Women have demonstrated their immense potential in every field. Increasing their participation would undoubtedly bring about a positive change in politics
The most widely debated issue at present is the 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies. The Women's Reservation Bill was passed in 2023 and just last week, the government issued the notification for its implementation. However, a new Bill was introduced recently to amend it but the same could not be passed. In my view, this reservation is the right of women and not a favour being done to them.
Now the question is what happens next? The government says that this law will be implemented for the Lok Sabha by 2029. Since the Opposition linked it to delimitation, its aggressive stance was inevitable. The Opposition argues that it should be implemented based on the current strength of the Lok Sabha itself, instead of implementing it after increasing the number of seats to 850. There are several concerns regarding delimitation, but I will not go into those here. Instead, I want to focus on the issue of 33% reservation for women. The sooner this reservation is implemented, the better, because we have already lost a lot of time. We must reflect on the fact that despite being the world’s largest democracy, we have lagged behind in terms of women’s representation. Globally, women’s participation in parliamentary democracies has been around 20%, whereas in our case, it has never exceeded even 14%. Why has it taken so long to grant even one-third representation to half of the population in politics?
Before discussing this further, let us recall the first Lok Sabha election. The first election was held in 1951-1952. During the voter survey conducted before the election, about 2.8 million women, instead of registering their own names, got themselves registered as someone’s wife, mother or sister. This was a common practice in many parts of the country at that time, where women were recognised not by their own names but through their relationships. The first Chief Election Commissioner Sukumar Sen was so displeased that he decided to remove these 2.8 million names from the electoral rolls. It was a revolutionary step. Society felt that women’s rights had been denied, and in the next election, many such women came forward and registered their names independently.
I narrate this story to give you a sense of how Indian women have progressed in the political system from a narrow footpath to a paved road, and now to a highway. Interestingly, even in the first Lok Sabha election, only 22 women were elected out of 489 members, accounting for just 4.4% of the total. Thereafter, the figures show a slow and uneven rise: Women’s representation was 5.4% in the second Lok Sabha, 6.7% in the third, 5.9% in the fourth, 4.2% in the fifth, 3.4% in the sixth, 5.1% in the seventh, 8.11% in the eighth, 5.3% in the ninth, 7% in the tenth, 7.4% in the 11th, 8% in the 12th, 8.8% in the 13th and 8.1% in the 14th Lok Sabha. It was only in the 15th Lok Sabha that this figure reached 10.9%. Thereafter, it rose slightly to around 11% in the 16th Lok Sabha and hovered around 14% in both the 17th and 18th Lok Sabha. These figures clearly show that the pace of women’s participation in politics has been extremely slow.
Many people have tried to increase women’s participation over time. When Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, a committee formed by him had recommended increasing women’s participation in governance. Based on this recommendation, the P V Narasimha Rao government provided 33% reservation for women in panchayats. Following this, similar demands were raised for legislative assemblies and the Lok Sabha. In September 1996, the H D Deve Gowda government introduced the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha for the first time, but it did not succeed and was referred to the joint parliamentary committee. In reality, a large section was not in favour of 33% reservation for women. In 1998, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister, another attempt was made to pass the Bill. At that time, RJD MP Surendra Prasad Yadav even snatched the Bill from L K Advani and tore it apart. I was present in the House when Vajpayee humorously remarked that Lalu Prasad Yadav had made his wife chief minister but does not want to grant reservation to women. In fact, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party consistently opposed the Women’s Reservation Bill. In June 2009, the government of Manmohan Singh managed to pass the Bill in the Rajya Sabha, but due to strong opposition from RJD and SP, it could not be passed in the Lok Sabha. However, the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are known for their determination to see decisions through to completion, and in 2023, Parliament finally passed the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam. There was a demand to implement the women's reservation in 2024 itself, but that was perhaps not feasible. The government was firm on implementing it by 2029, but it has encountered a hurdle now.
I firmly believe that our women will lead the stream of politics towards a path of purity. Our daughters have illuminated everything from the Earth to the vast skies with their talent, and it is my hope that politics too will be enriched by their abilities. However, there are many hurdles. The future will reveal what happens next. One thing, though, is difficult to understand: When all political parties claim to support 33% reservation for women, why is it still not being implemented? There is a significant gap between what these parties say and what they actually do. If you ask them why they do not give more tickets to women, the usual response is that women are not able to win elections. In reality, our politics has still not been able to break free from a deeply rooted patriarchal mindset.The author is the chairman, Editorial Board of Lokmat Media and former member of Rajya Sabha.