Kerala 2005 - of Planning Commission

CHAPTER 9
DECENTRALISED GOVERNANCE AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
151
Box 9.5: Lighting Up Remote Hamlets – Mini- and Micro-hydel Projects
Despite cent per cent rural electrification, achieved long back, more than 15 per cent of the households
in Kerala still remain unelectrified, most of them being in remote hilly areas all along the Western Ghats.
Electrifying these households from the grid involves problems of accessibility and high costs, on account
of low density and long distance to be covered. The Electricity Act 2003 lays down that the appropriate
government shall endeavour to supply electricity to all areas including villages and hamlets. The Act envisages
formulation of two policies: a National Electricity Policy permitting standalone systems (including renewable
and non-renewable sources), and a National Policy for Rural Electrification for purchase of bulk power and its
local distribution in rural areas.
Micro- and mini-hydel power stations (up to 100 KW capacity) have already proved to be a useful standalone source
for lighting up villages in remote, mountainous terrain in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal,
West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh as well as in Kerala. About 198 small hydel sites have so far been identified in
Kerala with a total capacity of 467 mega watts (MW), of which 10 sites (with a capacity of 72 MW) have so far been
set up, most of them in Idukki district, and another 10 (with 73 MW) are under construction (Government of Kerala,
2004). It should be noted that the decentralisation drives have opened up ample opportunities for exploiting the
potential available for harnessing mini- and micro-hydel projects. Given the enabling environment, several local
bodies have taken up initiatives to develop locally available sources of energy with people’s participation.
Most studies found that armed with an understanding of
gender 15 as a crucial parameter in economic and social
analyses, the proponents of the decentralised planning process
made a sincere attempt to address women’s issues with a
view to 'empowering' them, that is enhancing their choices.
The ‘empowerment approach’ had gained considerable
popularity and appeal in the 1990s. Although first invoked in
the 1980s and envisaged within a 'transformative' tradition
of planning, characterised as a political, conflictual process,
it came to be widely interpreted in very narrow terms in
the mainstream development discourse of the 1990s. The
analysis of the WCP, through a gender lens reveals that
in Kerala too, despite the well meaning intentions of the
policy-makers on mainstreaming gender into the Plan
process, at the level of implementation the approach tied up
much more with the narrow interpretation, relying heavily
on ‘empowering’ women through self help groups. While
the mandatory 10 per cent appears to have been more or
less achieved for the five year period as a whole, some items
of general expenditure were really ascribed to the WCP like
anganwadi feeding, toilets, drinking water and roads, thereby
cutting down on resources intended primarily for women..
There was hardly any difference in the nature of projects in
the women headed panchayats. This is not to undermine
considerable efforts by some panchayats to move into new
areas such as IT, auto rickshaw driving, women’s transport
cooperatives, etc.
Given the fact that 70-75 per cent of women in Kerala are
engaged in household duties, many of the SHG activities
enabled women to combine roles and earn some incomes.
Mushroom cultivation, poultry, kitchen garden, umbrella
making, etc. allow work to be carried out in/near home and
is not full time in nature. Women perceived these activities
as a boon and the extra work appeared to be no burden to
them. In fact, these are perceived to be better choices than
working in the fields or as casual labour in non-agriculture,
choices that are also dictated by the wide spread of literacy,
and social norms/practices which shape job expectations.
While such an approach certainly enhances the
choices and productivity levels of individual women,
we have to see how this collectivity of women backed
by a feminised political leadership can generate a
larger agenda of changing the social environment for
women. It was here that the strategy failed as far as
gendered planning was concerned. The difficulty of
translating innovative ideas into concrete projects for
women to achieve greater gender justice, lay in the
absence of a gender analysis framework. Discussions
within such a framework (which also requires the
presentation of gender statistics in a manner teasing
out the underlying causes of unequal gender relations
and the consequences) in the task forces (now working
groups) would have helped in the formulation of more
15 That is the social relationship between men and women through which women have been systematically located in an inferior
position in society.