| | | Good morning! | | | | One  Starting sometime in the 2030s — even 2029 looks like a stretch, and if you read on you will understand why — a full third of India’s elected representatives in legislative assemblies, and the Lok Sabha, will be women. With half the seats in panchayats already reserved for women, this will likely take India to the vanguard of countries in terms of representation of women in elected government. The experience in panchayats, where reservation for women started in 1993 (back then, it was a third of the seats), indicates that there will likely be a transition phase where at least some of the candidates are proxies for their male relatives (my own councillor in Delhi is a woman, but much of the campaigning was done by her husband, who is as involved as her in running the ward, and she even altered her name ahead of the election to reflect his full name), but also that there will be a growing incidence of female emancipation and empowerment. As Hindustan Times pointed out in an editorial: “…reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies should not be seen as a panacea. To truly empower women, there have to be, in parallel, efforts to break barriers for them in accessing education, health, employment, and economic opportunities that aren’t just structural, but also to do with mindsets.”  But while the law has been passed, its implementation could take time. It will definitely not happen in time for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, and will likely not happen in time even for the 2029 one. That’s because the law is very clear on the chronology – census, delimitation, and then reservation. The last time the constitutional provision regarding delimitation was amended, it was decided that the exercise would be conducted based on the first census after 2026. It takes at least two years for a census to be completed; and delimitation (which is likely to be a complex and contentious issue this time, and again, if you read on, you will understand why) will have to happen after that. Sure, this government, or the one elected in 2024, could choose to amend the Constitution, rush the census (there’s no sign of the 2021 one yet), and push through the reservation in time for 2029. And sure, all parties, including the current national hegemon, the Bharatiya Janata Party, could signal their buy-in by ensuring that one in every three candidates they field in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections is a woman. | | Two It was always clear that the big delimitation that had to happen in 2001 would be contentious — and that is perhaps why the then National Democratic Alliance government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee decided to put it off. This deferral required a constitutional amendment, which was duly passed – and it clearly mentions that delimitation will be based on the first census after 2026. The exercise promised to be contentious because it was premised around a necessary and fair change – but one that would ironically end up being unfair to the southern states. The fairness came from ensuring proportionality of representation (the population of a state and the number of people sent to the Lok Sabha, the house of representatives). And the unfairness came from the fact that this would necessarily punish the southern states for diligently following the national objective through the 1970s and 1980s (and even part of the 1990s), population control. The most authoritative piece on this — one that is cited by everyone, and almost always without credit — is one that appeared (where else) in Hindustan Times in 2019. In one of the several pieces they wrote ahead of the 2019 elections, Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hinton pointed to the challenge to federalism that would come from delimitation. The piece extrapolated some numbers, and suggested that delimitation could see the number of representatives in the Lok Sabha rising to 848 from the current 545, with Uttar Pradesh seeing its tally go up to 143 from the current 80, and Bihar to 79 from 40. In contrast, Maharashtra would send 76, up from 48, and Tamil Nadu, 49, up from 39 (among the lowest increases). The outlier would be Kerala – with no change in the 20 representatives it sends to the Lower House. This week, Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin described delimitation as a “Damocles sword hanging over the head of Tamil Nadu and the southern states”. From the debate over freebies to the strain in India’s fiscal federalism fabric everything is related to this. When delimitation happens, and if 848 is the number of representatives it arrives at, then 280 of them (at least) will be women, which means there will be (at most) 568 male representatives. | | Three One of the interesting aspects of the debate that preceded the passage of the women’s reservation bill was the demand for a reservation for women from other backward classes (OBCs) within the reservation for women. As Hindustan Times pointed out in an editorial, representatives from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress among others demanded sub-quotas for OBCs, signaling the “re-emergence of an old fault line that had once disrupted the passage of a women’s quota Bill in the Rajya Sabha in 2010”. On Friday, in a media interaction, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi once again pitched for an OBC census — a demand that has become louder among opposition parties over the past year because they see it as a way to use Mandal (a reference to the commission that recommended the OBC reservations instituted by the VP Singh government in 1990) to counter Kamandal (a reference to the BJP). There are two questions to be asked here. One, can Kamandal once again counter Mandal, as many believe it did in the 1990s? And two, can the push for a caste census revive the Congress? My colleague Roshan Kishore has tried to answer both questions. The short answer (for those who don’t want to read more): unlikely. | | Four My busiest (but also best) day of the week is Wednesday. That’s the day I look at Wknd and Brunch stories. And for two weeks in a row, the good folks at Wknd have hit it out of the park with their cover stories. As it turns out – and this is one of those coincidences because I had no hand in the commissioning of the stories — both stories were authored by my old quizzing comrade-in-arms from college K Narayanan (aka Nari). The first of these was on the Tolkien universe, timed to coincide with 50 years of Tolkien's passing (in September 1973), and the second, which will be published tomorrow (Sunday) is on Reddit, which may well be the social network all of us need in these times. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, HT Wknd is the best weekend features section in the country. | | Five The soundtrack to my week’s work has been provided by Cat Power and Jiro Inagaki. The first because two of her Dylan covers from a performance at the Royal Albert Hall last November that recreated Bob Dylan’s 15-song set from 1966, Live 1966: The Royal Albert Hall Concert (although it was actually recorded at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester). Like Dylan, she switched from acoustic to electric in the middle of the concert. And reports say that, like back then, someone in the audience stood up and yelled “Judas” when she made the shift. The album is expected in November. The second because someone finally decided to reissue Jiro Inagaki’s Funky Stuff (which has only been reissued once since its release in 1975), and I snared a pre-order. Bitches Brew was released in 1970, and took jazz in an entirely different direction – towards funk, rock, and fusion. Bands such as Weather Report exemplified this. In Japan, so did Jiro Inagaki & His Soul Media (that was the full name of his band). In fact, Funky Stuff (named after the Kool & The Gang song which finds a place on this album; the cover is better than the original), came out before Weather Report’s two best albums , Black Market (1976) and Heavy Weather (1977). | | | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? Sign up here. | | | | | | Get the Hindustan Times app and read premium stories | | | | | | View in Browser | Privacy Policy | Contact us You received this email because you signed up for HT Newsletters or because it is included in your subscription. Copyright © HT Digital Streams. All Rights Reserved | | | | |
