3 min readMay 11, 2026 06:58 AM IST
First published on: May 11, 2026 at 06:15 AM IST
Puspanjali Bhuyan, a woman sarpanch, had a plan. Before the gram sabha, the village assembly, met in Namanguda, a village of nearly 5,000 people in Odisha, she gathered the women together. In that earlier meeting of the mahila sabha, they discussed what concerned them most: Violence women faced behind closed doors and in public spaces that felt unsafe, girls who had stopped going to school, and women shut out of economic opportunity. By the time the larger village council convened, the women arrived with a unified voice and a deliberated agenda. The gram sabha passed a resolution declaring zero tolerance for violence. A women’s help desk was established. A village conversation became an act of governance.
Puspanjali is one of more than 1.4 million women serving as elected representatives across India’s Panchayati Raj system. What she did in Namanguda is a glimpse of what becomes possible when women are empowered to shape outcomes.
This ambition is at the heart of the Women-Friendly Gram Panchayat initiative, developed by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj to localise the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 5 on gender equality, with technical support from UNFPA. The premise is simple: Global targets are only as meaningful as the village-level systems built to deliver them. Gender equality must be at the heart of governance, embedded in budgeting, planning, and every local service.
Piloted in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the model has expanded to one gram panchayat in every district. On International Women’s Day 2025, 770 panchayats formally resolved to adopt it. The evidence is already striking. In Nongarh panchayat in Bihar’s Lakhisarai district, child marriage has been eradicated. Cycle banks keep girls in school whose only barrier was distance. A peer-reviewed study across 163 villages in 12 states found that women’s political reservation increased participation in employment schemes by over 50 per cent and doubled the rate at which women opened bank accounts. These effects persisted long after the reservation period ended.
Sustaining this requires deliberate action. Gender-responsive budgeting must become a binding component of the gram panchayat. The Panchayat Advancement Index, a national scorecard tracking how well panchayats are delivering on development outcomes, must more rigorously measure progress on gender equality at the village level. Deeper devolution of functions and finances would further amplify what women leaders are already achieving.
The institutional architecture is taking shape. The Sashakt Panchayat-Netri Abhiyaan is bringing structured training to newly elected women representatives nationwide. Mentorship structures formalise the transfer of knowledge between experienced and newer sarpanches. The Panchayat to Parliament initiative is building a corridor from village governance upward.
Through South-South cooperation, nations across Asia and Africa are taking note of how India’s blueprint might be adapted to their own contexts. India is at a moment when Nari Shakti and Viksit Bharat carry real operational meaning. As India reflects on women’s representation in Parliament, its panchayats offer a clear message: The foundation for inclusive leadership has been laid. Now is the time to scale up the model.
Bharadwaj is Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj and Wojnar is UNFPA India Representative
