Editorial: For Empowerment, Women Had to Vote More As Well

At least half of the panchayats in Sikkim will now be women, a substantial leap from the 33% reservation set aside for them in Panchayat elections 2007. Within the term of the incumbent panchayats, the State government increased the reservation to 40% and before the polls, scaled it still higher to the present 50%. When it comes to proportional representation in participatory democracy, this figure is close to what should come to women since they constitute 48 per cent of the electorate. Centuries of denial and generations of sidelining ensured that even when they could, the women did not step out and take their rightful share of decision-making processes. Reservations are not always the solution, but the 50% reservation that women now enjoy in Sikkim at the panchayat level is a welcome course correction, and if allowed to join forces and effect policy implementation without interference, the new crop of rural level representatives could unveil a new facet of rural empowerment.
The reason why the 50% reservation is special can be best appreciated if put in the right perspective. In the Sikkim context, in the eight Assembly elections that the State has seen, women have secured only a sliver of the elected representation. The present Legislative Assembly with four lady MLAs, accommodates their highest numbers ever in a single term. The story of the nation is no better. Even though ladies head five of the more influential political parties in an extensively fractured national political space at present, their presence as people’s representatives is still personality driven and not representative of their share of the population; not even remotely. In the 60 years of Independent India, women’s representation in the Parliament has hobbled along from 4.4% to 9.02%. The average for women’s representation for countries with elected legislatures is 15%. We have a long way to go and it was only in the present Lok Sabha that the Leader of the Opposition post was secured by a woman in Sushma Swaraj. Going by our past performance, another 50 to 60 years before we can increase women’s representation by the 6% that we are still short of the international average; but by then, the international average too would have climbed.
Is reservation the answer? Of course not, because quotas are a flawed model; more effective in constricting ambitions than ensuring equal opportunity. The typical Indian male chauvinism will toss only token sops and not nurture political ambition if it can suppress or distract the expression of a half of the electorate. Till the decision making process is controlled by them, the larger debate in the public domain will be over political reservation for women. Even this debate will be stretched out, diverted, digressed and diluted and granted only when the fear of women wizening up to their actual strength looms real. To push an interpretation into the data, the 5% increase in women’s representation in Parliament in the last 60 years has not necessarily happened because political parties became more conscious, but because women’s participation in the voting process increased. In the 1962 Parliamentary elections for example, only 46.6% female voters made their way to the booths. By 1998, 57.86% of them were voting. With more of them deciding to exercise their franchise, it only followed that parties were forced to award more tickets to women as well. Fact remains that increased participation is the best way for women to wrestle the representation they deserve. Stay away from the polling stations and the nation will continue to live with the incongruity displayed in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Puducherry. These six, are states where women voters actually outnumber the male voters, but their voting habits are poor, leading to a situation where their representation pales in comparison to even States that one traditionally sees as women-repressive. Sikkim throws up a more respectable data. What cannot be denied is that women’s empowerment has been more effective here under the present Government and this reflects in their participation in the elections. Where female voter turnout in parliamentary elections hovered in the low fifties till 1991, it jumped to 74% in the 1996 general elections itself. The record till then was the 68% turnout of women voters recorded in 1989, the only time when a lady, Dil Kumari Bhandari, was contesting for the Lok Sabha. No prizes for guessing who the ladies of Sikkim voted in strength for that year. Even in 2004, when voters in four assembly constituencies were required to vote only for the Lok Sabha [and thus has little reason to brave the monsoons and vote], 76% women made it to the polling stations. A series of women-centric policy decisions perhaps inspired more women to come out and vote to sustain a process that had started. And the 2009 Assembly elections showed the result – women voters in Sikkim outperformed the men. Against 81.46% male voter turnout in Election 2009, Sikkim’s women posted an 82.77% turnout, a national record! At least the ruling party appears to have recognised their strength.
A disconnect is however too obvious in the Opposition parties and at the organisational level of political outfits not only in Sikkim, but across the country. It would have been healthier if the presence of women was more noticeable across all parties, not only as candidates, but also as important office bearers. That has not happened yet...