VICTORY LAP: Celebrations in Lucknow after the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha

Rita Rani Das was only 22 when she became the sarpanch of the Tentulia panchayat in Orissa’s Angul district. “The seat was reserved for women and I thought that I could do a better job than the previous sarpanch,” she says.

Das went on to fight the Zila Parishad elections in 2007, losing narrowly. Then in 2009, she fought the state assembly elections from the Talcher constituency. Though she lost again, her confidence has not been dented. “My job is to work for the people and I know that if I continue to do that, they will reward me,” she says.

Das, who could not go to college because of poverty, says that but for the reservation of women at the panchayat level, she wouldn’t have made it this far.

There are thousands of women like Das who could hope to profit from the Women’s Reservation Bill (The Constitution, 108th Amendment Bill, 2008) that will reserve 33 per cent of the seats in the Lok Sabha for women. If the Bill is passed, there will be as many as 181 seats reserved for women on a rotational basis in each Lok Sabha elections for 15 years. Thousands of state assembly seats will also be reserved. Seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes that fall under the rotation system will be fought by women belonging to these castes.

But despite the apparent noble objective of the Bill, it has many opponents who point out that the it is laden with flaws.

Interestingly, when the government proposed the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution in 1992, reserving 33 per cent of seats for women in panchayats and nagarpalikas (municipalities), there was little opposition in Parliament. “Maybe it was because the parties didn’t feel threatened by this grassroots legislation,” says Basudeb Acharia, member of Parliament (MP), Communist Party of India (Marxist).

India does not have a very good record when it comes to the representation of women in Parliament (see table). What makes the representation even more skewed is the fact that most women MPs belong to privileged, political families. According to the National Election Watch, which tracks election expenses and other issues, around 68 per cent of India’s women MPs are crorepatis.

So, say supporters of the Bill, a 33 per cent reservation of women in Parliament would do a lot to correct the imbalance and bring many more women into the country’s political process.

But will it really? The counter argument against the Bill is that in the ultimate analysis, it will fail to empower women because women will be only competing against other women in the reserved constituencies. “How will they feel empowered when they know that they fought only against women and won,” asks Virendra Bhatia, MP and Samajwadi Party leader.

According to Bhatia, the government should have opted for the Gill Formula (named after M.S. Gill, Union minister for sports and youth affairs and former Chief Election Commissioner) which suggested that political parties should reserve seats for women in state assembly and parliamentary elections.

But others point out that such a strategy would not benefit women at all. “A party like the RJD would seek to fill the women’s quota by alloting them seats in constituencies where they have no presence whatsoever. That will be injustice, not empowerment,” says Ranjana Kumari, president, WomenPowerConnect, a network of women’s groups.

There are other concerns as well, such as the rotational system of reservation. Bhatia explains that if an MP knows that his seat will become a reserved one the next term, he could easily wangle a ticket for a female relative, who would keep the seat warm for him for five years, so that he can come back to power when it falls unreserved again.

Kumari admits that there will be some teething troubles. “This is likely to happen in a patriarchal society such as ours, but it will be a temporary phenomenon. Women of substance will ultimately emerge,” she says.

Supporters of the Bill also say that there is no need to fear that women MPs will not take their job seriously. In Pakistan, for example, where 17 per cent of the seats are reserved for women, they have performed quite well. Says Wasim Wagha, who did a study on the ‘Performance of Women Parliamentarians in the 12th National Assembly (2002-2007)’ for the Aurat Foundation in Pakistan, “…once in Parliament, they went beyond the political borders, expanded their horizons and proved that they were suited to their new role as public representatives.” According to Wagha, women MPs performed better than men when it came to spending development funds.

The experience in India may not have been quite as positive. According to a report by PRS Legislative Research, which works on legislative and policy issues, in the 14th Lok Sabha women MPs were seen to fall behind men on certain key parameters like the number of questions asked, the number of private member’s Bills tabled, and so on.

But Amita Chaudhary, head of the Jodhpur Zila Parishad, feels that when it comes to real work, women do better. “We work much harder than men in our constituencies. Besides, I know the problems women face and I try and address them. Women’s issues do get neglected when men are in power.”

Of course, in a way the Bill has opened a Pandora’s Box on the issue of reservations itself. There is now the demand that there should be a “quota within quota” for other backward classes (OBCs) and minorities by parties like the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party.

One suggestion made before the parliamentary standing committee that examined the Bill was to increase the number of seats by amending Articles 81 and 170 of the Constitution. This could lead the way for dual member constituencies, where one constituency would have two seats.

According to Rami Chhabra, president, Streebal, an NGO working for the empowerment of women and a former member of the National Population Commission, one seat in dual member constituencies could be reserved for women. Chhabra, who also deposed before the standing committee, says, “If we increase the number of Lok Sabha seats by 50 per cent and reserve these for women, it would automatically come to 33 per cent of the total seats.”

But that is easier said than done. In fact, the standing committee had come to a consensus that “dual-member constituencies might result in women being reduced to a subservient status, which will defeat the very purpose of the Bill”.

Obviously, the air will be thick with arguments and counter arguments till the Women’s Reservation Bill is actually passed in the Lok Sabha. Acharia probably puts it best: “There is no need for any new magic formula. The priority should be to pass this Bill.”

Amen to that.