Forcing women into Parliament is going to solve nothing. What have Jayalalitha, Mayawati, Mamta Banerjee or Sonia Gandhi done for women, that men could not have done, or did not already do? Are more women parliamentarians, or even more women doctors for that matter, going to reduce female foeticide?

Reservation, whether it is community-based, or gender-based, is discrimination with another name.

Off late, I've been reading your articles.
They are pretty good.

This particular article is well-written.
It reminds me a dialogue from Kannada Drama "KapiMushti".

If more than One Party supports a bill, be rest assured, the bill is a rotten one. :)

This bill pushes 4'th std kids to get admitted to college and claims we educated kids.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Reservation in India has been in place for over a hundred years. Now reservation is expanding. Should we not investigate whether reservation has worked in other cases before expanding it?

http://indiafirsthand.com/?p=1661

I agree with you totally. Reservation is the bane of Indian democracy. Instead of tackling the route causes of lopsided growth by ensuring education for all, the politicians want to take the easy way of reservations for everything to guarantee their continuing in power at the cost real and tangible benefits to all, particularly the poor and the weak. Reservations only serve to divide people and create fissures in society. Day by day the criteria for reservations is increasing and very soon we will have every segment of our society neatly arranged to add up to 100% reservation. And when new segmentation takes place it will be a virtual war of the new segment against the already entrenched segments to grab a share of the pie. It is indeed a recipe for disaster to come!! The sooner we try and get rid of this chronic disease the better it is for the health our society and national integration.

Very nice article. Logical and well reasoned.
Originally, the constitution provided reservation for a limited period to achieve the goal. What we could not gain in ten years, would not get in hundred years because of lack of political will.

It is very sad and hypocrtical on the part of Times of India that they were against OBC reservation in IIMs some time ago but now are supporting women's bill.
Media should not blindly support womens bill
Women consitute 25% of general quota but are getting 33%
25% Males in general category ate getting only 17%
This is highly discrimintory
Media should not be biased

This is absolutely right. There should not be any kind of reservations.

Why should anyone make sure that a fairer number of women legislatives attend parliament. Let the strongest contender wins even if it were to be 100% men or 100% women. On one hand women want themselves to be treated as equals and on the other hand they want a ladder of reservation to catch up. The very idea of giving reservations is to connote discrimination. If giving reservation is a way to atone the misdeeds done to women in the past then it will be like indebted to someone and paying off to someone else.

Precise! Right on the point Madam. Also, thanks for a good write up - well reasoned line of thought, which has sadly become a rare occurance in TOI these days.

We all know what women are capable off. If at all they want to fight it out during the elections, let the fight be fair enough. Once the bill is passed, men who have been consistently doing well in a particular constituency will have to give up their seats. 33% Reservation for women will serve no purpose but result in more discrimination.

The whole exercise appears like a big joke. The more than 85% male members of the Parliament trying to pass a legislation which they say would improve the status of women in the country. What is confusing me is that if all of these men are for more participation of women in the law-making process, why can't they give tickets to women candidates without attaching the stigma of reservation? Whatever the proponents of reservations say, it is a fact the the people coming up through the reservation channel are looked down upon by those coming through the open channel based on merit. Anyway, once this reservation bill also is passed, India can proudly delete the words secular and socialist from the description, "Socialist, secular, democratic republic)" with everything being decided on the basis of caste, religion and gender instead of quality. Wonder if any other country in the world has such a retrogressive policy, aimed only at vote banks.

I'm an American law student working in India as an intern. The author of this article implies that the women not speaking out in the Lok Sabha is an act of volition. She completely neglects the possibility that women are not speaking up in the parliament, BECAUSE THEY FEEL OUTNUMBERED. The disproportionate representation is pathetic. In America, we have something called remedial affirmative action. The purpose of affirmative action is to provide those who've faced severe political incapacitation with an opportunity to advance. So far, the program is working, though very slowly. Throughout the 1990s, the gap between white and black Americans in educational attainment has been closing. People who feel that affirmative action prohibits those more qualified from reaping certain benefits are unaware of what affirmative action really is.
Government intervention is necessary when the benefits of such action eclipse the hindrances.