The programme, which is financed by the Norwegian government through UN Women and is a collaboration between the governments of Norway and India, aims to create an enabling environment where elected women representatives will have equal influence over political decisions as their male counterparts. The Hunger Project, an Indian NGO, is UN Women’s partner in the execution of the project. The programme has projects in fourteen districts in six states in India, and a regional programme covers similar activities in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Pakistan.
In order to understand the project first hand Minister Counselor Aslak Brun and Gender Advisor Shivani Bhardwaj from the Embassy made the visit at 20 and 21 of June 2011. They attended district level meetings with elected women representatives, visited villages, and attended meetings with state and national level leaders.
Since its launch in November 2010 the programme has shown good results. Focusing on leadership training, the programme has built consensus with high level government officials and bureaucrats, and worked with women newly appointed as elected representatives at the Panchayati level. The positive experience so far has created a substantial interest from the Ministry of the Panchayati Raj, co-owner of the programme, and they hope to upscale the learning from the impacted areas in India. As the programme progresses, it is time to specify the base line and process indicators so that next year, when the first phase of the programme ends, a substantial assessment of the achieved results can be done.
During the visit the importance of women participating in governance and the community were acknowledged, and the programme was seen as a positive instrument for empowering women. Hopefully the programme will be able to ride the current wave of enthusiasm and as a result plug gaps in governance.