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wealthier villagers. Women, however, face more significant handicaps in these Indian contexts.
Because a majority of women remain relatively less educated and less well informed, and
because their participation in public domains is limited as well by cultural practices, women have
participation scores that are, on average, almost 25 percentage points lower than those of men.
Even among women, however, more educated and better informed individuals tend to have
significantly higher participation scores.
Individual-level factors, especially education and information matter a great deal, this
analysis shows. Policies affecting structures, such as reservation of offices for women and
scheduled castes, work best when officials selected through these procedures have some basic
education and when they are reasonably well informed. Elected representatives who have no
education and who do not inform themselves adequately have very little impact upon decision
making within panchayats.
Affirmative action also works best when it is combined with education and information
among leaders and followers, and it works relatively poorly when leaders are less well educated
or relatively poorly informed. Making elementary education available to all and facilitating
adequate flows of information, particularly about the rights of citizens and the procedures of
local self-governance, are important prerequisites – or at least, essential accompaniments – of a
policy to promote more equitable decentralization. Structural safeguards such as affirmative
action will not by themselves make decentralization equitable and participatory, unless
empowerment is supported simultaneously through education and information at the individual
level.
Convention