Noting that India's successful experiment with women's reservation in local bodies was a 'silent revolution', a top US official told lawmakers
that American agencies would like to work with India to extend the example regionally.
Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues, said empirical studies had shown a correlation between the increase in women in local bodies and their performance and benefits to the people, with greater public
resources coming in, "not being siphoned off in ways that were previously siphoned off".
"With Indian government we were talking about the great success story that panchayat system is in India where because of a quota, but now well beyond the quota, upwards of 40 (per cent) to 50 per cent of these village and municipal council level elected positions are held by women," Verveer told a Congressional committee.
Noting that more than a million women across the country have been elected at the local or panchayat level -- the highest such female representation for any democracy, Verveer said India and the US recently had a dialogue in this
regard.
"There's an effort now with our coming together to take that experience and help build the capacity more broadly regionally which would obviously be a contribution to enhancing the role of women's political participation at the
local level," Verveer said in response to a question.
"So both on the level of procedures within the
Department (of State) and then in terms of the kinds of programmes we've been engaged in that need to be sustained I would say it's not an either/or but a both and for us to go forward," she said.
In India, approximately 40 per cent of all elected representatives in villages and municipal councils are women.
"The success of India's panchayats has often been referred to as a silent revolution within the democratic decentralisation process," she said in her testimony before the Subcommittee on International Organisations, Human Rights
and Oversight of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
She said according to many studies, women-led
panchayats have provided more public services, from building wells to roads, and they acquired more public funding for local projects.
"These panchayats have improved attention to service delivery such as the water supply, sanitation, and other issues including education," she said.
The large presence of women in local governments has brought women considerable gains -- both social as well as psychological -- including enhanced self-esteem and self-confidence, which has led to a greater role for women in their households and in the community, Verveer said.
Verveer said in Afghanistan and Iraq, women who have been committed to building their nascent democracies, exercising their right to vote and to run for office, often do so at great personal peril.
"Last year, I traveled to a remote province in
Afghanistan prior to the elections there. More women were running for the provincial council than the quota allocated.
"They told me that, despite the threats to their security, they were willing to make the sacrifice to run for office because it is their hope that they can help make life better in their communities," she said.
Women are a vibrant force in civil society, from Iran to Kenya to Chile-and every place else, as they work to advance social, economic, and democratic progress, safeguard human rights, and promote peace, the State Department official
noted.
"Women in these countries, and the world over, are strengthening democracies and creating more equitable societies," she said.