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Tamil Nadu elections: How many women will you nominate?

Tamil Nadu elections are coming up and it remains to be seen how many women candidates will be nominated this year.

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AIADMK's Jayalalitha and BJP's Tamilisai.
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Summer is here. Holidays will soon begin for children around India. Mangoes will enter the market, each variety as its season arrives. And we will have elections in five Indian states—seems like a summer holiday routine.

Tamil Nadu will vote for state legislators on May 16. The last date to file nominations is April 29. The first list of candidates has been released by the ruling All India Anna DMK. They are contesting 227 seats and are fielding 31 women candidates. That constitutes 13.7% of their list.

Earlier that day, coincidentally, I posted a poll on Twitter asking, “In your view, which TN party will come closest to gender parity in nominating electoral candidates?” Fifteen votes were cast, 47% for the AIADMK, 20% for the DMK, 33% for the BJP and none for the Congress. This utterly unscientific poll probably reflects each party’s social media presence better than anything else, but if more people thought AIADMK would come closest to the bar on parity and a measly 13.7% is where they stop, there seems to be little hope that gender equality will be a concern in these elections… finally!

From across the Palk Straits, came the news this week that Sri Lanka’s Parliament was converted into a Constituent Assembly that will deliberate on the thousands of suggestions they crowd-sourced in the first quarter of this year. To this end, a Chairman, seven Deputy Chairmen and a 21-member Steering Committee were appointed. Out of the 29 people who were appointed, only one member was a woman. Women outnumber men in Sri Lanka, unlike other South Asian countries, and the island has consistently had better social indicators than most of its neighbours. Still, in bodies whose mandate is critical to society, so few women are included that their inclusion seems an oversight.

That is the world as it is. What infuriates me more than this world is our acceptance. of “That is how it is.”

We can be outraged by people eating beef, the hoisting of flags, the chanting or not chanting of slogans, who attended which meeting, who covered their head or not in a particular context—just trivial stuff—but the exclusion of women--  now, that is an issue that can wait another day!

I know I am being unrealistic in being angry. A reasonable person would understand that the inclusion of women is like hanging up a painting or placing a vase in your home—it’s very nice, but it does not define the home. What then defines the home—everything else. You clutch at straws, saying, “First, we must deal with …” and fill in the blank with this morning’s corruption scandal, the drought you have ignored for years, the non-availability of medicines that you do not know about, the flyover that collapsed because your cronies used bad cement… anything, anything that will keep you from having to share your access to power. You know that neither you nor I will remember your pressing concern about this issue in a few months.

As patriarchy’s elite guard their entitlements closely, the more sophisticated, “liberal” of them will say to people like me, with a touch of thoughtfulness: “Yes, it’s a real problem. There should be more women in politics. I have said so myself at such-and-such-a-meeting. It was a key point in my speech to such-and-such-a-conference. In my book, I return time and again to the role of the mother in the Indian family.” A charming, rueful smile probably follows. “But the problem, and it’s insurmountable, exactly like hunger and illness, is that it is impossible to find competent women.”

Are you saying women are not competent? Are you saying this to me? I ask. No, no, perish the thought, they are wonderful! But where are they?

This is hard for me to buy. I see them everywhere. They are school principals, they are head nurses, they run large, complex joint families, juggling their finances, they run family stores, family farms (even during droughts and floods) and family firms. They are in social work and they are in business. They are in sports and entertainment and are media icons—you hand awards to them but you cannot see them. They are in your rallies, in your timelines, in your op-ed pages and in your faces. And you don’t see them? If you cannot see what is in front of you, dare I trust you with the future of the world?

The gruff, old-fashioned realists now decide it’s time to give me a talking-to. At my age, I must understand the realities of the world.

“We cannot give women tickets because they have no experience.” Nor did you, it bounces off their thick skins.

“Women simply are not tough enough for election campaigns.” Change the rules? But this is about realism.

“Women do not offer themselves as candidates, they have no drive.” Really? How come they flourish in other sectors?

“We invite women but they don’t see themselves as leaders.” This is true, but it’s not a permanent condition.

“Let me be blunt, campaigning involves money and women cannot access money.” So, how can you help?

“Sorry, you have to help yourself, it’s an election. Women cannot help themselves or each other. They cannot survive this process. And most important, women don’t vote for women.” You have studied this?

“Yes, as men we are naturally experts on all we survey.” No comment.

“Women don’t vote for women and don’t campaign for women, and no party can afford to put up a losing candidate.”

I have no words left at this point, mainly because all that cold fury in my heart is transforming into a volcano. I think. There is no point persisting with this campaign for gender parity. No one is going to listen to me.

More to the point, no one cares. Not even women. Women accept all these arguments as true. They do not notice their own absence. They are neither aware nor concerned that they are invisible. Raised to consider themselves the least important members of their households, families, offices and communities, they will be the first to concede that their inclusion is rightly a non-issue in any election.

This is a losing battle but the few of us who care about it cannot stop.

As we get ready to vote in Tamil Nadu, I want to ask of the male-dominated committees that hand out party nominations: Can you claim to be democratic when about half your population is registered to vote, only two-thirds of those turn up to vote, only a plurality is needed to win, and you have virtually ignored almost half your population as a category so that women only make up 10-12% of legislators? Really?

Sri Lanka, unlike India, uses proportional representation. The new 25% quota for women in local government elections involves parties creating a list of women who will then be nominated to these bodies in proportion to the votes the parties have already won. You don’t need to be an election expert to spot the two glaring flaws in this. First, this makes women dependent on male-dominated party nomination committees for their inclusion. That dependence is, among other things, an invitation for exploitation and control. Second, in politics, if you do not face an election and return with a popular mandate (even with a minority of the votes), you remain a second-class participant. With such a system, women appear to be included—“How kind of you to let me come!” but are in fact, left trapped on the margins.

Are these democracies? Not my democracy, I say, even as I continue to vote so that you have no reason to shut me out of this conversation. Political parties, when you decide to nominate women and other gender groups in substantial numbers, let us know—I will then take seriously your democratic claims.

Gender equality—expressed as a sincere effort to achieve parity—is not a dispensable, optional carrot to dangle. It is not the ice cream a child (women and children?) may be promised for quiescence on the way home to electoral victory. It is the foundation of social and political democracy.

At the time of the last election, I suggested here that parties that ignore women’s rights and exclude women do not deserve our vote. I wrote about ways in which to change the way things are. These included not nominating those charged with sexual offences and those who responsible for misogynistic speech, and of course, inclusivity and diversity.

Almost two years later, nothing has changed. But it must. So, I close by saying to Tamil Nadu’s political parties: I am going to vote on May 16. Show me you care. If you are really as progressive as you claim, if you are sincere about social equality, show me now—show me serious diversity in your nominations list, with gender parity.

But you cannot. You will not. You really do not care. And so, the solitary independent woman candidate on the ballot in my constituency will probably get my vote.

Swarna Rajagopalan is a political scientist based in Chennai. She is the founder of Prajnya and hates feeling cynical.

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