Opinion One-third done
The Womens Reservation Bill is a powerful normative signal about the desirability of the empowerment of women.
The Womens Reservation Bill is a powerful normative signal about the desirability of the empowerment of women. It comes against the backdrop of profound social change. Women have,by the dint of their capabilities and efforts,torn down so many barriers. Even in politics,at the top echelons,there is a striking story to be told. Sonia Gandhi,Sushma Swaraj,Mayawati,Mamata Banerjee,Brinda Karat hold top leadership positions in five of the most consequential political parties. The president of India,speaker of the Lok Sabha,the foreign secretary are all testament to the fact that the normative barriers to women assuming leadership roles have mostly dissipated; gender ratios in higher education are also telling an encouraging story. But there are spheres where old boys networks remain operative: law and bureaucracy perhaps the most prominent. But modernity has also unleashed an appalling contradictory dynamic: declining sex ratio,continuing nutrition discrimination and increasing violence against women. This bill is a moment in that larger history.
But while the bills normative intent is laudable,there is reason to be a trifle disappointed over the short shrift serious constitutional and institutional issues have got in the debates. The political debate has largely been structured around the discourse of power: displacing one set of power holders with another and the resistance this process unleashes. Other opponents of the bill,particularly OBC-based parties,have expressed worries about other marginalised constituencies this bill might disempower. But several important institutional issues have not received political articulation.
The first is simply this. Indias electoral system is now becoming an incoherent patchwork of contradictory principles. We are trying to get proportional outcomes from a first-past-the-post system. If we genuinely believe that proportional representation based on ascriptive characteristics like caste and gender are the litmus tests of political legitimacy,then it would have been wiser to state it explicitly and design an electoral system (through perhaps a list system) accordingly. A territorial-based system had its own normative integrity,which we have now given up on.
The second issue is the normative questions the rotation of constituencies raise. The rotation principle is a peculiar one in a democracy because it produces democracy without democratic accountability. You dont,as an individual,now seek the verdict of those whom you claimed to serve. Even the rightly heralded reservations at panchayat level have generated this problem,producing both an accountability deficit and a weakening of an institution as a whole.
The third issue is a normative one. We know that in terms of how power operates in society the idea that we are free and equal as individuals is a fiction. All kinds of hierarchies of gender,caste and class characterise the operations of power,and in a healthy polity these need to be redressed. Affirmative action is often necessary in this context. But Indian politics has been dangerously close to enshrining other normative propositions that are dangerous for democracy. The first is the equation of identity with reason,where the assumption is policies track the identities of those who promulgate them. This is often true as a matter of fact,but legitimating it into an organising principle is detrimental to the idea of public reason. It needs to be asked whether it befits a free society to restrict the choice of candidates available to particular constituencies based on particular identity. While it could be argued that de facto this choice is restricted for a whole host of reasons anyway,there is still a great deal of difference between a de facto reality and a dejure acceptance of a principle that it should be restricted.
While the critique of the SP and RJD does not carry much weight,underlying it is a kernel of truth. The question raised by their critique is this. Let us accept that constituencies need to be empowered through reservations. What classifications are appropriate for designing quotas? Why not sub-classifications? Why not minorities? Why not more representation for the poor,who seem most disadvantaged in our electoral system? Of course these very parties closed off just these questions when it came to OBC reservations. They themselves exemplified what they are now alleging: that the classifications that are used by the state in quotas are,barring the case of SC/ STs,rarely classifications to empower the weak. They get enacted because they are classifications that favour the strong,or newly emerging,not the downtrodden. Other groups will be demanding quotas as well,and our normative basis for saying no to any quota demand is diminishing. So the enactment of quotas has this ambiguous status: it is as much an exercise in power as it is a sign of justice.
Finally,there are several practical issues. The first is this. As we have seen with other quotas,representation does not translate into empowerment. This is for several reasons. In India,normative acceptance has seldom been a problem; the problem has been the gap between normative acceptance and the ability to implement. Partly it has to do with sticky dynamics of power. We know for instance that reserved constituencies for SC/ STs produced weak representation because they by definition became dependent on the decisive votes of others. Strong SC representation emerged post-political mobilisation,not post-reservation. It is an interesting question,the degree to which reservation de-radicalised demands for justice rather than push them further. But in India reservation also brings to closure a deeper question: that of ethical responsibilities. Quotas are our justice on the cheap; as happened with SCs,once we gave them,we absolved ourselves of larger and more difficult ethical questions about discrimination and so forth. Formal representational equality makes it politically harder,not easier,to articulate the case for substantive equality.
There were also several alternatives,from well thought out voluntary proposals,to proposals for list systems,to multi-member constituencies that might have mitigated some of the institutional concerns. The fact that they did not find political space is another sign than we do not often want to match ends and means.
But the time for all this has past. Quotas will certainly open up the political system in expected and unexpected ways,although their political effects are indeterminate. Indian democracy has improvised solutions,even if they are messy and ad hoc,and this bill is better than many other ad hoc improvisations. But while we celebrate this desirable normative leap we are about to take,we should just wonder,whether we are celebrating it because we take justice seriously,or because we dont take it seriously enough.
The writer is president,Centre for Policy Research,Delhi
express@expressindia.com
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