Women Reservation Another Approach
Women’s Reservation: Another Approach
Mukesh Dalal he Women’s Reservation Bill is currently caught in a deadly stalemate. Nevertheless, the idea of affirmative action to enhance the participation of women in our legislatures is finally getting to be debated in terms of exploring various options and alternatives which will avoid the pitfalls of a lottery based, territorially reserved, rotating quota of seats for women. Over the last four years, MANUSHI has submitted three different options: a) Multi seat constituencies, b) Dual member constituencies, c) Party based quotas in ticket allocation (MANUSHI 96, 97, 107, 116). Based on the feedback received, we prepared a comprehensive Alternative Women’s Reservation Bill which was introduced in MANUSHI 116. This has been endorsed by numerous women’s organisations, activists and other concerned people, and has also led to widespread debate on the subject all over the country. Now we present another proposal by Mukesh Dalal which he claims will be far more effective than any other suggested so far. Many of our readers are likely to find it too complicated and problematic in actual implementation. Since we think it is important to keep our minds open and engage seriously with various suggestions being made for improving the Bill, we invite our readers to respond to his proposition. -Editor
T
espite several years of national consensuson women’s reservation, we have miserably failed to put it into law. I will now present a novel proposal for women’s reservation that is based on two key ideas. The first key idea is to create some extra seats that are not assigned to any specific constituency. These “quota seats” will be filled only when there is a need to increase women’s representation, that is, whenever the number of women “elected directly” falls below the desired “women’s quota”. The second key idea is that women candidates who were closest to victory (defined shortly) in constituencies not already represented by
Mukesh Dalal he Women’s Reservation Bill is currently caught in a deadly stalemate. Nevertheless, the idea of affirmative action to enhance the participation of women in our legislatures is finally getting to be debated in terms of exploring various options and alternatives which will avoid the pitfalls of a lottery based, territorially reserved, rotating quota of seats for women. Over the last four years, MANUSHI has submitted three different options: a) Multi seat constituencies, b) Dual member constituencies, c) Party based quotas in ticket allocation (MANUSHI 96, 97, 107, 116). Based on the feedback received, we prepared a comprehensive Alternative Women’s Reservation Bill which was introduced in MANUSHI 116. This has been endorsed by numerous women’s organisations, activists and other concerned people, and has also led to widespread debate on the subject all over the country. Now we present another proposal by Mukesh Dalal which he claims will be far more effective than any other suggested so far. Many of our readers are likely to find it too complicated and problematic in actual implementation. Since we think it is important to keep our minds open and engage seriously with various suggestions being made for improving the Bill, we invite our readers to respond to his proposition. -Editor
T
espite several years of national consensuson women’s reservation, we have miserably failed to put it into law. I will now present a novel proposal for women’s reservation that is based on two key ideas. The first key idea is to create some extra seats that are not assigned to any specific constituency. These “quota seats” will be filled only when there is a need to increase women’s representation, that is, whenever the number of women “elected directly” falls below the desired “women’s quota”. The second key idea is that women candidates who were closest to victory (defined shortly) in constituencies not already represented by