Raj Kamal JhaÎMy mother has a master's degree, her hair isn't bobbed, she brought up four children, ironed their clothes, cooked their meals, allowed three to marry partners of their choice. She wouldn't make for a bad Member of Parliament.

She hasn't won a lottery in her life but if she's enormously lucky and her Calcutta (North East) constituency gets chosen, by lottery, under the provisions of the Women's Bill, she will have to approach a party, convince the men that she is their right candidate, not one of their wives; convince the men that she will need money, lots of money; convince the men that she needs volunteers; convince a section of the local goondas, most of them men that they shouldn't kill her; she will have to strike deals, suck up to men who know the political machinery as well as she knows her kitchen.

If she charms them all and gets up on the stage, she will like to talk about loan schemes that give easy credit to poor women, laws for maternity-leave rights, tax deductions for housekeeping, homes for battered women: pansy issues. She doesn't have half a chance in hell until she becomes one of the men. By the way, Mother is not the ``average'' woman: going by current life expectancy figures for women in India, she should have died three years ago.

That's the main problem with the Women's Bill. Promising empowerment by reserving seats in Parliament and the Assemblies, it puts up a glittering Welcome sign at the Exit, refuses to acknowledge that there's muck piled up at the Entrance.

My opposition to the Bill, however, isn't free of ambivalence. I have to admit to a certain guilt because I do agree that we need more women in Parliament, that corrective justice is one way to counter historical injustice. There's no doubt that women are discriminated against, that their caste and class only determine the nature of their discrimination. But the Bill is a con for it derails the real debate.

First, its motives are suspect given the rising importance of the numbers game in Parliament. Listen to the hypocrisy all around: the BJP doesn't want castewise reservations because it's unsure of its backward support; Laloo and Sharad Yadav want castewise quotas without explaining why, despite a court order, Bihar hasn't held Panchayat elections (in which seats are reserved for women). As for the Congress, Sonia Gandhi seems to be the only woman it needs to reserve anything for.

Look at the most common arguments in favour of the Bill:

The Corrective Justice Argument: Women have been denied justice for too long.Undeniably true, but reserving seats in the legislature isn't corrective justice because that's arguing from the conclusion to the premise. The Bill assumes a top-down approach to women's empowerment: have more women MPs and MLAs, see women's status improve. Balance of opinion shows that reality works the other way around, bottom-up: it's only when women are better ``empowered'' that you find more of them running for public office. That's the way it has happened all over the world.

Which means we need to press for reforms that promote gender equality bottom-up than top-down. As in Mandal, have affirmative action at the entrance level; change discriminatory laws on family inheritance, age of marriage; put more girls in school and ensure that they do not drop out.

Since there's no evidence that voters discriminate against women candidates, the reason why there are so few women MPs is that political parties discriminate. They do not want women too pushy or too uppity but Alka Naths for whom they will be comfortable carrying suitcases.

The Numbers Argument: Once you have 180 women MPs, it will be a powerful symbol of women's participation in politics. The number we should be looking at as an accurate index of women's participation in the political process isn't the number at the ExitMLAs or MPsbut that at the Entrance: how many women vote. Kerala, with a much higher female literacy level than that of Bihar, did not send a single woman to Parliament last year; Bihar sent three. But look at the voter turn-out figures: while only 47 per cent of the eligible women voters in Bihar voted, the figure was 71 for Kerala, 80 for West Bengal.

This means that parties need to first mobilize women as voters, put women's issues on the electoral agenda so that women begin to influence the political process, have a stake in it. In Uttarakhand, for example, women are a vocal, integral part of the political process. So even if the local MP or MLA is a male, he will have to reckon with their clout. In other words, you can have an all-woman Parliament but that would mean precious little if not enough women come out to vote.

The Representation Argument: It's only when you have more women MPs that women's interests will be served. Look at the Panchayats where women have made a difference.

There are two problems with this. One, in the very idea of representation. Political theorist Hanna Pitkin defines representation as ``acting in the interests of the represented in a manner responsive to them.''What's crucial, therefore, is that women vote and vote differently: that women must be able to elect candidates who are feministmale and femaleand that electoral victories must be translated into changes of policy. This, in turn, depends on how many of these 180 women MPs actually get to be a part of the ``inner circle'' of policy-making.

Two, the jury is still out on the role of women in Panchayats. While many are reduced to fronts for men, there are a few effective women Sarpanches. But that has happened because Panchayat is local government, bottom-up, Parliament is not. Let women Sarpanches build on their bases, let them then get elected to Parliament. That will ensure a genuine representation of women.

In the meantime, let us continue to be shamed by the low number of women in our elected bodies just as we are shamed by the low number of proficient, honest men in elected bodies. Also, let's be more banal in our debates: instead of talking about women's ``empowerment'' in the context of ``symbols'' let's talk about empowerment as in women getting jobs in the market economy. Instead of talking about the number of women in Parliament, let's first talk about the number of girls in schools. Maybe if we can ensure a lower drop-out rate than the present 60 per cent, some of them may end up in Parliament. As for my mother being an MP, I was just kidding.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.