 "Women pradhans bringing about change in Bihar, UP")
Uttar Pradesh created a record of sorts a few days ago by electing nearly 44 per cent women heads of panchayats. It is a marked improvement from the situation only a decade ago. What is noteworthy is that nearly 39 per cent of the women elected are young, in the age group of 21-35, which is better than the commensurate figure for men. The state had 39 per cent women elected members in village panchayats in 2006.
The representation of women in panchayats was at a dismal level in Bihar till 2001. In fact, the state did not hold panchayat elections from 1978 to 2001. It was in 2006 that the Bihar government decided to reserve 50 per cent seats for women in local bodies, a first in the country. Nearly 55 per cent women got elected the same year.
This was precisely the period, from 2001 onwards, when demographic indices of these two states started showing signs of considerable improvement. Experts say empowerment of women in rural areas, which is what is happening through increased representation in the three-tier panchayat structure, may have played a big role in this change. Empowerment has been a continuous process helped largely by the growing willingness to send girls to schools even in states where female literacy was quite low, says Sudha Pai, professor of political science and rector of Jawaharlal Nehru University.
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Empowerment of women results in, among others, greater adoption of contraceptives, age at marriage going up and higher incidence of institutional delivery reducing the risk of infant and maternal mortality considerably, argue experts. Data do indicate an improvement on most of these parametres in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
"The impact of women's empowerment on social indices is undeniable. Uttar Pradesh has shown all-round improvement on these parametres in the past few years. The culture of 'women cannot speak out' too is changing and their rising representation in panchayats is an evidence of that," observes Lucknow-based political scientist Sudhir Panwar. He has tracked panchayat elections closely. A word of caution, though, from him is that the "rising influence of money power in panchayat elections is a cause for concern."
Data suggest that contraceptive prevalence rate has inched up significantly in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in recent years. In the former, it has gone up from 34 to 37.6 per cent during 2005-06 to 2010-11. And in the case of Uttar Pradesh, the change was from 43.6 per cent to 49.9 per cent in the same period.
The two states have registered much sharper improvement on the infant mortality rate (IMR). In case of Bihar, the fall has been from 64 in 2000 to 43 in 2012, an improvement of nearly 33 per cent. During the same period, the IMR fell from 84 to 53 in Uttar Pradesh. Demographers argue that lower IMR tends to induce people to have smaller families.
A paper co-authored by K James and K Srinivasan of the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, shows that in the decade gone by, the mean age at marriage in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh rose faster than the national average and they are now almost at par with states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In fact, the rise in mean age at marriage in Bihar from 2001 to 2011 was almost equal to the rise in the preceding 40 years. Uttar Pradesh has shown a similar improvement.
"The age at marriage does have some impact on the total fertility rate. But other factors like use of contraceptives play a much bigger role. The rise in mean age at marriage in states like Bihar and UP is therefore a positive development. But for fertility rate to fall substantially, you need other contributory factors," K S James, a demographer at Bengaluru-based Institute for Social and Economic Change, had told this reporter.
These factors did play a role in fall in decadal growth rate of population, for the first time, in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. While the former registered a decline of 3.55 percentage points, population in the latter declined by a whopping six percentage points. On the basis of these positive changes, demographers have begun to argue that erstwhile laggard states may achieve demographic transition faster than anticipated.
The trend of women occupying more elected positions in village panchayats is not confined to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh alone. In fact, 15 states have reserved 50 per cent seats for women in local bodies and in many of them the proportion of women representatives in local bodies is much higher.
Even for the country as a whole, the representation of women in panchayats has been going up consistently in the past 15 years. From a low of nearly 27 per cent in 2001, the proportion of women in panchayat institutions reached the 37-per cent mark in 2007-08. It now stands at 44 per cent.
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