Dalit Women Empowerment in Panchayat Raj Institutions

Abstract

Empowerment is a multi-dimensional concept and relates to the social attainment, e economical participation and political participation of people. Further, empowerment being an ongoing process, there is no final goal. One does not arrive at a stage of being empowered in some absolute sense. The 73rd Amendment to our constitution in 1993 was a major milestone in this direction. The amendment, besides making provision for reservation of seats for scheduled castes and tribes proportionate to their population in the panchayat area, also ensured reservation of not less than one third of these reserved seats for the women. The impact of reserving one third of seats for women in the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) has been fruitful, and has empowered women both politically and socially. At present, there are approximately 260,000 panchayat representatives in India, out of which around 75,000 are women making it the largest number of elected women in the world.