Launch of Programme on Strengthening Gender Response of Panchayats in Rajasthan

PRIA has launched ‘Strengthening Gender Response of Panchayats in Rajasthan’ with the aim of mainstreaming the issue of gender in panchayats and making these institutions of local governance more gender responsive. This three-year programme covers 21 districts of Rajasthan and is being supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The programme was formally launched with a multi-stakeholder dialogue that on 14 July 2010 in Jaipur. The participants included representatives from government, non-government as well as national and state level civil society actors.

Noted economist and member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council Prof. Vijay Shankar Vyas inaugurated the programme and observed that health care is one of the four crucial subjects being transferred to village panchayats in Rajasthan this year. Terming the state of maternal health in the state as ‘dismal’, he called for the appointment of a Working Group on different subjects at the panchayat level and said that the sex ratio in the country would improve only if we start treating girls as an asset rather than a liability.

The three-year programme is divided into two phases and will cover 1000 village panchayats across 21 states in Rajasthan through a network of civil society organisations. Twenty nodal civil society partners from 20 districts, covering all the 7 regions of the state, have joined hands with PRIA in this programme. In phase I of the programme, the issue of sex selection and maternal health have been identified. The second phase of the programme will be from October 2011 to March 2013.

This is PRIA’s second partnership with UNFPA, the earlier one being a Pre-Election Voters Awareness Campaign (PEVAC) in the last Panchayat elections in Rajasthan (January 2010).