Naye sadan ke pratham satra mein…” Prime Minister Narendra Modi framed the re-introduction of the Women’s Reservation Bill in Lok Sabha as a historic beginning made in the first session held in the new Parliament building. At the same time, he sought to locate the 27-year old Bill, which was first introduced in the House by a coalition government nearly three decades ago and passed by Rajya Sabha in 2010, and which requires an amendment to the Constitution, in a wider arc. PM Modi spoke of India’s journey to the Moon in Chandrayaan 3 and its successful hosting of the G20. He mentioned his government’s schemes that have addressed and benefited women, from the Jan Dhan Yojana to the Mudra Yojana and the PM Awaas Yojana, and mapped the salience of this moment in the nation’s journey, “desh ki vikas yatra”. The preface was political, and perhaps, so also the timing – ahead of the general election in 2024 — even though women’s reservation, linked to the next census and delimitation, is likely to come into effect only after that. But whatever the immediate reason or circumstance, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam is a watershed in the nation’s journey as a democracy and enormously welcome. The Bill which promises to increase the representation of women in Parliament and state legislative assemblies to 33 per cent is finally on the brink of becoming law because, unlike in its previous outings, it is now backed by a government armed with a decisive majority. For the nation, for its women and also its men, this is a moment to applaud and to look forward to.
Though women were given one-third reservation in panchayats and local urban bodies in the early 1990s, their numbers in Parliament and in the state assemblies have remained well short of the mark — not even 15 per cent in the current Parliament. Even as female turnouts have increased, closing the gap with male turnouts, and in 2019, overtaking them at the national level, the representation of women in law and policy-making has remained perfunctory – and unjust. It is clear that if the country wants to truly reap its demographic dividend, closed spaces need to be prised open, and boys’ clubs dismantled. The processes of empowerment that have been set off bottom-up will have to be reinforced and strengthened by initiatives that are top-down. A law for women’s reservation in legislatures is needed. The rest, be it the design of the reservation system or the mechanisms to implement it, or the crucial issue of how to ensure that the quota isn’t dominated by the dominant, will need to be worked out.
The empowerment of women is an irreversible force and societies and polities would do well to move with the change, not against it. Moreover, in India, the political-electoral system, more than civil society, has played host to forces of democratic deepening. Of course, having said that, the road ahead is arduous. There will be attempts to subvert and domesticate the potential of women’s reservation to bring radical change – the Parliament/assembly versions of the “sarpanch pati”. But in the long run, an important process is being set in motion that will not be contained by the legislatures. It will spill over and energise wider spaces — political parties to begin with, civil society, boardrooms and classrooms, the government, and all of we, the people.
