DESK WORK: Kodihalli?s women panchayat members. Photo: Varuna Verma

In Bangalore, M.G. Road stands for glitzy shops, neon-lit hoardings, jostling crowds and traffic snarls. In Kodihalli ? a paddy-growing village 100 km south of Bangalore ? M.G. Road lives more by the dreams of the man it is named after. The narrow brick-laid lane ? which measures about 100 steps ? has a village office on one side and a primary school on the other. Solar lights line the garbage-free road.

Kodihalli looks like a miniature village model grown big. All the 18 lanes in the village have their names painted on yellow brick signboards. The houses on either side are uniform in size and colour ? with off-white walls and red-tiled roofs. Most striking is the absence of litter and stray dogs.

Kodihalli village was declared Karnataka?s first ?Swaccha Grama? (clean village) and ?Solar Grama?. It lives up to both its reputations.

The village bagged another epithet last month. Kodihalli and neighbouring Gopalapura became the first two villages in Karnataka to jointly elect an all-woman gram panchayat. Women candidates were fielded for all the eight panchayat seats ? which include the scheduled caste and backward caste seats. Seven members were elected unopposed.

The panchayat election has defied all social and demographic statistics. Farming ? mainly of paddy and sugarcane ? is the chief occupation in Kodihalli and Gopalapura. Women?s employment hovers around the zero mark. Family planning means restricting the number of children to three or four.

The village made waves when eight women took over charge at the panchayat office last month. Local politicians, NGOs, felicitations and funds came pouring into Kodihalli and Gopalapura. ?We have been promised an additional grant of Rs 10 lakh,? says K.M. Channaya Gowda, the local JD (S) leader. But in some ways, the story of Kodihalli and Gopalpura is an old one ? that of proxy rule by men. As Gowda walks into the Gopalapura panchayat office ? with his cronies in tow ? the newly elected panchayat vice-president, M. Manjula, vacates her seat and shifts to a corner chair. Gowda takes centre stage and does the talking now. He says he plans to improve the village drainage system and drinking water supply during this panchayat?s tenure.

The panchayat members seem too enamoured of him to say much. ?Yes, drainage is a problem,? chips in Manjula. ?We get just two hours of drinking water supply in a day,? pipes in Kamla ? another panchayat member ? from the back.

The controls of Gopalapura?s panchayat office are clearly not vested in its new leaders. But they are not raising a storm. A panchayat position does not mean change in priorities for them ? they remain home-makers first and village heads later.

Kamla says she manages to attend office only twice a week. Cooking lunch for the workers at her husband?s sugarcane farm takes up all her time, she says.

The furthest that vice-president M. Manjula has been from home is Mandya ? the district town, 10 km from Gopalapura. ?Running the house and looking after three children takes up all my time,? she says.

Being the local JD (U) strongman?s wife was reason enough for G.M. Manjula to walk away with the panchayat president?s post. ?She wants all residents to get ration cards,? says K. C. Satish, Manjula?s husband. Manjula stands quietly beside him.

Clearly, this seems to be a woman panchayat only on paper. The men still run the show. ?Women can?t manage two 1,000-people-strong villages on their own,? reasons Satish. ?They need our help.?

Feminists would probably not bookmark Kodihalli?s feat as path-breaking. But Mahesh Chandra Guru, director, Vikasana Sangha ? a Mandya-based NGO working in village development ?is doing the victory dance. For one, he believes that power does gradually get transferred to women, even when men are loath to give it up. And two, the change may right now be notional, but sooner or later, he believes that the women of the two villages will rule.

Guru calls the Gopalapura panchayat verdict a significant first for the village women. ?Eight housewives now go to office and look into ledgers and accounts. They see a life beyond their cooking stove. That?s enough to begin with,? says Guru.

The Vikasana Sangha has been working with women and village panchayats in Mandya district for a decade. It organises self-help groups for the women. Under the NGO?s self-employment training programme, village women are given crash courses in tailoring and candle-making. Health education for women and children is also a part of the NGO?s agenda.

However, Guru feels that the local women have been largely unreceptive to the NGO?s self-employment schemes. The reason, he says, is the general economic prosperity in the region. Most villages in Mandya district fall in fertile, well-irrigated land where paddy and sugarcane grow in abundance. Families are fairly prosperous, and women don?t find the need to work outside their homes. ?It is difficult to convince the women to become economically independent,? says Guru.

Besides women-centric programmes, the NGO holds training classes for panchayat members. Newly-elected panchayat leaders are updated on government rules and regulations and taught how to mobilise funds, implement projects and generate income for the panchayat.

This is the first time the Vikasana Sangha will be training an all-women batch of panchayat members in Gopalapura. The NGO didn?t imagine its experiment for an all-woman panchayat would reach this far. A grassroot-level worker mooted the idea at a monthly meeting and the big bosses at the NGO decided to give it a go. The idea of an all-woman panchayat didn?t happen arbitrarily. Vikasana Sangha?s grass-root workers found women panchayat members ? elected through the reservation system ? more enthusiastic about resolving local issues.

Last year, Kodihalli?s primary school faced a slump, as the student drop-out rate soared. The issue was discussed at a panchayat meeting. The men found the problem inconsequential. ?The woman panchayat member said she would ask her friends to ensure their children attended school,? says Y.R. Sumathi, a NGO worker who was present during the meeting.

The offer was brushed aside and the meeting moved to other matters. ?One woman?s voice invariably gets lost in a male-dominated panchayat,? explains Guru.

Work at building a women?s panchayat team began with identifying the right village. Kodihalli and Gopalapura fitted the bill. With the Vishweshwaraya Canal ? which connects to the Cauvery river ? flowing nearby, the two villages are the best irrigated in the region. This means, high average income and education for girls. Most women in the village have studied up to Standard 10. ?It?s easier to communicate with educated women,? says Sumathi.

The tough part of the exercise was convincing the local opinion leaders to hand over power to women. Money worked as an attractive bait. ?We told them that women panchayats have easier access to government grants,? says Guru. The idea struck home.

Post-panchayat election, Kodihalli and Gopalapura?s menfolk are in celebration mode. The two villages have become local celebrities for electing eight women leaders. They are being called model villages. Funds are flowing in. And the best part ? for the men, at least ? is that they continue to retain the real power.

But Guru likes to point out a women-led simmer of protest at Gopalapura last week. A small group of village women staged an hour-long protest outside the local liquor shop. Since politicians and social workers were visiting the village regularly, the men decided it was best to shut the shop temporarily. ?We now buy our liquor stock from Mandya,? says Venkat, a Gopalapura resident.

Guru feels this spark of protest is a sign of things to come. A time when K.C. Satish will be known as Manjula?s husband ? and not the other way round.