thebrownguy
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Indian parliament witnesses Ruckus over Women's Bill
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IMADreamer
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This only creates 'artifical equality' and reverse discrimination. If women are equally capable as men, they should get in the normal way without having problems. I do not like the way seats are reserved for women either in Pakistan. You should be getting in on your merit.
In US for instance, where they believe in equal opportunity and not equal outcome (equal outcome is a liberal notion that regardless of opportunity, status, power, wealth, and MERIT outcome should be roughly equal for everyone), women only represent some 20% of senators and stuff. What that shows me is that not that women are not equally capable in these things, but rather they're not as interested in these things compared to men. So in other words, the day the artifical equality is removed and real equality is inplace, the number of women in these positions will drop down again.
In US for instance, where they believe in equal opportunity and not equal outcome (equal outcome is a liberal notion that regardless of opportunity, status, power, wealth, and MERIT outcome should be roughly equal for everyone), women only represent some 20% of senators and stuff. What that shows me is that not that women are not equally capable in these things, but rather they're not as interested in these things compared to men. So in other words, the day the artifical equality is removed and real equality is inplace, the number of women in these positions will drop down again.
Spring Onion
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High gender justice rhetoric followed by anti-climactic bathos. That seems to be the story of the Womens Reservation Bill that was passed in the Rajya Sabha yesterday. Its the longest running saas-bahu soap opera in Indian politics.
Thrice introduced, thrice aborted for the last 14 years, governments have tried to move the Bill. Every time the Bill has been moved, it has been vociferously opposed by the social justice lobby of Lalu Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav and, with monotonous regularity sent back to cold storage.
The Bill, reserving one-third seats in Lok Sabha and assemblies, strikes at the heart of gender relations in India. Patriarchal societies cosset and oppress their women in equal measure. In the violent high stakes game of Indian politics, women are tolerable as supportive wives and daughters who step out shyly to become a substitute for dead husbands or brothers, but intolerable when they stake a claim to robustly represent their own constituency. In fact, all over South Asia, there exists the syndrome that social scientist Ali Mazrui calls, female accession to male martyrdom, or the Indira, Benazir, Sheikh Hasina syndrome by which females hold office not as female individuals, but as proxies of the powerful departed male.
If, on the other hand, women rise on their own, or creditably claw their way up from the grassroots like Mamata, Uma and Maya, they must cultivate a certain strategic and spectacular insanity that strikes terror and fear in their supporters, a terror that silences all prejudice against femininity. The devi/demoness stereotype, sadly, bedevils most women in Indian public life.
Thus there is every reason to support a legislation that promises special measures to bring women into public life. The odds are so high and the political culture so hostile that if women are to participate meaningfully and in large numbers in politics, then certainly some legislative shock treatment is needed. The question is if this Bill Constitution (108th Amendment) Bill, 2008 is the right legislation to secure meaningful participation of women in large numbers in our present day politics. The jury is still out on that one.
The cacophony in Parliament, the shrill polarised exchange of charges of elite women and par kati women on the one side and anti-women Yadavs and regressive Hindi belt netas on the other throughout the life of this Bill have meant that the opportunity for real debate on the Bill has been lost and the public has not had the opportunity to understand and engage with the Bill. No government since the inception of the Bill has made any serious attempt to create a wide-ranging debate or to assess public responses to a legislation that has the potential to transform Indian politics and create tectonic shifts in society.
While we may ridicule Lalu and Mulayams objections to the Bill, yet their demand for quota within quota may simply be a demand to force the government to spell out exactly what it will achieve through this Bill and what kind of arguments the government is able to bring in favour of the Bill.
As analysts have pointed out, the Bill contains many structural flaws. First, there will be compulsory unseating of two-third of the members every election. Second, there will be no incentive for MPs to nurse constituencies. Third, there is the undeniable fact that family politics will be further enhanced as a male who suddenly loses his seat to a reserved constituency will be tempted to simply put up a female relative as a proxy. Thus the floodgates of bahu-betis may open.
Women who contest from reserved seats will also not be able to nurture their constituencies as they will lose them in the next election and be forever seen as non-serious and ornamental figures who have been foisted on the people. Fifth, women will be consigned to the ladies compartment of politics, busily fighting each other in their own female ghetto without getting the opportunity to test their skills against mainstream politicians. Women, the world over, hanker for equality of opportunity, not certainty of success. If the opportunity to fight is equal then let the best woman or man win. But if the reward is a given, then is the battle worth it?
Gender is the focus of elaborate hypocrisy in our country. On the one hand, we worship at the politically correct altar of gender justice. On the other hand, equality of women and acceptance of female individuality is frowned on and subverted at every stage. Gender is the subject of endless elite seminars, yet the fact is among the competing inequalities of India, the infirmities of caste and class bear down much more brutally on women than their gender.
Upper class privileged women seeking victimhood on the basis of gender is perhaps an injustice to the millions of men who suffer far worse privations because they are lower caste and poor. Thus the idea that women are a monolithic victimised caste that need special protection through quotas is totally immature and misguided. Reading through this version of the womens quota Bill, it doesnt seem as if it will succeed in its mission of empowering women.
Sagarika Ghose is Senior Editor, CNN-IBN
Ladies compartment- Hindustan Times
High gender justice rhetoric followed by anti-climactic bathos. That seems to be the story of the Womens Reservation Bill that was passed in the Rajya Sabha yesterday. Its the longest running saas-bahu soap opera in Indian politics.
Thrice introduced, thrice aborted for the last 14 years, governments have tried to move the Bill. Every time the Bill has been moved, it has been vociferously opposed by the social justice lobby of Lalu Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav and, with monotonous regularity sent back to cold storage.
The Bill, reserving one-third seats in Lok Sabha and assemblies, strikes at the heart of gender relations in India. Patriarchal societies cosset and oppress their women in equal measure. In the violent high stakes game of Indian politics, women are tolerable as supportive wives and daughters who step out shyly to become a substitute for dead husbands or brothers, but intolerable when they stake a claim to robustly represent their own constituency. In fact, all over South Asia, there exists the syndrome that social scientist Ali Mazrui calls, female accession to male martyrdom, or the Indira, Benazir, Sheikh Hasina syndrome by which females hold office not as female individuals, but as proxies of the powerful departed male.
If, on the other hand, women rise on their own, or creditably claw their way up from the grassroots like Mamata, Uma and Maya, they must cultivate a certain strategic and spectacular insanity that strikes terror and fear in their supporters, a terror that silences all prejudice against femininity. The devi/demoness stereotype, sadly, bedevils most women in Indian public life.
Thus there is every reason to support a legislation that promises special measures to bring women into public life. The odds are so high and the political culture so hostile that if women are to participate meaningfully and in large numbers in politics, then certainly some legislative shock treatment is needed. The question is if this Bill Constitution (108th Amendment) Bill, 2008 is the right legislation to secure meaningful participation of women in large numbers in our present day politics. The jury is still out on that one.
The cacophony in Parliament, the shrill polarised exchange of charges of elite women and par kati women on the one side and anti-women Yadavs and regressive Hindi belt netas on the other throughout the life of this Bill have meant that the opportunity for real debate on the Bill has been lost and the public has not had the opportunity to understand and engage with the Bill. No government since the inception of the Bill has made any serious attempt to create a wide-ranging debate or to assess public responses to a legislation that has the potential to transform Indian politics and create tectonic shifts in society.
While we may ridicule Lalu and Mulayams objections to the Bill, yet their demand for quota within quota may simply be a demand to force the government to spell out exactly what it will achieve through this Bill and what kind of arguments the government is able to bring in favour of the Bill.
As analysts have pointed out, the Bill contains many structural flaws. First, there will be compulsory unseating of two-third of the members every election. Second, there will be no incentive for MPs to nurse constituencies. Third, there is the undeniable fact that family politics will be further enhanced as a male who suddenly loses his seat to a reserved constituency will be tempted to simply put up a female relative as a proxy. Thus the floodgates of bahu-betis may open.
Women who contest from reserved seats will also not be able to nurture their constituencies as they will lose them in the next election and be forever seen as non-serious and ornamental figures who have been foisted on the people. Fifth, women will be consigned to the ladies compartment of politics, busily fighting each other in their own female ghetto without getting the opportunity to test their skills against mainstream politicians. Women, the world over, hanker for equality of opportunity, not certainty of success. If the opportunity to fight is equal then let the best woman or man win. But if the reward is a given, then is the battle worth it?
Gender is the focus of elaborate hypocrisy in our country. On the one hand, we worship at the politically correct altar of gender justice. On the other hand, equality of women and acceptance of female individuality is frowned on and subverted at every stage. Gender is the subject of endless elite seminars, yet the fact is among the competing inequalities of India, the infirmities of caste and class bear down much more brutally on women than their gender.
Upper class privileged women seeking victimhood on the basis of gender is perhaps an injustice to the millions of men who suffer far worse privations because they are lower caste and poor. Thus the idea that women are a monolithic victimised caste that need special protection through quotas is totally immature and misguided. Reading through this version of the womens quota Bill, it doesnt seem as if it will succeed in its mission of empowering women.
Sagarika Ghose is Senior Editor, CNN-IBN
Ladies compartment- Hindustan Times
thebrownguy
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Well with more women in parliament now, the percentage of hooligan and ruckus creating MPs will be less. One can expect more civility in the house. Now thats what i call "added benifits" lol 
IMADreamer
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Well with more women in parliament now, the percentage of hooligan and ruckus creating MPs will be less. One can expect more civility in the house. Now thats what i call "added benifits" lol
Yes agree with you
@on a lighter side
But how can anybody be sure
may be the day have come now when we will see live telecast of "Woman Wrestling" and "lots of Belan" roming in a parliament...
Well with more women in parliament now, the percentage of hooligan and ruckus creating MPs will be less. One can expect more civility in the house. Now thats what i call "added benifits" lol
Ah yes, women are so much more civil than men. I am not sure how much company of women you've had.
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Women's Bill can be amended: Pawar to Lalu, Mulayam
PUNE: NCP president Sharad Pawar on Sunday said he had counseled the three Yadavs-Mulayam Singh, Laloo Prasad and Sharad- not to stall the passage of the Women Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha as their views on the quota for OBC and minorities could be taken into consideration by the government.
"A combination of Yadavs has emerged to oppose the Bill. I had a talk with them. I told them that the bill could be amended to address their concerns in respect of OBC and Muslim women. A reduction in the proposed 33% reservation can be considered to arrive at a consensus", he said while speaking at the concluding session of NCP's two-day national conclave at Karla, about 50 km from here.
Pawar said he told the SP, RJD and JD(U) leaders that they had the right to present standpoint but that should not create hurdles in the smooth passage of the historical legislation. He said Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had already assured the House that all parties would be taken into confidence by the government on the issue.
The NCP, he noted, had always been a consistent supporter of the Bill since its inception.
Women's Bill can be amended: Pawar to Lalu, Mulayam - India - The Times of India
PUNE: NCP president Sharad Pawar on Sunday said he had counseled the three Yadavs-Mulayam Singh, Laloo Prasad and Sharad- not to stall the passage of the Women Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha as their views on the quota for OBC and minorities could be taken into consideration by the government.
"A combination of Yadavs has emerged to oppose the Bill. I had a talk with them. I told them that the bill could be amended to address their concerns in respect of OBC and Muslim women. A reduction in the proposed 33% reservation can be considered to arrive at a consensus", he said while speaking at the concluding session of NCP's two-day national conclave at Karla, about 50 km from here.
Pawar said he told the SP, RJD and JD(U) leaders that they had the right to present standpoint but that should not create hurdles in the smooth passage of the historical legislation. He said Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had already assured the House that all parties would be taken into confidence by the government on the issue.
The NCP, he noted, had always been a consistent supporter of the Bill since its inception.
Women's Bill can be amended: Pawar to Lalu, Mulayam - India - The Times of India
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Women's Bill will be passed as it is: Moily
IANS
Ruling out the demand for quota within quota in the Women’s Reservation Bill, Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily said the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was totally committed to the Bill and it would be passed in the Lok Sabha in its present form.
“The Congress party... the UPA government is totally committed to this bill in the form it was passed by the Rajya Sabha,” Moily told Karan Thapar on Devil’s Advocate programme on CNN-IBN. The programme will be telecast on Sunday night.
The Rajya Sabha last week passed the historic Bill giving one-third representation to women in the Lok Sabha and State legislatures.
The Bill continued to stall Parliament till Thursday when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee offered discussion with all “concerned parties” before moving the Bill in the Lok Sabha.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has said he, along with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad and Janata Dal United (JD-U) chief Sharad Yadav, would continue to fight against the Bill.
The Hindu : News / National : Women's Bill will be passed as it is: Moily
IANS
Ruling out the demand for quota within quota in the Women’s Reservation Bill, Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily said the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was totally committed to the Bill and it would be passed in the Lok Sabha in its present form.
“The Congress party... the UPA government is totally committed to this bill in the form it was passed by the Rajya Sabha,” Moily told Karan Thapar on Devil’s Advocate programme on CNN-IBN. The programme will be telecast on Sunday night.
The Rajya Sabha last week passed the historic Bill giving one-third representation to women in the Lok Sabha and State legislatures.
The Bill continued to stall Parliament till Thursday when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee offered discussion with all “concerned parties” before moving the Bill in the Lok Sabha.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has said he, along with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad and Janata Dal United (JD-U) chief Sharad Yadav, would continue to fight against the Bill.
The Hindu : News / National : Women's Bill will be passed as it is: Moily
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