The next decisive development was to come almost two decades later. Late last month, a 95-year-old woman died in an old age home in Kolkata, largely unnoticed and unsung. She was Phulrenu Guha, a minister of state for social welfare in the early ‘70s, who had chaired the Status of Women Committee. The report of this Committee, titled ‘Towards Equality’, was the Indian state’s first attempt to ask itself whether it had been successful in keeping the constitutional pledge of equality to the women of the country. The Committee conducted surveys to assess changes, personally interviewed a vast cross-section of women, invited the views and suggestions of experts, scrutinised infirmities in the law, and identified areas and problems that required further investigation. It even observed, with some degree of acerbity, the attempts of politicians to undo constitutional provisions. For instance, in 1970, the Uttar Pradesh government under Charan Singh had the gumption to shoot off a letter to the Government of India stating that women should not be admitted into the Indian Administrative Service; and that in any case women officers should not be sent to UP!

If this sounds outrageous today, we have to be grateful for a report like ‘Towards Equality’, which created widespread awareness about the abysmal status of Indian women, called for concerted initiatives to change this reality, and argued for constant vigilance against the dilution of constitutional safeguards and provisions. The Committee perceived women’s equality as a necessity “not merely on the grounds of social justice, but as a basic condition for the social, economic and political development of the nation’’.

... contd.