Women's Reservation Bill

The Woman's reservation bill was passed by an overwhelming majority in the Upper House recently, and so was the Constitutional Amendment which made it possible. How the bill was passed in the "Upper House", has set new negative precedents for parliamentary democracy, with "marshals" standing by to remove the dissenting views, and with that the views of the millions they represent, politely, of course. Slogan shouting and physical threat to the Vice-President may not be the best forms of protest, but throwing people out is certainly not the way to treat esteemed parliamentarians, who are supposed to be the model citizens and moral conscience keepers of society. That having been said let us come to the actual matter of the much hyped bill.


This bill has been in the waiting for over a decade now, and that it was passed in the Upper House without substantial discussion was sad. Even sadder, is the fact that during this time, the bill has not been improved much, but maybe that was not the intention. Women have been grossly under-represented and perhaps represent the largest "backward class" in this country, although whether they fall into the formal definition of class is open to debate, and certainly beyond the scope of this short opinion piece. And, so, logically steps must be taken to improve their representation.


Whether, an increase in representation of women in Parliament will increase the focus on women's issues and gender empowerment is disputable- there is no evidence to suggest that women leaders work with any greater vigour on gender issues, or that they offer a greater number of tickets to women to contest, a case in example is Ms. Mayawati, Honourable Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh; or Ms. Jayalalithaa, J., Honourable Former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu; or even Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Honourable Former Prime Minister of India. Similar examples can be easily provided for women politicians around the world. One may also note that the key factor for the success of the above mentioned women leaders was not their "womanhood", but their views on policy matters and other gender neutral factors like charisma (whether charisma does not depend on gender is again debatable), or caste, religion (again not entirely non-dependent on gender, but largely so - I will not go into the sociological and political complications which arise due to these interlinkages). This explains their non-interest in taking up women's issues with any particular activism or avant-garde radical approach. Women in politics have not done much for women, which does not mean they betrayed them, for they never stood and won based on women's issues.


At some level, a reservation boils down to choosing a less meritorious candidate over a more meritorious one, and I think it is better for the women (and men) of this country that a truly democratically elected man or woman (who is better qualified, more intellectual) represent their views, rather than a less able women candidate, who probably would not got elected in the first place due to lack of ability. I am, by no means saying, women are biologically less capable in these fields, I am merely stating due to the gender inequalities and exploitative gender relationships which exist in this country, we find few women sufficiently qualified to occupy this most important position of being a member of Parliament. Reservation is not going to help the vast majority of women who have to come to grips with the struggles of existence on a daily basis, what will help is better policies and grassroots administration - which again we can expect of a well qualified male or female member rather than a candidate who has come through reservation.


Similar policies at the global level, whether in Rwanda, Pakistan or some Eastern European countries, has produced disastrous results. While comparing these countries to a somewhat "healthier" democracy like India may not be suitable, we can certainly take cues from their experiences and teach ourselves a lesson or two.


There has also been talk of the reservation being for a limited period of time, after which India, having achieved "gender equality", will continue with the current system. One wishes it were so simple. What sixty years of democracy has not achieved, can a few years of the rule of the reserved achieve? This seems very unlikely, especially given the social, political and economic tangles which women's issues get stuck in, and also since what is required is a structural change. There are several possible consequences of this period of "women's reservation Raj", of which two seem to be very likely. One, like the quota provided to Scheduled Castes and Tribes, this will be extended forever, amending the Constitution at will. This will be unfortunate, and lead to the gradual emergence of a neo-creamy layer among women representatives, as has been the case before. The second possibility is that once the reservation is withdrawn, there will be a huge backlash, leading to fewer woman members in Parliament than ever before. This genuine public "anger" against woman candidates, is, to say the least, understated in an already skewed polity. There is much evidence to this fact when we look at the experiences of the aforementioned countries.


All this even though the voters of this country have never discriminated against women candidates, infact, they have shown a preference for them. It is the political parties, which have not taken initiative to field more women candidates in winnable seats, and to train women members of their party from less politically privileged backgrounds for electoral politics. The percentage of women fielded when compared to that of men by each party is abysmally low, and their gross under-representation in Parliament is a natural consequence. The fact that women candidates have a higher success rate than men also shows that political parties dare to field a woman only if she is very sure of winning - that is, she has to work harder, that too in a gender-unfavourable environment within her party, for a party ticket, and, thus many women fall by the wayside in this race for party tickets.


The consequence of this bill is that more and more mothers, sisters, daughters and wives of current politicians will get elected as proxies for male candidates, and we will witness a show a puppets in the Parliament, making a mockery of democracy. Even without the quota, a large number of the women elected are from political families, and an overwhelming number of them are from very wealthy backgrounds.


The implementation of the reservation will also certainly reduce the "representativeness" of Parliament. It will favour the large national parties at the Centre and State levels, and demolish smaller ones, especially those representing the weak and the oppressed. This is because elections will become even more about money power, fraud and election malpractices. Only large parties possess the physical and economic resources to generate, train and popularize women, who otherwise are not popular at that level - smaller parties will lose the chance to give party tickets to local leaders with alternate ideologies, and thus take advantage of their local support base, since a majority of these local leaders are male. This will certainly make our democracy less vibrant, and lead eventually to the monopoly of one or two parties.


This increase in the need for funding will lead to the furtherance of neoliberal economic policy (more pro-market policies shall have to be introduced to fund elections), and this will be certainly anti poor and anti woman. Moreover, this will push the politicians into corruption and embezzlement to fund their campaigns. It is already a well known fact, that in the absence of state funding of elections, corruption is being used as a major tool to fund such campaigns, and also election malpractices, such as the distribution of liquor, food, cash or in general, the violation of the moral code of conduct.


The demand by some parties for the introduction of quotas for the so-called "Other Backward Classes" within the reserved quota, is also ill-founded. Caste and gender, as is well researched often bear an inverse relationship, since the relative position of the female with respect to the male is generally higher in the lower castes than the upper castes. Thus a large section of upper caste women will get excluded from the benefits of reservation. The complexity therefore, is enormous and any such demands without careful analysis and study is certainly not justified. And also, this bill will also severely affect one seat or two seat states much more severely. All the above issues have been articulated several times, with considerable evidence, over the past years, but the Government has not responded positively.


Infact, several alternate models have been suggested, all of which are of considerable merit and thus deserve careful study for adoption. One of these is enforcing that a certain percentage of seats contested by a party be allotted to women. To ensure that, say, a party with its vote base in Bihar, does not fulfil this quota by fielding candidates in say, Kerala, safeguards can be developed - and such models have been developed involving choosing a suitably sized block of a certain number of assembly sections as a group. Several other alternatives also exist. Thus, the "Women's Reservation Bill", in the current form is ill-founded and simplistic.