Political parties across the country are in campaign high-gear as the country prepares to go to the polls next month. Amidst the politicking, there is a welcome development: two regional parties have decided to field women as their candidates in at least one-third of the constituencies that they will contest from. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said that his Biju Janata Dal (BJD) would field 33% women among its candidates in the Lok Sabha elections, terming the move a benchmark for womens empowerment in India. Soon after, his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee said that her Trinamool Congress would allocate 40.5% of its Lok Sabha poll tickets to women.
These announcements come a decade after a constitutional amendment guaranteeing 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies was stalled. The Womens Reservation Bill, 2008 was approved by the Rajya Sabha, but failed to find support in the Lok Sabha. Since then, it has repeatedly been deferred for want of a political consensus. Some parties would like reservation within reservation for the most backward women. Some parties do not want any such division.
It is a great irony that while Indian womens parliamentary strength is negligibleonly 65 MPs of the total 545, or 12%, of the current Lok Sabha are womenIndia has had a woman president, a woman prime minister, a woman speaker, a woman leader of opposition and a woman like Sonia Gandhi, who was the supreme leader of the ruling coalition for 10 years, even towering over the prime minister of the day.
In the incumbent Modi cabinet, there are as many as five women cabinet ministers, two of whom have top postsSushma Swaraj serves as External Affairs Minister, and Nirmala Sitharaman serves as Defence Minister. In fact, it is an enviable record that of the five-member all powerful cabinet committee on security, two are women (others members are Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jaiteley).
Representatives does not mean representation
But the fact remains that almost all women leaders come from the middle and upper middle classes, high castes and elite backgrounds. One striking aspect of the demand for reservations for women in legislation is that it is mostly driven by those women who are in some way or the other are related to established political families or groups.
What substantial benefits will the average Indian woman get by more women representatives from a narrow social base without increasing the level of female literacy, eradicating social problems that impact women the most, and boosting womens wages? This question does not have an easy answer. Having ‘women representatives’ does not necessarily lead to ‘women representation in true sense of the idea.
Besides, the pending Women Reservation Bill is highly undemocratic as it says that one-third of the total parliamentary seats to be reserved for women are to be selected through a lottery system. This means that at least 180 male legislators will be uprooted from their constituencies at every election. But what is worse is that in the next election, 180 women who have replaced these male legislators will not be able to contest from the seats they are holding at that point of time because the same constituency cannot be reserved twice in succession under the Bills rotation system. Thus, two-thirds of our legislators will be uprooted after every election, leading to a situation where no representative will be able to nurture a constituency. In fact, no representative will care to be accountable to those who have elected him or her.
The Vajpayee alternative
This is where former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s suggestion could help. Vajpayee had once recommended making it mandatory by law for every recognised political party to field women to the extent of 33% of its total candidates in every election. This approach is more scientific, less divisive and would ensure that every political formation would better represent its support bases. Under this approach, no political party would like to be seen as a party that promotes women of a particular background. Even if it does (which could be the case for small regional parties dominated by particular sections of society), in the final analysis things would even out since there are other formations that would promote women of the rival sections. That would be a level-playing field.
Both Patnaik and Banerjee were Vajpayees cabinet colleagues and their parties members of the his BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. It is ironic that they are now doing something that Vajpayees own BJP is hesitating to follow.
Prakash Nanda is an author and journalist who tries to blend the rigour of academics with the craft of journalism.