Rediff On The NeT: Mani Shankar Aiyar assesses how reservations for women candidates have transformed the electoral process

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Commentary / Mani Shankar Aiyar

I am surprised at how much criticism is being brough to bear on the idea of extending the opportunity afforded Damayanti to her sisters for the state assemblies and Parliament. Of course, reservations would not have made sense if the political process had thrown up a fair share of women legislators. It would not have needed to be half - or even near a half; it would have had to be no more than fair.

Yet, society - not merely in India but everywhere the world over - is so structured (at any rate, at the present level of human evolution) that near parity in population between men and women, and parity in all mental and emotional attributes, has nowhere translated itself automatically into near parity in representation.

If gender equality does not spring naturally from the organisation of society, is there really an alternative of force-feeding it to society?

I respect the argument which holds that all reservations are bad. I, however, know of no one responsible who will go on from that to stating that reservations for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes be abolished. There is a specifically Indian reason for this, a reason, moreover, that is woven into the wrap and woof of the freedom struggle. SC/ST reservations was the brilliant innovation by which Gandhiji foiled Ramsay MacDonald's plan of separate electorates for the SC/ST.

If MacDonald (incidentally, no relative of the hamburger; just prime minister of Britain's first national government) had his way, Independence might never have come - or come through a Bosnia-isation of the country. The unity of our polity was preserved through reservations. Conversely, separate electorates for the Muslims certainly contributed in large measure to Partition as the price we were forced to pay for liberty.

The compromise on reservations in lieu of separate SC/ST electorates was worked out by Babasaheb Ambedkar with Gandhiji at Yervada. When the same Dr Ambedkar came to draft the Constitution, he thought 10 years of reservations might do to mitigate 10,000 years of injustice. Fifty years on, we are still far, far from the goal. No political party can, with any sense of responsibility, say that the time has come - or will, in any foreseeable future, come - to end SC/ST reservations.

Continued