Commentary/Janardan Thakur

What would be achieved by giving one-third seats in the Lok Sabha to women?

There is no doubt a strong case in democratic societies for giving reservations to the socially or economically underprivileged. There has been a case for extending certain privileges to Harijans, backward classes, tribals etc. Because for centuries they had suffered the ills of undemocratic societies. They had to be lifted so that they could catch up with other sections which happened to be far ahead of them.

Even so, the policy of reservations does not seem to have helped much. You have only to see the Harijan ghetto surrounding the posh double-storeyed bungalow of the late Jagjivan Ram in his village in Bihar. It is in a way symbolic of the great divide between dalit leaders and the dalits. Reservations have been a plaything in the hands of self-seeking politicians, a way of reaping electoral victories with the help of the many for the benefit of the few.

We have had great dalit leaders elected to Parliament from reserved constituencies, but very little uplift of the dalits. The same goes for tribals. There have been great scheduled tribe leaders making heart-rending speeches about the plight of the aboriginals, the Wretched of the Earth, but we have just seen how much these leaders have actually benefitted the tribals.

If only Suraj Mandal, Shibu Soren and company had served the interests of their tribal constituencies as well as they served themselves -- and Narasimha Rao -- things would have been so very different. If only Mulayam Singh Yadav, Laloo and their political forebears had served the interests of the backward classes a little better, there wouldn't have been the social tensions that we are facing today.

Urbanisation and the sheer force of the market have done more to obliterate social and sectarian divisions than these leaders of their brand of social engineering ever did.

And now there is 'sex engineering', the plan to extend one-third reservation to women in the Lok Sabha. One fears it might go the same way that social engineering went: into the hands of self-serving opportunists who will use the provision not to bring women into the greater mainstream but to use and abuse them as vote banks.

This is not an argument for keeping women out of Parliament. One is merely wondering how we are going to get 181 women in the Lok Sabha and what we are going to achieve with them there. Even at the cost of being declared an MCP, one has to ask a few questions. First, where will we find 181 women fit to be members of the Lok Sabha? One would be told there are thousands of women fit to be members of Parliament, but then by the same logic there are thousands of men fit to be members of Parliament. The point is not whether they are fit or unfit. It is not as though Parliament is full of the fittest men and women. The point is, what would be achieved by giving one-third seats in the Lok Sabha to women?

Women in India do not constitute a homogeneous social group by themselves. Ours is a deeply stratified society, divided into distinctions of class, caste, religion, tribe, language and region. Women are as divided along those lines as men are. There is little common between the circumstances, for instance, of an educated, privileged, upper class woman from the metropolis and an illiterate, socio-economically deprived untouchable woman from the backwaters of Bihar other than the fact that both are female.

The class of fire-spitting feminists of the metropolitan cities of India does not realise that no matter how much they may scream about gender equality, if the Harijan man is discriminated against, his wife will be more discriminated against. The idea of liberty has very little in common with the idea of liberty of most Indian women. Women in India belong much more to their respective socio-economic categories than to that category called Women.

A question that needs to be asked is: What is it that these 181 women will be able to do for women that the ones already present in the Lok Sabha cannot do or would not do for women? What great cause of women will be served by herding more women into the legislatures? What the votaries of the move do not realise -- and perhaps do not wish to realise -- is that the cause of women is not served either by raising decibel levels or by issuing statements that they themselves and their like will read.

Women in the West have achieved a measures of progress and a degree of equality greater than women in India, and they have not done it by reserving seats and berths for themselves in select socio-political clubs. They have done it by fighting for their rights whether they are. They have fought for economic empowerment, they have fought for maternity and child care rights, they have fought for equal wages for equal work, they have fought for education. They have not sought or secured their progress by paradropping into the legislatures through reserved entry holes.

What is hard to understand in the nation is that only women can speak on behalf of women, that men have nothing to do with it. A very pernicious thought, to say the least. Nothing could harm the interests of women more. The very thought that only women understand women's problems and can speak about them reeks of a ghettoised, segregated, almost communalised mindset. Besides, perhaps the status of women in society has very little to do with their numbers in Parliament.

Reservations for women might serve the feminist clique, and its populist male collaborators, but it will not serve the cause of women. Genuine reform on the ground and the creation of greater awareness and consciousness in society -- as much among men as among women -- perhaps will. And the day that begins to happen, women will automatically see their seat share in the ticket lists of political parties rising.

But then perhaps the diehard feminists who are clamouring for one-third seats in legislatures are not talking about an all-woman situation. Unfortunately, these women leaders do not want to face the reality: The fact that without proper interaction with men no real solutions to the problems of women can emerge. Have these feminists forgotten that the great consciousness about women's rights was part of the national movement which was not led by feminists of the kind we are talking about?

Surely they realise that the Sarojini Naidus and Aruna Asaf Alis and Laxmi Sehgals, the Indira Gandhis and the Tarkeshwari Sinhas, the Margaret Alvas and the Mamta Bannerjees did not get where they did because they had sexual engineering working in their favour. It is perhaps a tribute to the larger Indian consciousness that women have done so well in public life in this country. Indeed, they seem to have done better than in most parts of the world. But it still has not helped the general lot of women. Just as greater numbers of scheduled caste and scheduled tribe members in the legislature have not helped the general lot of those sections.

Indian women have defeated men and got the better of them in equal battles not because they were seen as women battling men or vice versa but because they proved, as campaigners and politicians, better. Thereby, they have spoken for and gained acceptance in a constituency much larger than the ghettoised constituency of women.

What is needed is a little change in attitudes. The sooner women leaders realise that they need men as allies rather than as antagonists the better it would be for society.

Janardan Thakur, former editor of Free Press Journal, contributes a regular column to these pages.

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