The Indian parliament is on the verge of passing a landmark bill which would reserve 33% seats for women at each level of legislative decision making, starting with the Lok Sabha, down to state and local legislatures. The proponents of the bill say that more participation of the women at the top will lead to women empowerment, help them to fight against abuse, discriminations and inequality they face. While the opponents of the bill say that this bill will not, in any way, help the women of the lower strata of the society, as only the women from the high society will be benefitted. As far as my stand on this topic is concerned, I’m very much for women empowerment, but only if it’s done with a good motive and the steps are not politically motivated.
Now coming to the question: Do we really require women reservation in the parliament? Let’s try to answer this question keeping just Lok Sabha or the Lower House in mind. Statistics show that till 14th Lok Sabha, i.e. till UPA-I government, the number of women in the House of Commons never crossed 10% of the total seats. It was for the first time in 2009 general elections that the number of women in Lok Sabha crossed this mark; it’s 10.82% to be more precise.
There could be two reasons for this. First, women are not given enough opportunities to contest elections, and that is the reason behind less representation. Second, women are given a chance but they don’t win the elections. FYI, there were only 45 women who contested the 1957 general elections. This number touched a high of 599 in 1996 and stood at 556 in 2009. The trend shows that this figure rose consistently between 1957 and 1996. But there was a sharp dip in 1998 elections, but then the number rose again uniformly. To give a better picture, in 1957 elections, only 2.96% of the contestants were women and in 2009, this figure was 6.89%. Though this figure has been constantly increasing, it’s still pretty low. Now, let’s see how many of these women who contested the elections were victorious. Interestingly, this number has fallen down continuously since 1957. It has come down from 48.89% success rate in 1957 to 6.68% in 1996 and stood at 10.61% in 2009. So, out of 556 women who got tickets in 2009, only 59 were elected from their constituencies.
Till now, we’ve seen only India specific data. Now, let’s have a look at what is happening in the world politics. Rwanda is the only country in the world with more women in the parliament than men. 56.3% of Rwanda MPs are women, followed by Sweden with 46.4%. Keeping the 33.3% mark in mind, which India wants to impose, it is interesting to note that only 17 countries in the world have those many women in their current parliaments. The big names among these 17 countries include South Africa, Cuba, Netherlands, Finland, Argentina, Spain and New Zealand. Nepal (33.2%) and Germany (32.8%) stand very close to this mark. The average of G-7 nations stands at 20.4% and that of G-20 at 19.3%. All these numbers are pretty far away from 33.3%. Ain’t they?
These statistics raise many questions in mind. How did India arrive at 33.3% mark? Would it do any good to the nation to jump from 10.82% to 33.3% in one leap?? We know that women empowerment is very important, but is reservation the only way? Will this reservation kill the chances of some more deserving candidates? All in all, how fair is this reservation? And does India need 33.3% women reservation (focusing more on the numbers than the words)?
