100 - 50 = 33 (And parties call it equality)

India’s political parties aim to celebrate International Women’s Day by giving the country’s women a gift — 33% reservation for women in legislatures. This makes them strong on the idea of occasion, but how do they stand on conviction?

This bill has been 12 years in the making and was first mooted in 1996 when HD Deve Gowda was prime minister. At that time, Sharad Yadav had famously objected to the bill since it did not have a special section reserved for women of the Other Backward Classes (OBC). He thundered on about the tyranny of being ruled by “short-haired” women. Some passing goddess may have overheard him and his home state is now “ruled” by the short-haired Dalit female chief minister, Mayawati.

Be that as it may. Most Yadavs — of all political persuasions — have since then been doggedly against the women reservation’s bill, since it does not have any special OBC quota. Most other parties are in favour of the bill. But the question behind the question is: how serious are our parties about increasing political participation of women?

The current Lok Sabha has 59 women MPs, including 19 from the Congress, 13 BJP, 4 BSP, 2 NCP, 1 CPM, 4 Trinamool Congress and 2 of the Janata Dal (United) — the party of afore-mentioned Sharad, which is now apparently not so united over the issue as Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is all for the bill.

If you dig a little deeper, the real malaise emerges. While all the parties, for and against, have said that they are all for more women in politics, almost none have done enough to encourage women within their own organisations.

As even a cursory glance at the figures in the accompanying box shows, women do not have much say in their own parties. Some are there for family reasons, some are tokens and others may be the only reason why the party wins seats. But the fact remains that while our politicians are keen to reserve seats for women and in effect change the Constitution by adding quotas and reservations to constituencies and seats, they are unwilling to make the change within their parties and give more electoral space to women.

We are not supposed to look gift horses in the mouth and women ought, one supposes, to be grateful for whatever little titbits come their way, even if they are 50% of the population with 33% of the seats. It might be too strong to call this so-called present an insult to gender equality. But without change from within, it does seem like grandstanding minus commitment on the part of India’s politicians.

See how serious they are
57 Congress office bearers, 7 are women
21 BJP office bearers, 7 women
13 CPM politburo members, 1 woman
8 Samajwadi Party national leaders, 2 women
10 NCP office bearers, no women
46 Trinamool Congress office bearers, 5 women
4 BSP office bearers, 1 woman