http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Reservation+for+women&artid=ML5k0wKKlRQ=&SectionID=d16Fdk4iJhE=&MainSectionID=HuSUEmcGnyc=&SectionName=aVlZZy44Xq0bJKAA84nwcg==&SEO=Reservation for women
B G Verghese
First Published : 25 Mar 2010 11:48:00 PM ISTLast Updated : 25 Mar
2010 12:31:01 AM IST
The Women's Reservation Bill got rough passage through the Rajya Sabha
before it was finally adopted by 187 votes to one, after sundry
obstructionists had been suspended and physically removed from the
House for hooliganism and other recalcitrant elements had withdrawn.
The BJP and the Left voted with the UPA. Floor management on the first
day was remarkably clumsy with nothing anticipated despite clear
intimations of possible disruption. Three Yadavs, Mulayam, Lalu and
Sharad, demanded reservations within reservation for Backward and
Muslim women. Their supporters violated every rule and parliamentary
decorum by not merely defying the Chair but by attempting to humiliate
and physically assault the chairperson, Hamid Ansari, the
Vice-President of India, and refusing to allow the House to function.
Why the Leader of the House did not seek their suspension and
expulsion on the first day itself is surprising. It is also strange
that the Opposition, including supporters of the Bill, should deplore
the use of marshals to evict the rowdies and seek to annul their
suspension with pathetic and insincere apologies.
The damage has been done, a dreadful precedent established and the bar
of good conduct knowingly lowered. Thus do some parliamentarians
destroy Parliament to cultivate vote banks. This is precisely how the
Shiv Sena and other fascist elements like Haryana's khap (gotra)
panchayats have won immunity and impunity despite flagrant violation
of the law.
The Bill, which is yet to negotiate the Lok Sabha, provides for 33 per
cent women's representation in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies by
reserving as many seats for them on a rotational basis. These
reservations are to come to a natural end after 15 years by when, in
theory, women will be sufficiently empowered to contest and win seats
on their own. Hopefully, this will not continue indefinitely like
general SC and ST reservations as any government/party seeking to
implement the law will be (falsely) accused of discriminating against
women, patent humbug of a kind that is plausibly and piously marketed
all the time.
It is true that Muslims have not got their due and that their
representation in most walks of life is abysmally low. This is
deplorable and is very properly being sought to be corrected through
affirmative action. Yet it does not do for conservative Muslims, and
others, to sit back and assume that there is little onus on them to
exert themselves and that the state owes them a living. Wakf Boards
for example have not done enough to utilise their lands and wealth to
set up educational, health and training facilities that would
enormously benefit the community and others.
The Women's Bill will now not be taken up in the Lok Sabha until
financial business is concluded and the vote on account if not the
entire Budget adopted for fear of embarrassment and truant voting if
cut-motions are moved.
Many MPs across the board appear unhappy with the rotational principle
and fear that they might be the ones to lose their seats through
reservation. The hypocrisy lies in the fact that, despite lip sympathy
for the cause, women are simply not nominated in adequate numbers by
any political party. The Yadav trio's record has been far from
spectacular and that of the Congress, BJP and Left no better.
Two alternatives have been mooted. Both are premised on a one-third
expansion of all legislatures, with the additional 33 per cent seats
being mandatorily filled by women. One option would be to permit two
members, one female, to be returned from 33 per cent of all seats over
a two-term cycle, rotating the double-seat constituencies every third
election over six elections. By then women would be sufficiently
empowered to stand and be returned on their own. The other would be to
mandate that the additional 33 per cent seats be indirectly filled by
women by proportional representation through the list system. In
either case, women could be directly elected but their 33 per cent
women's quota would have to be made good through the List. In any
event, the present Bill need not be further delayed by such
refinements.
The matter is urgent because women will assuredly bring greater
commitment and integrity to the unfinished and increasingly urgent
task of implementing rights based legislation – to food, education,
health, sanitation and water supply, clean energy, demographic change,
and employment. Those nominated are not all going to be wives,
daughters and sisters of powerful political families.
This could happen up to a point but not for long and women will
increasingly come into their own. Parties that wish to see more OBC
and Muslim representation are free to nominate more candidates from
these categories. It is also likely that corruption and misbehaviour
in the House may also come down with a proportionate increase in women
members.
Conservative and fundamentalist forces are not favourable to women.
Witness female infanticide and declining sex ratios in the relatively
prosperous NW states. Worse, witness the ferocious objections to a
uniform civil code, so necessary to promote fraternity and equal
citizenship, by persons determined to misinterpret the law and suggest
that a UCC can only be enacted by abrogating personal law, which is
simply not the case. Similar influences were at work over the ban and
threats to M.F. Husain and again when there was rioting recently in
Shimoga and Hassan in Karnataka over publication of a supposedly
erroneous translation of an old article of Taslima Nasreen, the exiled
Bangladeshi writer, that was allegedly offensive to Muslim religious
sentiment. The law was not allowed to take its course. Some perversely
asserted a freedom or "right to offend" as in the case of the Danish
cartoonists or Taslima. A person has a right to be offended and to
seek recourse to law. But there is no right to offend, which would
entail a right to murder, rape, forgery and similar acts.
The caste-based parties opposing the Bill have threatened to withdraw
support for the UPA coalition. The Congress has refused to be
blackmailed thus far and must stand firm. There has been no OBC census
for decades and accurate figures are not available. Nor does an OBC in
one state get recorded as an OBC in another. In such circumstances,
any across the board OBC reservation could create confusion. The
Government does not propose to include caste among the questions to be
asked in the 2011 census. It is time to rise above such absurd
throwbacks and root to become and be just Indian.
About the author:
B G Verghese is a columnist
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