My Village Has a Pradhan Pati

 

 

 

 

I belong to a rural village in Uttar Pradesh but currently live in Delhi. For passport-related work, I had to go back to my village. After completing the documentation process, the next step was police verification. I got a call from the police station saying that I should have a residence certificate issued by the Gram Panchayat, along with my Aadhaar card.

The Pradhan of my village is a woman from SC category. I asked my mother if she would be available. Mom, being an ASHA worker, stays in contact with her. She replied, "Her husband might not be home right now." I asked, "But the Pradhan will write the address proof, right?" Mom said, "No, he will write it."

I didn’t take my mom very seriously and ran straight to the Pradhan’s house. When I reached there,  Pradhan was present, but her husband was not. She asked me what work I needed. I told her, and she said, "I don’t know what to write." I asked, "There must be some format for this, right?" She responded, "I don’t know."

I said, "Okay, I’ll check the format on the internet. Will that work?" She said, "No." I suggested, "Let your daughter guide you." She again refused. "He (her husband) will write it," she said. I pointed out, "But the signature will be yours, right?" She went silent.

Luckily, the Pradhan Pati arrived just then. He asked me what I needed, so I told him. He himself wrote the letter, stamped it, and signed it. I was shocked—he is not the Pradhan, yet he was the one issuing and signing the document.

From this incident, I recalled almost three to four Five-Year Plans during which she had been elected since my childhood. Her husband has been contesting elections every term using her name because he is a government employee and cannot run for office himself.

While the reservation of seats for women paved the way for greater political participation, in reality, it has not been entirely successful. Practices of Pradhan Pati and Sarpanch Pati are widespread and remain significant issues in local self-governance.

The menace of Pradhan Pati is widespread because there are about 2.63 lakh panchayats, and women make up 46.6% of the 32.29 lakh elected representatives in Panchayati Raj Institutions. In states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, and Rajasthan, power is usually controlled by male relatives instead of the elected women. Whereas in states like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh, have 50% reservation for women, aiming to ensure their actual participation in governance.

while the reservation of seats for women and marginalized groups in Panchayati Raj Institutions was intended to enhance political participation and empowerment, the ground reality often reflects tokenism rather than genuine representation. Tokenism in panchayat elections is not limited to women alone. It also occurs in seats reserved for  general SC population or any category other than the general seat. Upper caste/ruling caste often selects a symbolic puppet to contest the election on their behalf. If their candidate wins, they indirectly control the power. 

Genuine empowerment requires not just electoral representation but also structural and social changes that enable elected women to exercise authority independently, without the shadow of male dominance.

Book Review: Janki se Janaki Tak by Jagdish Chandra Pandey

On the fourth Sunday of January 2025, exhausted by Delhi’s freezing cold, I visited one of my favorite places—the Darya Ganj book market (Mahila Hat). While wandering through the book stalls, my eyes landed on a beautiful red cover with a handmade painting. There was something about this book that instantly caught my attention. I picked it up and felt like it had been resting in some kabadkhana (scrapyard) for years. Cover was barely holding together, almost splitting from the book. Out of curiosity, I flipped to a random page and read a few lines and the words struck deep.

Without much expectation, I asked the stall owner how much it cost. "Fifty rupees, madam," he replied. After reaching my room, I revisited the book and, to my surprise, found the author’s signature inside. My curiosity deepened, leading me to search for the book online. There was no digital footprint of either the author or his works. Only place where his books are preserved is NITI Aayog library, in physical format. So i decided to give it a instant read.

While reading, book took me to a remote village in the dense forests of Uttarakhand, where the Kefalta Massacre took place in the 1980s (a horrific incident where fourteen Dalit men were brutally killed because the groom refused to get off his buggy during a wedding procession). In this deeply casteist and patriarchal landscape, the story follows Bholka, a brahmin village sarpanch, walking alone towards his village, full of shame and dilemma because he has to make a decision. which can led entire village to outcast him depending on the decision.

Bholka is the type of man who never remarried after the death of his wife, Devaki, early in life, fearing that a stepmother might be unjust to his children. He has an elder daughter, Janki, and two sons. Janki is not very educated—she has passed 10th—but she is very smart. She farms by herself. She even fulfilled Bholka’s dream of having a buffalo in their home, something he couldn’t even imagine after Devaki’s death. But Janaki, being strong, does all these things. She is an example of an ideal daughter. Bholka is very proud of her. But now, one decision will change Janki’s life forever.

Janki’s father-in-law has come to the village, demanding that the marriage between his son and Janki be annulled. reason? , after a month of marriage, she have a six month child in her womb. In their village, no girl has ever conceived before marriage—it is considered an unforgivable sin. Women like Janki are not just disowned by their families but also banished from the village, their very existence erased from society.

However, Janki’s pregnancy is not a consequence of her choices alone—it is the cruel repayment of a loan.  Bholka’s unpaid debt has been extracted in the form of his daughter’s body. Now, he must decide: should he protect his daughter, or should he sacrifice her to maintain his family’s honor? 

The title, Janki se Janaki Tak, symbolizes the shame of Janki being Janki (Mother) and the painful transformation of a woman’s identity. It forces us to reflect: Do women ever truly own their bodies, or are they merely possessions passed from one man to another? It also sheds light on the absence of solidarity among women and the harsh realities of a society where a woman’s body is nothing more than a transaction in a patriarchal deal.

The novel brutally exposes how women are traded, sold, and disowned in the name of respect and love. It questions the rigid moral standards imposed on women, who are expected to uphold family honor at the cost of their lives.

Jagdish Chandra Pandey’s Janki se Janaki Tak is a raw and deeply unsettling novel that lays bare the hypocrisies of tradition, caste, and gender roles. It compels readers to question the brutal social structures that continue to govern rural India, where women like Janki have nowhere to go, no place to call home—thrown in the river and abandoned by their loved ones.