Sorry!!! Reserved.

That women are downtrodden and need emancipation from the evils of repressive dominance is well accepted. But what is the right path to this liberation? Would tokenisms like electing a female President or a female Speaker help the women of India ?

It would be a grave miscalculation to assume that the women’s bill would be the ultimate solution to all gender based issues. Am I being an MCP? Of course not. In fact, I am speaking for those ever overlooked women of India . Those women covered in veil, kept in dark, away from education, entangled in institutions, destined to poverty and malnutrition. Would the women’s bill ensure their betterment?

Would not the reservation of seats in Lok sabha make the politically connected, educated, prosperous ladies even more powerful? The case where Ms. Rabdi devi was the CM instead of Lalu, showed how proxy rule could kill the essence of power given to women.

The bill in reality will give the male section of the parliament a clean chit on women’s issues. The male section in a sense would in no way be responsible for the betterment or worsening of the position of women after the bill is passed. The bill would not only

a) lead to a proxy rule controlled by the males,

b) give more power to the already powerful women, but also

c) leave the male MPs off the hook

All this for just getting a few seats reserved; by getting the bill passed as an act of condescension and not as conceding. Not a good deal.

If the parliament is serious about doing good to women then it should, as the first step as Sharad Yadav says, liberate women from the clutches of muslim personal law, which is keeping the muslim women of this country in tribal conditions and in a conditioned psyche. The congress which does this charade of development of women is squarely responsible for keeping the muslim women in such a repressive condition by passing the ‘Muslim women protection bill’ after the Shah Bano case.

If the govt is interested in womens’ development, let it start addressing real issues like these and not indulge in tokenism politics.