What – and who – made Mission Shakti such a formidable force behind the BJD’s historic victory in the Panchayat polls last month
By Sunjoy Hans
Blurb 1: Leaders of the vanquished opposition grudgingly painted this arrangement as an electoral masterstroke that effected the ruling party’s landslide win in the three-tier Panchayat elections, but such an assessment – even if apparently accurate to an extent – is grossly unfair for its sheer failure to give the complete picture
Blurb 2: The passion with which Karthikeyan delivered that speech back then to an evidently impressed and inspired audience had given enough indication and hope that the mission was destined for bigger things and a brighter future under her leadership
Blurb 3: With Karthikeyan in charge, Chief Minister Patnaik has remained perfectly clued-up about the ever-evolving needs and aspirations of the Mission Shakti SHGs
During the run-up to the urban local body elections in Odisha a few days ago, there was not a single political expert in sight who gave the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Congress even half a chance of giving the ruling Biju Janata Dal a run for its money.
This was because no one has quite forgotten the scenes from across the state earlier last month when the state election commission officially announced the results of the rural polls.
One of the most memorable ones was from Baripada. Wearing big marigold garlands with gulaal of sundry hues smeared over their faces, the members of Mission Shakti self-help groups (SHGs) celebrated as if Holi had come early to the headquarters of Mayurbhanj district.
Of course, there were more than enough reasons for such unbridled revelry.
The BJD had scored a record 90% in the panchayat elections by winning an incredible 766 out of 852 zilla parishad (ZP) seats in Odisha. Those numbers later helped it effortlessly form councils in all the 30 districts of the state, something that had never been achieved by any single party in the history of the eastern coastal state.
And victories such as the one in Mayurbhanj, where BJD swept 53 out of the 56 ZP seats, must have been particularly satisfying thanks to the way it wrested power away from its rival parties. In 2017 panchayat elections, the BJP had won 49 out of 56 zila parishad seats in the northern Odisha district– but this time it did not win a single one.
While the saffron party had emerged as a strong challenger to the ruling BJD by winning 297 seats and forming eight ZPs that year, it drew a blank this time in nine (including Deogarh, Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Jharsuguda, Koraput, Nabarangpur and Rayagada) and was reduced to a mere 42 seats statewide.
The BJD on the other hand, which had won 473 ZP seats five years ago and formed ZPs in 20 districts, gained 60% more seats this time – not to mention a 52.73% vote share, the highest it has ever had in any election it has contested since its inception nearly a quarter of a century ago.
The Mission Shakti SHG members in Mayurbhanj were ecstatic because the BJD’s phenomenally grand victory was theirs, quite literally. Just like in the rest of the Odisha, the lion’s share of the Naveen Patnaik-led party’s success in the panchayat elections in the northern district has been attributed to the role they played in spreading awareness about the BJD government’s pioneering welfare schemes and programmes through door-to-door campaigns in its heartland as well as hinterland.
However, equally consequential was the Chief Minister Patnaik’s earlier decision to reserve 50% seats for women in Panchayati Raj institutions and his party fielding office bearers of SHGs as candidates for ZP seats. With Mayurbhanj having the highest number of SHGs, the BJD had a surfeit of efficient and popular leaders who enjoyed support at the ground level and practically turned into trump cards for the party.
Leaders of the vanquished opposition grudgingly painted this arrangement as an electoral masterstroke that effected the ruling party’s landslide win in the three-tier Panchayat elections, but such an assessment – even if apparently accurate to an extent – is grossly unfair for its sheer failure to give the complete picture.
Cut to Baripada, January 2019. Sujata Karthikeyan – then commissioner-cum-director at Department of Women & Child Development and Mission Shakti – was addressing a massive gathering of SHG members from a pandal in the presence of Chief Minister Patnaik and other dignitaries.
“Today is a happy day for Mayurbhanj. Honourable Chief Minister himself will himself provide a host of amenities under Mission Shakti to nearly 5 lakh women. On March 8, 2001, he had launched this mission which now has 70 lakh women, 6 lakh groups, 5,000 crore in savings and 2,000 crore of annual bank exposure,” the 2000-batch IAS officer said in her opening lines.
“Who would have thought that the mother who once did not have even Rs 10 on her and depended on the money lender is now in possession of lakhs of rupees? The woman who did not have any status of her own and was recognised only as somebody’s daughter-in-law or daughter or mother, now has created her own identity. The mother who had never set foot outside her kitchen is now selling her products in countries like France and Belgium, and attending meetings at the official residence of honourable Chief Minister” she continued.
“The long-time leaders here will remember how they used a handful of rice grains 18 years ago as their savings contribution to the group. There was no house to sit in, no money in hand, no support from family, but there was hope and belief that we would move forward. It is because of the sacrifices and enthusiasm of these mothers that Mission Shakti has reached where it has today,” she added.
The passion with which Karthikeyan delivered that speech back then to an evidently impressed and inspired audience had given enough indication and hope that the mission was destined for bigger things and a brighter future under her leadership.
There is little doubt that Mission Shakti was Chief Minister Patnaik’s brainchild and had already been empowering 70 lakh women as part of his ever-evolving vision to take Odisha forward. However, it is no secret that the movement acquired an increasingly faster pace and wider dimension since Karthikeyan arrived on the scene.
Over the past two years, under the Mission Shakti women empowerment programme, jobs have been created exclusively for women in various state government departments. During this period, nearly 10 lakh women have found steady income-generating opportunities in 13 government departments.
Karthikeyan, now principal secretary cum commissioner of an independent Mission Shakti department, has revealed that the scope of such opportunities is soon going to be extended to seven more departments and the number of women covered under this programme is expected to double what with many new departments set to sign agreements on hiring SHG members for a monthly remuneration.
Chief Minister Patnaik has retained his focus on Mission Shakti all along. Just after coming to power for the fifth consecutive time in 2019, he called a Cabinet meeting where it was decided that the government would procure goods and services worth Rs 5,000 crore from Mission Shakti SHGs. This move not only ensured a steady flow of funds into the SHGs and cash for its members, but also considerably reduced unemployment among nearly half of the state’s population.
Now, with an enhanced target of providing steady monthly income for 1 crore women, Mission Shakti is also contributing in no small measure to skilling SHG members in wide a range of sectors – from agriculture, animal husbandry and fishing to energy and finance – so they can have an independent economic and social status.
The five-time Chief Minister’s commitment to the cause was evident in the establishment of Mission Shakti as an independent department in June last year. With Patnaik having an unparalleled knack for choosing the right people for the right jobs and Karthikeyan having already proven more than capable of carrying out his vision on the women’s empowerment front, apart from being instrumental in the growth of the Mission Shakti across Odisha, there was never any doubt among those who had been following the story about who would lead the new department.
With Karthikeyan in charge, Chief Minister Patnaik has remained perfectly clued-up about the ever-evolving needs and aspirations of the Mission Shakti SHGs. As a result, he launched a series of programmes last December to further strengthen the movement in the state. Most notable was the announcement about new marketing arrangements for goods produced by Mission Shakti SHGs. Patnaik laid the foundation stone for Mission Shakti Bazar in Bhubaneswar and declared that such Bazars would be set up across Odisha. He also launched an e-marketing portal. An online marketing platform, the Chief Minister said, would let people across the world buy goods produced by Mission Shakti women and thus increase their income.
Other programmes included provision of interest subsidy, uniform allowance for community support staff, meeting fees and travel allowance for EC members of the Federation and provision of Rs 1 crore to every district for constitution of Mission Shakti at the district level.
Also significant was the announcement about SHG ‘Sakhis’ for assisting women in villages that do not have banks yet, not to mention the construction of Mission Shakti Ghar in all panchayats and wards and Mission Shakti Bhawans at all blocks and state levels.
Expressing hope on the occasion of the launch that the new facilities would further strengthen the Mission Shakti movement at the grassroots level, the Chief Minister stated that no state, country or family can move forward without empowerment of women and that Odisha will always show the forward to others in this sphere.
In her welcome address for that event, Karthikeyan hailed Mission Shakti women as a ‘setubandha’ (bridge) between the government and the society.
With one of Odisha’s finest bureaucrats herself acting as a rock-solid bridge between the Mission Shakti SHGs and the ever-popular Chief Minister, and SHG members themselves – who have earned the implicit trust of rural Odisha through their diligent execution of the government’s unfailingly people-friendly schemes – deployed as the BJD’s campaigners and candidates in the Panchayat polls this time, the Opposition never really stood a chance.
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