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RURAL DEVELOPMENT
MoRD
and TISS wooing women for PM’s rural development fellowship
Katha Kartiki holds a master’s degree in
development studies from the University of Sussex, Brighton. She is
currently posted in Balaghat — a Naxalite area at a junction between
Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh — under the Prime Minister’s
Rural Development (PMRD) Fellows Scheme. She designed and helped implement
Nidaan, a first-of-itskind system that facilitates disbursal of funds from
schemes like Indira Awaas Yojana and Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan to Balaghat’s
villagers. Kartiki is being held up as an example to lure more women into
the second batch of the fellowship, starting 2014. The PMRD Fellows Scheme
is an initiative of the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) in association
with state governments. Thirty-five of the 137 fellows in the first 2012
batch, posted across 80 districts, are women. MoRD and its partner, Tata
Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), are aggressively seeking out more women
for the 2014 programme, a three-year fellowship with postings likely in
remote and difficult terrain. TISS hopes half of the batch this year will
be women. The fellowship enables young professionals to work with district
collectors in improving rural development programmes, besides building them
as a cadre of development facilitators who will be available as a ready
resource for rural development activities over a long term. It’s
Important to be Gender Sensitive
Here’s why the government needs fellows like Kartiki: Women have been found
to gain villagers’ trust, empathise with them and find solutions that are
overlooked by their male counterparts. In remote rural areas, they spot and
address the needs of other women faster, besides being more resilient and
responding to crises rather than reacting to them.
“It is important to be gender sensitive in areas where issues like open
defecation are grave problems and women can better understand the needs of
other women to address them,” says Varad Pande, officer on special duty to
Union Minister for Rural Development, Jairam Ramesh. Kartiki’s aim is also
to reach out to women, who typically are left out of the development
process. “Often, when (male) officers go to gram panchayats, they’re blind
to the needs of women,” she says. In her case, though, she can take into
account women’s needs around issues like sanitation and pre-natal care, and
they don’t hesitate in talking to her, she explains.
“Placing a hand-pump in a remote village too comes with gender discrepancies,”
adds Ruchi Sinha, associate professor, School of Social Work, TISS, and a
core faculty member for this fellowship training. While men decide to place
it at a higher level, women prefer levels accessible by the elderly,
children and women for their kitchens, says Sinha.
Indeed, professors in charge of the project at TISS are looking at multiple
ways to make sure more women join in. Applicants will have access to
database of fellows from the first batch, and seeing women from all
backgrounds participate will be an encouragement, they believe. Last year,
because of safety concerns there were a few dropouts during the training
period.
But there is a back-up plan to take care of such apprehensions. “In case
there are pregnant women applicants or their family members are worried, we
will try to accommodate a family member or someone else to make them more
comfortable,” says Aarti Upadhyay, assistant professor at TISS.
The aim is also to attract women from diverse backgrounds. Shila Matang
(25) and Belmati Jonko (26) posted at Khunti, Jharkhand are perfect
examples.
Matang hails from Jamnagar, Gujarat and married a TISS graduate from the
Munda tribal community of Jharkhand. She helps the officers implement
projects under NREGA, national rural health mission and villagers on
alternate forms of livelihood. Khunti district, with 848 villages, is also
a Naxalite area.
DEVINA
SENGUPTA & ANUMEHA CHATURVEDI
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