New Delhi, July 29: Cellphones clutched firmly in their hands, Preeti Bainsala and Savita Rathi flip out visiting cards every time they are asked for their numbers.

The ladies, in their mid-20s, could well be mistaken for businesswomen addressing a corporate gathering. But that’s not too far from the truth. They mean business.

Savita is the sarpanch of Rajasthan’s Gopalpura village, while Preeti is vice-chairperson of the Faridabad Zilla Parishad in Haryana. These are just two of the many women changing the face of local governance.

A recent panchayati raj ministry study said only 11.4 per cent of the women pradhans were illiterate, 19.8 per cent had gone as far as primary school and 16.4 per cent up to middle school. But the largest, 52.4 per cent, had studied much more, with some of them going beyond graduation.

The numbers defy the cliché that women village leaders aren’t educated enough for their responsibilities.

One of them is 48-year-old Rajinder Kaur, the sarpanch of Begowal village in Punjab’s Ludhiana. A graduate and a mother of two grown-up children, she says education has been her greatest weapon against detractors.

Kaur has not only set up a village library in the gurdwara, next to the air-conditioned panchayat, she has also helped set up a dispensary, high schools and a milk co-operative for the benefit of producers.

Panchayati raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar asserts the change isn’t “merely symbolic”. “Panchayat heads like these are helping change perceptions (about women). Each one has a success story. Many of the 10 lakh women in local politics are educated and make their own decisions. They are keen on promoting education.”

Akata Jayaswal, the sarpanch of Amlaha in Madhya Pradesh’s Sehore, shows why Aiyar is so optimistic.

An ambitious graduate, she was married into the village and won panchayat elections there, only to run into a depressing fact — female child education was almost nil.

But since she took over, female literacy has gone up in her area as she motivates families to send girls to school. She has also ensured that her panchayat is fully computerised with Internet facilities. “Education was my priority. I knew only that can change panchayats,” says Akata, in her mid-30s.

For Faridabad’s Preeti, too, studies come first. A graduate, she is now pursuing postgraduation and plans to get a BEd degree. But she rues the fact that her village, Badoli, is still trapped in the dark cycle of illiteracy.

That is the problem in much of rural Faridabad. But she knows the solution isn’t as simple as herding children to school.

“How can you force people who don’t have two square meals a day to let their children go to school? They would rather send them to the fields to work. The government has to provide the parents alternative employment so their kids can study. Most poor families send their children to school only to get grants (such as meals and free books). They mark their attendance and get back to the farms. We are trying to change this.”

For Vaishali Parihar, the sarpanch of Bayaveda panchayat in Madhya Pradesh’s Hoshangabad, the biggest hurdle was the “male-dominated administrative system”.

The lady in her mid-30s, with an MSc and a law degree, feels her education made it easy for her to deal with the problems. “When I started as a sarpanch, there was only one primary school in my village. The girls would leave school after primary education because they had to travel a long distance to study further. Now, after a long fight (against those who didn’t want change), I built a middle school. Most girls here go there now.”

The picture is slightly different in Sarbari village, in Rajasthan’s Sikar district. There, Durga Devi refused to hang up her broom even after she was elected the sarpanch.

“What is wrong with what I do? No work is below my dignity. My job is to clean the streets and I will continue to do so.” Durga sweeps the lanes in the morning and sits at the sarpanch’s desk in the evening. But the first thing she did after her election was to ensure every child in the village was enrolled in school.