Sharmi Bai doesn’t feel shy any more. Having long given up the ghungaht, or the saree veil, she presides over the male-dominated Neechlagarh gram sabha with an uncharacteristic élan.  

Dressed in a bright pink saree, Sharmi Bai, the tribal sarpanch of Neechlagarh, in Abu road block of Rajasthan’s Sirohi district, sits confidently in the Panchayat Bhavan, inspecting documents. The gram sabha has been called to prepare the annual plan for National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), and when she speaks, people listen with rapt attention. Tall and thin, and almost gaunt, Sharmi Bai does not look her 40 years. But years spent working at various positions in the panchayat has brought a certain gravitas in her voice.   

“We want a road built to one of our remotest villages. Since it’s the forest land we want your permission,” she tells a forest official in the meeting. “We also want community rights over a patch of land under the Forest Rights Act.”

The work: present continuous
Neechlagarh panchayat comes under bhakhar (hilly) area of the block and is infamous for its abysmally low female literacy rate. So ever since becoming a sarpanch in 2010, she has exhorted families under her jurisdiction to send their girl children to school.

Sunita, a class IV student from the area, attests that. Had it not been for Sharmi Bai, the child says, her parents would long have confined her to their house. “I was forced to leave school twice,” Sunita says, “and on both occasions sarpanch-ji convinced my parents to send me back to school,”
Villagers also say tens of girls are now going to school, largely due to the efforts of their sarpanch.

Sharmi Bai, locals say, has also worked to get pension for the aged and infirm in the panchayat.  “There is not one single senior citizen in the panchayat who does not receive pension now,” Savita Bai, a ward panch, says.

Besides her efforts in the field of education and pension, Sharmi Bai has also worked towards ridding NREGS of corruption and irregularities. The scheme has so much potential but has been abused at every level, Sharmi Bai says. “Ever since becoming the sarpanch I have cancelled many fake job cards and ensured workers get their payment on time,” she adds.

Her work has made Sharmi Bai hugely popular not only in Neechlagarh but also in panchayats nearby.
Residents of others panchayats now regularly come to her for her advice. In a healthy, competitive way, her popularity, locals say, has put pressure on other sarpanches to perform!

The entry, the rise in politics
Besides being chosen as the only panchayat leader to meet US president Barack Obama in Mumbai two years ago Sharmi Bai’s work is taking her outside Neechlagarh on other occasions, too. She visited Bangladesh recently to attend a workshop on women’s leadership, and is slated to travel to the US soon to talk about her work in the panchayat.

But while she has taken to this new role of glob-trotting sarpanch like the proverbial fish taking to water, she was just another shy, ghunghat-wearing daughter-in-law, like hundreds of other women of Neechlagarh, not long ago.

But as the old proverb goes: if there’s a will, there sure is a way. Though married at the age of 17 after she had barely stepped out of primary education, Sharmi Bai did not however want to give up on education and be a housewife all her life.

She would surreptitiously leave her husband’s house, gather a few women in the neighbourhood, and study together. It didn’t take long for her to travel the next distance: she gathered all illiterate women in her village and began teaching them, becoming, in the course of it, the rallying point for them.
Egged on by those very women, she came out of her shell and joined panchayat politics, contesting for the post of ward member in 2005. She won the election, and thus began her career in public service.

Her popularity as a ward panch rose further when she identified each and every old and infirm person in her ward and forced the sarpanch to get them old-age pension.

She had become quite popular by then, especially among the women. And when the next panchayat election approached, there was clamour among the village women to make Sharmi Bai their next sarpanch.

“As a ward panch, I had been able to make a difference in the lives of some people in the panchayat,” Sharmi Bai now says. “However, a ward panch has her limitations, and I was aware of the powers of a sarpanch. I knew if I became a sarpanch I could make a tangible difference in the lives of many more.
“So there I was, running for the position of sarpanch in 2010.”

For most people in Neechlagarh, the result was a foregone conclusion: she defeated the incumbent sarpanch, who had been in the post for 15 years.  

The early years, the next course
Recalling her early years of activism, Sharmi Bai says it wasn’t easy. “Men used to stare at me initially and talk about my audacity. They often asked my husband why he was letting me go out,” she says.

But she ignored the stares and loose talks, and egged on by her husband Bela Ram, a daily wage worker, she ploughed on.  
Seven years down the line — the first five as a ward member and the last two as sarpanch — those same stares have turned into admiration. She is now called “Sarpanch sahib” in the village.

Dharma Ram, a local resident, says, “She has made us proud. Thanks to her, anganwadi centres stick to norms and provide nutritious food to pregnant women and children, health sub-centres open on time, and NREGS workers get wages on time.”
Seated on a cot in her modest mud house with brick tiles, Sharmi Bai points to her veil-wearing photograph on the wall, clicked when she was awarded by the area SDM for work on sanitation and girl’s education as a ward panch. Next to it hangs another framed picture, in which she is shaking hands with Barack Obama.

“I have come a long way from those ghunghat-wearing days,” she says, almost reading my mind.
And does she want to rest for now? Is being a sarpanch enough? No way. “I will not fight for sarpanch in the next elections. Anyone who becomes a sarpanch will have to work for people, now that people have seen what a sarpanch can do,” she says. “(But) I would contest for the post of panchayat samiti member (at the block level), and then slowly graduate to the zila parishad (district level).”
Does she dream of becoming an MLA?

Sharmi Bai smiles and doesn’t answer but the glint in her eyes is a giveaway. She has seen and lived the powers of an elected representative, and the difference one can make in the lives of the ordinary folks.