Reservations About The Bill

DOES the Women's Reservation Bill 1996 embody the diktat of the 'gender-sensitive', or is it a first step in democratising the electoral system? A.B. Vajpayee has announced that the undiluted bill will be tabled in this parliamentary session. Yet this landmark bill—one of its kind in the world—goes to Parliament as the consensus among women splinters. Politicians have been divided on it ever since Mulayam Singh Yadav can remember, but now increasing numbers of women are beginning to question whether a statutory fiat from the top can ever fully change social relations, even as the embattled PMappears determined to stake a claim to 'progressive' policy and the female vote. "Greater participation of women will lead to better governance," maintains CWDS chairperson Vina Mazumdar, but others question whether, in the land of Jaya-lalitha and Mayawati, women politicians are by definition good politicians.

State-level women's groups allege Delhi feminists have failed to generate a meaningful debate. But those supporting the bill believe that 33 per cent reservation in Parliament is the logical culmination of reservation of seats in panchayats and zila parishads. But have reservations at the local level been completely successful? And isn't compensatory discrimination in India, as in the case of the SC/ST quota, as Marc Galanter writes in Competing Equalities, only a costly and partial success, which can permanently segregate the oppressed group?

 In a report—Empowering Women: Assessing the Policy of Reservation in Local Bodies that studied municipal corporations in cities like Thane, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Nashik—Medha Nanivadekar, a member of a local women's group in Kolhapur, notes that women corporators aren't necessarily more development-oriented than men nor do they create better politics. "A strong conviction that women ought to look after only matters like education, health and women and child development is held not only by men but also by women who tend to treat these matters as trivial. There was no gender difference between male and female corpo-rators with respect to their priority issues." Also, reservations led to the entry of more 'proxy' rather than professional women.

Nanivadekar's report suggests seminar theories of liberation must be balanced by hard realities on the ground. Elite policymaking often takes place without changing popular attitudes, thus retarding the scope of the law. While she accepts the reservations principle in general and says it can lead to the entry of competent women into politics, her study shows women politicians don't bring any strikingly different value perceptions into the political arena. There's often no organic link between women politicians and the women's movement. Thus, women sometimes have no alternative vision and play by the same patriarchal rules. "Reservations per se don't guarantee effective participation of women," she says. In a way, reservations sometimes harm the women's movement by creating a new form of "state-sponsored feminism".

In the last couple of years since the bill was first introduced, the debate has been unfortunately polarised. The 'social justice' lobby has repeatedly asserted that it will benefit only privileged women; that parties must first begin to distribute tickets more equitably—Bhagwati Devi, ex-MP from the Musahar (SC) community from Bihar, has demanded reservations for SC/ST women; Uma Bharati for OBC women: Muslims for Muslim women. Yet so potent is gender in the politically-correct lexicon that to raise doubts about the bill is to be instantly guilty of an anti-woman, reactionary sellout to patriarchy. To support the bill imparts the virtues of progressive social activism.

But do reservations guarantee effective participation of women? The Wardha-based Shetkari Sangathana Mahila Aghadi, which has been studying women candidates at local levels, says women candidates are often as corrupt as men, or simply nominated puppets of leaders. Says Saroja Kashi-kar of the Sangathana: "Sometimes women candidates demand percentages. Women as a whole will not benefit from reservation in Parliament," says Kashikar.

YET the Sangathana's views weren't represented at the joint select committee on reservations headed by CPI MP Gita Mukherjee last year. This, despite the fact that it has been in the forefront of demanding reservations for women at local levels and has been actively involved in equal property rights agitations. Instead of 33 per cent in Parliament, the Sangathana demands multi-seat constituencies with one-third seats reserved for women. For decades a campaigner for women's rights, Manushi editor Madhu Kishwar believes there has been no dialogue with those who've had reservations about the bill.

"Enhanced participation of women in politics must be seen as part of a far-reaching package of electoral reforms," she says. Party high commands tend to auction tickets or distribute them as patronage to chosen sycophants; grassroots workers have no choice in who's to represent them. "In this scenario, it's inevitable the women's quota will be cornered by the biwi-beti brigade." The lottery system of reserved seats will uproot both men and women from their constituencies which they may have worked hard to build. It will ghettoise women's politics as women will forever be pitted against each other. A far more effective way, Kishwar feels, is to have 100 per cent reservations for 30 years at the panchayats and 50 per cent at zila parishads. This will create a bank of women activists who can reach legislatures on their own steam.

A woman member of the Congress, requesting anonymity, says she's completely opposed to the bill but is being forced into silence because of the party line. "The assumption that gender transcends caste and class is wrong. I as an educated woman am more privileged than a Dalit man. A Muslim woman may feel more discriminated against as a Muslim rather than as a woman."

 Affirmative action in India turns on this crucial dilemma: among competing inequalities, which is the greater oppressed category: gender, caste or class? Uma Bharati, known champion of reservations for OBC women, says she has strong reservations about this bill. "But I'll obey party discipline. I'll not speak publicly. Whatever I have to say I'll say in private to the PM." Jaya Jai-tly, general secretary of the Samata Party, also believes there hasn't been enough debate on the bill. "It's not a question of gender but of caste. More numbers of women will change the nature of politics. The Left has been hypocritical and excluded women who're pro-BJP or from backward castes."

The notion that once elected, women will automatically begin to competently discharge political functions may not be a very valid one either. Vasudha Dhagamvar, executive director, MARG, writes that in studies on panchayats in Karnal district, the group found that not one of the 128 women interviewed had heard of the 73rd amendment, few if any were aware of their fiscal powers or source of funds. The reason for giving reservations to women was unclear to them. "If the government must pass this bill," says Dhagamvar, who has voiced grave misgivings against the bill, "the method of rotatory reserved seats is totally wrong. Seats must be held for two terms or more."

Without efforts to democratise political parties, efforts to manage the anticipated male 'backlash' or to educate women on political functioning, the women's bill, in the absence of simultaneous reforms, could become the worst form of tokenism.