India’s Parliament today suspended seven legislators to ease the passage of a 14-year-old plan to reserve a third of lawmaker’s seats for women after the elected representatives disrupted business for two days.
The Women’s Reservation Bill, which will apply to the federal parliament in New Delhi and regional assemblies, could not be put to vote yesterday in the upper house of parliament as politicians opposed the draft, shouted slogans, tore up official papers and forced repeated adjournment of proceedings.
“We will oppose the bill tooth and nail in its present form,” said Akhilesh Yadav, a lawmaker of the Samajwadi Party. “We want reservations,” for women from under privileged sections of society, he said. The government has ruled out such sub-quotas that would mirror state-mandated caste and religion- based reservations in education and government jobs.
Men in the world’s second-most populous nation have a literacy rate 20 percentage points higher than women and dominate in the workplace. While the president, the speaker of parliament are female and four of India’s main political parties are led by women, including Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, just 11 percent of members of the lower house of parliament and 9 percent of the upper house, are female.
Discrimination against the girl child has driven the country’s sex ratio down to 933 women for every 1,000 men.
Seven Suspended
The bill, which has the backing of the ruling Congress party and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, caused both houses of parliament to be adjourned twice today following protests by lawmakers opposing it. The chairman of the upper house Hamid Ansari suspended seven members today for their unruly behavior.
“Let me once again reaffirm our government’s commitment to all round social, economic and political empowerment of our women, whatever effort and resources the task might take,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said March 6.
In a report released yesterday to mark International Women’s Day, the United Nations Development Program said quotas for “women-held seats in political bodies can be effective,” citing India’s efforts to boost representation at the village level.
Still, “quotas must be combined with constitutional provisions, leadership training and political party reforms to bring women into the political mainstream in their own right,” the report said. The Asia-Pacific region contains the second- lowest percentage of women legislators in the world, above only the Arab world, it said.
Political Dynasties
Women elected to the highest office in South Asia have always been linked to political dynasties such as the Gandhi- Nehru family that produced India’s lone female Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, Sonia’s mother-in-law.
Sri Lanka, India’s neighbor, was the first country to elect a woman prime minister, when the late Sirimavo Bandaranaike assumed office after the assassination of her husband. In Bangladesh, the government has largely alternated between Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the sole surviving daughter of the nation’s founder Mujibur Rehman, and Khaleda Zia, the widow of assassinated President Zia-ur-Rehman, since 1991.
Opponents of the bill, mainly parties that draw their support from poor rural regions, argue it will deepen the country’s class divide and fail to boost representation among the least empowered.
“We are not against reservation for women but society’s needy women should be represented,” said Lalu Prasad, leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal said today.
Village councils have raised female representation to nearly 40 percent, and the ruling Congress-led coalition wants to increase it further so women make up half of members.
The bill to extend those gains to national and regional legislatures needs the approval of two-thirds of lawmakers of each house of parliament. It has the backing of at least 165 members in the upper house of parliament, 10 more than the required number for its passage.
Sonia Gandhi last week told party lawmakers the legislation will be a “gift to the women of India.”
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