K. Anitha Kumari
Assistant Professor
Government Degree College for Women, (A)
Guntur, Andhra Pradesh
B. Jamuna Rani
Dean of PG studies I/C
Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University
Rajendranagar,Hyderabad
Abstract
Andhra Pradesh is one of the two Indian states which had taken a lead in introducing the system of panchayati raj in 1952. The three tier system of panchayat Raj in the state is still existing with 33% percent women reservation in the local bodies. These women sarpanch slowly moving towards the leadership scale and changing the face of village politics by giving new direction to the empowerment, highlighting their problems and finding solutions to make it successful. Contrary to expectations, mass media reports highlighted negative results of decentralization of power especially to women such as misuse of power and leadership. Such opinions get strengthened in the absence of realistic analysis of performance of women sarpanch in the grass root level institutions. This prompted the need for this study so as to evaluate the performance of women sarpanch. Existing monitoring data and information on role performance of women sarpanch shows that majority had high role performance in social welfare (55.00%), followed by medium role performance for maintenance of community assets (53.33%), infrastructure and minimum need social service (43.33%), poverty alleviation programmes (40.00%) and low role performance for forestry and environment (60.00%), industry (55.00%), agriculture and allied sectors (43.33%) respectively.
