women’s reservation bill likely to pass in Lok Sabha on women’s day, March 8!
Tomorrow, March 8, 2010, is the 100th International Women’s day and Sonia Gandhi and the congress Party is to gift women of India with a historic bill reserving 33% of the seats in the Lok Sabha for women. By all accounts the bill will pass. The bill has to be passed in both houses.According to the Times of India The bill is likely to pass in the Lok Sabha where the Congress Party, THe BJP and the left support the bill. In the Rajya Sabha too the bill s expected to pass wih the support of the smaller parties. Eloquent opposition to the bill comes from pponents like the Samajwadi Party, the Janata Dal-United, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Shiv Sena but they can muster only 27 MPs in the Lok Sabha where congress has a clear majority.
If passed, the women’s reservation bill in India will be one of the biggest social experiments but probably less so than the introduction of reservations in to the panchayatt system. Reservation of seats have been successfully used at the Panchayatt or village council level to increase the participation of women to more than one third. By all accounts performance of Pachayattes have improved and there has been no major upheaval in the social fabric of rural India.
