Active participation of rural women in Panchayat Raj System, India

By, 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts of 1992; Panchayati Raj System was established in India. This system gave grass-root level democracy. Rural women were not getting their due share in development process. Social and political backwardness prevented them from taking part in decision making. But these amendments made provision for one-third reservation for women.

Hence, women got due share in policy making. Illiteracy among women could be reduced. Their leadership skill developed. They came out of four walls of houses and played decisive role in development. Gender bias is reduced. They became more aware about their rights. They have started to demand reservation in Parliament also.

But in some cases, women have been used as rubber-stamps. Actual decisions are being taken by their male partners. Women may have stormed the male bastion under the Panchayati Raj System, but in many cases it is the husbands or male members of their families who are calling the shots.

The Panchayati Raj Ministry has received complaints that it is the spouses or male members of the families of elected women representatives in the rural bodies who are running the office. Elected women representatives have reportedly been reduced to proxies of their male relatives and are under the control of male-dominated political party system.

Maharashtra Government, in 2007, had issued a circular directing all the PRIs in the state that lady office bearers should discharge their duty themselves and their close relatives should not interfere in their work. States and Union Territories have also been suggested to consider taking a similar action.

National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) Scheme, India

NRLM is the rechristened version of Swarna Jayanti Swarojgar Yojna (SGSY). It is a programme of Ministry of Rural Development. It aims to reduce poverty by enabling the poor household to access gainful self employment and skilled wage employment opportunity resulting in a sustainable livelihood.

NRLM is based on three pillars:

i. Enhancing and expanding the existing livelihood options of the poor

ii. Building skills for the job market

iii. Nurturing self employed and entrepreneurs

NRLM plans to give special focus on the poorest households who are currently dependent on the MGNREGA. The design of NRLM is more likely to succeed because its implementation is in a mission mode which enables it shift from the present allocation based approach to demand based approach. This enables the states to formulate their own livelihood based on poverty reduction action plans.

It also focuses on targets, outcomes, and time bound strategies. The monitoring would be done against the targets of the poverty outcomes. NRLM will have continuous capacity building, imparting of requisite skills and creating linkages with livelihood opportunities for the poor, including those emerging from the organised sectors.

NRLM funds will be directly released to the state level agencies and DRDA based on the detailed district wise annual action plan. It will involve the Self Help Group in the implementation which increases the likelihood of its success. National Skill Development Council will also coordinate in the skill development part in the implementation of NRLM.

In order to ensure institutional arrangement for skill development for self employment and wage employment, dedicated training institute for rural BPL youth i.e. Rural Self Employment Training Institutes (RSETIs) are being set up with the aim of having at least one such institution in each district in India. These RSETIs will be set up with the partnership of banks. This will help in achieving the objectives of NRLM.

Salient aspects of National Family Health Survey (MFHS), India

Almost half of children under age of five years (48%) are chronically malnourished. In other words, they are too short for their age or stunted. Stunting is a good long-term indicator of the nutritional status of a population because it does not vary appreciably by the season of data collection or other short-term factors, such as epidemic illnesses, acute food shortages, or shifts in economic conditions.

Acute malnutrition, as evidenced by wasting, results in a child being too thin for his or her height. One out of every five children in India under the age of five years is wasted. Forty-three percent of children under the age of five years are underweight for their age. Underweight status is a composite index of chronic or acute malnutrition. Underweight is often used as a basic indicator of the status of a population’s health.

The urban population in India is expected to increase to more than 550 million by 2030. Currently, a sizable proportion of the population in most Indian cities lives in slum areas. The increasing slum population in Indian cities is seen an indication of worsening living conditions and increasing poverty in cities in India.

The increasing concentration of population in slums and urban poverty has elicited a strong interest in urban health conditions in general and the health of slum dwellers and the urban poor in particular.

Trend data based on the three NFHS surveys provide strong evidence of declines in the sex ratio (females per 1,000 males) of the population age 0-6 and in the sex ratio at birth for births in the five years preceding each survey.

Females are under-represented among births and over-represented among births that die. Sex ratios at birth decline with wealth, suggesting that sex selection of births is more common among wealthier than poorer households.