Electing Women to Panchayats – 50% Reservation is 100% Farce

This is recent news – the central government will take steps to amend the Constitution to increase reservation of seats for women in elections to panchayat bodies from the present 33% to 50%.  Who benefits if that happens?  Not anyone.

Compulsory reservation for women among elected members and Chairpersons of panchayat bodies has been followed in several states of India – for twenty years in some, and less in others. The Indian Constitution mandates it, since 1993, at a minimum of 33% of contested seats.  A proposal to hike it to 50% was approved by the Union cabinet of an earlier government in 2009, but the Constitution is yet to be amended for the purpose.  A different ruling party now running the central government cannot drop that idea and invite political peril.   

But we should ask : Can we believe that the existing 33% reservation has toned up governance at village levels and enhanced women’s prestige in village areas, and so making it 50% will brighten such results even more? Or have we found that a mere 33% is not enough to get expected benefits and that a minimum 50% reservation is needed?  “No. None of it” should be our answer to both questions.

More than women, men desire, grab and enjoy power in politics.  Males are one half of our population, and more than half among elected representatives in our legislatures.  Without their approval the present 33% reservation would not have happened, nor can it go up.   That is not because our male politicians are generous and sacrificing.  It simply points to a ground reality – this reservation serves as a cloak for clever men to project their obedient wives, mothers or daughters as contestants for reserved seats in panchayat polls, secure their election and rule by proxy.  Those women know this and are happy to help their men folk by just being name-lenders.  And all – including government officials supervising local administration - who deal with or pay purposeful respect to those controlling men behind the mute elected women in panchayats know this.  This is a great farce in our politics and government.

Yes, there is a question to be answered. What is wrong in husbands, fathers or sons helping out women in their families when the law requires that women alone can contest some panchayat seats?  Two counter questions get us the answer.  When women in panchayat areas are not so elected, in what ways and for how long are they helped by men in their homes?  Will a straight-thinking man who respects his wife, daughter or mother, consent to proxy for her illegally in government work, and do the things done by a good number of 33% or 50% male proxies?

Let me not leave out this question.  Why should anyone – here a woman – agree to hold an elected office but let her official power and add-ons lie in the hands of another person – here a man?  Man or woman, if one is dependent on another in many ways or if one is indebted to another for reasons they know best, this fronting or proxying in varying extent could happen anywhere.  If the names of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi, or Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, suddenly cross your mind now you will have some good reason.

Compulsory reservation for women in panchayat bodies, and the way it is worked, do not really help women among the public.  Women everywhere look for their physical safety and security foremost, and if their elected representatives can ensure that while they govern, women would be glad and relieved even if all or a vast majority of those representatives are men.  But if they have to live amidst an unsure sense of safety and security, holding and concealing their fright, it makes no difference to them that 33% or 50% of their elected representatives are also women.  Horror stories in newspapers every other day about unfortunate female victims tell us how insecure Indian women feel on our soil.

Women voters are not really yearning for reservation in panchayat positions.  If they really do, they can act in unison and elect a female candidate pitted against male candidates from an unreserved constituency. That would surely happen if they wish it since they make up about 50% of voters.  Just as, in a free-for-all election, a candidate of the same caste as a good chunk of the voters in his constituency wins.  Then why do our dominant male politicians play out this farce?  Perhaps they think they are placating women voters by this false concession.  And perhaps women voters feel that if it pleases men on their pet political pranks let it be – why raise questions, dissatisfy ambitious political men and possibly have a dent in women’s overall sense of safety and security, whatever it be?  Indian men who pioneered and backed this reservation have failed our women by making puppets out of the latter and degrading their dignity in a public sphere. 

Want some more proof that our male politicians are cooking up this farce of espousing women’s cause? Well, if men truly believe that more of women should be elected to political offices – as high as 33% or 50% - and make decisions to run governments, men would have first asked women to take up top posts within their political parties at village level or district level everywhere.  Men don’t do it because they wish to be widely in charge of party affairs (rightly, as they fit those roles better), but when it comes to elected political offices in government they make it appear they would let women fill up those offices  – 33% or 50% of them – while they still run those offices from behind.

We have also powerful examples to prove that men and women do not bother much if their elected rulers are men or women.  We had Indira Gandhi as prime minister, she and her party were defeated massively throughout the country in elections held after she lifted her Emergency, but later she was also voted back to power – without reservation of any kind for women.  Now Jayalalithaa of Tamil Nadu in the South, Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal in the East, Anandiben Patel of Gujarat in the West rule their states as chief ministers.  And in the North, Mehbooba Mufti Sayeed of Jammu and Kashmir could get sworn in as chief minister if she just wants it.  This is the spectacle in the four corners of India with no reservation helping these four women – and men voters in huge numbers in the four states wanting them at the helm.  Likewise, male chief ministers presently ruling in other states enjoy the support of women voters in large numbers and those voters are not longing for woman chief ministers. It is again clear that 33% reservation is a plain farce, and any increase of it will heighten its effect.  Sadly, it has been elevated as a Constitutional compulsion – not only for panchayats but for municipalities too, and the farce gets enacted in more theatres than one.

If women are inclined to politics and have the guts for it they would come out on their own, lead and shine, like they do now in the four corner states of India. On that some may take inspiration from their fathers or spouses, which is understandable as it happens with all, man or woman.  At national levels too, apart from India's Indira Gandhi, Srimavo Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka, Golda Meir in Israel, Margaret Thatcher in the UK and recently Angela Merkel in Germany rose to head governments on their own strength and leadership qualities – that is natural and welcome in a democracy.  But to stipulate that some electoral constituencies across India at village or municipal levels  - or  in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures - shall only have women candidates (or only men, if law says it), that too at high percentages of 33 or 50 is no good, and in any case an overdose that maims or kills.  This enforced reservation leads to several ills and it would be difficult to remove them as they get entrenched.  And it will have a sinister side effect too – of creating a needless men-versus-women issue and all the acrimony that comes with it.

So, as an Indian, if you object to a good slice of our elected political offices being reserved for women, it doesn’t mean you have malice toward the reservees.  It means you love your homeland. 

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Copyright © R. Veera Raghavan 2016