Why women’s Bill need not be held up for OBC quota, and why it ultimately wasn’t

When the Union Cabinet cleared the proposal earlier this week, there was a flurry of excitement over what was finally to become possible after 27 years of prevarication and opposition to the legislation.

As the cold logic of the Bill’s fine print began to sink in, it became clear that though Parliament had lent its approval to reservation for women, it could still be a long haul.

Why then did the Modi government go in for the Bill now? Given the challenges it is facing, was this another arrow pulled out of its quiver — to tell women that only Narendra Modi could bring about the long-awaited reservation for women, not the Congress that had failed to do so in the past? The BJP may have calculated that in sum, it had more to gain, and less to lose.

The Bill has seen a rocky ride, opposed during the tenure of several PMs. The day it was first introduced in the Lok Sabha in 1996, when H D Deve Gowda was PM, I was standing near the entrance of Parliament and heard a senior Congress leader tell his party MPs to go back home. If they went into the Lok Sabha where the Bill was going to be tabled, he said: “I will make sure you don’t get a ticket next time.” The leader did not want the quorum in the House to be completed.

Officially, many parties supported the Bill. But groups within these too opposed the legislation. Not because the MPs were anti-women; after all, many pro-women legislation had been cleared by Parliament. But they were worried about where the sword (of reservation for women) would fall, and whose seat would be covered by the quota. It was this uncertainty about their own seats which fuelled the opposition of many. This, then, has been the kernel of the problem and the real reason why the Bill did not see the light of day till now.

The Modi government has said it would let the Delimitation Commission earmark the seats to be reserved for women. Could the Delimitation Commission, when it redraws seats on the basis of Census data, create an additional number of constituencies so that seats could be more easily reserved for women? (This was one of the suggestions that several committees went into over the years. A suggestion was also made for double-member constituencies.)

Extra seats are now also possible at a more practical level, given that the new Parliament accounts for a substantial expansion in the strength of the Houses.

In 2010, when Sonia Gandhi-led UPA took the initiative for the passage of the Bill, and it cleared the Rajya Sabha (though Marshals had to be employed in the House to deal with unruly protesting MPs), she had to backtrack. The Lok Sabha did not pass the Bill thanks to the opposition by OBC leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad and Sharad Yadav. They demanded “a quota (for OBC women) within the (larger) women’s quota” first. As a result, the Bill again went into cold storage.

But, truth be told, at that time too, many MPs in mainline parties, which were officially supporting the bill, were firing from the shoulders of the OBC leaders.

The OBC leaders’ stand was that urban, middle-class “parkati” (short haired) women might corner the seats kept for women. It was not clear why any political party would risk fielding a woman leader fitting this description in a seat like, say, Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh or Madhepura in Bihar, and hope to win?

Today the situation is perhaps more favourable for OBC-Dalit women. For, over the last 30 years, a large number of women – 15 lakh by one count – have come up through the seats reserved for them in panchayats and municipal bodies. (The legislation for the same was envisaged by Rajiv Gandhi and passed by P V Narasimha Rao in 1992-93).

Meanwhile, as the OBC-dominant SP and RJD have changed their stance, the Congress is now backing an “OBC quota within the larger women’s quota”. All, though, voted for the Bill.

A lot of water has gone down the Ganga since 2010. Parties realise that women are fast emerging as a vote bank. Nitish Kumar, for instance, might not have won last time but for the support of women. Women have been an important vote bank of Modi as well, a constituency he is clear about consolidating. That is why, despite reservations about the Bill’s timing and the “OBC factor”, it was passed painlessly and unanimously, barring 2 MPs of the AIMIM.

Coming now to the demand for an OBC quota within women’s quota that the parties in the Opposition INDIA alliance are demanding. The just-approved Bill provides for a quota for women within the SC-ST quota. But then, there is a provision for SC-ST quota in the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, and no such provision for OBCs. The quota for OBCs is only 27% reservation in government jobs (after the adoption of the Mandal Commission’s report in 1990) and in educational institutions (brought in during Manmohan Singh’s premiership).

If a quota is brought in for OBC women in the Lok Sabha and Assemblies, what is to stop OBC men from demanding that they – indeed the backward classes — get reservation too, as provided for the SCs and STs? This could open Pandora’s box.

Greater OBC representation, which is desirable, is anyway happening in a democracy that is devolving. It may be a good election slogan. But an OBC quota “within the quota”, and its implications, need greater thought and more discussion.

What is becoming increasingly clear is this, and the women’s reservation Bill has further underlined it: with both the government and the Opposition jostling to get their support, the OBCs are going to be the flavour of the 2024 polls.