Now that the Women’s Reservation Bill has been passed in the Rajya Sabha, we are left with a feeling of having undone a major part of the wrongs our culture has perpetrated on women. But the moot question is this. Has a top-down approach ever been beneficial to any sector, nation or company?
Let me give an example. What if there was a rule in your firm which said that all directors of the form or the chairperson has to be a woman? Do you think it would make the firm you’re working in a better one?
But if the same rule were to be amended and now the equation would be that thirty percent of all management trainees in your firm would be women, do you believe it would make a more positive impact?
Probably because then, the ladies who join you as management trainees start on an equal footing and from there on whoever reaches the post of director, it has to be through fair competition and hardwork.
What is the point reserving a third of our Parliament- the highest seat of law and governance of our land- for women when the chance to attain it is restricted to such a small number that the whole process looks like a sham.
Some wonderful cartoons in our daily newspapers have summed it up well. All of them have some or the other neta beaming that now he can reward his wives, daughters and bahus with coveted MP election tickets.
Even at the moment, with probably the exception of Sushma Swaraj, Brinda Karat and Maywati, name me one woman who has reached the upper echelons of governance because she is not somebody’s wife, daughter or bahu.
Till internal democracy comes to parties, all this is hogwash and while I completely oppose the reason why Mulayam or Lalu opposed the Bill, I’ll side with them if I had a vote.
Did you hear what Priya Dutt had to say when she came out after filing her nominations for the Lok Sabha elections in 2009? Someone asked her what her priorities would be- a very clichéd question. The answer was betterment of infrastructure, making Mumbai a better place to live, equality for all sexes, blah blah. You could be forgiven if you thought the question was posed at the Miss World competition since the answer was the kind that would have done and bust-and-bum beauty brigade proud.
But what do you know? Priya Dutt won with a record margin and is a second time MP though she can be seen only on the pages of Bombay Times or Midday in parties hosted by cronies.
Come 2014, it will not just be Poonam Mahajan but just about everybody who is a lady in the Munde-Mahajan household who will be getting tickets.
If true democracy has to bring about equality, then our mindsets have to change. The day Irom Sharmila wins from Manipur, or a lady whose name I forgot- I’m also a hypocrite you see- who started a mosque exclusively for women wins, that’s when you can say democracy has come in and has brought equality as its partner. Or Shah Bano or Mahasveta Devi.
No point rejoicing over the Bill when you know every seat in that reserved circle would be taken up by docile biwis and bahus and betis who cling on to regressive families because of the legacies they would inherit some day.
Just go home one day, sit doing nothing, observe your mother multi-task with the dexterity of a Harvard Business School bright spark, and listen carefully to the philosophy that she spouts. And you will find a woman who puts in a lot of work being a wife, a mother, raises kids, reads to be able to converse with her children, tries to acquire a thought process to beat the generation gap with her daughter and does it without much of a fuss. And you will find that probably she is the kind of woman you want in Parliament.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I disagree with you. It is just a first step in right direction. Beti-Bahu Baazi is bound to happen, no doubt. But that will subside slowly and eventually Bahu-Betis will have to make way for other deserving candidates. Similar doubts were raised by sceptics when similar reservation was given in Panchayat Raj institutions. But they were proven wrong by the tremendous performance of the empowered Non-Bahu-Betis of rural India. And why not Beti-Bahus for a change? We anyway have a Raj of Beta-Bhai-Damad's?
Though ur article was very nice to read, yet i side with Mukesh here. He is right, something is always better than nothing. Man, these idiots have at least taken a step in the right direction. A small step, but a giant leap for womanhood toward equality. Like Mukesh said, yes the initial year, you will see a lot of beti-bahu baazi going but eventually it will peter out and the right women will come upfront.
Binoo the problem with democratic system is that it takes years to yield results. The emancipation of Indian women is a slow and steady process, but this bill will propel it to the next level at a much faster pace. There is no denying that the bill's loopholes will be misused--thereby denying women the just place they deserve. But growing awareness, participation in decision making process, supported by laws--will go a long way and nobody can stop it. The passage of the bill (in RS) is a right step in right direction...One that will further strengthen our democracy.
Post a Comment