Indian elections have always thrown up its share of curiosities. Take one that emerged in the searing summer of 1991, as the country prepared to face a general election. A certain Suman Lata constituted the Akhil Bharatiya Mahila Dal and promoted it as India’s “first and only women’s party”. She, rather courageously, expressed her intention to field 400 candidates. History was not been kind to Suman Lata’s party. It sank without a trace.
Quixotic though this move may seem the unhappy fate of Suman Lata’s party does point to a serious flaw in the world’s largest democracy: Roughly half its population – 48.26 per cent of Indians to be precise – still remains poorly represented in mainstream politics.
It is 57 years since post-independent India had its first tryst with a general election. In the recently held 15th Lok Sabha election, several of India’s most important political parties are either headed by women or have vocal women leaders, yet women have never constituted more than 10 per cent of the Lower House of Parliament.
In 2004, when the last general election took place, 44 women became parliamentarians. This is the exact same number that was returned 20 years earlier in the 1984 election! If we are to go further back in time, this figure appears even more insignificant. In the 1937 elections held under the Government of India Act, which had reservations for women, 80 women were elected to power.
The bald truth is that in post-Independent India, women have never been able to breach the 10 per cent mark in terms of parliamentary representation. It should, therefore, surprise nobody that ‘democratic’ India – with a rank of 105 out of 135 countries – fares far worse than its neighbours, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan in terms of parliamentary representation for women, according to 2009 figures compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
What accounts for the paradox of having so many women leading parties but few actually representing parties in Parliament? According to Sanjay Kumar, psephologist and fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, “The plain truth is that political parties in the country have always chosen to privilege male political aspirants over female ones. Not enough tickets are given to women.”
The number of women given tickets across political parties actually declined from 247 in the 13th General Elections to 177 in the 14th General Elections. Important parties such as the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have always claimed that they are committed to women’s empowerment but they have invariably let women down when it came to handing them tickets. Take the Congress’s record in the polls to the six state assemblies late last year: In Delhi, eight out of 70 candidates; in Chhattisgarh, 10 out of 90; in Madhya Pradesh 29 out of 230. The latest General Elections did not witness any radical changes in this pattern.
Political parties cite “winnability” as their argument for why women don’t get tickets. But counters political scientist Zoya Hasan, the author of the recent ‘Politics of Inclusion: Castes, Minorities and Affirmative Action’, “The winnability factor is more a presumption than anything else. Going by whatever analyses that have been done, it is simply not true that women fare worse than men in Indian elections do. In fact, in India, where most people vote for parties rather than individuals, it follows that if successful parties field women they would win.”
She points to the poor record of the CPI (M) on this score despite having an articulate Brinda Karat vociferously pushing for better political representation for women. “In the 2004 elections, it was clear that the party would do well. So what prevented it from distributing tickets to women?” asks Dr Hasan. The real issue, she states, is that women lack networks and financial muscle. At a time when standing for a Lok Sabha election would entail amounts that are anything over Rs 100 million (US$1=Rs 51.2), women may find it more difficult to raise funds of this magnitude. The other factor that Dr Hasan underlines is the lack of public visibility. “You just don’t have enough women in organisational positions within parties and even women leaders themselves don’t promote women,” she says.
According to Surat-based political analyst, Dr Ghanshyam Shah, a retired professor of the Social Sciences, this is because political parties don’t consider women’s empowerment a priority issue. He says, “There is only rhetoric about it and little intent. Nothing exemplifies this better than the treatment accorded to the Women’s Bill.”
The Women’s Bill – reserving 33 per cent of seats in the Parliament and state assemblies for women – has been hanging fire since 1997 thanks to the dogged opposition mounted by male MPs from a few regional parties. They argued that it would only empower elite women at the cost of men representing Other Backward Classes (OBCs). In 2008, the Bill was introduced in the Upper House of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) after women Members of Parliament (MPs) formed a human chain around the law minister to enable him to do this. But the big question is whether it will get passed in the Lower House and become the law of the land.
Dr Shah dismisses the argument that the Bill will only see power being transferred to elite women, as mere hypocrisy. “There is provision within the Bill to reserve seats for SCs/STs. In any case, what is stopping political parties from giving tickets to lower caste women and those from OBCs?” he asks.
In 1993, India enacted the 93rd and 94th Constitutional Amendments, reserving 33 per cent of seats in local bodies for women. Today, the symbolic and actual value of having more than a million women preside over Panchayati Raj institutions is the best argument for why reservations for women is the only way to address the poor representation of women in the Parliament and state assemblies. There are innumerable examples of the transformative character of having more women as lawmakers. The case of Rwanda, where women legislators ensured the passing of a law protecting victims of sexual abuse, an issue their male counterparts may have considered a waste of time, is cited.
Meanwhile, in India, voices demanding the Women’s Bill are getting louder. In the Women’s Charter, which was part of the All India People’s Manifesto initiative promoted by the ‘Wada Na Todo Abhiyan’ after consultations with more than 230,000 people in 100 parliamentary constituencies, the enactment of the Women’s Bill emerged as a key demand. Several women’s groups have also made the same demand in a Women’s Charter that was released recently in New Delhi.
As Delhi-based political scientist Neera Chandoke has argued in ‘Challenges to Democracy In India’, “Democracy is much more than a system whereby citizens elect and dismiss their representatives. Democracy is about assuring freedom and equality to all citizens in their everyday life, so that they can develop their capacities.”
Indian democracy continues to be diminished by the fact that women’s political empowerment in the country remains an unfinished agenda.
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