WUNRN
Uproar in India
Associated
Press
Congress
Party supporters rejoiced in
March 9, 2010
NEW
DELHI — The upper house of India’s
Parliament passed a bill Tuesday that would amend the Constitution to reserve
one-third of the seats in India’s national and state legislatures for women,
after two days of political chaos that could whittle governing coalition’s
majority to a dangerously thin margin.
The vote, which is an early step in the process of amending the Constitution, brought pandemonium to the floor of the Parliament, as a small group of regional caste-based parties waged a fierce fight to block it, arguing that it would diminish their influence.
The parties, which are allies of the governing coalition led by the Congress Party, have threatened to withdraw their support, which would reduce the coalition’s voting majority to single digits and jeopardize crucial legislation such as India’s budget, which was just introduced.
The chaos surrounding the bill threatens to undermine what has been an otherwise stable coalition government, analysts said.
The amendment is a long-sought tool to improve the lot of women in India, the world’s most populous democracy. Despite having had several formidable female leaders — including the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi, the current head of the Congress Party — Indian women lag behind men in virtually every sphere of life.
Various governments have been trying to get the amendment passed since the 1990s, but each has failed despite wide support across the political spectrum. The fight over the bill illustrates the often-vicious competition between caste, religion, ethnicity and gender over who will benefit most from laws designed to reduce inequality.
Tuesday’s vote was the first of four hurdles the measure must clear. The lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, must pass the bill, then the proposed amendment will need to win approval from at least half of India’s state legislatures. Then India’s president, a largely ceremonial post, must sign off.
Opponents of the bill say that it will favor wealthy upper-caste women at the expense of the lower castes and Muslims.
“We are not against women reservation,” said Lalu Prasad Yadav, leader of one of the parties seeking to block the amendment. “Give reservation to poor India, to original India. Ninety percent of population is deprived in India.”
Mulayam Singh Yadav, another lower-caste leader who is no relation to Ms. Yadav, told reporters outside Parliament that the large, upper-caste dominated parties “want to prolong their rule. We are in favor of women reservation, but first give it to the women of minorities and backwards.”
The amendment’s critics say that it will only worsen what is already a big problem — powerful men substituting their daughters, wives and sisters as proxies in political office. The amendment would effectively make nearly half of the seats in the lower house of Parliament reserved, which would only heighten the competition for the remaining, unrestricted seats. Muslim politicians said they would suffer under the bill as well. Syed Shahabuddin, a former member of Parliament, said in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the amendment would cut Muslim representation in half.
Muslims are a crucial component of the Congress Party’s vote in many states. Trinamool Congress, one of the governing coalition’s crucial members, said late Tuesday that it would abstain from voting for the amendment over concerns about how it might affect Muslims. India’s Constitution sets aside parliamentary and state assembly seats for Dalits, or untouchables, and for members of tribal groups long excluded from power. At least one-third of the seats on local councils, known as Panchayats, are already reserved for women, and as a result more than a million Indian women have held political office at some level. But the percentage of women in Parliament has peaked at 11 percent.
Excluded from these national affirmative action plans is a set of castes near the bottom of the hierarchy but above the Dalits and tribal people, known as Other Backward Castes. Three regional caste-based political parties have objected to the bill, arguing that it would make it difficult for women from their castes and Muslim women to win political office. They have demanded that a portion of the seats reserved for women be set aside for their communities, something the bill’s backers have refused to do. Opponents of the amendment disrupted the parliamentary session, sitting on the floor and chanting slogans.
“Government dictatorship will not go on,” they shouted. “Take back the women’s reservation bill. Take back the anti-Muslim bill. Take back the anti-Dalit bill.”
The chairman of the upper house of Parliament, Hamid Ansari, pleaded with the legislators to calm down and take their seats.
“You have a better way to say what you want to say,” he said. “Please go back to your seats and allow the debate to take place.”
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