Women's Reservation

Women’s Reservation is the latest political watchword in India.Now it is time to think about the real empowerment of women community.

According to Hillary Clinton,”The Women community of the world has a common language called silence”.It shows how the community suffers world over.

Equitable representation of women in the highest decision making body is urgently required measure to empower the women politically .No nation stand proud if it discriminates against any of its citizens, and no society could claim to be part of the modern civilized world unless it treats women on par with men.In keeping with the point to provide gender equality in political arena,the present Government has been trying to bring consensus among all political parties in favour of the women’s reservation Bill.The Government had introduced women’s reservation Bil,2008, in the Rajya Sabha amidst protests from opposition parties.After this several attempts were made to introduce the bill in the Parliament but the Government could not pass the bill, due to various political reasons .

Choice of Reservation for women in Independent India

Evolution of Independent India on the basis of liberal democracy has exposed the contradiction between the stated political equality and pre-existing social and economic inequalities. Reservation has become an unavoidable choice for political representation to provide scope for equal status and opportunities for depressed classes and women to overcome all inequalities. The ever first amendment made to the Constitution of India in 1951 is to accommodate non-discrimination to Article 15 & 16, which empowered the state to make reservation in favor of any disadvantaged group without being challenged on the grounds of discrimination .

During 80’s the mobilization of women at the grass-root level and pressure from women’s organizations through policy and legal interventions made the political parties to view women as a constituency and included women’s issues in their manifesto. During this period the demand for reservation for political representation has re-emerged. Some policy statement on reservation have been made in which the National Perspective Plan for Women(1988) is one such recommends for 30% reservation for women at Panchayat and zilla or district level and municipal bodies to be filled by election. This demand was emerged out of the need for engaging women in “development planning”.  But the same was not demanded for the decision making on policy and law making arenas of state assemblies and parliament. Voice raised by women’s groups during the National Conference on Panchayat Raj and Women, made the late Rajiv Gandhi to accept the proposal of reservation for women in Panchayat Raj Institutions .

Many parliamentarians and political parties appreciated this move as historical measure and revolutionary approach. But the same was not appreciated on the debate on reservation for women in State Assemblies and Parliament in the recent decade. This shows the will of political institutions in the country to keep the women in the lower rung of the state only for implementing the decision of the larger political body, in which men have the predominant control and women not to get their due representation in policy and law making process of the country .

Possible Benefits:

1. More women participation in politics and society.

2. Social norms in India strongly favour men, therefore, reservation for women is expected to create equal opportunity for men and women.

3. Due to female foeticide and issue related to women’s  health, sex ratio in India is alarming at 1.06  males per female.It is expected this will change the society to give equal status to women.

4. Women are supposedly more resistant to corruption.Therefore,this bill might prove to be a factor restraining the growth of corruption.

Possible Drawbacks

Passing the Women Reservation Bill may cause bias in the democratic process because of the following reasons:

1. It may hurt the self respect of women who have come up on their own ability, it may result in lesser respect for women in the society. It may also bring down the quality of leaders.

2. It is likely to begin the hatred between genders as  male may feel deprived of certain privileges, in turn create more social issues.

3. Parties will be forced to find women whether or not the women identify with the overall party agenda and the rest of the issues concerning all citizens, as opposed to just women’s issues.There are no provisions to prevent discrimination against men because of finding women who are inclined towards women’s issues alone, or , in other words, biased against men.

4. Powerful men members of parties will be tempted to find female relatives to reserve the seat for themselves during the following cycle.

5. It is feared that reservation would only help women of the elitist group to gain seats, therefore causing further discrimination and under representation to the poor and backward classes(According to a National Election Study,68 percent of today’s women MPs are crorepatis).

73rd Constitutional Amendment- historical milestone for women’s political participation

To protect the interests of disadvantaged segments of the population, notably women, the scheduled castes (SC) and the scheduled tribes (ST), and to ensure their participation in democratic decentralisation process, the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments was passed with the provision of Reservation on 23rd April 1993. The Act reserved one-third of all seats in the Local Self Governing bodies for rural (All three levels of Panchayats) and urban areas (Municipal body) respectively for women and reservation for SC/STs proportionate to their population.

Though reservation for SCs and STs are in place in other elected bodies (National and State legislative assemblies), the 73rd Amendment is the first one in India that mandated women’s reservation in local body election. Article 243D of 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act in detail  cover the manner in which reservations are to be provided to women and others belonging to the SC / STs in the local panchayat election at all three levels.