Women’s Reservation: Several Ifs and Buts

The two houses of the Parliament have passed the 128th Constitution Amendment Bill reserving 33 per cent of the seats of the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies for women for a period of 15 years.

The passing of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam 2023 bill has been hailed as ‘historic’ and ‘a milestone’ as it has taken 27 years since it was first introduced.

Under the provisions of the bill, the reservation will come into effect once the exercise of delimitation is completed following the first Census after the commencement of the Act.

Optimistically, the two exercises are not likely to be completed before 2029 at the earliest. The ones not sharing this optimism postpone the implementation to a decade later.

Currently it falls in the domain of a formality which the ruling dispensation might project as a largesse for garnering the votes of the fairer sex in the general elections slated for next year.

Women constitute roughly half of the population and deserve better representation in the decision-making bodies, especially the ones making laws, in order to impart them inclusivism vouched by parties representing all the ideological shades.

The current Lok Sabha has only 78 women MPs, a hundred less than what the 33% reservation would fetch them. India currently ranks 141 out of 185 countries in terms of the percentage of women among the directly elected members of its parliament.

Not alone on the global scale, this representation is even below what obtains in neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, given the statistics by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Compared with the global average of 26%, the gender parity is stark, to say the least.

Among the states, Chhattisgarh Assembly scores the best with 14.4% representation for women. Curiously, the states doing better in matters of education and economic development—those including Gujarat and all the ones south of it—account for less than 10%.

It is not yet certain as to how the new calculus would pan out as the bill seeks to rotate seats after each delimitation exercise thereby adjusting the boundaries of the constituencies in proportion to population.

But voices are bound to rise for inclusion of reservation for Other Backward Class (OBC) communities who represent the largest chunk of social components of the population. The progress of the bill was stalled in previous tenures of Lok Sabha precisely on these grounds.

More so because, the current bill retains the 15 and 7 per cent reservation among the reserved seats for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.

In all likelihood it will become imperative for the 18th Lok Sabha to deal with the issue as soon as the new house gathers, lest the exercise begins to look like a new alternative route for further enhancing the political representation of the elite classes who have traditionally dominated political parties and institutions.

Rotation clause for reserved constituencies too evokes anxiety as it might result in decline of interest and a disincentive as it would reduce interest in working for the development of the constituency due to ineligibility for seeking re-election.

With umpteen ifs and buts marking its future trajectory, it would require much sagacity and perspicacity for members of the 18th Lok Sabha to steer the way for its materialization.