Rajasthan Case Study

Case Study of Banuda Panchayat
(Sikar, Rajasthan)

Manju Devi, 37 years old, is from an educated and economically strengthened family. She is a dalit woman Sarpanch from Banuda panchayat and belongs to the Meghwal community. She has three children, two girls and one boy and they are all studying. Her husband is a government teacher and her father in law is secretary in the Panchayat. She does not have any pressure from her family and she is quite free to do her work independently.

She had a first experience of contesting Ward Panchayat election but she was defeated by 12 votes. However, she contested for Sarpanch election and won by 837 votes. Political Parties BJP and Communist also supported her during the campaign. Now, she is working independently and has started to take decisions on her own.

Initially, in the first meetings she used to sit keep quite, as her father in law used to go with her. He used to address meetings, but later with the motivation and support from her husband, she unveils and started to talk.

She experienced discrimination and humiliation during her sittings in Panchyat Bhawan. She said people thought because she was from lower caste she would not dare threaten them and would do whatever they want.

She faced a lot of pressure from dominant caste people who used to come in Panchayat Bhawan in crowd for their work and used to fall over her. They were trying to touch her from one way or other way. She handled this situation by using her authority and asked them to come one by one and give their complaint to her assistant.

Beside the fact that she was nominated for her good work in her panchayat, the dominant caste people wrote bad reports about her, so she has not been able to get the President award.