The 16th Lok Sabha has a record number of women representatives. But scratch the surface of that triumphal declaration and what you get is a stark numbers story, all the sorrier because it is a historic first. Of the 543 MPs elected to India’s lower house, 61 are women, just two more than in 2009, reflecting once again the status of women in India’s polity and underscoring the urgent need for women to claim their political and public space.
Do the math further and the picture gets more dismal. As India prepares for a new government, it emerges that women will have only 11 per cent representation in the new Lok Sabha, leaving men with 89 per cent. This is, of course, far, far removed from the 33 per cent quota being sought by the women’s reservation bill. How will this yawning gap ever be filled? And it is not just about winning or losing, it is also about parties giving them a chance. Only 642 women contested at all, a fraction of the more than 8,000 candidates in the fray in what is the world’s largest democratic exercise. There are other numbers too, all of which add up to the marginalisation of 49 per cent of India’s electorate. The first Lok Sabha in 1951 had five percent women, a number that has painfully grown bit by bit to just about double in the six decades since. In the global ranking, according to data on ‘women in national parliaments’ put out by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), India ranks 113 (the latest election results are unlikely to change this much), way lower than neighbouring Pakistan’s 72nd position with 20.7 percent representation of women and Nepal’s 35th slot with 29.9 percent. Quite a contrast from the rapid strides that India has made in so many other spheres. A coming to age of the Indian nationhood in varied other arenas but this.
The contradictions in a still patriarchal and feudal society are as old as Indian democracy itself. Women have been powerful in political parties – right from Sarojini Naidu and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur to Indira Gandhi and, of course, Sonia Gandhi, not to mention the triumvirate of J Jayalalithaa, Mamata Banerjee and Mayawati all of whom are formidable politicians holding their own in a very male world. But this has rarely translated into any transformative changes in the prism through which women are viewed.
The issue of security of women has been under the spotlight since December 16, 2012 with the previous government stepping in to bring in sweeping changes in the law. This is indeed welcome and fundamental to the everyday existence of India’s women, whether young or old, working or homemaker, rich or poor. But there must be more. The patriarchal construct of a society which views women as a section that is feeble and in need of protection must be broken.
The new government, said prime minister-elect Narendra Modi, is “dedicated to the poor, millions of youth and mothers and daughters who are striving for their respect and honour”. But women are not just mothers and daughters, or wives and sisters for that matter. They have their own identity. The leitmotif of change must be empowerment and participation.
Till that does not happen, it will continue to be to a man’s world — or Parliament if you will.
