The Supreme Court has directed the government to respond within this month to the National Federation of Indian Women's PIL for reintroduction in parliament of the 108th constitutional amendment (108 CA), better known as the Women's Reservation Bill (WRB).
WRB's chequered history across 14 years of its introduction/reintroduction (initiated in 1996 as the 81st CA) witnessed scenes of then-unprecedented gross indiscipline extending to violence. Then vice-president and Rajya Sabha Chair was physically intimidated, and seven members were expelled before a near-midnight vote finally scraped it through Rajya Sabha in 2010. After that, two successive Lok Sabha functioned (and dissolved), leaving it lapsed/in limbo.
Reviving it is pushing a dead horse. The 108th CA is a flawed formula – displacement of one-third of sitting MPs; the remaining two-thirds in perpetual jeopardy as a rotational reservation process by drawing lots every five years ensures every seat undergoes one reservation spell.
Supremely ironic is the fact that this process which raised the male MPs' hackles, is not unlike Maupassant's famous fake-diamond-necklace story: an unrequired costly sacrifice. There should be no seat-scarcity psychosis. That is the legacy of flawed political actions, circa 1976, freezing the Constitutionally-mandated decadal-delimitation/reallocation of parliament/state legislature constituencies (PC and SLCs) till 2000 AD (Later extended to 2026).
The extension of the "freeze" secured political peace from the five southern states facing the loss of 15 constituencies in the parliament (state legislative assemblies, too), perversely penalising their excellent demographic management. In contrast, northern states stood to gain for their demographic profligacy. But the peace formula - re-delimitation of the 2001 billion-plus population keeping intact the constituency-allocations as per 1971's half-billion population levels and the ratio between states and within states, however ensuring as-near-equal-population-distribution, better geographical and administrative coherence – turned every PC/ SLC into a perilously-bloated entity.
After the delimitation in 2002, the population size in parliamentary constituencies in the larger states reached the 1.5 to 2 million mark. This was triple the constitutionally envisaged ideal of half-to-three quarters of a million. Such high numbers have made politics open season for money and muscle power and have taken the elected far away from those they serve.
In the General Elections next year, the number of voters in any of the larger states' PCs will number 1.5 to 2 million. The PC will hold another 28-40 per cent (Bihar 43 per cent) under-19 non-voting population: a segment requiring tremendous attention and inputs if demographic dividends are not to turn disastrous. Can such gargantuan numbers be managed?
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Post-2026 underlying fault lines of the north/south demographic divergence will widen dangerously unless this decade moves to swiftly recast political goals and mindsets to a harmonious national convergence, wherein the economically-superior southern and western states appreciate the investment in the north's young as contributing to the in-migration needed for their ageing societies.
Women's reservation bill provides an opportunity to change this trajectory. This can be done through a strategy of gender equity without displacement but enlargement of the political framework. This framework can downsize all constituencies and enable better management while ensuring greater female participation.
The 108th amendment must discard the extension of the SC/ST analogy to women. Instead, women's representation must embody the promise of equality in Articles 14 and 15. It can be achieved with amendments to Articles 80/81 and 170/171 dealing directly with the composition of the parliament and the state legislatures. This would require a mere enhancement of the upper numbers limit given in Articles 80 and 170 without touching the crucial second clause elucidating the principle of the ratio of population numbers and state allocations between and within states pertinent to the existing delicate political balance. Thus, the number of representatives can increase (increase exclusively reserved for women) without altering the present allocation of constituency numbers to the respective states/within each state.
Is this fanciful? Not in the least. Constitutional approval, precedent, and methodology exist to validate just such an approach. This is precisely how India started its democratic innings – with double/triple-member constituencies with one seat mandatorily reserved, then for scheduled castes/tribes. The first General Election had 401 constituencies but 489 representatives; 1957- 403 constituencies and 494 representatives. Altogether in the first two elections, a third of MPs/MLAs were from double/triple constituencies. The debacle in one such double-constituency of a political stalwart – VV Giri, later India's fourth President – led to agitation to delimit double-constituencies to single as they exceeded a million-plus. The Abolition of Two-Member Constituencies Act (1961) was enacted and implemented within the year. It provides a mirror analogy to reverse to two-member-constituencies, now with one woman member.
In 1961 no computers existed, but the process was accomplished within the year before the General Elections. Today, thanks to the excellent work done by the Delimitation Commission 2002, meticulous computerised mapping of each 543 PCs and 4120 SLCs is available complete with data on the constituent units of each constituency. This is in the Election Commission archives; I have accessed these maps/data and demonstrated both their availability and ease of bifurcation at a recent lecture I gave.
Bifurcating constituencies into two separate sections – each to be represented by a man and a woman respectively - can be accomplished within a few months as no population redistribution is required to take place at this stage.
If the prospect of an outright doubling of numbers in the parliament and state legislatures is daunting – though it should not be, for any number of smaller countries have a far greater political representation ratio proportionately - then the selection of every alternate constituency in each state could also ensure minimum 33 per cent representation of women (the "magical arithmetic" of fifty per cent added to any number and earmarked results in 33 per cent of the total) In this model, only half the constituencies would downsize. However, it could still constitute an effective experiment towards gender parity and manageable constituency sizes.
Required is the drafting of a new Constitution Amendment Bill: The Creation of Two Member Constituencies Act to Provide Gender Parity-2023 to amend Articles 80/81 and 170/171. As earlier shown, constitutional validity, national precedent, and mirror methodology for this strategy exist, as does the administrative back-up to implement quickly. All that is needed is political will.
A most befitting inauguration of the new parliament building would be a special session to introduce and pilot a new enactment to realise the dream of gender equality and exercise a salutary effect on the entire political process.