The revolutionary 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments brought in radical changes in the administrative stuctures of the country, which mandated 33.3% reservation of seats for woman in local bodies, leading to more than a million women assuming the reins of political power at local level. This has envisaged that local governments should be responsible for providing basic services as well as meeting the minimum needs of people, especially the poor. They were also meant to ensure that local communities have greater control over local resources and in protecting their own sources of livelihood. Increased participation of people in local governance was meant to enable greater proximity, transparency and accountability of government and hence reduce leakages.

Now, more than a decade after the passage of these Acts, it is necessary to look at how far women have been able to assume these political roles and bring about desired changes at the local level.

To enable them to perform better, several initiatives have been taken in the last decade be NGOs and feminist organisations to empower these women. Against this landscape, one of the measures undertaken by Karnataka Women's Information and Resource Centre (KWIRC), an activity of the Singamma Sreenivasan Foundation, has been to federate them at district level - a project to promote and test out the idea of a formation of networks and associations of elected women representatives.

The project was taken up in four southern states of India, viz., Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh. One agency in each of these states was selected to collaborate in this effort viz., Karnataka Women's Information & Resource Centre (KWRC, an activity of SSF) in Karnataka, Sakhi in Kerala, Ghandhigram Rural Institute (GRI) in Tamil Nadu and Lok satta in Andhra Pradesh.

LOK SATTA :
The basic idea with which the project is being implemented in Andhra is as a part of a larger mission to improve governance procedures. Federation are not being formed exclusively for EWRs, but the idea is to ultimately form a state level federation of all the elected panchayat leaders in seven districts. Empowerment of EWRs would be part of the larger campaingn to empower local governments.