Women’s reservation: A law on paper, but a reality far away

In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, the Congress actually gave 40 per cent of the party ticket to women candidates. That year, as the electoral battle was fiercely fought between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party, the State Congress’ campaign, led by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, was possibly making a point with the slogan “Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon” (I am a girl/woman, and I can fight).

In the course of travelling in the State, one saw several campaigns run by interesting women candidates of the Congress: there was Nida Ahmed, a former TV journalist; Asha Devi, the mother of a rape victim; Sadaf Jafar, an activist who had been jailed during the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA); and Archana Gautam, formerly Miss Cosmo World (2018) and Miss UP (2014), to name a few.

Eventually, the entire initiative came to naught as only one of the 159 women the Congress fielded won—Aradhana Mishra Mona, a traditional politician and daughter of party veteran Pramod Tiwari. Also, the other women candidates’ performance was dismal, getting 1,500 to 3,000 votes. It was all a bit sad, considering that Uttar Pradesh had produced the country’s first woman Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi; the first woman Chief Minister, Sucheta Kripalani (1963-67); and the only Dalit woman Chief Minister, Mayawati. Uttar Pradesh is one of the largest administrative units in the world and the nation’s most populous State, currently having 48 women MLAs in a House of 403 (11.9 per cent), which is actually an improvement on past numbers.

It can be argued that in 2022, had the BJP and the SP emulated the Congress and fielded more candidates, there would have been more women in the Assembly. Conversely, it can be argued that the Congress could freely distribute its ticket to women because the party knew it did not stand a chance in the contest. After all, the Congress did not do the same in States where it had real stakes, such as Karnataka, where it fielded only 11 women in the Assembly election it won this year. The BJP had fielded 12 women.

There are currently 10 women MLAs in the Karnataka Assembly of 224 (4.5 per cent). The south, which performs better than the Hindi belt States on most social indices, clearly lags behind in the matter of women’s representation in the Assemblies.

Such numbers reinforce the stark truth that without reservation, women would not get adequate representation in our political system, north to south, east to west.

Now they will. Some day. In the future. We do not know when exactly but we can speculate.

The passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in both Houses of Parliament on September 20 and 21 indicates that sometime in the future a third of representatives in the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha, and the State assemblies in the world’s most populated democracy will be women. That is certainly a step forward for humankind.

Obstacle course
But reaching that point has also been made into something of an obstacle course. The first obstacle: the Bill passed by the BJP government links women’s reservation to the next Census. The Census has historically been conducted every decade, but after the delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the BJP government at the Centre has inexplicably dragged its feet on giving the go-ahead to conducting it. Some analysts have opined that the BJP possibly wishes to avoid precise population numbers of OBCs and upper castes for purely political reasons, besides data that could suggest a decline in the birth rate among Muslims.

But the logical question to ask is: why should reservation of one-third of the seats for women, who make up half of the country’s population, be linked to the Census and the complex delimitation of constituencies that is to follow? Particularly since women’s reservation has not been linked to the caste census as demanded by the opposition?

Courtesy : Frontline

Note: This news piece was originally published in frontline.thehindu.com and used purely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Right.