Transforming the state from within: Women changing local governance in India

This dissertation is an ethnography of the extent, nature and conditions of women's political "participation" within the decentralization project undertaken by the Indian state since 1993. Known as Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs), this project instituted a three-tier governance structure wherein members of historically marginalized groups such as women and "lower" castes have emerged as elected representatives within the state institutions. My study of elected women representatives (EWRs) in the southern region of Karnataka engages the following questions: Does the presence of EWRs enable their participation as citizens and stakeholders in the process of socioeconomic development? Does the greater representation of marginalized groups in politics ensure their empowerment ?;This study shows how the policy of PRI is embedded within everyday practices and social relations of identity and power, and how this fact shapes the "participation" of EWRs. It explores how notions of "private" and "public" spheres get reproduced within PRIs and act as hurdles for EWRs to assert their new political subjectivity. Additionally, it shows how structural factors such as lack of resources and control over decision-making, make EWRs appear as "failed agents" of development. Further, participation of EWRs is limited by political parties who determine the election of particular EWRs and constrain their actions by subsuming it within larger "party interests.";PRIs are located at the historical conjuncture of transnational forces of economic globalization, and political imperatives of national government that needed to contain popular resistance to growing inequalities. By raising questions of the postcolonial state and possibilities and limits of state-driven change in developing societies, this study furthers feminist political theory on the question of engaging the state for social transformation in the condition of women. It concludes that experiments such as PRI offer feminists the opportunity to interrogate key concepts of gender and patriarchy as they are shaped by the effects of state policies and institutions purportedly enabling development and participation around the world.