Will the Women's Reservation Bill help women?

From asking for quotas within quotas to arguing that dealing with issues like female foeticide would benefit women more, the arguments remain unchanged.

Ravi Shankar Prasad,
Spokesperson,
BJP

'This will empower women but asking for quotas within quotas, as some are doing, will kill the bill since it may amount to rewriting the Constitution'

Since time immemorial, Indian society has accorded respect to women. Now as a democracy, we have to give women a proper space in a significant way in the democratic setup. The tokenism of reservation for women must be converted into a meaningful and substantive role for them. We in the BJP were the first to demand reservation for women at our Baroda convention in the late 1980s. This process is a tool of empowerment which comes from participation which, in turn, comes from opportunity. This progression from opportunity to participation to empowerment is the basic logic behind asking for reservations for women.

Traditionally, males are reluctant to concede space, particularly when the question of empowerment comes up. Exceptions apart, this has been the general experience, hence reservations through a legislative instrument make the social change mandatory and unarguable.

A large number of reservations for women in panchayats have been in place all over the country. We have seen for the last few years the phenomenon of veiled mukhias and sarpanches conducting the affairs of their panchayats where earlier they could not even dream of intervening. For example, when I travelled to a small village in Bihar to inaugurate a new road built through my Member of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) fund, I met a budding woman panchayat leader. She addressed a crowd of her own people with a trembling voice. I was informed that this was the first time in her life that she had done so. I am convinced that this was just a beginning for her. The second or third time that she will be called upon to intervene through her role in the panchayat, the trembling would have ceased and a new confidence would have taken its place. There I see a new India emerging.

It is important that there be a constructive consensus behind women's reservation because it would usher in a new revolution in India. Those who talk of sub-categories of reservations for OBCs, or Dalit Muslims and Christians in this larger question of reservation need to know that in the last 60 years, as per our Constitution, we have given reservations only to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Religion-based reservation is prohibited under the Constitution. Therefore, insistence over a sub-categorisation of reservation would have long-term disastrous consequences because this reservation then cannot be confined only to women and would have a spill-over effect for all, apart from its problematic legal position.

This may amount to the rewriting of the Constitution in many respects. It is important, therefore, not to cloud this good initiative under the pretext of constitutionally impermissible premises.

(As told to Nistula Hebbar)

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Sanjay Raut,
Spokesperson,
Shiv Sena

'Those demanding reservation should first take up issues like female foeticide and female literacy if they want to bring about real change'

It is our conviction that reservation based on caste, creed, region and even on gender ends up in dividing society further, resulting in the benefit of a very select few. Not only this, reservations create further divides between the haves and the have-nots. This is the why we see demands for increasing the scope of reservations.

The Shiv Sena has always been a progressive and liberal party on women issues. Our ideological position on women issues is defined by the thoughts of Prabodhankar Thakre who was a great social reformer of Maharashtra and Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray's father. Balasaheb also believes in his father's philosophy of women's empowerment.

Since the inception of the party, its women's wing has always been active and at the forefront of all party agitations. The Sena has given women their due share in power, both in the organisation and in elected posts, and that is not because they were women but because they were able political workers.

We are of the firm opinion that the introduction of the women's reservation bill is nothing but a populist move on the eve of elections and it will contribute nothing towards women's empowerment. It will end up making a few hundred women MPs and MLAs, and that too, mostly from influential political families.

If the government is serious about women's empowerment issues, then it should make serious efforts to ensure that schemes implemented by the woman and child development ministries at the central and state levels are effectively implemented.

We have a simple question to ask all those who advocate women's reservation vociferously: did Indira Gandhi, Nandini Satpathy, Mayawati, Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Jaylalithaa and many others like them need any reservation to come to Parliament or to the state assemblies? They rose in public life it simply on their own merit, so why the talk of reservation for women's empowerment?

Despite being given no reservation, we see many women occupying top posts in sectors like administrative services, banking, media, IT and so on. Eventually they will leave a mark in politics also. Social change is a slow process and one should not impose it on people.

Political parties that are advocating reservation for women should first take up issues like female foeticide, women's literacy, malnourishment of the girl child, and so on, if they want to bring real change in our society and change the outlook of society towards women.

The most unfortunate part of the whole debate is that people like Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav are demanding reservation within reservations. If Lalu Prasad is so concerned about the welfare of OBC or Dalit women, why didn't he make a Dalit woman the chief minister of Bihar, in place of Rabri Devi?

(As told to Makarand Gadgil)