Thought On Women Reservation Bill
In short, I don’t particularly care for it. A more detailed explanation is sure I do believe that the amendment is wrong but that ship sailed long long ago, and right now rests in a galaxy far far away. The other reason for not caring is it doesn’t hurt me personally the way reservations in private sector does, for example. Now it might have hurt me two years ago when I harbored delusion of entering politics despite my numerous personal inadequacies, now that I have reconciled myself to a life of paying my EMI.
Personal opinions aside, I don’t think, that this amendment will be inimical to Indian politics to the extent that Data Nazi does. I should clarify this remark. I do believe that there will be some adverse impact as it will result in election of women which are proxies than election of genuine political activist. Indeed it is difficult to see how the proxies can be worse than the real sponsors (i.e. their father or husbands). In my opinion, the bigger danger to any democratic system and not just Indian is entrenchment of interest groups. A more important point is the due to rotation of seats the incentive of representative to work for constituency will decrease.
This subsequent doesn’t happen in this case. The reason for this is it doesn’t have much of support base. This may come as a surprise because as of this is most prominent issue but this is because it is supported by the right thinking people. I find it difficult to believe that a common woman voter when going to vote will be swayed by this bill, more or less same for a man voter (in all probability the bill have a negative, if slight, effect). Where this bill has huge negative is its impact on political machinery. First it will prevent incumbent male representatives from contesting which will no doubt cause resentment; this can be worked around to some extent with proxies. However most impacted will be activist rising through rank, males will be disappointed with the bar that the amendment places, as it counter intuitive as it may seem most disappointed will be the female activist, because it is they who expect most from the bill, which is when the tickets inevitable go to proxies, it will be their expectation which will be dashed.
All of this could have left our lady of 10 Janpath vulnerable. Could have, because BJP by supporting the bill has squandered the opportunity to exploit what could have been chink in Congress’s armor. It is possible though that regional player can sabotage Congress’s political machinery.
