IT IS time for a rethink on the Women's Reservation Bill. For all those who found the drama in the LokSabha infuriating, it is time for hard thinking. It is also time to look ahead and think of a fresh way out.Let there be no doubts about it. It was not just Mulayam Singh Yadav and co. who blocked the bill on May 6. Ifthe BJP and the Congress were determined, all the opponents could not have blocked it. Coming from a regimethat passed POTA in the teeth of widespread opposition, the touching search for consensus, the sudden surge ofrespect for the minority viewpoint makes impossible demands on one's credulity. The truth is that with theexception of the Left parties, the entire political establishment is responsible for the non-passage of theBill. Behind Sushma Swaraj's exasperation there was an unmistakable touch of relief. Relief that the Bill wasdead, and that her party was not going to be blamed.
Let us also be honest about something else. The now-dead Bill was a deeply flawed piece of legislation. Thosewho drafted it were absolutely right about the fundamental principles: the abysmally low representation ofwomen in our legislatures can and must be corrected through binding legal provisions. But in their enthusiasmthey paid inadequate attention to the mechanism they were proposing for realising their objectives. The Billproposed reservation of constituencies for women on the lines of that for Scheduled Castes and ScheduledTribes, with a provision to rotate them with every election. This would have meant that nearly half of theconstituencies would have been reserved for one group or another. Rotation would have meant that at leasttwo-thirds of the sitting MLAs and MPs would not go back to their constituency for re-election. This was aninvitation to disaster and would have robbed our system of whatever accountability it has now.
What then do we do? The ruling establishment would like us to forget about the matter till the next Lok Sabhais constituted. We can do better than that. The apparent deadlock on the Bill can and must be turned into anopportunity by agreeing to an alternative proposal that the political establishment would find difficult tosay no to.
This alternative has been around for some time and is known as the Election Commission Proposal. Firstoriginating in an article by some social scientists and activists in Manushiand subsequently endorsed in principle by the Election Commission, this alternative involves a compulsoryquota for women in party nominations. If accepted it would mean that the political parties would be requiredto field at least a certain percentage of women candidates, but would be free to decide where to field themfrom. A version of this method was recommended way back in the National Perspective Plan approved by RajivGandhi. This incidentally is the wisdom gleaned from global experience as well. If you care to visit thewebsite of the inter-governmental organization, International IDEA, you would discover that party quota wasthe route taken by most democracies where women did succeed in securing a decent political representation forthemselves. For some reason the original framers of the existing Women's Reservation Bill think that thisalternative is a poor and diluted version of their proposal. A close look would show that if formulatedcarefully to guard against possible misuse, the party quota method can meet the objectives better than theexisting Bill.