By Raakhee Suryaprakash
This post is the first in a series devoted to the ongoing Elections in India
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| Image from Pixabay |
Popular media and advertisements may exhort the
average Indian to make a sensible choice or at least go register your vote against
all the candidates by pressing the “none of the above” button but its hard
exercising this hard-won fundamental right when the choices are so poor and
seemingly pointless. The Indian Womanifesto – The National
Womanifesto 2014 – is a decent
roadmap for a concerned citizen to assess electoral candidates’ commitment to
empower women as they try to win one of the 543 seats in the Indian National
Parliament. The Womanifesto is a 6-point plan that seeks to ensure the freedom
and safety, equality and flourishing of India's women and girls. It asks of all
candidates for the 2014 Lok Sabha to commit to the following:
(1) Educate for Equality: With the noble ambition to
“implement comprehensive, well-funded and long-term public education programmes
with full-scale media campaigns to end the culture of gender-based
discrimination and violence. ... Reaching
men, women, boys and girls in both urban and rural areas.”
(2) Make laws count.
(3) Put women in power: Emphasizing the need to pass
the Women's Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha and ensure that women will be
represented in all councils, committees and task forces related to policy and
practice across the board. The Womanifesto also supports the adoption of a Code
of Conduct to disqualify electoral candidates who have committed offences of
gender-related violence and end misogynist comments and behaviour in the Lok
Sabha. And in my opinion the first to be disqualified will the Samajwadi Party
(SP) leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and Abu Azmi for their statements wooing what
The Hindu’s editorial calls “India’s pro-rapist lobby.”
(4) Police for the people: There is a critical need
for this as a key reason for underreporting crimes against women is the
insensitivity and crudeness of police personnel – both men and women – towards
the victims and their family. The document asks to “establish and enforce a
comprehensive response protocol for crimes against women, and publicise it”; “work
with state governments to change service rules and ensure police and
prosecutorial recruitment, promotion and penalties are made on attitudes and
performances based on gender”; “[implement] police reforms and to ensure that
police personnel who breach the new procedures are investigated and disciplined
accordingly.”
The Indian Womanifesto also asks to establish rape
crisis response teams, with rural and urban pilot projects and calls for zero
tolerance of moral policing by State/non-State actors.
The talk show Satyameva
Jayate (Truth Will Triumph) hosted by Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan calls
for setting up of a comprehensive rape crisis centre in every district across
India and I think both the centre and response teams suggested by the Womanifesto
are essential to empower victims of sexual violence – man, woman, child or
adult.
(5) Swift, certain justice: calling for “strong
action against racial discrimination and violence against women from the North-East”;
“push to enact a special law to combat honour crimes” and most vitally in my
opinion “speedy justice in long-pending cases as well as custodial rapes.”
(6) Economic flourishing: Ensuring “secure,
dignified, remunerative employment for women”; Action plans to “secure equal
pay for equal work in all sectors”; “creches and other critical support to
MNREGA workers”; “action plans to accelerate quality education for girls”; and
working towards women achieving “equal property rights in natal families and
fair shares through marriage.”
Infrastructure development to promote health and
wealth for all especially women is central to this final point on the
Womanifesto – “Public toilets ... especially in the poorest areas”; “access to
regular, safe public transport.”
A Conversation beyond Violence against Women
Since December 2012 when the Delhi gang rape woke
Indians from our stupor, I have found that I have to agree with Dr. Swarna
Rajagopalan of Prajnya that “all things gender equal violence in public discourse,
and especially the media.”
Its worrying that unconsciously or consciously we’ve
to prove we are qualified to be concerned about any aspect of national policy
when men’s comments are solicited for a variety of issues whether they are
interested or even aware or not. Thus we “deprive women of voice on these
issues and all of us of the benefit of their insights.”
EWRs and the Effect of Indian Woman Voter in 2014
Article after article in the media taps into the
phenomenon of more women voting in the 2014 Indian elections than men, considering
the adverse sex-ratio that’s the bane of India this is a very positive trend. Women
have outnumbered men in voting in as many as 16 of the 20 states that went to
polls since 2010. The gap in voting
between men and women has been falling since 1962 and was lowest in 2009 polls.
Political parties will have to reckon with women power as two states – Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar – that could decide the fate of the next party in power at
Centre had recorded higher women participation then men.
As mentioned before in my opinion 33% reservation
for women in India’s grassroots governmental institutions is a significant
victory in empowering women and bringing them into the political arena thus helping
shape policy from the ground up. A few former bureaucrats have called these
elected women representatives (EWRs) of the Pachayati Raj (village level
councils) institutions “Rubber stamp female candidates” who are put in power by
the men in their family to rubber stamp their power ambitions. Sadly this is
not restricted to EWRs of grassroots organisations but also female MPs and
MLAs. The infamous former railways minister who inspired Harvard to study his
business model Lallo Prasad Yadav’s wife Rabri Devi in his home state of Bihar
being a case in point. But in my opinion these women should not be dismissed so
lightly. The truism “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
actually works some positive change in the case of some of these so-called rubber
stamp EWRs. Slowly but surely these women become truly empowered and the taste
for power actually helps them stand up against their male family members. And
sometimes they rebel for the greater good and development not just for selfish
motives. As Professor Jenik Radon, the founder and director of the Eesti and
Eurasian Public Service Fellowship said “Women are generally more family
oriented, and are more responsible. The more women we have represented the
better we are.”
In this context we must note that Dimple Yadav the
young wife of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and daughter-in-law
of the “pro-rapist” SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has filed nomination papers! Considering
the poor status of women in Uttar Pradesh in particular and poor performing
states in general the rise of the “females of the families” is a trend to
observe. And later on we also need to assess how these women perform while
dealing with so-called women issues.
Some Stats
In 2007, only 8% of all seats in the national
parliament were occupied by women. It is still a record of sorts that 59 women
were elected into the 15th Lok Sabha in the 2009 Indian national general
elections with, in all, 556 women contesting for a seat in the parliament. It’s
to be hoped that 2014’s 16th Lok Sabha will see this record beaten.
As per nomination data not that many women are
filing nominations and staying the course. Take for example the cases of two
diverse states Tamil Nadu and Jammu & Kashmir that both have similar low
percentages of women candidates contesting polls. According to EC data only 55 women
contest the polls out of 845 candidates for Tamil Nadu’s 39 Lok Sabha seats (7%
in 2014, still an increase from 2009’s 5.83% of 823 candidates). One candidate is
also contesting belonging to the “Others” category. A path-breaking development
all said and done. In Jammu & Kashmir only 2 out of 19 candidates are women
contesting for a chance to win one of its 4 Lok Sabha seats (going to polls on
April 24 & 30th – 10.53% is still better than TN’s percentage!).
Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have 120 Lok Sabha
constituencies sending representatives to India’s 543-member lower house. These
populous states of India’s “cow belt” and the Gangetic Plains consistently
underperform in almost all social indicators in addition to having a poor
outlook for women of the state. It seems that the day of reckoning has come for
the politicians of these states at the hands of their women. About 60.5% of
women came out to vote in the 2012 state assembly elections in UP, which has 80
Lok Sabha seats, as compared to 58% men. In Bihar, which has 40 Lok Sabha
constituencies, 54.5% women voted as compared to 51% men in the 2010 state assembly
polls. The negative sex ratio is almost reversed but it’s to be seen who these
women will choose in the national elections!