International Journal of Social Sciences and Management

5-9

Authors: Anjali Semwal

Women’s leadership and their effective participation is increasingly on the development agenda of governments. The gender mainstreaming and active involvement of women, who constitute almost 50 percent of population, is very crucial for the development of the rural areas. Women are still disadvantaged due to their limited access to land, credit, technology and resources. Rural women are economically backward. Poverty, illiteracy and caste are the factors affecting the social, economic and political development of woman. Affirmative action to ensure women’s participation in politics is an important step in democratising and engendering local governance. However, it has not been adequate to ensure women’s leadership and their effective participation in local governance, as elected women representatives. At the institutional level, the capacity of local governance structures to implement reforms, institutionalize accountability systems, decentralise functions and facilitate women’s active engagement plays a role in determining whether women are able to emerge as political actors. Social barriers include lack of education, lack of respect for women in PRIs, physical violence against women in public and domestic spheres and oppressive patriarchal and caste structures. In this paper effort has been made to analyse and understand influence of some of social factors, like caste, education and family on women’s participation in village panchayat of Uttarakhand.

16-24

Authors: Deepa Gangwar, Roli Misra

The sugar industry is the most vital industry in India as well as in Uttar Pradesh. Its importance in the state can also be known from the fact that Uttar Pradesh is called the sugar bowl of India. The processing of sugar production is done by co-operative sugar mills and private sugar mills and both the mills are equally important for the bright future of the sugar industry in Uttar Pradesh. In this study, we have attempted to compare and contrast private and cooperative sugar mills. For this, we selected the largest sugarcane-producing area in western Uttar Pradesh, the Bijnor district. This paper is based on both primary data collection and secondary data collection. Primary data was collected through field survey which was undertaken to Dhampur Chini Mill, a privately owned mill with the maximum capacity for crushing sugarcane, and Snehroad Najibabad Mill, a cooperative sugar mill with the lowest capacity. Comparing both the mills it was found that private mill Dhampur is superior in terms of infrastructure, cane crushing capacity, sugar output, and ethanol production. It is more conscious of its corporate social and environmental responsibilities. The cooperative sugar mill doesn't have power cogeneration unit, which should be established, and it makes less revenue than the Dhampur sugar mill generates. The paper concludes with specific policy suggestions to improve condition of cooperative mills.