Second Forum on Minority Issues Geneva, 12-13 November 2009 Jayshree Mangubhai India Obstacles to the Effective Political Participation of Dalit Women Madam Chair, distinguished Delegates, Dalits in India, officially termed scheduled castes, form the largest discriminated community. Their discrimination is based, first, on their descent or birth into specific ‘untouchable’ castes, and secondly, on their traditional ‘polluting’ work. As a result, although almost one in five Indians is a Dalit, half of whom are women, their political participation as a large minority community in India remains disproportionately low. Looking specifically at Dalit women, the current Indian Lower House of Parliament has only 12 Dalit women MPs, a mere 2.2% of Parliamentarians. In its consideration of the Government of India’s report in 2007, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination noted its concern over the underrepresentation of Dalits in all levels of government. The Committee went further to state that: “Dalit candidates, especially women, are frequently forcibly prevented from standing for election or, if elected, forced to resign from village councils or other elected bodies or not to exercise their mandate, [and] that many Dalits are not included in electoral rolls or otherwise denied the right to vote…” I want to just take the example of Dalit women’s political participation in local governance institutions in India called the panchayats. The simple reason is that this is the largest political space open for Dalit women today to participate in public affairs. Moreover, at this level, there are separate quotas for Dalit women, aside from quotas for Dalits and women in general, meant to facilitate their inclusion in local governance. It is true that the quota system has resulted in over 100,000 Dalit women elected representatives across the country today. Unfortunately, however, political representation through quotas has not led to effective political participation for the majority of Dalit women. The main obstacle is the multiple discrimination these women face arising from the entrenched caste hierarchy, chronic poverty and patriarchy. In terms of accessing local governance institutions, recent research shows that dominant castes often engineer elections by propping up Dalit women as proxy candidates. They exploit these women’s vulnerabilities as ‘low’ caste illiterate women, as dependent on dominant castes for their livelihood, as lacking sufficient financial resources to meet election expenses. Another method of electoral engineering is through determining