| Wendy Singer in her book raises this question very pertinently and early on in her argument. She traces the evolution of older versions of attempts to get women to participate in electoral politics to the old Congress policy of immediate post-independence, reserving 15 per cent of all tickets given out to women. That policy was based on the assumption that women voted for women, and also as a debt of gratitude to all women party workers who had participated in the freedom struggle. The policy according to Singer did not last long, and was discontinued after the 1962 elections, after party managers decided that people voted on the basis of caste and not gender and the party had discharged its debt in full. |
| Strange as it may seem, it was again a Congress victory that confused the issue somewhat. In 1984, nearly 159 women of 421 Lok Sabha seats that were contested were won by women. Singer says, in this election women voted like never before, the issue of reserving seats or separate electorates was raised again. The Panchayati Raj Act, reserving one-third seats for women in local government, has been examined in full by Singer and she raises all the important issues connected to the Act and its implementation. A lot of coverage has been devoted to the fact that for many years, women candidates were no more than dummy candidates for the male members of their household. Singer however, points to the fact that the areas where she conducted her research and a lot of secondary material she looked at showed that development indices related to women like maternal mortality rates and water supply had in fact shown improvement, proving that women in government are good for women, at least at the local level. |
| This, however, could also be due to the fact that party loyalties and ideology do not figure quite as much in local level government than it does at higher levels of government or political participation. In Parliament, several parties which opposed the Women's Reservation Bill did it on the basis of the fact that they refused to perceive women only in terms of gender and insisted that caste identity be central to this identification. A valid suggestion since caste is the primary basis of voting in India, regardless of many overarching national issues. |
| Singer is mindful of this suggestion. Her suggestion at the end of the chapter on Panchayati Raj is for the Central government to consider the Panchayati Raj model of rotating constituencies in the Central Act. Quite clearly, Singer has not been following the controversies following in the wake of the work of the delimitation commission. Constituencies have become approximations of caste and class hierarchy, a bitter truth of electoral politics in India. In this scenario, Singer's suggestions seem highly optimistic. |
| As a lay reader, the question that remains with me is very simple. Do women as leaders really behave differently from men? According to Sharad Yadav, famous for his opposition to the Women's Reservation Bill, the answer is an emphatic no, women are as much a product of their social milieu as are men. An upper-caste woman will behave, politically, like an upper- caste male. Interestingly, Singer too has no answer to this conundrum. For those interested in the basics of the arguments on women's participation in politics, this could provide a clear insight into the matter so far. The book raises important questions and very modestly does not offer any answers. |
| 'A Constituency Suitable for Women' And Other Social Histories of Indian Elections |
| Wendy Singer Oxford University Press Price: Rs 575; Pages: 245 |
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