Rural Empowerment
The end of the year 1997 marked, among other things, the formal completion of a truly national event - the Union Parishad elections. The month-long that really caught the imagination and involved the energy of rural people ever since it began on December 1, ended day before yesterday. Judging from the mass participation, the record of violence in its past versions and above all, the extremely bellicose mood now prevailing in country's political arena, the huge effort could be dubbed as quite a success. We commend the authorities for pulling off a vital step in the process of giving shape to a newly formatted local government system at a relatively low 'cost'.
Now that the elections are over and the people's representatives have been chosen, the idea of devolving power to the local authorities has to go through a reality check. In our view, the crunch part of the whole idea is the financial power or its extent as far as the elected representatives are concerned. Although there have been deliberations in the press and official circles about devolution of powers some gray vague areas do exist which might be called into question or at least could give rise to confusion once the dust settles and UP chairmen and women go about exploring their range of 'executive power'.
We call upon the government to address these probable operational lacunae sooner than later so that a good idea otherwise executed quite effectively does not get into the line of fire.
Not just the relatively lesser occurrence of fatal violence, the participation of women in large scale both in voting and the contests must go down as a phenomenon of far-reaching social implication. For the first time in the annals of these polls women were elected by direct votes to the three seats reserved for them in every union. Naturally it gave rise to resistance from the prejudiced so-called religious fanatics who were caught in a frenzy of declaring fatwa across the country. It proved an exercise in futility though. Mass participation of women has proved that rural Bangladesh has turned a corner; her women seem to have placed themselves firmly on road to empowerment.
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