If the women’s bill becomes law, politics in this country may not be the same again. No wonder some of the men are fighting hard.
By Neerja Chowdhury
The passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha last week, a historic first step towards ensuring the long denied one third representation to women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, might have not been possible but for the determined push by Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
Though faced with stiff opposition, Sonia urged her dithering party managers to press ahead, irrespective of the consequences. The withdrawal of support by Mulayam Singh and Lalu Yadav and BSP’s opposition has undoubtedly left an otherwise comfortable UPA II with a wafer thin majority in the Lok Sabha, making the government more vulnerable. But Sonia’s move is not bereft of political calculations and is a pointer to a new umbrella coalition she now wants to forge.
On the other side, the opposition to the Bill, which has the potential to alter gender equations as well as power relations, was led by the Yadav trio — Mulayam, Lalu and Sharad. Even though the Yadav chieftains have all along been opposed to the Bill on the ground that it does not have a sub quota for OBC and Muslim women, they seized upon it this time as a weapon to revive their flagging fortunes.
Mulayam Singh Yadav has clearly been on the backfoot — he lost out to Mayawati in the 2007 UP elections and his seats almost halved in the 2009 general elections. He could not even retain his fiefdom of Firozabad in the by-poll contested by his daughter-in-law Dimple Yadav. Lalu Yadav managed only four Lok Sabha seats last year.
The Yadav leaders have not only been losing Muslim support, which has been gravitating towards the Congress, their following among their own community has also been dwindling. Only one of the four RJD MPs elected in 2009 was a Yadav and that was Lalu himself. As for Sharad Yadav, his stand against the bill — there was a time when he had threatened to consume poison in the House if the bill was passed — has divided the JD(U) right down the middle, with Nitish Kumar coming out in support of the bill. With state elections only six months away, there was no way the Bihar CM could have gone against it, having given 50% representation to women in the state’s panchayats.
It is another matter that the Yadav leaders, who are former socialists, forgot what they had learnt from their mentor Ram Manohar Lohia — that women per se should be treated as a backward category — or what former Bihar CM Karpoori Thakur had implemented in Bihar, providing 3% reservation to women in jobs.
With the Mandal effect on the wane and the Congress on the upswing, the Yadavs are trying to use the slogan of a “quota within the quota” as a tool for mobilizing OBC and Muslim support once again to recreate the old MY (Muslim-Yadav) magic, which had brought them to power in UP and Bihar.
And yet, for them, as for many male MPs in every party, it is also a convenient tool to prevent the bill from seeing the light of day. Nobody knows whose constituency will be axed in the rotational reservation, though over a period of 15 years every constituency will become reserved for women in turn.
In many ways, the passage of the bill in the Rajya Sabha was a milestone in Sonia Gandhi’s own journey as a political leader. As a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family, which has ruled India for decades, Sonia Gandhi’s stewardship of the 125 year old Indian National Congress has kept the party united. Now, with her firm stand on the women’s bill, despite the opposition coming from within every party, including her own. She has shown that she is also capable of taking risks and tough decisions. Indians respect renunciation, but they also look up to strong leaders.
Even before the bill becomes law, Sonia Gandhi has sent a powerful message to Indian women. There is little doubt that the bill, which remains to be passed by the Lok Sabha and more than half the state assemblies, will be far from smooth sailing.
Theoretically, numbers should not pose a problem for the government in the Lok Sabha for passing the bill, given the support promised by the BJP, Left parties, and many regional outfits, even if the SP, RJD and BSP do not play ball and even if ally Mamata Bannerjee’s Trinamul Congress abstains, as it did in the Rajya Sabha.
But with a reduced majority in the Lok Sabha, the Congress will now have to mobilize independents and other regional groupings to get legislations passed. The finance bill is likely to be passed, for no one wants to bring on an election. But given the feelings on issues such as that of a separate Telengana state, the coming months will call for a high order of political management and statecraft by Congress leaders.
What is however critical for Sonia is the Muslim reaction to the women’s bill, their support being crucial for the party’s revival in the Gangetic heartland. It is the fear of an adverse Muslim reaction which saw Mamata do a 180 degree turnabout, supporting it enthusiastically in the Cabinet and then abstaining from the Rajya Sabha vote. Muslim MPs have expressed the fear that their seats in the Lok Sabha might shrink further since their womenfolk may not be in a position to take advantage of the reservation. But Sonia Gandhi appears to be playing for larger — and long term — stakes. With 2014 being billed as Rahul Gandhi’s election, the Congress seems to be moving towards creating a new umbrella alliance of middle class/upper castes, minorities and Dalits. And just as the party is targeting the youth in an increasingly young country, it also sees women as an important support base.
The move may also firm up her position and that of Rahul’s. The arrangement to reserve seats by rotation will also go to strengthen the parties — and those who lead them — as opposed to individual candidates, some of whom have become larger than their parties.
There is already a huge change taking place at the village and district levels with 1.2 million women now taking executive decisions in the three tier system of panchayats, thanks to one third reservations given to them in local bodies since 1992. It was resistance to Mandal which made job reservations for OBCs such an emotive issue during VP Singh’s premiership, bringing down his government. But it threw up a slew of OBC chief ministers in the North, like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Uma Bharati, Kalyan Singh, Shivraj Chauhan, Narendra Modi, and Ashok Gehlot.
The Women’s Bill will make for more competitive politics at the constituency level. Women know they have only five years to make their mark and many will work very hard to prove their worth so that they can be elected again when it becomes de-reserved.
It goes without saying that Sonia Gandhi’s decision to press ahead will lead to a realignment of political forces at the ground level and also in Parliament and state assemblies. If the bill goes through, not only will it bring 181 women to the Lok Sabha, but Indian politics as we have known it may not remain the same.