PATTAN, KASHMIR, INDIA – Zana Begum, a resident of Buren-Pattan, a locality of Jammu and Kashmir state in India, says her interest drove her to run in the first elections for her area’s panchayat, the local village council, in a decade. She ran unopposed earlier this year and gained a seat as a panch, a local government representative.
She says her family didn’t support her, but she took on the challenge anyway.
“I was interested in contesting elections for local governance,” she says. “My husband didn’t support me. He often told me that our family will be killed due to my contesting of elections. One of my children supported me, and I went forward with elections.”
Begum, a middle-aged woman, says that after filing her nomination papers, her husband told her not to return home because he was afraid that her candidacy would cause serious repercussions. She says her parents also disapproved of her candidacy. She says she left town close to the vote because she was scared of general militant threats and calls by separatists to boycott the elections.
“Even my parental side didn’t support me, and I went out of village for 15 days prior to elections,” she says.
But now that she has been elected, she says her husband supports her in her new role. He also helps her, as it is common here that women’s husbands or male family members help them fulfill their professional obligations.
“He is forced to go with other panch members, as I have to look after household affairs,” she says. “Otherwise, my family will go empty stomach.”
Since she is illiterate, Begum says that her husband and children guide her in dealing with the issues related to local governance.
“I only know how to append my signatures,” she says. “Rest I will seek their assistance.”
Begum says that the panchayat system can help villagers to make sure they receive the services they deserve.
“Few days back, I went to a nearby school to cross-check the facilities available,” she says. “Apart from lack of management and indiscipline, I found teachers irregular and mostly engaged in knitting and gossiping.”
She pauses briefly before continuing that the teachers didn’t appreciate when she confronted them about their quality of teaching.
“I asked one of the concerned employees about cleanliness in school,” she says. “She observed silence, and later in evening, her mother-in-law turned up to my house asking me who I was to question her daughter-in-law.”
But Begum says it’s her responsibility to make sure that village youth receive a better education than her generation did.
“Being a panch member, I feel it my duty to question and check if at all our children are getting due facilities,” she says. “They’ve a right to secure future and shouldn’t suffer the way we did.”
Local government representatives welcome increased participation from women here, but many say they prefer literate to illiterate candidates. But women who won seats in the election and women voters say that equal gender representation is more important than literacy. Women say top issues for them include availability of water, transportation and medical services. Nongovernmental organizations, NGOs, are organizing trainings to strengthen the reinstitution of the panchayat system and the inclusion of women in it.
Each panchayat has five panches and a head, the sarpanch. A halqa panchyat is a basic unit representing a village or group of villages. Together they make up the panchayat raj, which refers to the entire system.
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