Was government support important in providing legitimacy for these panchayats?
It’s interesting to watch this kind of organization, which is halfway between the government and an NGO. A Harvard undergraduate, Mekhla Krishnamurthy, who spent a summer traveling around with these women and observing the program, pointed out something interesting: Sometimes they’d claim to be part of the government of India—so that if they were trying to get a man whose wife had accused him of something to come to the panchayat, they’d drive their government-of-India jeep to go talk to the village headman and tell him, “We need this guy to come,” and the village headman would make sure he showed up. At other times, they’d say, “We’re not part of the government, we’re an NGO. We can be much more flexible, much more responsive to you.” So they played both sides. The U.S. hasn’t signed CEDAW, the convention on the rights of women. Why is that? That’s a very complicated issue. Of the six major human right treaties, we’ve ratified three—the conventions on civil and political rights, on ra
