Does India need a women’s reservation bill?

Last couple of days India has witnessed a huge furor over the Women’s reservation Bill, which essentially talks about giving 33% legislative seats to the women of the country. While at one hand we see parties like congress and BJP pushing for the bill, some other regional parties like RJD and Samajwadi party has been clearly raising their voices against the bill. Historically, the reservation bill was introduced by the HD Deve Gowda led government way back in 1996. Though it has been presented on various occasions in the parliament, it could never be passed as a constitutional amendment due to lack of political consensus. If the bill is passed it would signal a very important milestone for the UPA government.

But for now let’s look at what could be the potential impact both on the positive and negative side if the bill finally gets passed.
At the positive outset the bills makes reservation mandatory for a third of the seats for women in national state and local governments. This would put India in league with many of the developed nations where women hold many of the important governmental roles. Today in India women represents a mere 11% in the chief legislature, Lok Sabha, this is very much below the average across the world. Women in India have always been deprived and discriminated, and this would bill will go a long way in ensuring political and economic empowerment of women. More than anything else it would provide them with an opportunity to represent the community in a more equitable manner. Also, women are characterized as more caring and humble than male counterparts, and this would probably lead to a more stable democratic government.

On the negative side it might just prove to be a notion that woman empowerment can only be achieved through parliamentary representation. As a matter of fact, any parliamentary body is not a literal mirror of the society where every section needs to be represented in a fairly distributed manner. Rather it is one elected body where laws of the land get formulated and the future roadmap of the nation gets decided. For any woman it would be much more credible to be elected based on merit rather than sex. The Bill in its Current form envisages reserving 181 seats in the Parliament for women. In practical terms its impact would be that 181 male members of Parliament would not be able to contest elections if the bill is passed. Also, there is to be a rotation of seats, i.e., a male member of Parliament cannot represent the same constituency for more than two consecutive terms. But overall the bill does not talk about how more women representation would able to fight the injustice and social prejudice against girls and women, so prevalent in our society.
From a political standpoint it makes sense to have some quantum of reservation, but the percentage is debatable. Not just for the vote banks for also from a long pending reform perspective. More representation of women in the legislature would surely give more voice to women community and help in the general upliftment of India socio economy.

But my take is that any reservation is an acknowledgment of the failure of the state and the political system. Even after 62 years of independence every year so many girl children get aborted, killed or bartered. Primary necessities like education and food is also deprived from a girl child. I do not think just my having more women legislatures would change any of those ills from our society immediately. But hopefully passing of this bill would be a step towards the right direction, because standing where we are today India does need women's reservation. I feel as more educated women enter the mainstream political arena, we can expect improvement in girl child education level, sex ratio, removal to certain extent of dowry system, early child marriage and lastly women being treated with respect.