Women's reservation bill-Feedback on NDTV debate

Feedback: For once it was good to see the real fire power behind the women's reservations bill. There was a substantial amount of Nari Shakti on that panel yesterday. My sympathies with Mr Yadav and with Vikram. But I must say the two gentelmen conducted themselves well by not losing their cool. I think Vikram's efforts, particularly, were commendable. He did well to inject humour when needed to cool frayed tempers and bring the discussion back on track. On a more serious note though, I got the impression that the supporters of the bill have an air of desparation about them to get the bill through without thinking through what is really needed to ensure that it achieves its primary objective: that of empowering women. Miss Lamba and the BJP representative (organizers should ensure names of panelists are displayed on the lectern) certainly appeared to typify that desparation in their refusal to even consider alternatives suggestions. As Prod Madhu pointed out, I think the 33% reservation for party tickets would have been a sound first step in this direction. As she noted no political party would want to risk one-third of its seats so the fears expressed by the critics of this suggestion seem quite unfounded to me. In my view the other suggestion i.e to increase the number of parliamentary seats should not even be considered. It is not as if we are short of legislators to run our deomicratic institutions. Far from it. The suggestion appears to portray our legisltative institutions as a mere equal opportunities employer rather than as temples of democracy which is what they are meant to be. My my main concern is that the ongoing debate does not consider some of the other, perhaps more critical, enabling factors that are prerequisites for women's political empowerment. To me it smacks of an easy-to -implement quick fix effort to achieve an objective that will in reality take a lot more sustained effort to achieve. A sttrong long term focus upgrading the knowledge and skills of our legislators is needed. Such efforts and, more importantly, the thought process to implement them, are in short supply. In this context I am reminded of a recent news report about a delegation of Ministers of State who had to approach the PM becuase they were not being alloted any kind of work by their senior ministers. The continuing high absenteeism amongs MPs during important debates is another indicator that the key enabling infrastructure for upgrading the skills needed for legislative and governance roles is missing. Among the current lot of parliamentarians only a small select group of people seem to have the required level of confidence and skills for this job. For most parliamentarians their debating and reasoning skills appear to be good enough to allow them to score political brownie points against each other in very superficial debates. For most these skills are not backed up by an in-depth knowledge of how political and governance institutions are meant to work. In this environemnt if we introducing new members with perhaps even fewer skills and lesser experience, I think it is not conducive to the growth of parliamentary democracy. Consider Miss Lamba, for example. Despite her 16 years of political experience did not inspire confidence yesterday that she is ready for the role of a Parliamentarian. He arguments yesterday simply did not have the substance to inspire such confidence. While Mrs Suhasini Ali at the other end was certainly doing a much more impressive job of it. We already have enough people in our legislatures who can make a lot of noise. We need people who can contribute to a constructive on issues that concern a vast and complex country. Pakistani democracy is another example of this failing: women representatives in percentage terms far outnumber those in India and yet barring a few exceptions the quality of political debate in Pakistan remains very poor. At the other end of the spectrum there are countries like UK where despite no reservations women parliamentarians contribute very effectively to political debate. This obviously has as much to do with their primary and higher education system as with their efforts to continuously update and upgrade the skills and knowledge of their MP's about key issues before they are put in positions of responsibility. In our country by introducing this bill at this stage I think we are making the mistake of putting the cart before the horse. Without putting in place the infrastructure needed for ensuring / upgrading the skills of our parliamentarians if we go ahead and reserve seats for them in the parliament we only set the stage for more political corruption. It is no secret that when people without the necassary skills and capability are put in positions of responsibility they often resort to questionable practices to ensure they a secure future for themselves. And these are not ordinary positions we are talking about. These are some of the most politically empowered positions in the country. I hope when this Bill is introduced in the Lok Sabha for debate some of these issues I have written about are considered for further debate. ...more

Women's reservation bill

Reservations are acceptable as long as they are viewed as a means of facilitating equality of opportunity for the weaker sections of scoeity. The way to do it, however, would be to introduce a reservation bill in the parliamnent that has a specific expiry date. Every time the law comes up for renewal the govt should be required to support it with a white paper clearly stating what the policy has achieved and what it expects it to achieve further in the future. Such a white paper would also provide a proper basis for stimulating a proper debate on any reservations policy. In the absence of supporting facts any debate around reservations merely becomes a forum for posturing. It is one of the key reasons the women's reservations bill has been hanging fire for the last 14 years with little meaningful debate but at a substantial cost to the taxpayer. I hope the govt rectifies its mistake and issues a white paper before introducing the bill in the Lok Sabha

SIT summons for Mr Narendra Modi

Powerful debate yesterday. I liked the fact that the debate didn’t really get stuck around the Modi issue alone. There is a larger issue at stake here and that came out quite well in the discussion. Establishing the rule of law is clearly important for a progressive democracy. To ensure this happens, the criminal justice system needs to gear up to keep up with the needs of the country. Bhagalpur, the anti Sikh riots of 1984 and Gujarat are clear indicators that our criminal justice system runs the risk of rendering itself obsolete if it doesn’t ensure timely delivery of justice. As the Gujarat example show when justice is delayed other much stronger forces tend to take over and end up bypassing the institutions of civil society. In the debate yesterday there were some interesting comments from the younger participants as well. Someone asked if development since Godhra can compensate for the Godhra violence itself. Someone else answered that morality should be viewed as an issue separate from development. Comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. I think that is a dangerous argument. Perhaps in the short term it does work that way. However, if we turn back to history there are numerous examples to show that once development has been used as an excuse to subvert social and criminal justice it doesn’t just stop after one incident. As this acceptance sets a precedence and becomes widespread everything gradually becomes subservient to objectives of development and ultimately civilizations and empires collapse because there just isn’t enough of a value system to sustain them. In its early years Great Britain was established as a nation state based on some of the finest democratic principles. Its conversion to an imperialist power is one example of this phenomenon. Ultimately the empire on which ‘the sun could never set’ was lost. Some would say, in the post war period, the US has too has been drifting the same way. Communist Soviet Union also crumbled as it gradually departed from its lofty pro-poor ideology to an ideology that was solely focussed on preserving its regional/global hegemony. Last but not the least, Hitler’s Germany was also a victim of the syndrome that development justifies all kinds of excesses. Starting with the ancient civilizations history is replete with such examples. And we appear to have taken a few steps in the same direction with Gujarat in 2002 and with the ongoing conflict in tribal areas of the country now. We have gradually come to adopt the idea that development is a justification for police/military action. So, no, I don’t think development can compensate for loss of human values. And I don’t think the two reside in different buckets either. Lasting prosperity can only be had by upholding these values. In a democracy these values can only be upheld by presence of strong and ever vigilant institutions like the criminal justice system. But in the long term the real force that upholds the integrity of such institutions themselves are neither the people who run them nor the laws and procedures that underpin them. The real force is provided by the value system of the people who these institutions are meant to serve. In post independence India we have given ourselves a national constitution and a set of laws. But it would be a mistake to believe they alone can our sense of ethics and values. It is the other way round. As a people if we do not protect and continuously redefine our values and ethics all our pillars of democracy will ultimately collapse. In my view our education system which is so devoid of a focus on ethics and values, is primarily responsible for the weakening of this moral force. There is a strong need to re-visit our curricula to enquire if there is a need for a change of focus. The problem today is that our education is so devoid of morality and values that those who at least do have the benefit of education can hardly think of anything more important than a sustainable GDP growth rate. Education is far too much sanitized and rendered quite devoid of a robust ethics and value base. Amazingly enough there is hardly any debate or discussion on these issues. If we continue to produce educated youngsters whose skills and ambitions are not underpinned by a robust value system we should not expect our pillars of democracy remain strong. This hopelessness that seemed so evident by the end of the debate would only continue. We will continue to have more Godhras and many more equally polarized debates without any real progress. The people who subvert the law will just keep taking advantage of this state of affairs for their own short term gains. Unless, of course, education reforms step in quickly to stem this moral rot.