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Pak women's team learns from Kerala

George Iype in Kochi

The first thing that a four-member Pakistani women team did when it reached India was book tickets for Aamir Khan-starrer Lagaan. And they continued watching latest Hindi movies as they travelled across Kerala to study the panchayati raj system.

"Because political unrest has killed art and culture in Pakistan, watching films here was a great experience," said Dr Farzana Bari, director of the Centre for Women's Studies at the Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.

President Pervez Musharraf's visit to Agra was not about the summit alone. The Pakistani president dispatched the women's delegation to Kerala to learn how the panchayati raj system worked so smoothly in India.

"Thanks to local self-government bodies, the strides that women have made in Kerala are tremendous. We want to emulate this in Pakistan because we are implementing the early stages of panchayati raj system," Dr Bari pointed out.

She said women in Pakistan would wield more power once elections to the three-tier local bodies -- the district, tehsil and the union council -- are completed.

"The local elections in our country are on. When the elections are completed, Pakistan would have reserved 20 per cent of seats for peasants and workers and 33 per cent for women. This is a wonderful thing that is happening in our country," Dr Bari asserted.

But isn't Pakistan suffering from the rule of a military dictator?

"To be fair, the military regime of President Musharraf is more women-friendly than the so-called democratic governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif," said Aysha Khurshid, a researcher with the Islamabad-based Sustainable Development Policy Institute.

For instance, the Musharraf regime has three women federal ministers who handle women's development, law and education, she said.

"For some strange reasons, political parties are reluctant to share power with women in Pakistan. Women's representation in the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif was negligible," Khurshid said.

Dr Bari said the Quran does do not bar public role for women. "It is a section of the clergy with vested interests which has been giving the false impression that there are sanctions in the holy book against women entering politics," she said.

Another member of the delegation said successive military regimes in Pakistan have tried to hold elections to the local bodies.

"This is true not only in the case of President Musharraf, but also with Ayub Khan and Zia ul Haq. May be the military regimes use elections to the local bodies to gain political legitimacy," said Noor-Ul-Sabah.

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

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