A Case For Reservation

Listening to The Bugle Podcast (a satirical show on global politics) a fortnight ago, a passing remark by the co-host Andy Zaltzman on the relationship between the most developed economies (Norway, Sweden) in the world being directly proportional to the number of women represented in the parliament, turned out to be the genesis for this article. With the chances of the hoary old bill on Women Reservation being tabled at the Lok Sabha during the budget session and the upcoming International Women’s day (March 8^th), the chauvinist in me made way for the pro-feminist.

It’s no secret that a nation whose foundations are based on an egalitarian model would be predisposed to peace and economic prosperity. Human Development Index (HDI) is a tool by which the UN studies the growth of nations. By including the parameters of standard of living, literacy and education a decisive number is obtained, which helps in ranking the countries on the condition of its citizens. A common theme if you look closely at top nations of the HDI List would be the equality of the opposites. While as you go down the list, the low HDI is indeed linked with the gender gap and is easily noticeable. India is ranked a woeful 134^th, tied with Iraq, and well below its neighbors Sri Lanka and Maldives. Here, the chauvinist I countered to this argument and said that a big nation like ours can’t be compared to smaller countries on this parameter alone. As India is a continent in itself, a rising super-power, we need to have a detailed analysis as to why we are so low on this index. So thanks again to Wikipedia (don’t know what I would do without it), here’s the list of individual states of India based on HDI. And yes, no big surprises that Kerala tops the chart with it being the only state where female to male ratio is higher than the rest of the country.

This brings us to our conundrum; do we need a reservation for women in parliament? We can certainly take inspiration from Rwanda, where women in Parliament secure 56% of the total seats and although well below in HDI, have actually recovered miraculously after the 1994 genocide (do watch Hotel Rwanda movie to learn more about it). Giving preferences to candidates solely on merit is the ultimate goal which a society must achieve. Though, this can only be done if everyone is given the same opportunity to perform and succeed. For a developing nation like ours, reservation is often a hotly debated topic. The Government has tried reservation for women before in municipalities and local elections but with utter failures. Proxy Seats, where dogmatic politicians make sure it all stays in the family, i.e., by only allocating tickets to contest elections to their female family members and as a result neglecting the fairer sex and mitigating the entire purpose of reservation.

The urgent need for the purpose to be vindicated is to make sure there is utmost integrity and sincerity followed in the rotational aspect of the bill. When Rajya Sabha passed the bill back in 2010, there was a clear directive to reserve the seats once in three consecutive general elections on the basis of a draw of lot. The same must be passed at Lok Sabha too, and hopefully the path to a long term goal of development is achieved on an even footing.