Wednesday, March 10, 2010

On the occasion of women's reservation bill

Women's Reservation Bill, ensuring 33% reservation to women in Parliament and state legislative bodies, is it really required?
Well, I am certainly not in favor of any kind of reservation. Capable people should be holding the deserving positions in any of the system of this country whether its parliament, defense, medical science, education system or in any other damn system.

I do agree in India still there are places especially in rural areas women are dominated by men. They are deprived of the opportunities. But reservation is not the solution for this. Running programs to encourage women to explore the opportunities, educating them, giving concessions or providing additional facilities, making them aware of their rights is the way to empower them. If they don’t have the potential to do right justice to their responsibilities they are going to fail even after reservation.

They might become puppets and someone else would operate them. Men who may not contest the election for being quota system ask their ladies to contest and eventually rule the world according to them. Do we want to see more Rabdidevis everywhere?

Reservation is not giving the right candidate right opportunity. It raises frustration in society, reduces efficiency of the system and divides the society in groups.

Reservation is certainly not the solution of empowering any group or any community.

6 comments:

Janukin said...

True that women are being dominated in some parts of India. But then rather than passing this 33% reservation quota for all women why not do something for the women who really need help?

We talk of no difference between men and women. We talk of equality. We ask for gender indiscrimination. BUT then aren't we the ones who are creating a rift by asking for this reservation.

I think we as women should understand our power and use it without being dependent on others.

I ask for EQUALITY not RESERVATION.

Varada said...

Very Well said Janukin

Anonymous said...

First i want to thanks govt. for pass women's reservation bill.
  Now  for your Why?????
           I never underestimate woman, If they can give birth to men than they can do anything.
For EX. President of india (Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Pati) , Cong. president (Sonia Gandhi)
& many more woman are driving india as well as world. But still these r few if we want more so
we have to keep reservation for women's.
 
       Here few statistical report for women's are showing,Why ?india needed reservation for women's.

Women in Parliament by country
The countries are ranked and colour-coded according to the percentage of women
in unicameral parliaments or the lower house of parliament.
Reflecting elections/appointments up to 1 January 2008.
Rank Country Lower or single House Upper House or Senate
% W Women Seats % W Women Seats
 
 
 
Rank                  Country Lower or single                  
                           % W Women Seats                      
                                           
40 to 50.0%

1 Rwanda                     48.8 39 / 80
2 Sweden                     47.0 164 / 349
3 Finland                    41.5 83 / 200
4 Argentina                  40.0 102 / 255
 
 
35 to 39.9%

5 Netherlands                39.3 59 / 150
6 Denmark                    38.0 68 / 179
7 Costa Rica                 36.8 21 / 57
8 Spain                      36.6 128 / 350
9 Norway                     36.1 61 / 169
10 Cuba                      36.0 219 / 609
51 Pakistan                  21.1 72 / 342
54 China                     20.6 611 /2963
71 United States of America 16.8 73 / 435

107 India                    9.1 49 / 541
 
 
 
Women in India                      
 
 
Child Sex Ratio (0_6 years)
The child sex ratio has dropped from
945 females per 1000 males in 1991 to
927 females per 1000 males in 200112
The United Nations Children’s Fund, estimated that upto 50 million girls and women are ‘missing’ from India’s population
because of termination of the female foetus or high mortality of the girl child due to lack of proper care13   
Women as Workers
Female share of non-agricultural wage employment isonly 17%14
Participation of women in the workforce is only
13.9% in the urban sector and
29.9% in the rural sector 15
Women’s wage rates are, on an average
only 75 % of men’s wage rates and
constitute only 25% of the family income
In no Indian State do women and men earn equal wages in agriculture16
Women occupy
only 9% of parliamentary seats
less than 4% seats in High Courts and Supreme Court
less than 3% administrators and managers are women17
Women and Education
Close to 245 million Indian women lack the basic capability to read and write18
Adult literacy rates for ages 15 and above for the year 2000 were
female 46.4%
male rate of 69%19
Women and Health
The average nutritional intake of women is 1400 calories daily. The necessary requirement is approximately 2200 calories20
38% of all HIV positive people in India are women yet only 25% of beds in AIDS care centres in India are occupied by them21
92% of women in India suffer from gynaecological problems22
300 women die every day due to childbirth and pregnancy related causes23
The maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births in the year 1995 was 440 24
 
 
Govt. give this right to women’s to help women’s , To rise voice into Parliament against all who think women are weak.

Shailesh

Anonymous said...

I would rather see more rabri's than Lallu's in parliament.

The point is that with people like Lallu's there is just no hope. You can not change these people. With Rabri's I would say that even if they do what the Lallu's say, they still have a chance may be less than 5%, to do something which Lallu's won't allow. This 5% hopefully would increase to 10% in future and someday these rabri's will have enough confidence to make decisions inspite of Lallu's.

This is what the idea of reservation is. Reservation is a way to jump start a social event which has been suppressed for a long time. It may not give immediate results. It may actually give some initial setbacks, but in long term, hopefully, it will bring a social change which will change the future of our country.

Ofcouse, having resevration of any sort, whether in parliament, public jobs, education has its side effects and should be used as a temporary measure.

Deepak

Anonymous said...

I would say that whether you are a guy or a girl, if you have the talent and urge, you would definitely reach where you have thought to be. Hence, Reservation is never a solution to this.

In this case, just like Filmdom; we would see Sons of sons of sons and many many generations of politicians [and beware TALENT would never be seen in this case].

Like the Kapoor family in movies, we would see many of them in Politics :)

Hence, in a nutshell as Janukin has rightly pointed out :EQUALITY and not reservation should be a solution"

-Himanshu Sheth

Jagannathan said...

@Varada: Nice thoughts it is very true that reservation is not the best way to empower any section of people in society. What i would suggest is it would be too abrupt asking people to come to "no reservations" in a shorter span of time. So let this reservation exists, but not permanently. What i mean is, since we do accept that certain women are over powered by men in rural areas we first need to create a platform for them. Gradually as year progresses we should keep on reducing the reservations by say 1% which in this case we can be done away with reservation in 33 years. Slow but a steady process. This can also followed in other reservations systems. And i am sure reservation % will be < 100% always, so for sure India can be a country with ZERO RESERVATION within 100years! sound good isnt it?:)