Rajkot: When in Nakhatrana taluka of Kutch district, you will be lost if you don’t know the name of the girl in the family you are visiting. As nameplates in two villages here will only tell you about the daughter that resides in that house, not her pedigree! So, welcome to Mota Angiya and Nirona villages where women rule the roost, literally.
And what augured the change? An initiative of the district women and child development department to convince the residents that girls too matter.
The villagers took the message to heart and within the last two months convinced the Gram Sabha to honour their daughters with these special nameplates. Today, a proud 150 households in both the villages bear such unique nameplates. And what’s more, many more villages will join this initiative on international women’s day on Monday.
The team of government officials organized awareness programmes and in January tasted success when people agreed to change the nameplates outside their houses. Sarpanch of Mota Angiya village, Iqbal Ghanchi told TOI, “We are working on various women empowerment programmes in the village for the past four years. We organized a gram sabha and convinced residents to empower the other half of the society. We have a WhatsApp group wherein we posted examples of extraordinary women of our country which helped us convince them faster.”
Nisha Soni, a FyBA student in the village, has her name pasted bold and beautifully on the nameplate outside her house. “Daughters are now being welcomed in the family. Examples of successful women like Kiran Bedi shown at the gram sabha encouraged our parents to put our names on the nameplates,” she said.
District women and child development officer Avni Dave who took the initiative told TOI, “Initially it was not easy, but now they are supporting our initiative willingly. More panchayats in Maska village of Mandvi, Kukma village of Bhuj and Sinugra village of Anjar have evinced interest in this initiative and we will paste new nameplates at more homes on March 8.”