At present the total population of Madhya Pradesh is 7.27 crore of which the population of women is 3.51 crore. And the total literacy level of Madhya Pradesh is 69.32 percent out of which the female literacy level is 54.49 percent.
The data shows that women are not far behind men in Madhya Pradesh either in contribution to the numbers or in terms of literacy level. But the status of women in important positions in the government administration is dismal.
Out of the total 10 divisions of Madhya Pradesh, none of the divisions is headed by a woman commissioner and out of 51 districts in Madhya Pradesh only three districts have women collectors. The three are Swati Meena of Sidhi, Shilpa Gupta in Khandwa and Chhavi Bhardwaj in Dindori.
The rest 48 districts have male collectors. According to the general administration department, the Government of Madhya Pradesh, there are a total of 304 IAS officers in Madhya Pradesh cadre, out of which 53 are women IAS officers. Out of the 53 women IAS officers, 8 are serving in New Delhi, one is serving in Maharashtra, one is on child care leave, one is on leave and other one is in NRHM and the rest 41 are heads of various departments of the Government of Madhya Pradesh.
Though all the departments of the Government are equally important but compared to these departments, the role of collectors is most important as it directly deals with the welfare of the people and even a common man can directly reach to him and speak up his problems. Even the Government has also initiated the scheme of night stay of collectors in rural areas and villages. These help the villagers to directly interact with the collectors who cannot come to the district headquarters.
Talking to The Pioneer, the working women and college going village women said that it will be much better if the government also posts women collectors in more districts of the state because it will be easy for the women to interact with the lady officers as she can understand their problems in detail. The women collector will be an inspiration for the common women and a lesson to the male dominant society. When The Pioneer asked a mature male politician about the posting of women as collectors, he said that women should not be posted as collectors because they work according to rules and regulations and we cannot pressurise them. It is to be noted that the business capital of Madhya Pradesh and the biggest district of Madhya Pradesh, Indore never witnessed a single woman collector in the past 60 years.