Govt to bring in mobile app for women sarpanch by year-end

The app is likely to come up by the year-end. The move comes after the recently concluded training programme for woman sarpanches in Rajasthan.

“It was wonderful to see the change in all these women after the end of the training programme. They realised their potential and the power they had within themselves to change the world,” said Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Sanjay Gandhi.

She added: “These women leaders want an app to be brought in, which will help them communicate with each other, after the programme finished. Then ministry is making that app for all sarpanchinis to communicate. Hopefully, by the end of the year we should have this app in place.”

 

The minister highlighted that the main problem these women faced was from their husbands – sarpanch patis.

“When we talk about women power and 33 per cent  reservation for women in Parliament, then we come to a point that there has been one-third reservation for women in all panchayati raj institutions and this is approximately 40 years old, but has it worked really?,” she questioned.

The minister said: “There are six lakh villages in India that have a ‘pradhan’. Of these two lakh are women. But have these two lakh women done something to better the administration or propel themselves in political life? No they haven’t.” 

She added: “They have never been trained on what to do, so they just fight an election. After that they go back into their households and their husbands run the village, so we have places in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and other states where the husbands are called pradhan patis or sarpanch patis. This is illegal, but it has been happening. Officials and VIPs only deal with these pradhan patis.” 

Gandhi stressed on training these woman sarpanches to hone up their leadership skills. “They would then increase the demand of this 33% reservation,” she added.

Giving details of the 5-day sensitisation and training programme organised for these women, the minister said, “We started the training programme in Rajasthan with 40 women. They were taught things, which included not only who they were and what powers they have, but basic things that include what goes into making roads and naalas and other issues concerning village development. When these 40 women came, they were accompanied by their husbands. The men then waited outside, while the women were being trained.”