Women in Politics: A Study of Tribal Women s Participation in Local Governance

For any nation, participation of women in the development process is of utmost necessity as they comprise of half of the population percentage. However low participation of women in politics is a problem in all of the democratic countries of the world today. In India post independence women have achieved unprecedented political breakthrough with the reservation of seats in the Panchayats and other public bodies. The 73^rd Constitutional Amendment Act 1993 mandating atleast 1/3^rd of the seat reservation for women is an important landmark in the history of Indian women’s participation in the formation of democratic institutions at the grass root level; it also provides political space to the disadvantaged sections of the society like Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women. In this context, in the Indian state of Sikkim, the Panchayat (Amendment) Act, 2011 giving 50% reservation for women in Panchayats has been a landmark achievement. Moreover it is observed that the presence of women in Panchayat bodies is quite impressive as compared to the state Legislature. Hence this paper examines the participation of tribal women particularly the Bhutia and Lepcha tribal women in the east district of Sikkim. This paper has been written on the basis of qualitative and quantitative data collected from primary and secondary sources i.e. published books, statistical reports, research work, journals and newspaper and have discussed participation of Sikkim’s tribal women in politics in a descriptive manner. It also seeks to analyse whether the representation of tribal women from these two community through the reservation policy have been able to achieve successful rate of their political participation in the decision making process of the state.

Keywords:
Tribal women, Sikkim, Panchayati Raj, Political Participation, Reservation