Plans afoot to empower women in PR bodies

​Hyderabad: National Commission for Women (NCW) and National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRD&PR) on Wednesday announced their collaboration to impart training to women Panchayat Pradhans and women members of panchayats as an effort to provide them with skills in governance.

An MoU was signed in this regard as part of the launch of foundation activities of NIRD&PR here which will focus on establishing partnership to take up activities for empowerment of women and training elected women representatives of panchayats in particular.

The first phase of training will begin in six districts of Rajasthan covering over 9,000 women elected representatives followed by Jharkhand and Assam, NCW Chairperson Lalitha Kumaramangalam said.

As per the MoU, monitoring of this project will also be done. The training to them covers academics of governance such as administration, conducting meetings, using Information Technology tools, understanding legal procedures and laws,” she said.

While working with women in general and specially women from rural regions, we realised that they are not part of the decision making process.

What we found that most panchayat leaders don't understand administration like accounting, reporting, liaison with various government offices, how to conduct meetings, understanding the laws etc.

Hence, it is very difficult for them to participate in decision making,” she said. “Women have actually understood that when they can be successful Sarpanchs or members of the panchayat, they are given a lot more respect because they have decision making power,” the NCW chief said.

Kumaramangalam said this was an effort to empower women to take their decisions and enable them to become contributing members of their own communities, and added that the first round of training Training of Trainers (TOT) would start by this month end or December second week from Rajasthan.

She further said NCW was developing an app and elected women representatives would be taught how to use IT, things like construction of roads, toilets etc.

Beginning this financial year, about Rs 2 lakh crore is going to be transferred directly to the panchayats. “Today, 53 per cent of Panchayat Pradhans all over the country are women,” she pointed out.