The video that sparked the storm was not much watching. A Circle of 12 men Draved in brilliant garlands read solemn statements aloud during a ceremony to form a new local government in a deeply rural corner of India.
The scandal was that six of the people elected to lead the village had been women. These six were absent, each represented by her husband instead.
The video became viral after the ceremony on March 3 and journalists from the Indian national newspapers went down to the village of Paraswara in the central state of Chhattisgarh over the next week – which included International Women’s Day.
The public erasure of the six office owners was shocking but barely surprising. This type of unofficial substitution is commonplace in rural India, in exactly the places where steering positions have long been put aside for women.
Since 1992, the national rules concerning the panchayats, or traditional village councils, have promised that a third party and in some cases, half of all the seats will be reserved for women. The idea was to raise a generation of women leaders and to make advice more attentive to the needs of women.
The spirit of this law, however, is often ignored, even when the letter is respected. Women who are supposed to take place at the Panchayat end up serving as deputies for their own husband, who exercises power alongside elected men. There is a well -known term in Hindi, Pradhan Pati, for this role of “husband boss”.
India also has a long way to go to empower women at the national level. About only 15% of deputies are women, and there are only two women in the cabinet of 30 members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The government approved a constitutional amendment in 2023 to reserve a third of all parliamentary seats for women, although it will not come into force for at least four years.
While many politicians have increased national importance, this did not come through Panchayat seats, but often by association with established male politicians.
In Paraswara, the men who had been present during the village’s swearing ceremony were defensive about the absence of the six women. One of the men, Bahal Ram Sahu, said in an interview later that three of the women were sick and that the other three were necessary for funerals that day. Other witnesses differ on the details, but all agreed with Mr. Sahu: sometimes, a husband defends his wife, and “nobody thinks that there is something wrong with that.”
Over the past 15 years, Mr. Sahu’s wife, Ram Bai, has been elected three times at the Paraswara Panchayat and was once her chief. But “as a husband, I’m still with her,” he said. He advised it on all questions, he added, and represented it whenever she was unit.
The husband who serves as a proxy for his officially autonomous wife has become an action character in fiction. “Panchayat” is the title of a popular series on Amazon Prime in which the local boss of a village rushed to a string bed calling for shots while his wife pretends to hold the office to which she was elected.
The national government has recognized the problem. He ordered a report in 2023 aimed at “eliminating participation efforts” and last month, he proposed “exemplary sanctions” against husbands who usurp the roles of their wives.
Even “Panchayat”, the television show has a role to play. While the series takes place, the wife turns out to be a cunning and capable character and finds ways to exercise his legal authority. Now, the producers of the program work with the government on a series of subtitled episodes “Who is the real boss?”. In which, after all, the woman knows best.
Encourages also come from real life in other parts of India. In the state of Punjab, Sheshandeep Kaur Sidhu became the head of the Panchayat of his village at the age of 22. Ms. Sidhu, who is now 29 years old, had obtained a master’s degree in political science and felt determined to do something for her village.
After winning one of the seats reserved for women, Sidhu had an eye on solving problems involving education and sanitation. She faced resistance. “I was very young and they were like:” What can this girl realize? ” She recalls.
Ms. Sidhu wants each woman to be seated in each panchayat of India to set up for her and her colleagues, and use the power that the State has entrusted. Women like her, she said, must be “stubborn” and “return your points to your husbands”.
“I was told that politics was not considered a good thing for girls and women,” said Sidhu. She therefore made the priority to solve a symbolic problem in her village.
For each household led by a woman, she had a signage plate suspended outside. These houses were only known by the names of male parents: fathers, brothers or husbands, even if they died or left. Now everyone shows the name of the real woman who directs the house.
