Gender in Local Government: The Promise and the Limits

There is no sunset. By article 243D(5) the reservation for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and of chairperson offices other than the reservation for women, ceases on the expiry of the period in article 334. In K. Krishna Murthy v. Union of India, (2010) 7 SCC 202, the Court noted that there is no such time limit for the reservations made in favour of women, implying that they will operate in perpetuity. It also recorded that the challenge to the women's reservation was given up in the course of argument, so its validity has not been seriously contested.

And it came thirty years before Parliament's own. Local bodies have had this reservation since 1993. The Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023 inserted articles 330A and 332A reserving as nearly as may be one third of the directly elected seats in the House of the People and in State Legislative Assemblies for women, but by article 334A those provisions come into effect only after a delimitation undertaken on the figures of the first census after that Act's commencement, and cease after fifteen years from it. The comparison is a strong closing point: the panchayat has had a woman sarpanch for three decades while the Lok Sabha's reservation has not yet begun.

What the reservation delivered

Numbers that nothing else produced. Every panchayat and municipality in India has had at least a third of its seats and a third of its chairperson offices held by women continuously since the mid nineteen nineties, across more than two lakh village panchayats. On any measure of descriptive representation this is the largest such change anywhere.

Presence changes the agenda. The research on Indian panchayats reports that bodies headed by women invest differently, with more attention to drinking water, to the condition of village roads and paths, and to services whose burden falls on women. The finding is contested in detail and the direction has been reported repeatedly.

Presence changes what voters accept. The most important reported effect is on prejudice rather than on policy: repeated exposure to women as heads of local bodies is associated with a fall in the stated belief that women are unsuited to public office, and with a greater willingness to elect them where seats are not reserved. If that is right, the reservation is self-liquidating in the long run, which is the answer to the standard objection that quotas entrench the categories they use.

And it built a route into public life. A reserved sarpanch's office is, for many women, the first position of formal authority any woman in that family has held, and a proportion of those elected on reserved seats contest again on unreserved ones.

One more textual point. Section 2(g) of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 defines the Gram Sabha as a village assembly of all adult members with full and unrestricted participation of women, which is Parliament legislating against the practice of women being counted as members and prevented from attending. That phrase is evidence that the problem in the next section is recognised in the statute book.

The limitations

1. The proxy: sarpanch pati

The problem. A woman is elected to a reserved seat and her husband, father or son exercises the office: he attends the meetings, he signs, he deals with the officials, he is addressed by the title. The practice is common enough to have its own names in ordinary speech, sarpanch pati and pradhan pati, which is itself the best evidence that it is not rare.

Why it happens. Because the reservation changed who may hold the office and not the household, the land, the literacy or the customs that decide who speaks in a village. A seat is a legal fact; authority is a social one.

What has been done about it. Some States require the elected member personally to preside and to sign, treat proxy attendance as a ground for action, and provide training. None of it is a complete answer, because the sanction falls on the woman rather than on the relative.

And how far it goes is disputed. Proxy exercise is reported and so is its decline with time in office, second terms and exposure, and an answer should say both. The honest statement is that the reservation put women into office, that a substantial part of the office was initially exercised by men, and that the proportion falls the longer the arrangement lasts.

2. Rotation

Articles 243D(3) and 243D(4) permit reserved seats and offices to be allotted by rotation. The purpose is fairness between constituencies: no ward should be permanently reserved and no ward permanently open.

The cost is incumbency. A woman elected in a ward reserved this term finds it unreserved next term, and must either contest against the men who were excluded from it or stop. The experience she has acquired is discarded on a five year cycle, which is the opposite of what building a political career requires.

And it cuts against the strongest argument for reservation, which is the change in attitudes that comes from seeing the same person hold office and do the work.

Note that the drafters of the 2023 Amendment took the same approach for Parliament: article 334A(3) provides for rotation of the reserved seats after each subsequent delimitation, so the criticism is live at the national level too.

3. Seats without powers, and money

Everything at chapter 900 applies here. Article 243G is permissive, so a woman sarpanch may preside over a body that has no functions worth exercising; and the money comes largely from State transfers and tied schemes. Reservation distributes the offices of local government, and it cannot make those offices powerful.

This is the most important limitation and the one most often omitted. The question is not only whether a woman holds the chair but whether the chair decides anything, and Part IX left that to the States.

4. The permanent officials

A sarpanch deals with a secretary, a block development officer and a line department, most of whom are men, most of whom are permanent, and all of whom know the rules better than a first term member does. Where the member is a woman entering public life for the first time, that asymmetry is sharper, and it is the practical form the limitation takes on any ordinary day.

5. Disqualifications that fall unevenly

Article 243F allows a State to add disqualifications for panchayat membership. Some States have imposed conditions such as a minimum educational qualification, a household toilet, no arrears of dues and a limit on the number of children. Each has a stated purpose. Their effect is to disqualify candidates from exactly the households the reservation was designed to bring in, and since literacy and control over family decisions are unequal between the sexes, they fall hardest on women.

6. Reservation is not participation

A third of the seats is a third of the seats. It does not follow that the women elected speak in meetings, that their proposals are carried, or that the women of the village attend the Gram Sabha. This is why the Forest Rights Act's phrase, full and unrestricted participation of women, does work that a seat quota cannot.

A worked example

A village panchayat of eleven seats has four reserved for women under article 243D(3), one of them for a woman of the Scheduled Castes under clause (2), and the office of sarpanch is reserved for a woman this term under clause (4). Sunita is elected sarpanch. At the first three meetings her husband occupies the chair and signs the proceedings. The block development officer deals only with him. In the fourth year she begins presiding herself and pushes through a piped water connection for the hamlet she comes from. At the next election the office is rotated to another panchayat and her ward is unreserved.

The promise is all of it. Without articles 243D(3) and (4) she is not elected at all; without clause (2) the Scheduled Caste seat and the women's seats could have been kept separate; and the water line for her hamlet is exactly the change in priorities the research reports.

The limitations are all of it too. The proxy for three meetings is the reservation delivering a seat and not authority. The officer's conduct is the asymmetry with the permanent administration. The rotation destroys the incumbency in the year she becomes effective. And whether the water line could be built at all depended on what the State had devolved under article 243G and on money she did not control.

The correct conclusion is neither triumphal nor dismissive: the reservation is a necessary condition that is plainly not a sufficient one, and the fourth year of the example is the reason for keeping it.

Distinctions that carry marks

What this is NOT

It is not a claim that reservation failed. Nothing else in Indian history has put comparable numbers of women into elected office, and the case against it has to explain what would have done so instead.

It is not a claim that reservation is enough. Every limitation above is real and documented.

The proxy problem is not an argument for withdrawing the reservation. It is an argument about how long the reservation must last, since the proxy declines with time and exposure and would return at once with the reservation's removal.

And reservation for women is not on the same constitutional footing as reservation for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. By article 243D(5) it has no article 334 sunset, and K. Krishna Murthy noted that it therefore operates in perpetuity.

Quick revision

1. The provisions: 243D(3)/243T(3), not less than one-third of directly elected seats for women; 243D(2)/243T(2), one-third of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe seats for their women; 243D(4)/243T(4), one-third of chairperson offices at each level; allotment by rotation.
2. "Not less than" is a floor, so States may and do reserve one half; and article 243D(5) puts no time limit on the women's reservation, which K. Krishna Murthy noted implies it operates in perpetuity, the challenge to it having been given up in argument.
3. The contrast with 2023: articles 330A and 332A reserve a third for women in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies, but article 334A postpones them to a delimitation after the next census and ends them after fifteen years, with rotation after each delimitation.
4. Promises: unmatched descriptive representation across more than two lakh panchayats; a documented shift in what local bodies spend on, towards water and local infrastructure; a documented fall in stated prejudice against women in office after exposure, which makes the measure self-liquidating if it holds; and a first route into public life.
5. Limitations: sarpanch pati, the proxy exercise of office; rotation destroying incumbency; seats without powers, since 243G is permissive and money is transferred; the asymmetry with permanent officials; State disqualifications under 243F that fall hardest on the intended beneficiaries; and the gap between holding a seat and participating.
6. The conclusion to write: a necessary condition, plainly not a sufficient one, and the practices that defeat it decline the longer it lasts, which is an argument for continuing it rather than against it.

Test yourself

1. What exactly did the 73rd and 74th Amendments reserve for women? Not less than one third of the total number of seats to be filled by direct election in every panchayat and every municipality, under articles 243D(3) and 243T(3), including within that third the seats reserved for women of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Not less than one third of the seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, for women of those communities, under articles 243D(2) and 243T(2). And not less than one third of the total number of offices of chairperson at each level, under articles 243D(4) and 243T(4). Seats and offices so reserved may be allotted by rotation to different constituencies and panchayats. Because the words are "not less than", the one third is a floor and a State may reserve more, and several have legislated for one half.

2. Why is the women's reservation in local bodies constitutionally different from the reservation for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes? Because of article 243D(5). That clause provides that the reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes under clauses (1) and (2), and the reservation of chairperson offices under clause (4) other than the reservation for women, ceases on the expiration of the period specified in article 334. The reservation for women is expressly carved out of the sunset, and in K. Krishna Murthy v. Union of India the Supreme Court observed that there is no such time limit for reservations in favour of women, implying that they will operate in perpetuity. The Court also recorded that the challenge to the women's reservation was given up in the course of argument, so it has never been seriously contested.

3. Set out the promises the reservation has delivered. First, descriptive representation on a scale no other measure has achieved, with a third of the seats and a third of the chairperson offices in more than two lakh village panchayats and every municipality held by women continuously since the mid nineteen nineties. Second, a change in what local bodies do: research on Indian panchayats reports that bodies headed by women give more attention to drinking water, to village roads and paths, and to services whose burden falls on women. Third, and most significantly, a change in what voters believe: repeated exposure to women heading local bodies is associated with a decline in the stated view that women are unsuited to public office and with greater willingness to elect them to unreserved seats, which would make the measure self-liquidating over time. Fourth, a first route into public life for women whose households had never held formal authority, some of whom go on to contest unreserved seats.

4. Set out the limitations. The proxy, known in ordinary speech as sarpanch pati or pradhan pati, in which a male relative exercises the office of the elected woman, because the reservation changed who may hold office without changing the land, the literacy or the customs that decide who speaks. Rotation, which is fair between constituencies but destroys incumbency every five years and discards the experience that makes an elected member effective. The weakness of the office itself, since article 243G is permissive and money comes largely from State transfers, so a woman may preside over a body with little to decide. The asymmetry with the permanent officials, who are usually men, usually permanent, and always better acquainted with the rules than a first term member. State disqualifications under article 243F, such as educational or family size conditions, whose effect falls hardest on the households the reservation was meant to reach. And the gap between a reserved seat and actual participation, which is why the Forest Rights Act had to speak of full and unrestricted participation of women.

5. Compare the local reservation with the Constitution (One Hundred and Sixth Amendment) Act, 2023. Articles 330A and 332A, inserted in 2023, reserve as nearly as may be one third of the directly elected seats in the House of the People and in the Legislative Assemblies of the States for women, with one third of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe seats for women of those communities, which is the same architecture as article 243D. The differences are in force and in time. Article 334A(1) provides that these provisions come into effect only after an exercise of delimitation undertaken for the purpose after the figures of the first census taken following the commencement of the Amendment are published, and that they cease on the expiration of fifteen years from that commencement; article 334A(3) provides for rotation after each subsequent delimitation. The local bodies, by contrast, have had a reservation in force since 1993, without any time limit, extending to chairperson offices as well as seats. The comparison is the strongest close to an answer: India reserved office for women in the village thirty years before it did so in Parliament, and the parliamentary reservation has still not begun.