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Let's Have Hillarys, Many Hillarys, In Fact!
Dilwala Singh
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India makes
all the right noises about sex ratio, but is silent on the one
step that will catch the imagination.The Women’s Reservation
Bill |
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 America
is grappling. If it is going to be a Democrat, who will it be? A
woman or an African-American? Neither has sat in the Oval Office
before. And the race to the White House is being keenly watched in
India.
Well, for many reasons, but today we are on to the one having to do
with gender.
India
has long been ready with a piece of legislation that will ensure
that more and more women get to sit among the lawmakers. At least 33
per cent, to be precise. All one has to do is place a sheaf of
papers on a table inside the building called Parliament and take a
head count. Except that India has failed to do so in years. The
silence on the issue has overtones of guilt and has been deafening
for long in its apathy.
As
The Asian Age wrote recently, "the good men sitting in Parliament
have decided that they will not allow 33 per cent reservation for
women in the legislatures, and unfortunately, there are many good
women who have decided not to oppose this stand."
So, as a ritual, everyone talks about it once in a while, usually
before a Parliament session, and then everyone sits back as the
political parties are not prepared to have parliamentary
constituencies reserved for women. Akali Dal's stand on the issue is
not even known even though its alliance partner BJP makes biggest
noise. In
Punjab,
even the BJP does not demand at least one third of the tickets to
women, and the opposition does not raise any question.
 Suits both sides, just as it happens to be at the federal level. In
Punjab, the step would have been the best to catch the imagination
of people when a fight is being launched against female foeticide.
The woman’s story in India begins from the moment she is conceived.
And if it was not for her resilience and her courage, she would
realise that hers is a story of oppression and tragedy, a
tear-jerker that becomes even more stark in its reality because no
one cries. No one wants to. As the protagonist is a woman and she
has to live with what she gets. The man-woman ratio is dropping
drastically, particularly in states like
Punjab, where baby girls are wilfully aborted before they are born.
The mother agrees under duress. For if she gives birth to a girl her
own life will come under threat, she will be treated as an outcaste
in her husband’s
home, and so she convinces herself that it is best to get rid of a
baby that no one wants.
 Gruesome stories of female foeticide have come out in the media,
with graphic details. She is lucky if she gets the same level of
education, in as good a school as her brother. She is even more
fortunate if she is not married off for dowry to the lowest bidder.
She can count every lucky star if she is able to work and treated
not as a money making machine but as a person in her own
right. In most cases — this columnist had run a series some time ago
based on interviews with women stenographers, telephone operators
and others — she begins her day at the crack of dawn. She cooks for
the entire family, sends her children to school, packs her husband’s
lunch and goes to the bus stand to catch an overcrowded vehicle full
of leering, groping men.
he
works her day through, is shouted at by her boss, denied a
promotion and often subjected to sexual molestation. She returns
tired in the evening, to complete the chores and catch a few hours’
sleep before her day begins again.
This is in the cities. In the villages her story is as grim. She is
old by the time she is 35 as she has produced children year after
year — some live, some die — with no women doctors in the district
hospital who can understand and take care of her ailments. She lives
without knowing what life is, she dies without having lived. Each
woman has a story to tell, and each story is laced with suffering
and pathos that makes her different from man. In every religion, in
every caste, the woman remains oppressed, at the low receiving end
of life. She is denied equal property rights, she is denied marriage
rights, she is denied divorce rights, she is denied employment
rights, she is denied dignity and equality and yet they refuse to
allow her voice to be heard in Parliament. When 33 per cent of the
seats in Parliament are filled by women they will, slowly but
surely, raise the issues that concern them and their constituencies.
They will speak out for women’s education, for women’s healthcare,
for women’s dignity if for no other reason but to win the vote. The
woman pradhan in a village in eastern Uttar Pradesh was initially
the wife of a former pradhan when she was elected in the reserved
quota. A year later, she as the pradhan, getting roads made,
fighting for a school in the village, as she had found her voice.
She was empowered. Education and employment will empower her.
Dignity and respect will empower her. The state has to ensure her
not just an equal place but has to create the opportunities and the
climate where she can flourish.
 All she wants is education and equal employment opportunities. She
will empower herself, if not at the beginning then somewhere along
the way. She realises that she is not dependent, that she can feed,
clothe and educate her children and herself as well, if not better,
than her husband. She realises, if she is not married, that she does
not need to be burdened with a man who does not see her as an equal.
She can turn away the groom and his marriage party if they demand
dowry at her door. She can insist that she will have only two
children and no more.
She can insist that her daughter will be educated and will have the
right to exercise her choices. But they have all united to stop the
one opportunity that they as legislators could offer.
Reservation in Parliament and the Assemblies. They have all found
excuses to stop this. One that seems to be uniting even those
leaders who otherwise find it impossible to exchange the time of day
is that OBC and Dalit women should be given special privileges, and
cannot be equated with all women. Ask the women. There is no
Brahmin, Dalit, Muslim, Christian within them. They all face the
same discrimination as women, there is no untouchable here, they are
all untouchables, all backwards, all minorities, all victims of
social discrimination within their own castes and their own
religions and as women in a world of men. That is what is
frightening our parliamentarians: a woman’s voice on conflict, on
war, on oppression, on discrimination.
It
is time for an aggressive campaign to get the Women’s Reservation
Bill passed. No one has picked up the baton as yet, except for
Brinda Karat who is the lone figure trying to persuade the Congress
in each Parliament session to at least place the bill on the table.
No one seems to be responding, except again for the meaningless
token statements. Of course, for the record, everyone is committed
to the cause. The parliamentary records, the jokes targeting women,
the absurd banter and the pathetic responses should make the nation
wilt in shame. It is a revolutionary bill that will change the face
of Indian politics, if not tomorrow, then the day after. The tragedy
of the Indian woman will be reflected in a Parliament that kills the
bill.
13 February 2008
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