Pradhan Pati

I rolled into Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh on the day the results to the panchayat elections were being declared. The atmosphere was very charged.

In my survey I am asking people about the main reasons they voted for a certain candidate or what issues were most salient for them. After hearing the discussion about the panchayat elections my questions seemed unnecessary. The discussion was around how much money each candidate spent and which caste voted for whom. In the village I was in, a Yadav won, the reason given is that the Thakur vote got divided among the numerous candidates of that caste and the Yadavs stood behind their guy. He or I should say his family (his father was the previous one) is returning to power this time. It was reassuring to hear that at least some people spoke about the good work he had done in the last five years. So at least in one place I heard the `vikas’ agenda being spoken about.

This village had two surrounding villages with seats reserved for a woman candidate. I got excited that I would get to meet some dynamic women who had decided to step into politics. Till now we had not come across any women who had entered the work force, barring the first day in Gaya were we met a smart young vikas mitr (that is a development worker, whose job it is to make people aware of the numerous welfare programs available to them).

I went to Maksoodan, a village that does not seem to have benefitted from any of the welfare projects. The outgoing pradhan’s house does not have a toilet, so much for swachch bharat! This village is on the banks of river Gomati and lends itself to some beautiful views of the meandering river. But we could not enjoy that much the stench from the open toilet of the village was too nauseating.

My interest in this village lay in the weavers that reside in it. We had not come across such a group yet. They are all Muslim and they used to weave a course cloth that was used as a quilt. Their market is long disappeared, and now they are trying their hands at sharecropping.  The women in these houses weave baskets from elephant grass that I have not seen anywhere else. I asked them if they would make to sell in the market, they look at me all puzzled and ask “who would buy these?” I am lost for words, I have paid over Rs. 2000 for a much inferior product at the crafts melas in Delhi, without batting an eyelid. For them it is part of the dowry they make for their weddings and bring with them.  

In the next household I met a young bride married about two months ago. She is smart, confident and very sure of herself. My prejudices make me believe she must have studied at least to get an undergrad degree. We ask her and she tells us she has only studied till class five in the madrassa and can read the Holy Scriptures. Then were does she get the confidence from? She is also very talented. She can design and stitch kurtas well, there is a piece she has been working on next to here sewing machine. When we ask she tells us she was interested and picked it up. She once in a while has am apprentice she teaches. She points to what she is wearing and says that she had made it and shows us some of the other ones… they are good!

The economist in me cannot resist, such talent would have been found by the market. So I ask, if she earns anything from this. She says of course not, she only does this for family and friends.  Where are you my dear markets? Why have you not reached Maksudan yet!

There is still hope, there is going to be woman pradhan here, maybe the next fie years will see some new jobs being created here for these young talented girls. As I walk around in the village, the posters from the panchayat elections still decorate the house walls. This is a seat reserved for women, then why do I see so many men on the posters? In fact barring one poster, there are no women on any posters.  The man with big mustache is the outgoing pradhan, his daughter-in-law is the candidate this time. I asked why do we not see the pictures of the women contesting. The women have the pardha system and they can obviously not be seen by by anyone outside their houses. Alright, then how will they perform their duties… I am explained that they will obviously not. The pradhan pati’s will! Now who is this person, it is the actual male member of the family seen plastered on the walls.

Empowerment through reservations will happen if the women actually perform their roles. Chattopadhayay and Duflo (2005) show that women’s reservation has resulted is a shift in the policies implemented by the panchayats. Also a later piece shows role model effects of women panchayats. My little village in eastern UP will have to wait for that, no women’s empowerment here with the pradhan pati’s! I also witnessed the victory rally for the pradhan for this village, there were no women in it—not even the elected pradhan.

Is it peculiar to this village, I go a few miles ahead to another women’s reserved panchayat. Here the rally had the elected representative in it, she is from the scheduled castes. She was an elderly women in her 80s who needed help walking. Her grandson was thrilled and was the one being congratulated. A pradhan grandson

CTEP: First steps into Bihar

This is one of my old pieces, from my first trip to Patna in September before the elections.


I landed in Patna at 8 a.m. and almost immediately start drawing parallels with the Lucknow. I have never been to Bihar before this but have travelled in Uttar Pradesh a little bit. In my mind I am expecting Patna to be more or less like Lucknow. To me I have set expectations very low! I was obviously not prepared for what I saw!

This is an interesting time to be making a trip to Bihar. The state assembly election dates were announced not a week ago. Nitish Kumar has headed the State for a decade now, and the outside world has portrayed him as “the best thing to happen to Bihar” in a long time. But in this election, he for the first time contests without his old times allay, BJP (or the NDA) and has joined forces with the man he first came to uproot (Laloo Yadav). I can feel the intensity and the excitement in the air, almost as soon as I land.  Patna is plastered with huge hoardings of Nitish Kumar and Narendra Modi.

I travel from the airport to Gandhi Maidan, through one of the most important roads as of now, this road has all the major party offices on it. And even though its too early for the crowds of political aspirants to come, one can see the remnants of yesterdays activity. The roads in Nitish’s Patna look good and well maintained. But as soon as I mention this to my driver, he is quick to tell me, “Laloo ke raj main yeh sab kuch nahin tha. Lagta tha dihat main gadi chala rahe hain”  which would roughly translate to …During Laloo’s reign none of this was here, it felt as if we were driving on village roads.

After hearing this completely unsolicited endorsement of Nitish Kumar’s governance, I am hopeful that my conjectures may not be completely unfounded.  During the day, I crisscross the city meeting some of the people that will help me with my study. They all tell me the positives that have happened during Nitish Kuamr’s period. But as I am moving from one place to another, I see a bit of Patna. Its not Lucknow, there is more poverty and less of everything else.

The most important shopping destination in Patna is pointed out to me and I look at both sides of the road expecting to see big neon signs and the big commercial brands we see everywhere nowadays. But no, I am being shown a building with some old boards hanging loosely from its sides. It reminds me of my childhood, of the local markets in Delhi. That Delhi does not exist anymore, but it is still the current Patna. There is something I feel is missing from a growing state capital. There are no big glass buildings that we now associate with corporate offices. I don’t see any buildings with names of MNCs or even our own Indian companies anywhere.

One of the last things I saw in Patna before I headed back to the airport was a stark reminder that I am going to be working in one of the poorest states in the country.  We were driving alongside one of the flyovers that Nitish Kumar has built. I was now used to seeing these around Patna but what I have not seen anywhere else was what was under the flyover. Bamboo and blue plastic sheets divided the entire area under the flyover into 10 feet by 10 feet homes for the migrant Bihari. There were not just a few as we see under some of the flyovers in Delhi, but this was an entire slum, housing definitely over 2000 people under one flyover. Nitish Kumar may have built the road, there is still a long way to go, to bring the absent business and sustained and inclusive growth to Bihar.

But none of this is the actual reason why I was in Patna. I was in Patna to talk about women’s empowerment in Bihar. Nitish Kumar has won many accolades for his Mukhya Mantra Balika Cycle Yojana. This was one of the first few programs implemented by the Nitish Kuamr government; it provided cycles to all girls when they enrolled in secondary school. It was remarkably successful. Now one can see girls regularly riding bicycles to school in rural Bihar. But this is not just a point about increased enrollment, girls on cycles will not happen unless people feel safe about letting their girls go out. A man I spoke to put it very clearly, when he said “ab dekhiye, choti choti bachiya cycle par school jati hain, Laloo ke time main to beti ko ghar se bahar bhejne main dar lagta tha, cycle kahan chalati”…Now you see little girls riding bicycles to school, during Laloo’s time we were scared to let our girls go outside, how would they ride bicycles?

This program was started in 2006, now the first cohort of girls would be in their early 20s and would be looking for work (if they finished school) and would also be eligible to vote. The initial scheme was followed by 50% reservation for women in the local panchayat elections and 50% reservation for women in the hiring of para-teachers for the schools. Now the government t is proposing a 35% reservation for women in  the police force. So basically the girls who finished school now have opportunities to join the labor force. This is one type of empowerment, trying to make them financial independent.

However, are these girls becoming more confident and independent?  The Bihar elections may throw some light on that. Nitish Kumar has for the past 10 years nurtured an electorate that has not been tapped into by any political party either in any state or at the national level. We are talking about the 50% women in the electorate. Though we have many women leading political parties, Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati or Jayalalitha, they or anyone else has never systematically worked to gain the trust of this segment of the electorate.

One potential reason for the neglect of this group may be that in India, most women either do not vote or if they do vote then they would just vote for the same person as their husbands, fathers or brothers. They have rarely exercised their independent choice in this matter. This election in Bihar may show us that women have freed themselves from the choices of the men in their lives. If they choose to vote for Nitish Kumar surpassing the caste and religion barriers then they can themselves single handedly bring back Nitish Kumar to power.

We might see that Nitish’s cycles has given the women of Bihar the independence that we have not seen anywhere else. But irrespective of the outcome in November we will go into the field to test