- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
WHILE a lot has been said about Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s mega cabinet shuffle – the focus given on youth and people with high qualifications – one would still consider with disappointment the fact that only 11 in the prime minister’s jumbo cabinet of 77 are women. Statistically speaking, only one in every seven ministers in a body which many said would instil new energy into governance is a woman.
Women constitute a major section of the electorate of India’s largest democracy but when it comes to the candidates or representatives in the law-making bodies of the country, their presence is far too disappointing. As it has been revealed by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2021, India has slipped 28 places to rank 140 among 156 countries.
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In South Asia, India has done better than only Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the political empowerment sub-index, India now ranks 51, dropping from 18 in 2020 (mainly because of the decline in the number of women ministers, from 23.1 per cent in 2019 to 9.1 per cent in 2021).
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The Women’s Reservation Bill has remained a low point of the Indian democracy. While the country’s political parties raise voices often over the bill which seeks to amend the Indian Constitution by reserving 33 per cent of all seats in the Lok Sabha for women, it has not seen the daylight. It was passed in the Rajya Sabha in 2010 but has remained pending in the Lok Sabha since then. Parties have come and gone from the government but the will to see that bill transform into a law has not been seen.
If we are to look into the progress of women representation in the Lok Sabha, the 17th Lok Sabha will present the best scenario with representation of 14.4 per cent women.
State scenario not too better either: What 2021 polls showed
What about the situation in the states? If we look at the state assembly elections that took place this year, women voters played a key role in shaping their outcomes. But when it comes to women’s participation, the picture is not so inspiring.
In the 2021 elections, women constituted only 10.4 per cent of all candidates who contested the polls and only 8.5 per cent of all members of the legislative assembly. The eastern state of West Bengal presented an impressing picture as there, the ratio of women members of the legislative assembly is superior to that of women candidates owing to the ruling Trinamool Congress’s decision to field 48 women out of 288 candidates (16.7 per cent). Though it was more than any other party that contested across five states in India but much less than the figure of 41 percent of women candidates that it fielded in the 2019 general elections.
We may mention here that Bengal is the only state in India at the moment which has a woman chief minister.
In Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which won the election, fielded 11 women against 17 of the ruling All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). However, only 12 women were eventually elected to the 234-member assembly and they included 12 from the DMK, three from the AIADMK, two from the Bharatiya Janata Party and one from the Indian National Congress.
Smaller parties the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam or the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam did comparatively better, with 9.7% and 11.7% of women candidates, respectively.
In Assam, where the BJP came to power for the second successive time, only six women were elected in an assembly of 126. Three of them were elected on the ruling party’s ticket, two on the Congress’s ticket and one on an Asom Gana Parishad ticket.
In Kerala, where the Left came to power for the second successive time, 10 of the 11 women members of the legislative assembly are communists – eight from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and two from the Communist Party of India. The only other woman legislator was elected on a local party ticket and was part of the United Democratic Front.
In Puducherry, a Union Territory, the only woman member of the legislative assembly is a member of the All India NR Congress.
