A Reform Three Decades in the Making: Examining India’s Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023
In September 2023, both houses of India’s Parliament voted nearly unanimously in favour of passing the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Bill 2023 (popularly known as the Women’s Reservation Bill), ending a legislative saga stretching back almost three decades. Widely lauded as a turning point in Indian politics, it is notable that the importance of the Women’s Reservation Bill was not lost on Prime Minister Narendra Modi who, when introducing the legislation in a special session of the Indian Parliament, acknowledged that it represented an ‘historic moment’[1] to amend India’s Constitution so as to enhance female legislative representation. This article aims to examine briefly the key provisions of the Women’s Reservation Bill and to uncover some of its core limitations, while situating the bill in its historic context. From the outset, it ought to be stated that the author does not intend to engage in a substantive discussion on the merits of affirmative action.
Situating the Women’s Reservation Bill in context
To understand why the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill is a seminal moment, it is first necessary to grasp the context behind the bill: the lack of female political representation in India’s Parliament. According to PRS Legislative Research, in 2019 a record 78 female MPs were elected to India’s lower house of Parliament, representing a marginal increase from 2014 when 62 female MPs were elected.[2] Overall, female representation in India’s lower house of parliament has unarguably improved—female MPs constituted just 5% of India’s lower house of Parliament in 1952, whereas today, female MPs constitute 14% of India’s lower house.[3] Yet, beneath the headline increase in female representation, it is important to recognise that female representation in India’s Parliament continues to languish far behind other countries. Globally, as of 1 October 2023, India ranks 142nd in terms of the percentage of female MPs in national parliaments.[4] Notably, even within South Asia, India ranks behind almost all of its neighbours, with each of Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Nepal having higher rates of female representation in their national parliaments.[5] Based on UN data, at the cabinet level, India performs comparatively worse, with roughly 6% of cabinet level positions occupied by women in 2023.[6]
A similar picture emerges when analysing female representation across India’s numerous state-level legislative assemblies. Currently, female legislators comprise less than 20% of the Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) in every state-level legislative assembly (Chhattisgarh has the highest number of MLAs, with 18% of MLAs being female[7]). One state (Mizoram) has no female MLAs and the percentage of female MLAs in over a dozen states’ legislative assemblies is lower than 10%.[8] While the causes of this lack of representation are complex and myriad, it is self-evident that women, who according to the World Bank represent around 48% of the population in India,[9] are chronically underrepresented in both state and national level legislatures.
A long and winding legislative road
With this statistical background in mind, it is unsurprising that, in a departure from recent negative international coverage regarding democratic backsliding and minority rights in India, the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill has received near universal praise. For example, the UN’s representative for women in India noted that the legislation marked a ‘bold’ step, sending ‘a clear message to the world that the path to gender equality is not only essential, but attainable’,[10] while the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ‘welcome[d]’[11] the landmark legislation. Within India, given the impending 2024 general elections, senior members of both the opposition and the incumbent Government have seized on the Women’s Reservation Bill as an electoral campaigning tool to try to garner voter support.[12] Perhaps most notably, the incumbent Home Minister has used the passage of the Bill to evidence that ‘women’s security, respect, [and] equal participation have been the life force’ of the Government.[13]
Against this backdrop, observers could be forgiven for failing to realise that numerous similar bills seeking to enhance female legislative representation in India’s Parliament and state assemblies have been tabled by successive administrations for the past 30 years. In fact, no fewer than four prior attempts have been made to mandate quotas for female legislators and to amend India’s Constitution to this effect—in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2008.[14] These prior attempts failed for a number of reasons, including a combination of parliamentary inertia, opposition, and a lack of political will to drive legislative progress, often resulting in the relevant bills lapsing. Given this chequered past, the fact that the Women’s Reservation Bill achieved near unanimous cross parliamentary support with all but two[15] members of India’s lower house of Parliament voting in favour of its adoption is, in the author’s view, a significant achievement which brings a nearly 30-year legislative saga to a close.
The key provisions of the Women’s Reservation Bill: one step forwards and two steps back?
To address the woeful lack of female representation at both the national and state levels, the Women’s Reservation Bill seeks to amend India’s Constitution to reserve ‘[a]s nearly as may be’ one third of all seats for women in India’s lower house of Parliament, all state legislative assemblies, and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi.[16] In an effort to ensure that female representation is also enhanced for certain disadvantaged groups, the Women’s Reservation Bill also expressly includes a similar reservation applicable to the seats that are already reserved for members of both Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the lower house of Parliament and state legislatures.
It will be obvious to the reader that, through affirmative action, the Bill aims to remedy the chronic underrepresentation of women at both the national and state levels. Once implemented, the provisions of the Women’s Reservation Bill will therefore more than double the percentage of female MPs in the lower house of India’s Parliament (from 14% to around 33%) and vastly increase the number of female MLAs at the state level. Given the legislative history and the scale of the changes mandated by the Women’s Reservation Bill, it is unsurprising that proponents of the Women’s Reservation Bill see it as an historic achievement.
However, it is important to note that the Women’s Reservation Bill has a number of lesser discussed limitations. First, the quotas of reserved seats do not apply to the upper house of India’s bicameral legislature nor does the Bill seek to introduce a similar quota to cabinet-level positions. Moreover, the Bill’s provisions do not set aside reservations for minority communities other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, meaning that women from religious minorities and ‘Other Backward Castes’ will likely continue to be unrepresented. At best, therefore, the quotas introduced by the Women’s Reservation Bill are a partial solution to the lack of female political representation at the national level. It may also be argued that the Bill is less ambitious than it might have been. In this regard, it is important to note that a 2015 Report on the Status of Women in India by the Ministry of Women and Child Development called for the implementation of more extensive reservations for women to address the lack of female political representation—the report called for at least 50% of seats in state legislative assemblies and the national Parliament to be reserved for women.[17]
Second, having passed both houses of Parliament and received presidential assent, the operative provisions of the Women’s Reservation Bill will only apply after a ‘delimitation’ exercise is undertaken to determine which parliamentary constituencies ought to be reserved for female candidates. In practice, this means that the relevant quotas will not apply to the next general election and will come into force at a future date (with the earliest possible date of application being in 2029, when the next general election is scheduled to be held after the 2024 election), as the ‘delimitation’ exercise is currently scheduled to occur in 2026 at the earliest. By linking the application of the quotas to the complex process of delimitation, the Government has in effect deferred the application of the operative provisions in the Bill for an uncertain period.
Conclusion
Ultimately, while the provisions of the Women’s Reservation Bill are not without drawbacks, the Bill represents an important step in the right direction to address the lack of female political representation at both the national and state levels in India. However, the author wishes to sound a note of caution, for while members of the incumbent Government have been quick to seize on the passage of the Bill as an ‘historic’ victory for women in India, the introduction of the Bill cannot mark the end of the story, but should instead serve as the beginning of revitalised attempts to increase female political representation across India.
This article aims to examine briefly the key provisions of the Women’s Reservation Bill and to uncover some of its core limitations, while situating the bill in its historic context. Image source: Adam Jones / flickr
The fact that the Women’s Reservation Bill achieved near unanimous cross parliamentary support with all but two members of India’s lower house of Parliament voting in favour of its adoption is, in the author’s view, a significant achievement which brings a nearly 30-year legislative saga to a close. Image source: Asian Lite International
To address the woeful lack of female representation at both the national and state levels, the Women’s Reservation Bill seeks to amend India’s Constitution to reserve ‘[a]s nearly as may be’ one third of all seats for women in India’s lower house of Parliament, all state legislative assemblies, and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Image source: The Leaflet
Once implemented, the provisions of the Women’s Reservation Bill will more than double the percentage of female MPs in the lower house of India’s Parliament (from 14% to around 33%) and vastly increase the number of female MLAs at the state level. Given the legislative history and the scale of the changes mandated by the Women’s Reservation Bill, it is unsurprising that proponents of the Women’s Reservation Bill see it as an historic achievement. Image source: Thesocialtalks
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[1] Astha Rajvanshi, ‘Why India’s Women’s Reservation Bill Is a Major Step Forward’ (Time, 22 September 2023) <https://time.com/6316383/india-womens-reservation-bill/> accessed 10 October 2023.
[2] ‘Profile of the Newly Elected 17th Lok Sabha’ (PRS Legislative Research) <https://prsindia.org/parliamenttrack/vital-stats/profile-of-the-newly-elected-17th-lok-sabha> accessed 10 October 2023.
[3] ibid.
[4] ‘Monthly Ranking of Women in National Parliaments’ (IPU Parline) <https://data.ipu.org/women-ranking?month=12&year=2023> accessed 11 October 2023.
[5] ibid.
[6] ‘Women Cabinet Ministers’ (UN Women) <https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/Women-in-politics-2023-en.pdf> accessed 10 October 2023.
[7] Arpita Mallick and Analie Dutta Choudhury, ‘Vital Stats: Women in Parliament and State Assemblies’ (PRS Legislative Research, 19 September 2023) <https://prsindia.org/files/bills_acts/bills_parliament/2023/Vital_Stats-Womens_Reservation.pdf> accessed 10 October 2023.
[8] ibid.
[9] ‘Population, Female (% of Total Population) - India’ (The World Bank) <https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL.FE.ZS?locations=IN > accessed 11 October 2023.
[10] Daniel Ginsianmung, ‘India’s Passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill Reflects its Commitment to Gender Equality and Women-Led Development: UN Women India’ (United Nations India, 20 September 2023) <https://india.un.org/en/246604-india%E2%80%99s-passage-women%E2%80%99s-reservation-bill-reflects-its-commitment-gender-equality-and-women> accessed 11 October 2023.
[11] Ravina Shamdasani, ‘India - Passing of Women’s Reservation Bill’ (United Nations, 22 September 2023) <https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2023/09/india-passing-womens-reservation-bill#> accessed 11 October 2023.
[12] ‘Rajiv’s Dream Will Be Fulfilled with Passage of Women’s Reservation Bill: Sonia Gandhi’ (The Economic Times, 21 September 2023) <https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/highlights-from-elite-ensemble-by-phoenix-kessaku-a-symphony-of-opulence-and-culture/articleshow/103247249.cms> accessed 10 October 2023.
[13] Geeta Pandey, 'Nari Shakti: India Okays Women’s Reservation Bill - But Nothing Will Change Soon’ (BBC, 22 September 2023) <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-66878565> accessed 10 October 2023.
[14] Rajya Sabha Secretariat, Reservation of Seats for Women in Legislative Bodies: Perspectives (Occasional Paper Series, 1/2008, July 2008) 10.
[15] ‘Women’s Reservation Bill Clears Lok Sabha 454-2’ (India Today, 20 September 2023) <https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/women-reservation-bill-passed-lok-sabha-parliament-special-session-2438319-2023-09-20> accessed 10 October 2023.
[16] The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023 (passed by Lok Sabha, 19/09/2023).
[17] High Level Committee on the Status on Women, Executive Summary: Report on the Status of Women in India (2015) 35.