Unquiet waters

Amid the picturesque backwaters of Kerala lies the village of Mohamma which serves as a model for women's participation in decentralised governance and planning. AMMU JOSEPH writes on Jalaja Chandran, whose success highlights the potential of women's participation in self-governance.

KUMARAKOM in central Kerala, with its expansive Vembanad Lake and winding waterways fringed with coconut palms, is now known primarily as a picturesque and popular tourist destination offering a variety of charming holiday resorts. But on the banks of the lake - dotted with functional vallams (canoes) for the locals and luxurious kettuvallams (houseboats) for the tourists - is a small place called Mohamma which is becoming known for quite a different kind of development.

The grama panchayat office at Mohamma is a beehive of activity, teeming with citizens staking their claims on local development. Women are conspicuous by their presence. The open door of the panchayat president's office reveals a young woman in the chair behind the desk. Her eyes sparkle in a striking, animated face and she greets visitors with smiling confidence, enquiring after their families, answering their queries, clearing their doubts and attending to their business with commendable dispatch.

Jalaja Chandran was 26-years-old when she became president of the Mohamma grama panchayat in 1995. Now 31, she is nearing the end of her obviously successful term as one of the 3,878 women elected to a village panchayat and the approximately 331 women elevated to the post of panchayat president in Kerala that year.

Recent reports in sections of the Malayalam press have hailed Mohamma as a model for women's participation in decentralised governance and planning. It has been singled out as a success story for its effective, full-scale utilisation of the public funds available for "women's development" to benefit different aspects of women's lives. These funds have been used to not only improve the productivity and working conditions of enterprises in which local women are already engaged - such as agriculture, horticulture, fish and coir work and the processing of marine mollusc shells - but also to provide training and facilities to enable women to take up new forms of economic activity, often with financial and practical help from public institutions.

In an area where every available bit of waterfront land has been grabbed for tourism development, the Mohamma panchayat has managed to secure approximately 50 cents of land which provides the local community - especially women, who form the majority of fish and shell workers - with access to the water bodies they depend on for their livelihood. In addition, a new building has been constructed on another piece of land to house the small industrial units newly set up by women's collectives. Funds have also been invested in the improvement of women's health, with particular attention being paid to occupational and mental health. A counselling centre attached to the primary health centre and a legal aid cell are two of the unusual community facilities provided by the panchayat that women are increasingly beginning to appreciate and use.

The panchayat president's initiative was obviously a key factor in many of these developments. Jalaja Chandran's story, in fact, highlights some of the peculiarities, pitfalls and potential of women's participation in local self-governance in Kerala. Insights gained from her experience may be useful in the context of ongoing attempts across the country to improve the effectiveness of women's political participation at the grassroots.

Jalaja enjoys the obvious advantages of being a daughter of the soil, not only born and brought up in Mohamma but continuing to live there after marriage. Her father worked in a rice mill and her mother was a coir-worker. Like most families of limited means in post-land reform Kerala, they own a house and a few cents of homestead land. Likewise, in common with many girls of her generation and socio-economic background in the State, she has reaped the benefits of higher education and is equipped with a university degree. More unusually, she has also gained from long years of involvement in politics at different levels. Although her parents were not politically active (she is not even sure they had any particular affiliation), Jalaja was fired even as a child with a desire "to do something for society," which led her to join the Bala Sangam (children's organisation) of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). She graduated to the Student Federation of India (SFI) and thence to the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA). She became a member of the CPI(M) after her marriage (of choice) to a fellow political activist who is currently a member of the party's local area committee. It is not surprising that the party selected her as their local candidate for the GP elections.

Another uncommon advantage she enjoys is the fact that neither her parents nor her husband object to her political activities - past, present or future. In fact, she acknowledges their ongoing moral and practical support as a critical enabling factor in her public life, which now involves long and late working hours as well as considerable travel. The second of her two children was only two-years-old when she became panchayat president. It is clear that she would have been seriously hampered in the discharge of her public duties without family support.

Her roots in the community, her history of political activity and, perhaps most crucially, the support of her family have also spared her the gossip and innuendo that many women in public life have to endure or grapple with. If some people still disapprove and talk about her relatively unfettered mobility and the late hours she regularly keeps, she does not seem to be particularly bothered. It goes without saying that neither her educational and political background nor her family situation is typical. Few of the thousands of women catapulted into local level politics - in Kerala or elsewhere in the country - are similarly thrice blessed. In fact, political innocence and inexperience, together with unsympathetic, uncooperative, interfering and/or domineering families, form major stumbling blocks in the path of women's political participation, especially at the grassroots level.

An additional bonus that favours Jalaja is the fact that as the official, winning candidate of a political party she has its overt backing. Kerala is the only State where political parties are legally and openly involved in GP elections. Elsewhere in the country such "contamination" is publicly disallowed even while it is privately acknowledged. Few observers of the political scene in Kerala are wholly critical of this unique feature of its panchayat raj regime. Many point out that the legitimacy of party politics at the panchayat level in the State gives elected members access to the valuable support, guidance and help that parties can - at best - provide. This, they suggest, may be particularly beneficial to women who are new to both politics and governance.

In addition, the unconcealed participation of political parties in panchayat elections also tends to increase their accountability at the local level because it makes them ultimately responsible for the conduct and performance of their winning candidates: at the grassroots level a rogue leader - or an ineffectual one - may well cost them the next election. However, some people indicate that party support cannot always be relied upon, irrespective of the political party involved, especially if panchayat members assert their independence. There have apparently been cases of party-backed members being harassed to the point of resignation by local party decision-makers annoyed about their non-cooperation with local vested interests.

Female members are particularly vulnerable in this respect: under the spotlight as new entrants into the political field, they have a special stake in proving themselves as well as in safeguarding their reputations. Some observers suggest that party affiliations sometimes restrict elected members' freedom of action and association. However, most of them also believe that this hurdle can be overcome as members gain in experience and confidence and shed their fears and inhibitions. Already many women members are apparently expressing interest in networking across party lines to improve the quality and impact of their participation in politics.

But perhaps the most important advantage Jalaja enjoys as the president of a grama panchayat in Kerala is the fact that decentralised governance in the State is not restricted to panchayat elections. Unlike her counterparts in most other States, she is vested with the power - and the responsibilty - to make a real difference to the lives of her electorate. Thanks to a revolutionary step taken in 1996 by the newly incumbent Left and Democratic Front (LDF) Government, 35-40 per cent of the State's outlay of funds from the Ninth Five Year Plan has been placed at the disposal of panchayat raj bodies. In addition, thanks to the People's Campaign for Decentralised Planning, launched in the same year to enable these institutions of local self-government to prepare plans in a transparent and participatory manner, elected representatives like Jalaja had ongoing, intensive, on-the-job training in mobilising citizens to participate in the planning process, identifying local needs, formulating plans to fulfil these, accessing and allocating available resources and, finally, ensuring the proper implementation of projects and programmes emerging from the plans.

Jalaja herself believes that if decentralised governance is working in Kerala - to the extent that it is - it is because planning and financial decision-making have also been substantially decentralised. She says she became conscious of how unique and critical a factor this is during the exchange visits of women members of village panchayats in Kerala and Karnataka organised by the Centre for Rural Management (CRM). Kottayam, with the coopration of the Institute of Social Sciences, Bangalore.

While most GPs in Karnataka have no more than Rs. 2-4 lakhs at their disposal annually - and even that relatively small amount is often not completely under their control - she was able to preside over the allocation and utilisation of a staggering Rs. 70 lakhs in the very first year of her term (the sum of Plan funds and resources made available for specific projects and programmes by other public finance institutions. On the other hand, of course, Karnataka boasts nearly ten times the number of elected women at the GP level (35.187 after the elections earlier this year, comprising nearly 45 per cent of the total number of GP members, compared to Kerala's 3,878 and 36.2 per cent). It also has had a longer history of women's participation in the political process at the local level.

Another unique feature of Kerala's decentralised planning process, which has undoubtedly enhanced Jalaja's effectiveness as a panchayat president, is the earmarking of 10 per cent of the grant-in-aid funds available to each panchayat for what is known as the Women's Component Plan (WCP). Meant to be used for projects that will directly benefit women, the standard amount annually available for the WCP in each panchayat is apprxomately Rs. 7.5 lakhs.

It is Jalaja's imaginative and insightful deployment of WCP funds that has earned Mohamma its reputation as a women-friendly panchayat. In the current year she has managed to raise the WCP budget to 13 per cent of the available funds. A number of other panchayats have also apparently exceeded the stipulated ten per cent allocation.

Nevertheless, in this respect too, Jalaja and her experience are evidently not typical. A paper presented by T. N. Seema and Vanita Mukherjee at the May 2000 International Conference on Democratic Decentralisation in Thiruvananthapuram ("Gender, Governance and Citizenship in Decentralised Planning: The Experience of the People's Campaign in Kerala") acknowledges the several weaknesses that marked the implementation - if not the conceptualisation - of the "gender component" of the People's Plan Campaign (PPC0) esecially in its initial years.

However, as the authors point out, the strength of the PPC - and the hope for its future - lie in its inbuilt scope for reviewing and reforming interventions through an ongoing self-correcting process. If, in the first year, the WCP failed to serve its stated, comprehensive purpose in most GPs, the lessons learnt through that experience fed into the reorientation of future training programmes for elected representatives which, in turn, have begun to show results, at least in some panchayats, in the form of projects addressing a broader range of women's real and felt needs in different aspects of their lives. This progression is certainly evident in the panchayat presided over by Jalaja.

The WCP factor has also spawned village-level women's collectives in the form of neighbourhood and self-help groups. In the past most such groups were essentially savings and micro-credit units, generally initiated and nurtured by non-governmental organisations and operating outside the political and economic "mainstream." However, in the wake of the PPC, both existing groups and newly formed ones have been registered by panchayats in order to make them eligible for WCP funds and presumably, to encourage their active participation in the decentralisation process. This development is obviously not free of pitfalls but it clearly has some positive potential.

For instance, the groups cannot only encourage women's participation in the processes of local planning and governance but also provide women Panchayat members and leaders with a prospective support base. Further, they can become platforms that enable women to articulate and find solutions for gender-related problems. According to Jalaja, the self-help groups in her panchayat do not restrict themselves to savings, credit and income-generation activities alone but also use the forum to discuss a wide range of issues relating to women's lives and rights. Female panchayat leaders who are sensitive to women's multiple concerns and needs and recognise the tremendous potential of village-level owmen's collectives can cleary nurture the development of these groups into fora that serve local women in different but equally vital ways.

Another important outcome of the focus on women's needs through the WCP is the increased participation of women in grama sabhas, the essential foundation of decentralised governance, which has reportedly risen from 26 per cent in the initial stages to 60 per cent more recently. Women also constitute two-thirds of the beneficiaries under individual beneficiary oriented programmes. The existence of active women's collectives that are an integral part of the development process at the village level has no doubt contributed to those positive trends.

Yet another factor that probably helps to facilitate women's participation in grama sabhas in Kerala is the fact that, unlike in many other States, these fora are convened at the ward level and presided over by the elected representative of the ward. As a result they are relatively more accessible and manageable- especially for women - than their more unwieldy, impersonal and possibly intimidating equivalents in other parts of the country. In Jalaja's experience, women are now among the most active participants in the grama sabhas.

A new and exciting initiative of the PPC (in collaboration with the Manaveeyam Cultural Mission) has the potential to stimulate more positive developments in this regard. Around 400 grama panchayats and municipalities in Kerala are currently involved in a programme known as the Manaveeyam Sthree Padavi Patana Paripadi, which aims to generate reports on the status of women in their communities through a participatory process involving local women.

To get back to Jalaja, if she now seems to lead an amazingly charmed life as a grassroots political leader, the going was obviously not as easy as it looks at the end of her first term as an elected representative.

Despite her prior experience in political organisations, she admits she was initially nervous about what she would be able to achieve as a panchayat leader. According to her, the training programmes organised under his PPC provided indispensable support in this respect: "There was no model for us to follow," she points out. "We had to learn everything from scratch, sitting and doing all kinds of things we had never done before. It was a real learning experience."

Her educational background no doubt stood her in good stead as she tackled issues, plans and budgets, although several women with less education have also mastered the art of decentralised governance and planning thanks to the training programmes. Gaining the acceptance of colleagues in the panchayat office was obviously her greatest challenge. The initial resistance of government officers to the erosion of their traditional powers through the decentralised planning process sometimes manifested itself in non-cooperation with elected representatives, including presidents. Being compelled to report to a young, female, relatively savvy and fairly determined panchayat president must have only made things worse. While key public officials - such as panchayat secretaries - received training under the auspices of the PPC to help them to reorient their ways of thinking and functioning, other staff were left to adjust to the new circumstances on their own. This, mutually, led to a certain amount of tension and friction which had to be defused and overcome over time.

In this respect, too, Jalaja probably fared better than many others because she had the unusual triple advantage of education, prior experience in political organisations, as well as party support. With hindsight, however, she thinks workshops to help elected women anticipate and deal constructively with such teething problems, as well as training for all levels of panchayat staff on the concept and practice of decentralised planning and governance - and on women's role in these processes - would help minimise problems on this front.

According to Dr. Jos Chathukulam, director, CRM, there are three categories of female elected representatives in Kerala - and, no doubt, elsewhere in the country. The first comprises women who manage to achieve individual success by accommodating themselves within the prevailing patriarchal mainstream political system and adopting its terms of reference, terminology and methodologies. The second includes women who are struggling - with different levels of success - to create a women-friendly environment and make a real difference to the lives of women (as well as children and men) in their panchayats. The third and possibly largest category consists of women who are unable to penetrate or manipulate the political system and do not even manage to alter their own position within their parties, panchayat and/or families. Not surprisingly, many women who belong to this last category are unwilling to stand for elections again even if parties (desperately seeking women to field in reserved constituencies) are willing to sponsor them.

Jalaja is probably one of the more successful women in the second category. But she is coming to the end of her five-year term. Elections to grama panchayats in Kerala are expected to be held in the last week of September. In July she did not know - or could not say - whether or not she would be a candidate in the forthcoming elections since the decision rests with the party. In mid-August, at the time of writing, parties were in the process of finalising their lists of candidates for the forthcoming elections.

What is clear at this time is that, thanks to the inbuilt rotation system in panchayat elections, her own ward will not be reserved for women in the next round. If she is to contest elections again, she will have to stand as a "general" candidate in the ward that elected her the last time or "migrate" to another ward within the panchayat that is reserved for women. Of course, as panchayat president, Jalaja has the added advantage of being known in all the wards in Mohamma. This is yet another plus point that is not available to the majority of female elected representatives.

However, one of the drawbacks of the current system is the assumption that a seat that is not specifically reserved for women is in effect reserved for men. So the chances of even a woman with a good track record being put up as a "general" candidate in an unreserved constituency are quite slim. The CPI(M) has announced its plans to increase its percentage of female candidates and to field women who have hitherto proved themselves in reserved seats in "general" constituencies in the next round. Whether this resolve at the State level will be acted upon at local levels remains to be seen.

So only time will tell whether Jalaja Chandran will be able to take advantage of the many

factors in her favour and continue her work in politics and governance - not only for her own sake but, more importantly, for the benefit of the community and the women she represents and has already served over the past five years. Her fate - and that of many other women who have learnt the ropes of decentralised planning and governance the hard way - hang in the balance.

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