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National
Coordinator of
Lok Satta movement and
National Campaign for Electoral Reforms
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Over the past five decades,
the representational base of our legislatures has definitely
broadened. Unfortunately, this has not translated into more
number of women as MLAs or MPs. The representation of women
in Lok Sabha has remained more or less stagnant at a very
low 9% over the years.
This under-representation of
women has prompted India, as the first country in the world,
to consider the possibility of a 33% reservation for women
in its Parliament. Publicly, every major party or politician
of our country supports the Women's Reservation Bill. Privately,
the same political interests repeatedly scuttled this initiative
and really do not want it passed! At the heart of the debate
is the fact that the Bill proposes 'rotating reservation'
that was designed to avoid permanently reserving too many
constituencies. But this provision creates more problems than
it manages to solve.
First, when the reserved seats
are rotated, incumbent MLAs/MPs get unseated in spite of their
good performance and despite carefully nurturing their constituencies.
If a constituency knows that it may be randomly selected as
for reservation, its representatives will lose incentive to
build a strong base of support. Voters will be subject to
vast shifts in the legislature every term, regardless of the
previous legislator's performance. This kind of instability
will undercut political accountability by reducing the incentive
for legislators to respond to the demands of voters.
Second, women themselves will
suffer in terms of legislative position. While more women
will be in the legislature, they will constantly have to change
or run from new districts, preventing their own chances of
creating a strong following based on their political record.
They will owe their position then, not to a loyal electorate,
but to party bosses. Though they will not be legally barred
from contesting in non-reserved seats, they are unlikely to
be given the party ticket to do so in these areas. Effectively,
women will only have chances to contest against other women.
This will ghettoize women's politics and pure tokenism will
replace legitimate representation of women's concerns. Women
will become a burden on democracy rather than a means to increase
competitiveness and standards of representation.
In any case, if the Bill becomes
law, the male candidates replaced will be tempted to nominate
their female relatives as proxy candidates to keep the seats
warm for them. The women elected on their own will never be
able to build a political base as they will lose the seats
on rotation!
But, Indian elections have
a very interesting property: women seem to have a higher chance
of getting elected than men! On an average, only 10% of all
male candidates were elected (in 12 general elections up to
1998), while over 17% of women were winners. Among the recognized
party nominees, only 26% of men were elected as opposed to
32% of women. This is because Indian voters have never discriminated
against women candidates. It is the political parties which
deny women the opportunity.
That brings us to a rather
simple and robust solution: an electoral system where party
seats depend on the number of votes obtained. In other words,
proportionality based political representation. Proportional
Representation (PR) offers a natural and intelligent way of
increasing women's representation. Since PR requires parties
to have a majority vote in order to come to power, they might
lose out on the significant percentage of the female vote
by not nominating women. And the more women get nominated,
the more likely are they to win elections. There would then
be enough serious women candidates and there will be no need
for rotation of reservation, as constituencies are not reserved.
Do the facts support our line
of thinking? Yes, and overwhelmingly so. All countries that
have a PR-based electoral system such as Norway, Sweden, Finland,
Denmark, Austria, Holland, New Zealand and Germany have a
very high degree of women's representation (30-35%). Countries
that follow the Indian style of First-Past-The-Post (FPTP)
electoral system like the USA, the UK and France have (not
surprisingly) 'Indian levels' of women in their legislatures
- a paltry 10%. In fact, in 1994, a threat by women supporters
of major parties in Sweden to form a new women's party led
to women winning 41% of seats because major parties recruited
more women candidates!
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