{"id":3152,"date":"2019-11-26T15:30:12","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T15:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/ground_up_stories\/electoral-misconceptions\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T17:52:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:22:40","slug":"electoral-misconceptions","status":"publish","type":"ground_up_stories","link":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/kn-in\/ground-up-stories\/electoral-misconceptions\/","title":{"rendered":"Electoral misconceptions"},"content":{"rendered":"<?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><p>In 2015, while working with the <a href=\"http:\/\/rgmvp.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana<\/a>, I curated and led a leadership programme for rural women. I travelled extensively through Gorakhpur, one among 42 districts where the programme was implemented. My work involved conducting interactive leadership workshops with women who were interested in participating in panchayats.<\/p><p>Many of these women had already exhibited leadership qualities at the block and district level: by organising collective action to access government schemes; negotiating with bank officials for loans to start small livelihood activities; mobilising resources such as grains or money to help poor families in crisis; and conducting social audits on public schemes such as NREGA. Hardly any had considered contesting panchayat elections. After 20 odd workshops, I could see why.<\/p><p>Over and above the feudal, patriarchal context they lived in,&nbsp;it was clear that these women held common misconceptions about the election process.<\/p><ul>\n<li>Most believed that women could only contest in the <em>Mahila<\/em>&nbsp;seats (reserved for women) and that &lsquo;General&rsquo; category seats were for men.<\/li>\n<li>Most women didn&rsquo;t know about the 50 percent rebate in the nomination fee for women\/SC\/ST\/OBC candidates (an INR 300 nomination fee for the Sarpanch post cost women INR 150; similarly, for the INR 2,000 security deposit, women paid half).<\/li>\n<li>Women were also surprised to learn that they didn&rsquo;t <em>have to<\/em> spend a lot of money on their campaigns. The Election Commission had set an upper limit for expenditure, but not a base threshold.<\/li>\n<\/ul><p>Busting these myths boosted their confidence. The following panchayat elections saw <a href=\"https:\/\/ilareddy.com\/2016\/02\/12\/published-on-huffpost\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">more than 2,000 women candidates<\/a> at the village, block, and district levels, from across the 42 districts where we worked. Many of them were first-time candidates with minuscule budgets, and more than 1,000 of them won.<\/p><p><em>Ila Reddy is an independent development consultant, with over 10 years of experience working on governance and development issues in India. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":68568,"template":"","categories":[21,31],"tags":[],"series":[],"meta-filter":[],"schema-filter":[743],"no-display":[],"class_list":["post-3152","ground_up_stories","type-ground_up_stories","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender","category-ground-up","contributor-ila-reddy","states-uttar-pradesh","schema-filter-article"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Electoral misconceptions | Ground Up | India Development Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"#groundupstories aim to bridge the gap between development practice, decision making and ground realities across India.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/idronline.org\/ground-up-stories\/electoral-misconceptions\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"kn_IN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Electoral misconceptions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 2015, while working with the Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana, I curated and led a leadership programme for rural women. I travelled extensively\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/idronline.org\/ground-up-stories\/electoral-misconceptions\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"India Development Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-12T12:22:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/idronline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/A-group-of-women-in-UP.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"976\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"620\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Electoral misconceptions | Ground Up | India Development Review","description":"#groundupstories aim to bridge the gap between development practice, decision making and ground realities across India.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/ground-up-stories\/electoral-misconceptions\/","og_locale":"kn_IN","og_type":"article","og_title":"Electoral misconceptions","og_description":"In 2015, while working with the Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana, I curated and led a leadership programme for rural women. I travelled extensively","og_url":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/ground-up-stories\/electoral-misconceptions\/","og_site_name":"India Development Review","article_modified_time":"2025-12-12T12:22:40+00:00","og_image":[{"width":976,"height":620,"url":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/A-group-of-women-in-UP.webp","type":"image\/webp"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/ground-up-stories\/electoral-misconceptions\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/ground-up-stories\/electoral-misconceptions\/"},"author":{"name":"Rachita Vora","@id":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/#\/schema\/person\/0789e46287b0ed9f26a389a91eadfebc"},"headline":"Electoral 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