Ending proxy leadership in Panchayati Raj is a necessary step towards true grassroots democracy. Comment.

The 73rd Amendment (1993) reserved not less than one-third of seats and chairperson posts for women, and many states have since raised it to half. Where the elected woman's husband or male relative exercises the office in practice — the sarpanch pati or pradhan pati — the reservation delivers a body count without delivering power.

Why it matters. Descriptive representation without substantive representation discredits the reservation itself, supplies the argument against extending it, and leaves the woman answerable for decisions she did not take.

But the evidence cautions against despair. Chattopadhyay and Duflo's study of West Bengal and Rajasthan found that women pradhans invested more in the goods women themselves prioritised, notably drinking water. Repeated reservation of the same seat reduces proxy behaviour, because a second term produces experience and a constituency of her own, and exposure to women leaders measurably weakens voter bias.

What ending it requires.

• Making the proxy visible — recording who signs, attends and speaks in gram sabha proceedings, with penalties for the non-elected acting in office.
• Capacity building rather than one-off orientation, with literacy, financial and procedural training.
• Rotation designed so that reserved seats are not always new seats.
• Direct transfer of untied funds to the panchayat account operated by the elected representative.

Proxy leadership is best understood as a transitional pathology of a new institution, not a permanent verdict on it.