Miles to Go for Women's Effective Participation in the Grassroots Level Institutions Of Planning

Abstract

The agency role of women is widely recognized as the most significant aspect of the outstanding human development of Kerala. Participatory planning, the acclaimed mission of decentralization has been propagating the involvement of grassroots institutions in local governance since 1996. Kerala witnessed a proliferation of ground level institutions in local planning and the presence of women collectives in grassroots-level institutions since the inception of decentralised planning in Kerala. The present study addresses the question of whether the local self-government institutions claiming disproportionately high participation of women could assure their active involvement in decision making and whether women could voice their needs in the grassroots institutions of planning. Whether their agency role could ever make them local actors and voice their strategic needs in local planning is a matter of concern after a quarter of a century. Although women have been given special privileges in local planning, whether, the much celebrated entry of women in grassroots level institutors of planning could make visible changes from the status of benefits recipients to decision makers is the crux of this paper.