India empowers women with 50% quota
Morung Express News
Dimapur | September 4
India has taken a major step to empower women. On August 27, the Indian government announced that it has approved 50% reservation for women in Panchayats across the country. The path-breaking step towards making women’s role in public more visible also means that women will occupy 1.4 million of the close to three million Panchayat seats in the country. States such as Bihar, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have already implemented 50% reservation for women in the Panchayati Raj institutions, while Rajasthan is likely to follow suit.
But in a state such as Nagaland, which has already seen vehement opposition against reservation for women in municipal bodies, the landmark decision of the Cabinet appears a distant reality. The government’s decision to provide women reservation in the 2008 Mokokchung Municipal Council election was met with stiff opposition from the ‘members.’ The opposition gained support from various other corners, thus, making the possibility of women reservation bleak.
Even apex tribal bodies and student bodies claimed that “Nagaland does not need reservation.” Panchayati Raj in India brings million of people into the functioning of their representative government at the grass-root level. But women representatives at the grass-root level in Nagaland are almost non-existent.
In Nagaland, a majority of nominated women representatives in the village development boards are not given their due and are left out in the decision-making process. They are active in mass-based activities but their presence is not felt in the decision-making process. “We have to first strengthen our grass-root representatives,” Tokheli Kikon, the state’s first woman village council chairperson says. Most women land up with the label of being VDB members, not understanding the importance of their role in decision-making.
V Ate Kevichusa, a nominated member in the Kohima Municipal Council believes that as much as reservation is important, there must be visionaries at the Panchayat level. “Reservation is an impetus to propel women to go further,” she says and adds that she doesn’t think Naga women are voiceless but have been conditioned to believe that they are mere props; made to feel that they cannot be leaders.
Although many Naga women have made considerable progress in areas of education and employment, they continue to be bogged down by the patriarchic attitudes of the Naga society. Ate believes that being economically empowered should be on the top of every woman’s priority list and the rest can follow. “Naga women sit at home and exchange a lot of ideas and they are fantastic ideas. All they have to do is take it to a public platform. At the end of the day, no one can compete with a really good idea,” Ate says.
