An unequal India emerges after polls

FRANKLIN D. Roosevelt’s famous utterance “democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely” has great relevance in today’s India. The country has just elected a government with brute majority and yet bemoaning the fact that the victorious political outfit has virtually no minority Muslim representation. That the minorities will remain not only under-represented in the government but also in Indian Parliament is now inevitable.
With the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) seven nominated Muslim candidates having suffered severe drubbing at the hustings, it is amply clear that India will for the first time have a majoritarian government led by Narendra Modi in her checkered history. Worst still, the Muslim community which accounts for approximately 13 percent of the country’s population will have a meager 4 percent representation in Lok Sabha — the lower house of the Indian Parliament. While a secular India grapples for an appropriate answer and the Muslims wondering why their votes did not count in the ultimate analysis, one must also highlight the under-representation of women in the newly elected House.
Women will represent approximately 11 percent of the 543-member house this time around. It is a pity that the vital issue of women’s empowerment was pushed to the margin as all political parties wrestled with each other to usurp the right of being the sole crusader for issues related to development, secularism and corruption. Unfortunately, democracy in India has turned patriarchal as women are expected to only assist in the march of male progress.
The indomitable Indira Gandhi is rather an exception than a rule because the number of women in parliamentary or executive setup continues to be negligible. Hence, the long awaited Women’s Reservation Bill, despite finding a place in the manifestos of all parties for long, is effectively stuck in parliamentary stasis. And when a senior politician reassures voters that capital punishment for rape will be revoked because boys often commit such mistake out of enthusiasm, one cannot expect that women’s participation in our democratic process will take a giant leap anytime soon.
Besides, women are disadvantaged by under-representation in the electoral roll in spite of constituting about 48 percent of the total electorate. Election Commission data also reveals that there is a significant disparity in the enrolment of women voters in comparison to their male counterparts. The ambience in pre-independence era was far brighter and interestingly more favorable for women to join social movements. Mahatma Gandhi gave a clarion call to women to join the independence movement. Gandhi’s passionate appeal reverberated to the remotest corner of India and women came out in hordes to participate in this political process.
Another iconic freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose raised a separate women wing of the Indian National Army in those turbulent times. Indeed, an avalanche of women sacrificed their lives to get India freedom from the tyrannical dominance of imperialism years ago. Fiery ladies like Capt. Laxmi Sehgal and others shed drops of precious blood while fighting shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts in difficult terrains of Southeast Asia and India’s Northeastern corridor.
Closer home, the likes of Matangini Hazra, Sarojini Naidu, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, Vijay Lakshmi Pandit, Aruna Asaf Ali, Sucheta Kripalini, Begum Hazrat Mahal, Kasturba Gandhi, Kamala Nehru, Leela Roy, Basanti Devi and hundreds of others not only inspired their male counterparts but also led millions of women, including those from rural areas, to sow the seeds of political upheaval that shook the British Empire. Sadly, on achieving independence, this nation relegated the same womenfolk, who changed the shape of history, into the background. They were marginalized despite leaving a mark in parliamentary process in the early days of our post independence era.
If India aspires to move forward on the path of peace, prosperity and progress, she must evolve into a true democracy for women. Anybody who followed the election campaign minutely must have noticed that it was full of baloney. Amid unrestrained hyperbole, virtually all contenders overlooked the important issues of health, education, equality and safety. Women make up 49 percent of India’s population and yet apart from some hardly discernible bullet points in manifestos, issues concerning gender equality found no place in the entire electoral discourse. Even the BJP’s muscular campaign was bereft of a sincere desire to highlight women’s issues proactively.
Though the Congress did make gender justice a central plank of its campaign, it seemed hollow in the absence of an accompanying apology for failing to do something concrete on women’s safety. Lakshmi Puri, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and acting head of UN Women has a dream — that India will someday emerge as a democracy for women, by women and of women. But is it a reality in today’s India where no more than 8 percent of the total candidates who fought the general election are women and one third of them are not promoted by any party?
There already exists a 33 percent quota for female village leaders in India, which radically changed perception of women’s administrative capabilities, potentially improved women’s electoral prospects and raised aspirations and educational attainment of adolescent girls. But it was not replicated at the national level with vocal male parliamentarians repeatedly going back on their commitment to support similar reservation in parliament.
With the BJP completely wedded in an old-fashioned patriarchal ideology, Modi’s aversion to economic democracy compound the situation further for those fighting against gender, social and religious disparities.

n Seema Sengupta is a Kolkata-based journalist and columnist.