Pooja Gujjar is the deputy “sarpanch” – Hindi for leader – of her school’s Bal Panchayat in the village of Chaudhula, Viratnagar, Rajasthan, and she’s 11 years old. The Bal, or “children’s” Panchayat, is promoted by non-profit organizations across India to encourage children in rural areas to improve their own lives, as well as work with the Gram Panchayat to implement their initiatives.

Pooja’s experience in the Bal Panchayat holds real potential. The 73rd Amendment, which was implemented in 1993 to give constitutional mandate to the Panchayat system, requires that no less than one-third of all seats be reserved for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and women. The amendment has given women, in particular lower caste women, the impetus and government support to seek power in a patriarchal society, where women have historically played a subservient role, not least of all in politics.

This civic election, for the first time, women officials and police constables will be posted at the city’s 8,395 polling booths for verification of women wearing burqas.

This decision of the state election commission is aimed at reducing the chances of bogus voting.

“It has been a long-standing demand for a woman officer to be posted at polling booths as men cannot verify the credentials of burqa-clad women. Also, in ‘sensitive’ polling booths, male officers find difficult to handle the situation because of the religious sentiments,” said a civic official from the election department.

In the small hilly Indian state of Meghalaya, a matrilineal system operates with property names and wealth passing from mother to daughter rather than father to son - but some men are campaigning for change.

When early European settlers first arrived here they nicknamed it "the Scotland of the East" on account of its evocative rolling hills.

Coincidentally, today the bustling market in the state capital, Shillong, is awash with tartan in the form of the traditional handloom shawls worn ubiquitously since the autumn chill arrived.

Reservation for women in leadership positions in Indian villages is having a positive role model effect and has changed the way young girls and their parents think about female leadership, a new research has said.

In villages with two terms of female leadership, gender gap in parents' aspirations for their children's career and education closed by 25 percent, as compared to villages that never had a female leader.

Similarly, the gender gap in career and education aspirations closed by 32 percent in adolescents.