March.08 : India is set to make history on Monday when a long-overdue bill that aims to forever alter gender equations in our country will be tabled in the Rajya Sabha on the 100th anniversary of the International Women’s Day. And while a political consensus on the historic measure is still elusive, a large number of MPs across the political divide have agreed to sign on the dotted line, barring a handful who are either afraid or grossly ill-informed.
The political class might well squabble over who should take credit for the Women’s Reservation Bill, which was — surprisingly — first drafted by the United Front government of the mid-1990s, otherwise not considered a woman-friendly outfit! Since then, both the BJP (but not its Shiv Sena ally) and the Congress have tabled it several times. But as has been well documented, without the requisite backing from the largely male-dominated political class, neither party could push it through. It is, therefore, a matter of considerable national pride that both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi have now declared with some certainty that the bill will pass muster — 14 years since it was first aired, and not a day too late!
Undoubtedly, as we aim to make honest women of roughly half our population, that’s 600 million Indian women, the timing couldn’t be more perfect. But as with all things Indian, this bill too comes with a statutory warning. Just as it is all too easy to fall into the trap of being seen to do the right thing by naming a woman as the country’s first female President or the Lok Sabha’s first woman Speaker, or as the CEO of a bank or a major corporation, reserving 33.33 per cent of seats in Parliament and the state Assemblies for women is no sop, no token gesture, and must not become a tool by the power-hungry alpha male to push his agenda in Parliament.
In the 14 tortuous years that it has taken for the bill to come this far, there’s little doubt that it’s taken women at the very bottom rung of the social ladder to demonstrate what can be achieved when they are “given” the power to change things. The 33.33 per cent reservation for women at the panchayat level — now raised to 50 per cent — has changed the political, social and economic landscape of rural India. Little question that when reservations for women were first instituted at the panchayat level, politicians used female relatives as proxies to keep rivals at bay and extend their circle of power. Study after study shows, however, that these same women used the foot in the door to improve the lives of those around them in terms of improving female education, healthcare, roads, connectivity, even bringing in new concepts like rainwater harvesting and better management of agri-products.
Clearly, the bill now before Parliament may be no magic wand to cure all our ills — female foeticide, female illiteracy, the skewed sex ratio, malnutrition, assault and battery, sexual slavery — but it will give the right-thinking woman the ability to back her gender-friendly voice with power-packed, enforceable legislation. The question of how many legislative seats should be covered under the existing matrix, that mandates reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and where that will leave the upper castes, who in many cases also rank among the impoverished, is still open to debate. Either way, the problems that face women — or indeed all of India — will not change with one bill. But it’s a beginning. Perhaps, one day in the future — maybe a hundred years from now — there will be no need for reservations for women at all.
