proxy and they were not able to articulate group-specific interests or exercise their own judgement in decision making. A number of them were stoically dependent on the elite of the village and remained answerable to them. Both male and female ERs, being undereducated and inexperienced, were often not allowed to carry out their mandate. The insensitivity, indifference, vested interests, abusive language and non-cooperation of other elected representatives, functionaries and officials constrained the ability of many of these elected representatives to perform better. | | | The present project is built on the premise that “Democratic Participation if viewed just in the context of political democratic participation is meaningless, unless it percolates down to social democracy and economic democracy”. The project will make an effort to build the leadership of SC/ST leaders in local governments. The states where the next local government elections are due, i.e. in 2009--10 will be targeted for it. The project will also address the issue of decision-making in governance institutions by mobilising and use of public resources for their community goods by these elected leaders. It aims to build a strong support mechanism for SC/ST leaders so that they can perform effectively in local governments. It has been noticed that there are different types of CSO networks operating for Dalit and tribal rights, but unfortunately there has been no organised leadership at present among these networks which can take up the issue of capacity building of SC/ST ERs in panchayats and municipalities. The project will make an effort to bring all the networks together on one platform to work on grassroots-level leadership of these communities. | The locations proposed in the project are based on two criteria: a) Earlier work done by PRIA on the issues; b) New locations will have local government elections in the coming phase, which will help in making SC/ST leadership an issue in the forthcoming local self-government elections. | It is imperative that project should work on locations with sizable SC/ST population, where PRIA has past presence, experience on similar issues and an association with civil society organisations, as it is an exploratory project. The project proposes to work on tribal leadership in Korba in Chhattisgarh, while work on strengthening SC leadership would be done in Pulwari Sharif, Patna (Bihar). In Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh where local self-government elections are due in 2009--10, the project activities will be in campaign mode. | The project will pursue PRIA’s strategic standing on enabling, valuing and institutionalising participation, empowerment and decision-making by SC and SC leaders in the overall developmental process. It has the potential synergies with other initiatives of PRIA such as Deepening Devolution and Mobilising Demand for Devolution. | | Project Goal: | •Schedule Cast /Schedule Tribe leaders in local self governance accessing and utilizing developmental resources for the community. | | Project Purpose: | | •Strengthening the leadership among Schedule Casts /Schedule Tribes in panchayat and municipality with especial focus on women. | | Project Locations: | | State | District | Block/Municipality | | Bihar | Patna | Pulwari Sharif | | Chhattisgarh | Korba | | Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand | The project activities will be in campaign mode | | |
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| Women's Political Empowerment and Leadership | | Rationale: | The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments have accorded Indian women a scope for political representation. Despite such provisions, most of them face constraints in pursuing a political career due to various personal, social and institutional reasons. They are generally asked to contest because the seat is reserved for a woman candidate. In reality, they receive little support in exercising their mandate, which demotivates them to participate politically. The sustainability and legitimacy of the local governance structures depends on the capacities of the women, but one finds that women are unable to play an active role in governance and get confined to taking part in only the electoral processes, if at all. Gendered identities and practices limit their capacities to articulate and act upon their claims and concerns. | | | Given the present scenario, political representation in numbers alone cannot be a sufficient mechanism for women to exercise their agency. Years of discrimination have incapacitated them to articulate the priorities of their constituency and influence the decision-making. They need skills, knowledge and information to express their concerns and influence the decision-making processes as per their concerns. | | | PRIA’s familiarity with the constituency over the years, years of experience on panchayat leadership and strengthening of women collective---Nari Network in Haryana---would help in conducting the programme easily in Haryana. Innovative measures undertaken to address the need of women leaders, previous project on Rapid Literacy Programme in Govindgarh and Jhunjhunu provided a point of entry to these locations in Rajasthan. The mandate of 50 per cent reservation to women in panchayats and municipalities in Bihar gives a reason to strengthen the leadership of women more intensively in this state. Nurturing of women leadership by strengthening networks of elected representatives (ERs) and women collectives (e.g., SHGs) and citizen leaders, already established network of women in Gujarat, which needs to be strengthened more intensively. | | | It is expected that PRIA shall work in four states building upon the initiatives of the last year in terms of: | • Scaling up of project in terms of numbers. PRIA will include in the target group those who could not attend training programme due to constraints of family or other factors. However, those who were disqualified due to lack of skills will not be considered | • Using the women trained in the last programme as resource persons in training sessions, heading networks and making spaces for the new women to be engaged in a practical way in the networking building. | • Greater focus on capacity building within the field-level interventions as compared to structured interventions, which is a crucial learning from last year’s experience. | • PRIA will also take into account state-specific impact in the context of elections to be held. For example in Rajasthan, PRIA will support women to contest elections. In other states where elections have been held, PRIA will network with women to demand specific training needs from the government towards their growth and development. | • The strategy for the year will also cater to those women who have higher ambition and wish to contest elections beyond the local level. | | | This project is the extension of the last year’s Women Political Empowerment and Leadership (WPEL). PRIA’s past experience of its ongoing work with women leaders in the WPEL programme clearly indicate the key challenges that restrict women leaders to participate in the political processes of governance, either as elected leaders or as community leaders. | | | One of the most important learnings was to assess the methodology PRIA would now adopt in taking this process forward in reaching out to many more women. However, it is not just a reaching out and touching the lives of these women but more importantly having a positive impact on their future and their ambitions. This would imply: | a) Strengthening of the network of women leaders through sustained efforts at the field level, in order that women effectively get ground to practice and demonstrate their skills as change agents. | b) Engaging networks formed into issue-based campaigning that would not only help in mobilising the constituency before the next round of elections, but also help the aspiring politicians to become familiar faces actively involved in development issues. | c) Using a Campaign Mode of training for certain issues instead of a face to face training approach to cover greater numbers. | d) Ensuring the quality of the programme by getting women trained in smaller groups on issues like Gender, Personality Development, etc, so as to keep individuals and their specific needs within the training framework | | e) Reviewing the sites for this years programme in the context of scaling up and addition of new areas to the project. | | | PRIA is proposing a shift from its last year’s skill-building approach. This year PRIA plans to cover women in large numbers. The three-step campaign would have intensive coverage in the form of core women, who would be part of all the three exposure and floating women who might join only one or two steps in the campaigns. The steps of campaigns would be designed such that each campaign would be complete in its own, so that women attending any campaign would have impact that was intended for that level, though a woman attending all three steps would build on the key learnings desired in the project. This is one innovative method that PRIA proposes. | | | | Project Goal: | •Political empowerment of women leaders with potential leadership capacities in panchayat and municipal areas. | | Project Purpose: | •Enhancing skills and knowledge of women leaders for increased participation in political processes. | •Creating a coalition of institutional support base at local level to sustain efforts for women leadership. | | | Project Locations: | State | District | Block /Municipality | | Bihar | Jehanabad | | | Haryana | Mahendargarh | | | | Sonepat | | | Rajasthan | Jhunjhunu | Narnaul | | | Govindgarh | | | Chhattisgarh | Korba | | | |
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