Opinion Express View on women’s reservation Bill: Agree to agree

Four hundred and fifty-four for, two against. That was the vote tally on the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023, in Lok Sabha Wednesday. Something has changed in India’s politics from the time the Women’s Reservation Bill was repeatedly stalled in Parliament after it was first tabled in 1996, and passed only in Rajya Sabha in 2010 amid uproar and unruly scenes. That change — immensely welcome and enormously for the better — was reflected in the Bill’s smooth sailing on Wednesday. It is not just that, now, for the first time, the legislation to give 33 per cent reservation to women in state assemblies and Lok Sabha enjoys the backing of a party with a decisive majority. It is also — and more — that the opponents have laid down their arms before an idea whose time has finally come.

Of course, MPs of Opposition parties, while supporting the bill, also put their caveats on record. Many questioned the timing of the government’s move, and the delay due to the sequencing — a census to be followed by the delimitation exercise and only then the reservation of seats. Congress called for a caste census and spoke of the need for an OBC quota within the women’s quota — ironically, in its earlier abortive outings, Congress governments had attempted to pilot the Bill in the face of the demand for an OBC sub-quota, then raised by parties like the SP, RJD and sections of the JD(U). But on the whole, except the AIMIM’s two MPs, who pointed to the abysmal number of Muslim women MPs over the decades and voted against the Bill, parties of the Opposition supported it after expressing their specific reservations. The lack of drama, resentment and rancour, or suspension and physical removal of MPs, the near unanimity across the political spectrum in Lok Sabha on Wednesday spoke of larger things.

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Political parties recognise that in a changing India, women’s marginalisation and their exclusion from power corridors and decision-making echelons is becoming unsustainable. It needs to be addressed proactively. Of course, processes have already been set in motion from below, by the spread of literacy and new technologies, which are opening up and expanding opportunities, and empowering women. The pandemic has brought a setback in these virtuous cycles — women have borne the brunt of Covid lockdowns and their fallout on the economy; large numbers have been forced to exit the workforce. And yet, parties and politicians can read the larger writing on the wall. They can see the irresistible force that can also be mapped in the rising turnouts of women voters, which have been closing the gap with male turnouts, overtaking them at the Centre in 2019. They can see the greater visibility, and imprint, of women in public spaces, rising inexorably. That is why, even amid a sharpening of the political dividing lines between the BJP-led government that constantly seeks to shock and awe and an Opposition unity in-the-making, the women’s reservation bill has seen a rare coming together, this unusual moment of parties agreeing to agree.