Women and the Indian democracy

Earlier today, media reports broke out that wholesale traders of low cost saris in Gujarat are thriving in business because of the Lok Sabha elections. According to Industry experts around Rs 150 crore worth of orders have been sold so far in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odish, Kolkata, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Uttrakhand, Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgarh in the last month alone to political parties that are in the thick of campaigning. The overtly cheap Rs 150 per piece garment is being used to woo women voters in the area.

Earlier today, media reports broke out that wholesale traders of low cost saris in Gujarat are thriving in business because of the Lok Sabha elections. According to Industry experts around Rs 150 crore worth of orders have been sold so far in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odish, Kolkata, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Uttrakhand, Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgarh in the last month alone to political parties that are in the thick of campaigning. The overtly cheap Rs 150 per piece garment is being used to woo women voters in the area.

Let me remind you that the year is 2014 and there is a far more effective way to woo women. The woman’s charter for the up-coming elections is available to be considered for political party manifestos. Did you even know that there is such a charter that exists? That it is a process women’s organisations follow prior to each election? The reason it is important is because this charter goes beyond safety and violence by raising attention to issues imperative to women in both rural and urban areas such as welfare, health, child, education and employment. It also lists in painstaking details all the ways in which these can be addressed to empower women. At the crux of it is the notion that women should be active members of this democracy. It is a fair notion. But are the political parties really listening? Out of all the party manifestos released so far, there is nothing special for a woman that has not been said for beyond the references to the Justice Verma Committee, the women’s reservation bill, honor killings and gender selection crimes. That this charter has generally been ignored is alarming considering the fact that 48 per cent of the country’s voters are women. Despite their best efforts, women have long been ignored by the Indian democracy. In 2009 out of the 8,070 candidates that contested polls only 556 were women. There are only 60 women in the current 543-member Lok Sabha. Out of the 240 seats in the Rajya Sabha there are only 24 women. To sum it up, only 9.9 per cent of parliamentary or ministerial posts are occupied by women. According to the latest comparative data released by Inter-Parliamentary Union, an organisation that aims at promoting democracy across the globe, India ranks 113th on the issue of representation of women in the parliament. In Delhi and Haryana alone the numbers of women contesting are just 23 in total out of 380. The numbers seem especially alarming considering the fact that the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and the Congress are both advocating the Women’s reservation Bill which provides a 33 per cent quota to women in the parliament. But the reality is far from propaganda as the BJP in its current form has fielded only 8.5 per cent women—the lowest number so far. The Congress fares no better at 12.7 per cent and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) at 15 per cent.

The issue of representation in politics was raised first by Indian women in 1917. By 1930, it had progressed to the right to vote. This right to vote initially affected only elite women. It took almost another decade for the suffragist effect to slowly trickle down and more women started to participate in the nationalist and anti-colonial struggles. When the Indian constitution came into being in 1950, women did hold key offices, albeit very few, these were of course elite women from political dynasties and set a trend that doesn’t seem to have changed since. The under representation of women therefore automatically allots them an inferior status and makes them second class citizens prone to exploitation as women are still not actively involved in the decision and policy making of this country in proportion to their actual numbers. Thus, there is a void between the idea of women’s participation and the constructive use of that power.

Although it is to be noted that the 73rd and the 74th amendments to the Indian constitution that have included women representation in Panchayati Raj has set off a trend in grass root democracy allowing women to be active political members of society. Several states, including Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and most recently, Uttrakhand, have allotted not just the required 33 per cent of panchayat seats for women but increased it to 50 per cent. Over 1.5 million women have been elected to office since its inception in 1995 and although most of the women elected were proxy candidates initially, being in the public sphere has given them the confidence to go beyond their arm chair role and really confront issues. Take for instance, Sunita Devi who is the pradhan of a small village in Pilibhit, UP. ‘When I first won this seat fifteen years ago, I was contesting on behalf of my husband, but all that has changed now. The more I understand about my job, the more actively I want to participate in it,” she says excitedly over the telephone. According to a study conducted by the UN Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women (UN Women) with over 3000 elected members of the Gram Parishad (GP) and qualitative data on select themes collected from three districts, women are moving towards leaderships roles in the Panchayati sphere, both through, reserved and unreserved seats. The study also notes that elected women have different issues as compared to their male counterparts and focus not only development but the sociological issue. The fact that this grass root participation is yet to translate into the national scene is not surprising considering the fact that even though political parties recognize women members, most of them are relegated to the women’s wing of the political parties that are often seen as extensions, only there to serve the farcical concept of gender equality. They are then expected to deal with what are considered women issues such as dowry and rape cases with an occasional quote on rising gas prices, housing, welfare etc. Women in these positions often lack female empathy and are largely lead by their private political ambitions. Think Sushma Swaraj and Sheila Dixit.

To make matters worse, it doesn’t help that most of these so called women’s wings of political parties have little to zero power in making policy decisions and lack access to the inside power dynamics of the political circles that they move in. Even the National Commission for Women, which has been set up by the government to safeguard women’s rights has largely been a defunct organisation which has been incapable of taking any clear stand on relevant issues as it lacks the authority to act independently of the ruling party in the parliament at the time.

Feminist Mrinal Gore once said that for women to make it big in politics they need, “muscle power and money power.” She wasn’t wrong. The inability of women to raise funds and have a firm backing has political parties in India repeatedly asserting that it is hard to get qualified women candidates who want to get into politics. There has been ample talk of women being incapable of being independent voters, of them relying too much on the male members of their family for guidance. All these are notions of an obviously patriarchal state that can neither empower nor guarantee safety for almost half of its electoral number. For a country that has been going through what can be loosely termed as a women’s rights movement for the last one year, it is imperative to take the discourse out of an ideological sphere and ask the question, are women really active participants of the Indian democracy? Because in order to make a real feminist change, women need to be on the inside of the political sphere, not looking at it from the fringes, gawking, forever dependent on their indifferent male counterparts.

About The Author

Gunjeet Sra