The Women’s Reservation Bill

Yesterday the Women’s Reservation Bill was finally tabled in the Rajya Sabha with much “nautanki”. I cannot think of any word in English that conveys the exact sense of this word. In fact over the last decade this bill has unfortunately become something of a joke. No political party wants this bill passed, with the possible exception of the Communists, yet every party wants to put up a front of supporting it in some way or the other. If the Congress was really serious why did it have to wait till the end of its five-year term before tabling the bill?

This nautanki (there can be no other word for it) reminds me of an episode from the famous television series Yes Minister. Jim Hacker MP, succeeds in getting reservation for women, not in the parliament, but in the upper echelons of the civil service. And he wants to promote a junior female officer to a senior post under this policy. But the woman hands in her reservation instead. She does not want to be part of a quota. She has obtained a job as a CEO in the private sector on her own merit.

So on a more serious note: should there be reservation for women? Ideally there should not be. Since women comprise 50% of the population they should get 50% of the seats on merit without reservation. Are the women capable of getting 50% seats on their own without reservation? Yes they are. Then why are there so few women as elected representatives? This is because the male chauvinistic leadership of political parties does not give them tickets on the untenable pretext that women in general do not have the capacity of winning elections if pitted against men. Therefore reservations are required so that women can be pitted against women.

So why is the Women’s Reservation Bill being held up. The answer is that the men do not want to concede 33% of the space to women. As it is there is not enough space for all the men and many have to be left dissatisfied and these dissatisfied men can create quite a ruckus. If the space for men is reduced further then imagine the headaches for the party top bosses. But this is not the reason being offered.

The reason most commonly being given is that within the reservation for women there should be reservation for women of backward classes and minorities. There is merit in this argument and the solution is simple. If there are 150 seats reserved for backward classes and minorities, then 100 of these should be in the open category and 50 in the women category. But the messiahs of the backward classes and minorities do not want this. They want to keep the existing reservations for the backward classes and minorities intact and secure further reservation for women, a concept that is neither fair nor tenable.

Therefore the nautanki continues and the male politicians are having a good laugh.