Women run a better show

A UN report praises women panchayats in India, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 13, 2006, 03:14:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Trust women, they make better representatives of the people than men. They meet development goals and pay special attention to children.

At a time when a political consensus continues to elude a bill to reserve 33 per cent seats for women in Parliament, a UNICEF report heaps praise on women representatives in India's villages.

Released on Tuesday, The State of the World's Children 2007 says reservation for women in panchayats has helped bring all-round development to villages. It refers to a study of 165 villages in West Bengal which showed that, with the participation of women in village councils, investment in drinking water doubled, government health workers started visiting more frequently, more girl children started going to school, and roads improved.

Another survey — of 100 villages in Rajasthan — found that those with women pradhans got more children immunised, sent more girl children to school, and had better health facilities for women.

Sharmila Tagore, UNICEF goodwill ambassador, said at the release of the report, "The formula is, invest in women. It promises a double dividend, both for children and for adults."

The reports makes a strong case for more women in Parliament. It gives examples of countries like Argentina, where welfare improved as more women became legislators.

The report says India's Parliament had only 8.3 per cent women in 2004. In comparison, Pakistan's parliament had 21.3 per cent, and Bangladesh's 14.8 per cent.

Email Chetan Chauhan: cchetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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