Women's Reservation: Another Approach Mukesh Dalal The Women’s Reservation
Bill is currently caught in a deadly stalemate. Nevertheless, the idea of affirmative
action to enhance the participation of women in our legislatures is finally
getting to be debated in terms of
exploring various options and alternatives which will avoid the pitfalls of a
lottery based, territorially reserved, rotating quota of seats for women. Over
the last four years, MANUSHI
has submitted three different options: a) Multi seat constituencies, b) Dual member constituencies, c) Party
based quotas in ticket allocation (MANUSHI 96, 97, 107, 116). Based on the feedback
received, we prepared a comprehensive Alternative Women’s Reservation Bill
which was introduced in MANUSHI 116. This has been endorsed by numerous women’s
organisations, activists and other concerned people, and has also led to
widespread debate on the subject all over the country. Now we present another proposal by Mukesh Dalal which he claims will be far more effective than any other suggested so far. Many of our readers are likely to find it too complicated and problematic in actual implementation. Since we think it is important to keep our minds open and engage seriously with various suggestions being made for improving the Bill, we invite our readers to respond to his proposition. -Editor Despite several years of
national consensus on women’s reservation, we have miserably failed to put it
into law. I will now present a novel proposal for women’s reservation that is
based on two key ideas. The first key idea is to create some extra seats that
are not assigned to any specific constituency. These “quota seats” will be
filled only when there is a need to increase women’s representation, that is,
whenever the number of women “elected directly” falls below the desired
“women’s quota”. The second key idea is that women candidates who were closest
to victory (defined shortly) in constituencies not already represented by women
will then be “elected by quota” to fill the appropriate quota seats. For all
purposes, women elected by quota will be treated on par with men and women who
are elected directly. For
example, as explained in Diagram I, suppose it is decided to create 50 quota
seats in the Lok Sabha and set the women’s quota at 181, which is one-third of
543, the total number of Lok Sabha seats, we can envisage three different
scenarios as illustrated below, depending on the number of women getting
directly elected: Case 1: Only
44 women get directly elected, causing a shortfall of 137 from the women’s
quota of 181. In this case, all the 50 quota seats will be filled, by
increasing the strength of the house to 595, including two nominated seats. Case 2: 150
women get directly elected, causing a shortfall of only 31 from the women’s
quota. In this case, only 31 quota seats will be filled, increasing the
strength of the house to 576. Case 3: 200
women get directly elected, exceeding the women’s quota. In this case, no quota
seat will be filled, keeping the strength of the house to 545. Although “closest to victory” may be defined in
several ways, the most reasonable is to use the fractional margin of loss. For example, a woman losing by 5,000 votes
out of 200,000 valid votes will be chosen over a woman from another
constituency losing by 4,000 votes out of 150,000 valid votes. This
“normalization” by total votes ensures that all constituencies are treated
fairly, irrespective of their size. Women closest to victory are those who are
most likely to be directly elected in the next elections. It may be noted that using this criterion is now extremely easy because of the
advances in information technologies. Some obvious advantages of my proposal, in contrast to
the previous proposals, are as follows: Ø It will achieve reservation for women without
discriminating against any men in any constituency. Men will not be
undemocratically and unfairly prohibited to contest from any constituency and
every voter will get the democratic right to vote for either a man or a woman.
Thus, it should not cause any resentment against women. Ø Any women candidates in any constituency will be
eligible to be elected on quota seats. This will avoid undemocratic
discrimination against women contesting from constituencies not reserved for
women. Ø The quota seats will be filled only when the direct
elections do not result in adequate representation for women. This adaptive
approach should not distort the direct elections, except perhaps by providing
an additional motivation to women candidates to campaign harder. Ø Only women who are closest to victory will be elected
on the quota seats. This will improve the possibility of their directly winning
the next elections and making the quota seats available to women from other
constituencies. Ø The representation of women will gradually increase
over several elections, avoiding unacceptable disruptions caused by a sudden
artificial upsurge. This will also improve the quality of women representatives,
since they will mature in a natural manner. Ø The representation of women will eventually increase
to the desired level, so that filling seats through quotas will no longer be
required. In the above example, if we
assume that the number of directly elected women increases each time by half
the number of women elected by quota, then the desired representation of women
will be achieved in 5 elections (94, 119, 144, 169 and 194, respectively –
quota seats may be increased to get there sooner). Thus, this reservation
system will liquidate itself over the long-term, instead of getting permanently
entrenched. Ø It will motivate political parties to nominate
'winnable' women candidates, since this is the best way to also ensure their
election by quota. A party that does not nominate 'winnable' women candidates
will lose all quota seats to parties
that do nominate 'winnable' women candidates. Ø It will motivate people to vote for women candidates.
A vote for a woman will be more “effective”, since it may get two shots at
electing a winner, instead of the standard one shot given to a vote for a male
candidate. Note that this discrepancy will vanish as soon as women get adequate
representation. Ø It will motivate all sitting MPs (elected directly or
by quota) and potential candidates to nurture their constituencies on a
long-term basis, since they will never be prohibited from contesting there. Ø It will not lead to women contesting and winning only
the constituencies reserved for them, as has happened in the SC/ST case.
Moreover, women will not be artificially restricted to contesting against women
only, stunting the growth of their leadership qualities. Ø It will easily get the support of the current MPs,
since their seats will not be threatened. Some potential drawbacks of my proposal are as
follows:
My proposal naturally extends women’s reservation to
constituencies reserved for SCs and STs, by requiring that the quota seats and
women’s quota be distributed proportionately. In the above example, suppose 16
per cent constituencies (86 of 543) are reserved for SCs and 8 per cent (43 of
543) are reserved for STs. The 55 quota seats will get distributed in the same
proportion: eight for SCs and 4 for STs. The women’s quota of 181 will also get
distributed similarly: 28 for SCs and 14 for STs. Now suppose the 44 directly
elected women include 12 from SCs and two from STs, it follows that out of 50
women elected by quota, eight will be SCs and four will be STs (see Diagram
II). In general, the constituencies may be grouped in any
manner, before or after the elections, as long as the quota seats and the
women’s quota are also grouped proportionately. This principle enables us to
also handle the situation when results get delayed, for whatever reasons, in a
significant number of constituencies. The delayed constituencies can then be
grouped together so that women’s reservation may be applied to them as
described above for SC and ST groups. This
technique may not work well, if a very small number of results are delayed, for
example, fewer than 10 (this cutoff needs to be carefully selected). For example, if only three results are
delayed, then a better approach will be to delay filling three quota seats
until those three results are also declared. A description of some other
natural extensions of my proposal, for example, allowing multiple quotas for
overlapping groups, is available in a longer document that also argues for its
use in most kinds of reservations. I
believe that there are good arguments against the very concept of reservations
for disadvantaged groups – they are inherently discriminatory, they encourage
resentment against these groups leading to more disadvantages, and they get
perpetually entrenched. However,
I do not know of any other effective way to nullify the effects of centuries of
injustice suffered by some of these groups. I think of reservation as a
necessary evil, which has been accepted by an overwhelming majority of Indians.
Our continuing challenge is to either find a better way to ameliorate these
disadvantages or to find the least unpalatable forms of reservations. My
proposal aims to do the latter over the short term, while leading to the former
over the long term. In conclusion, I propose the following course of
action. The Election Commission, in consultation with the government and the
political parties, should come up with the acceptable numbers for women’s
quota, quota seats and constituencies, for the Lok Sabha and all the Vidhan
Sabhas. These numbers should be used to draft a new women’s reservation bill based on this proposal, which should then be tabled in the parliament for debate and approval. In parallel, I hope to see a constructive public debate for removing the remaining wrinkles from this proposal. Manushi content is reproduced on India Together with permission. Click here to visit the Manushi home page |