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Journalism of Courage
The women will never get the ayes, it seems. The naysayers will always shout their well-wishers down and occupy strategic territory in the well of the House. So let us please put an end to this periodic charade. Instead of deferring the Women8217;s Reservation Bill 8220;for the time being8221;, let our political parties for once construct a consensus and declare the proposed legislation dead on arrival. Let us, if only for the sake of propriety, ensure that we won8217;t have to endure ever again Tuesday8217;s depressing spectacle, or those hollow professions about giving women their share of seats in Parliament and state legislatures. Let us, in other words, junk the hypocrisy and acknowledge the patriarchal sentiments that guide India8217;s highest law-making body.
To be sure, Lok Sabha8217;s hour-long flirtation with the merits and defects of the 85th Constitution Amendment Bill proceeded along expected lines. Lok Sabha members have travelled down that road before, and they did not take long in forcing yet another adjournment 8212; after, of course, the usual obfuscatory nods to the need for sub-quotas for OBCs and the minorities, to the mystifying thesis that this is simply one big conspiracy to fill the legislatures with city-bred, English-speaking women. This rabid rhetoric has become far too familiar to startle. It is, however, the silences that were depressing. Speakers paid no attention to the actual problems in the bill. They did not, for example, dwell on the proposed rotation of constituencies that would erase a legislator8217;s accountability to his or her voters. They did not focus on the consequences of pitting women against women that the bill envisages, on their electoral ghettoisation.
