Women's Reservation - The continuing debate

By Jayalakshmi Sengupta, New Delhi, Mar 10 : While unrelenting opposition continues to thwart the Women's Rreservation Bill from becoming a law, thriving debate ensues on the merit of such opposition.

A major step forward in empowering women in this century, the 108th ammendment, assuring 33pc reservation in the Parliament and state legislatures, will take awhile to be implemented in its full glory.

Meanwhile heated discussion and debate continue to probe into the controversies surrounding this Bill.

A demand for quota-within-quota, from the opposition may have some merit, according to Rahul Verma, a researcher with the prestigious New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. ''Women from upper-caste groups have always formed more than 50 percent of women elected to each Parliament, which is out of proportion with their actual numbers in the electorate of 330 million registered women voters.''

Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) MP in Rajya Sabha, Brinda Karat,on the other hand said, on Tuesday , "Wherever there has been reservation for women in local levels, minority and backward section women got representation,"

Reservation for minority does not automatically ensure that the fruits of development will percolate to the neediest, marginalized section. As observed in the case of education and job quota, such measures have merely created a creamy layer within the most vulnerable sections and not been able to reach the targeted benefiaciaries.

A major tabloid in its editorial recently suggested, if the opposition was concerned about women from minority groups from getting fair representation, "the parties should simply nominate greater number of OBC Muslim and Dalit women candidates."

The 33pc reservation is clearly more about equity in the political space. It is an effort to make development more inclusive and set the machinery for overall economic progress in motion.

"Empowering women is vital for achieving development goals overall, and for boosting economic growth and sustainable development," said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, in presenting the "Report: Power, Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific," here on the International Women's day.

Reservation has given splendid results in the local self governance in India, where rural women have successfully taken forward the cause of the vulnerable, marginalized rural women at large.

Reservation at the highest offices in governance will ensure more women specific debates concerning their life and livelihoods hereafter, which will find an opportunity to be translated into meaningful policies, says a senior development advisor of an international agency.

Not only will women at large find a platform to articulate their aspirations and interests but they will also be assured of their due representation in the higher echelons of public office.

With such large number of women representatives coming into the folds of direct governance, advancement of women specific issues will penetrate in all government services, even the existing ones, in both urban and rural India.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) success stories for instance will now provide opportunities for mainstreaming and legitimizing the rights of the poor and marginalised with particular reference to women no matter what caste or social background they come from.