Half a year long ailments of heavy drapery, historical reverberations, and the constant and silent murmur of a dream deferred, have been the order of the day in the corridors of the Lok Sabha. The Women-reservation Bill, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, has been the “mirage” of the Indian politics: it had always been on the horizon, but it was never attainable.
But there is a major change that is being felt in the nerve centers of New Delhi. Most recent reports indicate that the Government is contemplating a historic step of decoupling the application of 33 per cent women quota on the census and the programme of delimiting it, after the census.
It is not a mere policy adjustment to the millions of women, who over the decades have endured a legislative stalemate, but the difference between those women experiencing change in their lifetime, and the next generation.
Stopping the Wait-and-Watch Cycle
The Women Reservation Bill was passed in a special sitting in 2023 with a hefty price attached to it. The law provided that the reservation would not take place until the first census since the passing of the Bill was, and that a redrawing of constituency boundaries (the delimitation) was carried out.
With the Census delays and due to the intricacies in remapping in political geography in India, it was estimated that it would be 2029, or even 2034, before women would be able to claim their 33 percent quota.
It was like being handed a key to a house that was not yet constructed says Meera Devi, a grassroots worker with Haryana background who has been mobilizing her coworker rural women into electing panchayat which was at the local level. They said we had the right to it, but we had the calendar going against us. And once the government uncouples this the house is ready to relocate into.
The anthropological effect of this delinking is hard to overestimate. Once the quota is no longer linked to the mathematical reality of delimitation, the government has in effect placed the Effective Date at a date that is not in the distant future, but immediately after the next General Election. It is an indication of the change of technical bureaucracy to political urgency.
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The Human Side of the Politics of Ambition
Rhea, a 28-year-old law graduate and a local organizer based in a small office in the suburbs of Mumbai, sits in front of television to receive the news with bated breath. To young women like herself, the delinking is one of the available careers that had been barred initially by the old-guard system of seat assignment.
The relocation appeals to a long-standing sense of frustration by the female voters in India. Whereas the voter turnout of the women in elections has been on the rise mostly exceeding that of a man, representation in the houses of power has been persistently low at about 14-15 percent in the Lok Sabha. The so called proxy argument (that women are mere puppets of their husbands or fathers) is gradually being killed as the new educated generation of women takes center stage in local government.
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The Importance of the Delinking: Not Only Math
The technical aspect of delimitation is an ugly disputable subject. It entails a weighing of the representation of the expanding North against the South which is demographically stable. The quota was unwillingly at the mercy of one of the most complicated federal issues in India by linking the rights of women to this North-South debate.
Delinking is an offer of clean exit. It enables the 33 percent reservation to take place in the current 543 seats in the Lok Sabha.
- Immediate Representation: 181 seats in the present Lok Sabha would be immediately reserved to women as opposed to the current situation where they wait until the house has grown to 800+ seats (after delimitation) before this opportunity to represent them can be reached.
- Rotational Justice: The system would probably be one of rotating or lottery but in such a way that every part of the country has been represented by a woman in at least three cycles of election.
- Political Accountability: The excuse of technical delays will no longer be used by the parties not to have female candidates in constituencies they can win.
