July 27, 1998

Whom will the Women's Reservation Bill help? Certainly not women.

Tavleen Singh

Since this is going to be a politically incorrect piece anyway, I may as well go the whole hog and state upfront that the last thing we need in Indian politics is more women of the kind we currently have. Please understand I am not against women per se, only against the kind of widows, wives, orphans, daughters and mistresses that have been dumped on us because of their connections to some important male politician or the other.

At the end of the 20th century, Indian women should consider it a matter of deep shame that the Rabri Devis and the Sonia Gandhis are by and large the only kind of women who make it to the top -- or even to the bottom -- of our political system. Those who support the Women's Reservation Bill should remember that all it is likely to do is give us more of the same.

The bill, which seeks to make 33 per cent of Parliament and each state assembly into the legislative equivalent of a "Ladies Only" railway compartment, is our latest holy cow. Nobody dares speak against it openly although many women politicians themselves oppose it, as do many journalists. The press is more susceptible to political correctness than even politicians. So while the bill's critics mutter quietly in dark corners, its supporters sing their support on front pages in a language that aspires to new literary heights.

Listen to this description from The Indian Express of how one of Laloo Yadav's men tore the bill out of Law Minister Thambidurai's hands: "Laloo Yadav backed his MP suggesting that Durai could have hurled the bill himself. Durai did nothing of the kind and merely wore a hapless look as he mumbled 'What is this?' as his copy of the bill ended as a crumpled ball of male resentment."

"Crumbled ball of male resentment"; not bad for a hack. But as I said both passions and political correctness are running high. That is why every political party has been forced to express fulsome support for a bill which will end up furthering nothing more than tokenism. How do I know for sure? Because I have had the dubious pleasure of covering Parliament for longer than anyone would want to. In all that time, I have never heard a woman MP say anything that could be considered remotely useful to the cause of women.

In fact, why should I even bother to provide this testimonial when Indira Gandhi's record speaks for itself. She was, without question, our most powerful prime minister ever. Yet, at the end of her 17-year reign, Indian women still had literacy levels that were half those of men. Healthcare for women was so appalling that most babies were still born not in hospitals but in the filth of village huts. Consequently, we had one of the world's highest infant mortality rates. Female infanticide continued to be practised in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. Child marriage was rampant. All these are still more or less true. And never, never have I heard women MPs or MLAs raise these issues effectively in our legislatures.

If Indian feminism was not such a pathetic imitation of the western variety, we would have realised by now that women's issues in our country are quite different from those in the West. In India, the most important feminist issues should be literacy, population control, healthcare, drinking water and fuelwood. On account of spending more than half their lives collecting the last two, the average rural Indian woman has no time to get literate. So where is the question of basic healthcare, leave alone family planning? It is a grim, grim story, the story of Indian women. But have you ever heard women politicians get as passionate about any of these issues as they are about this bill?

The bill raises other issues. If our political parties are as serious about giving women their rightful place in politics, then surely we should first have a bill that forces them to distribute 33 per cent of their election tickets to women. This would automatically solve the Muslim-OBC problem that the brothers Yadav -- Laloo and Mulayam -- are making such a fuss about. Because where would a Yadav party give tickets to upper-caste women in the first place?

I always think of the brothers Yadav as the ugliest face of Indian politics. But this time we need to be grateful to them for their customary bad behaviour. They have inadvertently stopped a bad bill. It deserves to be scrapped not because it does not provide sufficient reservation for Muslims and the so-called lower castes but because it should never have been there.

In its place, let us have a law or even an Election Commission directive that makes political parties put their money where their mouth is. Instead of "Ladies Only" constituencies, let us have more tickets for the ladies and may the best of them win in a fair fight.

Parliament is supposed to be the highest law-making body in the land. You need both intelligence and education to even understand what a law is. Do we really want to fill it with women who get in only because they have chosen to be the 21st century's latest Dalits?

Speaking of which, is it not time to examine whether reservations have helped Dalits? They have contested from reserved constituencies for 50 years now and the net result is not an improvement in the conditions in which most of our former untouchables live but in the creation of a Dalit elite. Is this what we want for women?

Issue Contents | Write to us | Subscriptions | Syndication

© Living Media India Ltd