How Indian politics has let its women down

The functioning of Parliamentary democracy has not always been appropriate but on occasion, it has fallen to new lows. In the Congress regime when the secular forces sought to empower women through reserving seats for them in the Lok Sabha elections, there was an almighty uproar.

The socialist Sharad Yadav called women like Geeta Mukherjee and Pramila Dandavate “par kati” comparing them with pigeons whose wings were clipped and could not fly. Sharad Yadav also removed and tore papers on the Rajya Sabha pulpit where vice president was presiding.

Why is this being raised? Because despite many years passing since this shameful episode, no significant secular challenge has been mounted for women’s rights. This despite Mrs Sonia Gandhi, not to speak of Nirmala Sitharaman, Smriti Irani, Suchitra Mahajan, et.al. Some might say that even the Congress PM Rajiv Gandhi during the Shah Bano controversy, told women leaders that “women’s equality” was a Western concept.

Decades have passed, but Muslim women do not have equality with men, then they are divorced. They do not have adequate maintenance from their husbands, because of the of the overriding of the Supreme Court ruling by Parliament. Compared to this, the current and laudatory Supreme Court judgement on triple talaq is not as important.

Women, as is well known, are grossly underrepresented in Parliament. Look at the list of candidates in the last two Lok Sabha polls. How many women have been accommodated by parties from all ideologies? Women are basically treated as second class candidates and are usually hugely outnumbered by men candidates for office. Most Western countries are careful to ensure that increasing numbers are empowered to be elected to public office. Not in India, of 1.2 billion people and relatively few women in Parliament.

There is a sting in the tail of this argument. After the Gujarat polls, the Congress in the Lok Sabha asked the speaker that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologise for accusing Manmohan Singh, former Army chief of staff, former high commissioners to Pakistan, former Pakistani diplomats and others, of being in league to politicise a Pakistani-Congress assault on the Modi government.

The Speaker categorically refused to support or permit any such apology, despite the fact that PM Modi had made this baseless charge in the run-up to the Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat polls, where such a humungous charge may have had some purchase. So now even the Lok Sabha is being muzzled. Warned by the speaker, Dr Manmohan Singh had no option but to withdraw. But this cannot be attributed to a woman speaker, but to the NDA not wanting its mascot PM Modi being exposed on this issue.

Further, other women of the BJP, mentioned above are reacting not as women, but as party members defending their leaders as is the tradition, across parties. That does hide the paucity of women in Parliament and force the dominant men leaders who basically run the roost in the organisation, to maintain the status quo.

Though some women get a head start if they are from a prominent and liberal family, that often alone is not enough in the face of patriarchy. So the quest for equality for women has seemingly stagnated for women. But in other areas: like law, medicine, education, finance, sciences, the arts and so on, women have moved far ahead, especially in the global North.

It would be unlikely that women from the global South would be capable of matching their gender in the North in a hurry. But women in India have systematically entered into several important vocations abroad. It is to be hoped that the vocational climate for them too, will be more fruitful and enriching in the years to come. Masculinity and Patriarchy will, of course, be major hurdles.

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