will draw on existing literature and also present data from our own research. Second, we will discuss the policy choices and possibilities for reform posed by this landscape.

# **Methodology**

This paper has several sources of data. The World Bank Gender Norms Survey<sup>3</sup> (WBGNS) is a nationally representative survey of 3,000 women from two age-groups – 15-25 year olds and 4560 year olds. In addition, it also surveyed 1,500 male heads of households and 500 community leaders like Union Parishad members, religious leaders, teachers and businessmen. Among other questions, the survey had a few on conflict in the community and many more on spousal and other forms of violence against women. The survey also asked if in the last year the respondent had heard of certain criminal incidents in the community or acts of violence against anyone in their community (village or urban neighborhood). To our knowledge this is the first nationally representative survey on conflict despite the fact that the number of questions is few. It is also the only survey that asks questions about spousal violence of both men and women.

A companion qualitative field study was also conducted in 2006 in tandem with the WBGNS. Thirty-two focus groups of on average 7 participants each were conducted at the ward level in the districts of Dinajpur, Satkhira, Sunamgonj and Mymensingh. The distribution of focus groups was as follows: four each with adolescent boys and girls (separately) in school, four each with adolescent boys and girls (separately) out of school, four each with mothers of adolescent girls from poor backgrounds, four each with mothers of adolescent girls from elite/rich backgrounds, four each with fathers of adolescent girls from poor backgrounds, four each with fathers of adolescent girls from elite/rich backgrounds. The questions were on changes in the community, changes in the lives of girls due to education, marriage practices, access to justice, participation in political processes, aspirations of young men and women and select gender norms. The qualitative field study also asked for shalish ―stories‖ – descriptions of shalish the respondents had attended or knew about and their level of satisfaction with the outcome and process. In all, there are twenty usable ―stories‖ whose content was analyzed for this paper.

Finally, we administered a telephone survey to 40 UP chairpersons (a little less than 1 percent of the total UPs) to inquire about whether and how they operated village courts, their knowledge of the Village Courts Act, their understanding of the difference between village courts and other kinds of dispute resolution and their thoughts about improving local justice.

# **I.  NATURE OF CONFLICT AND DISPUTES**

The WBGNS 2006 has questions on level of perceived conflict in the community and knowledge of criminal acts that have occurred in the last year. It has more detailed questions on spousal violence. This section lays out the results from those questions and despite the fact that measuring level of conflict is difficult as we point out later, we do believe that the data give us insight into regional variations and types of conflict that local justice providers have to deal with.

O _verall the WBGNS 2006 finds a very high perception of harmony in the community._ Less than 10 percent of any category of respondents believed that people ―fight a lot‖ in their village or

> 3 See annex 1 for details

3