Curious Reservations!

It was certainly an unmatched feat as the government managed to bulldoze its opinion in the Rajya Sabha and get the 108th Amendment to the Constitution approved. One point that stands out distinctly is the fact that if the Congress & the BJP join hands, there is nothing much that the others can do... Its more or less a fait accompli... In a democracy, this kind of collusion between the governing party & the opposition parties can imply dangerous trends... But lets not discuss that... Lets discuss something about the Women's reservation bill...

I have a singular question to ask... How did the UPA/NDA arrive at the figure of 33%... I mean, I am all for reservation of seats for women in the Parliament & the state legislatures, but I don't understand why only 33% of the seats should be reserved... I presumed that since half the population of this country is made up by Womankind, of all the people, women should at least have lobbied for 50% reservation... I am sure that the sex ratio in India isn't so skewed that there exist only 1 woman for every 2 men... Thus 33% reservation is simply ridiculous...At least 50% of the seats in all Legislatures should be reserved for women...Any other figure is simply illogical and should be rejected...Why 33%?...Why not 20%?... If the argument is affirmative action, then I believe 20% reservation sends out just as good a message... Probably, the government would have had to handle much less chaos had it proposed 20% reservation...

Another point is Reservation within Reservation, which is what the Yadav Troika has been yelling out loud... They fear that the bill is discriminatory in nature as there is no protection granted to the weaker sections among women... All I can say is this... Lets have caste/creed/region/language based reservation everywhere...So assuming 10% of India is Bengali... Lets reserve 10% of the seats in the Lok Sabha for Bengali Speaking people... Of this 10%, say 20% is Muslim, so 20% Muslim quota within the Bengali Quota... Also, of the entire population of West Bengal, 10% may be non Bengalis, so reserve another 10% within the Bengali Quota for the Non Bengalis... Say 40% of Bengalis are communist... So now take that in account...And you'd end up with nothing but chaos...

The very fact that we need to reserve seats for women is extremely sad... It just implies that for 60 years, we as a nation have done everything to impede their progress... So much so, that now the government needs to step in and improve their lot... And that is a fact... Had it not been for our reluctance to take all sections of our society along in our quest for progress, we would never have needed reservations in the first place...

But surely, Kudos to the UPA and Mrs. Gandhi... They've taken a huge political gamble for the sake of fulfilling their electoral promises... Something which is rarely seen in Indian Politics...