How is PESA Act empowering local self-governance and impacting women's political participation?

What PESA empowers

PESA applies in Fifth Schedule areas of ten states (Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan). It is not the Sixth Schedule. The Gram Sabha is to approve plans, control minor water bodies, minor forest produce, village markets, money-lending, and intoxicants, and to be consulted on land acquisition and rehabilitation. Customary mode of dispute resolution is recognised so far as it is consistent with the Constitution and with women’s dignity — a clause that matters for this question.

Samata (1997) and later Niyamgiri (2013) used Scheduled Area and Gram Sabha logic against mining. Forest Rights Act, 2006 needs a Gram Sabha that PESA already tried to centre. Xaxa Committee (2014) found that several states had not fully aligned panchayat laws with PESA, and that departments still bypassed the Sabha.

Local self-governance in practice

Where a functioning Sabha exists, it can stop a liquor shop, set MFP rates, and question a mining hearing. L. P. Vidyarthi’s village as a cultural system and M. N. Srinivas’s dominant-caste panchayat are both altered: the statutory Sabha is territorial and adult-based, not only lineage-based. In practice, manjhi, munda, pahan or patel often capture the new office. Non-notification of villages, poorly translated rules, and parallel van samitis weaken the Act.

Women

The 73rd Amendment reserves not less than one-third of seats and chairpersons for women (many states now use 50 percent). PESA inherits that reservation in Scheduled Areas. This has produced mukhiya / sarpanch women among Oraon, Gond, Bhil and Santhal panchayats. Proxy rule by husbands (sarpanch-pati) is widely reported. Customary councils that exclude women sit beside the statutory Sabha.

PESA’s own text asks that custom be consistent with women’s dignity. That is a lever for claiming speaking rights in the Sabha on MFP (often women’s labour: tendu, sal seeds, mahua) and on land. Elwin had noted women’s forest work; Irawati Karve and later gender ethnography showed that public office does not automatically follow economic role.

• Impact is therefore uneven but real: reserved chairs increase presence; control of MFP and prohibition decisions can increase voice; mining and party machines still mute many women. Literacy, travel to the block, and safety at night meetings remain material conditions of participation.

Critical close

PESA is empowering where the Sabha is convened, informed, and backed by courts. It is a paper tiger where states delay rules, where men speak as custom, and where a woman chair signs files written at home. Anthropology should count both the new women office-holders and the silent Sabhas.