Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (Women’s Reservation Bill) 2023

“Stop saluting women, they don't want to be saluted. They don't want to be put on pedestal. They don't want to be worshipped. They don't want to be called mothers, wives and sisters. They only want to be respected as EQUALS. Let them get down from the pedestal and walk as EQUALS.”

The Women's Reservation Bill is the 128 Constitutional Amendment Bill which will reserve one-third of all electoral seats for women in India, in the Lok Sabha, in the state legislative assemblies and in Union territories. The reservation will apply to reserve seats as well. Indian legislatures have seats reserved for backward communities like Scheduled Tribes and Schedule Castes and now one third of these reserved seats will also be reserved only for women from these communities.

 For India, this Women's Reservation bill was mandatory because politics has a gender problem in India. Women make up only 15% of Lok Sabha seats and 14% of Rajya Sabha seats. Indian states have same problem. At least 17 States have less than 10% women in their legislature. How can this problem be rectified in India? In an ideal world, the political parties would do more, they would put up more women candidates and they would cultivate more women leaders. Since this is not happening, India is batting on next best thing i.e. “Reservation”. In fact, we already provide reservations to women in local body elections of Panchayati Raj and Municipal elections and this quota has empowered women. India has around 3.2 million local representatives, 1.4 million of them are woman and 86,000 of them head their local bodies, take decisions on their own, implement and contribute at local level. In fact India is doing better than other countries, at least at local level. Around 44% of our representatives are women which are a much better number as compared to other leading democracies such as France, U.K, Germany and China. So, India's plan at local level has worked but as we grow up in the hierarchy, it hasn't. We have 28 states in India, only one of them has a female Chief Minister “only one in 28 states”. The goal is to correct this by extending the quota to all elected legislatures. “Elected” is the key here because this quota will be applied to Lok Sabha but not to Rajya Sabha; similarly it will apply to state assembly but not to state legislative councils. The bill calls for 3 steps in a particular order. At first census, second delimitation and then quota. India's last census was held in year 2011 the one in 2021 was delayed by the Wuhan Virus pandemic. So, the first step is to do another census and based on that redefine constituencies only then can the women's quota be implemented.

Women's Reservation Bill is a huge step forward and the roots of this proposal date back to the 1970's when it was found in a report that India has failed to ensure gender equality. This triggered a debate; several States began reserving seats for women. They thought it would solve the problem in 1980s. This idea got political backing in 1987 when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi formed a committee on gender equality. This committee had 353 recommendations; one of them was women's quota. In 1992, this proposal was implemented partially, one third of the seats in the local bodies were reserved for women but state assembly & the Parliament were left untouched. In 1996, Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda actually went one step ahead he table the whole proposal 1/3 of seats in all elected bodies. Now most of the parties agreed to this idea but some hold out remain especially parties representing the OBC communities, the other backward classes and what their objection is that you see seats are reserved for SC and ST community but not for OBC, so fear is that OBC women would lose out. Upper cast women would dominate the quota and so the bill didn’t come into existence. Since then every Prime Minister in India has tried to revive this effort. Atal Bihari Vajpayee tried twice, no luck. On one occasion mp took from the minister’s hand & tore it up. Dr. Manmohan Singh also tried and he had partial luck in 2010, the Women's Reservation Bill was passed in Rajya Sabha but it never reached the Lok Sabha. So will this time be different, well women's quota was BJP's campaign promise both in 2014 and again in 2019 plus they have a brute majority in Parliament so no collination business which means the proposal will now be a reality & begin a new era of Indian democracy.

— Team Yuva Aaveg

(Akhileshwar Maurya)

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