Women's Reservation - A thought - by Narayan Iyer

Well, I have to confess, I am very skeptical about the bill or even its intentions. 1) How does this raise the profile of women in India? How does this bring down female infancticide , child marriage, teen pregnancy, gang rapes, eve teasing or women being slaughtered for being potential "witches" in our villages (http://news.oneindia.in/2010/03/07/crusadeagainst-withcraft-by-street-plays-in-jharkhand.html)? The problem for women in India is more fundamental and it is more to do how Indian society perceives them. It is a mindset issue more than a polity one. 2) What message does this send to the women? You are weak and vulnerable and need this leverage of reservation to be in the parliament. What has reservation done for this country in the last 60 years other than encourage more reservation. Now muslims are angry because they feel denied. 3) I want people who have the capability, the vision and the understanding of economic, politicial and social dynamics of the country or their constituency to represent in the parliament. Men or women. Aren't we compromising on quality and prestige of the parliament which is already in shambles by holding out reservation for 1/3rd of seats. The socialist structure of our nation believes that every issue can be neutralized with policies.

I can't help but think that this is all just trivial posturing by the Italian stallion Gandhi. If one has to uplift the stature of women of this country, there are many other worthy causes and campaigns that can be implemented at the grass root level. I would rather believe that women who are in a more priveleged place than 70-80% of their counterparts are in a better position to make a realistic change in the status of a woman than the govt. will ever be in. Our President is a woman, leader of the ruling party is a woman, the leader of the opposition in the house is a woman. Even the US till date has not had a female president. I think there is enough motivation there for a woman if she is good enough to believe that she has a realistic chance of making it without any reservation. When will we stop the politics of appeasement and move towards reform and development?

I am no one to pour cold water on the irrepresible joy of the activists who were protesting for god knows what. What happened to neo feminism ? “We are smart and confident and capable of competing with and beating any man in any field,but first give us a wild card to enter the ring”. This is a very confused position I think. Imo, competence should be the only criteria, there are other more practical ways of appreciating an dhelping women than this kind of tokenism