State Level Workshop on Strengthening gender response of Panchayats in Rajasthan

PRIA organised a State Level Workshop on engaging Panchayats with gender issues in Nehru Sahkar Bhavan, Jaipur on 26th November, 2012. The workshop aimed to share significant learning and experiences of capacitating Panchayats on the issues of gender, health and governance, a three year programme undertaken by PRIA and partner organisations, in collaboration with UNFPA in almost 1070 Gram Panchayats of 21 districts of Rajasthan.

 

The workshop was attended by Ms. Lad Kumari Jain, Chairperson, State Women Commission; Mr. Deepak Gupta (Retd. IAS) Former Additional/Special Secretary, Ministry of Health, Government of India; Dr. Kan Singh Rathore, Director (IEC, Medical and health services), NRHM, Govt. of Rajasthan; Dr. Ashok Bapana, Member, State Planning Board and Rajeev Gandhi Mission on Population & Health, GoR; Dr. S.C Mathur, Former Executive Director, State Health Systems Resource Centre – NRHM, Rajasthan; Mr. Snehadri Kumar Jena, Programme Manager, CINI, West Bengal; Dr. Abha Tyagi, Director, HEDCON, Jaipur; Shri Hazari Lal Nagar, Chairperson, Zila Parishad, Jaipur besides Sarpanch and health workers from the intervened districts.Besides other national level organisations and social activists, civil society organisations from all the 33 districts of Rajasthan also participated in the workshop.

 

The workshop was divided into three technical sessionson the main themes of Engaging Panchayats on gender issues,Strengthening role and relevance of VHSNCs, Health Planning: Collaborative efforts of VHSNCs and Panchayats.Each session included a presentation from PRIA about project experience and learning, following panel discussion by experts on ways to scale up such experimentations. Various Sarpanch and ANMs including Ms. Dhau Devi from Bikaner, Mr. Ram Swarup Saukariya from Govindgarh etc. also shared their experiences of working on gender and health issues in their Gram Panchayat.

 

The first session aimed to highlight the need of engendering Panchayats through some of the hard facts and figures on the status of women from birth to death bed in Rajasthan.The presentation highlighted the methods adopted by PRIA to promoteengagements of Panchayats with gender issues - Pre-election voters gender awareness campaign (PEVGAC – to create the buzz on gender issues), knowledge building, capacity building and advocacy. The other two sessions stressed on ways to strengthen the Panchayats by defining the role and relevance of VHSNC committees, formulated as per NRHM guidelines and undertaking decentralized health planning.

 

Ms. Lad Kumari Jain highlighted the need to bring attitudinal change and acceptance for girl child in the state. She emphasised that the commission receives large number of complaints from women against violence on daily basis. These cases need to be resolved at local levels by Panchayats, the most potent body to address such issues at local level. Dr. SC Mathur critiqued theplanning process in NRHM and raised the significance of decentralized health planning with ownership by Gram Panchayats. He raised that the intention and conceptualization of NRHM was perfect but the implementation has been a problem. He also shared that the health plans facilitated by PRIA are not dependent on NRHM and aim to utilise other panchayat resources also for better health service delivery, which is applaudable. Dr. Ashok Bapana also stressed on the need for democratic decentralization and showed concern over non-functional district planning committees. Other eminent speakers also shared their views on the said issues.

 

The workshop came to an end with a collective learning on need to strengthen Panchayats on the issues of gender and health effectively. There was a strong emphasis by participants to scale up such initiatives and extend this project since it has reached a threshold stage in institutionalizing gender responses of Panchayats, as is indicated by maternal health service delivery.