What a failed bill says about the state of democracy

Political noise is burying the women’s reservation discourse, amid signals of a weakening democratic order

Women’s reservation in the Lok Sabha should have been a straightforward affair. The government says it wants it; the Opposition is all for it. Yet, what the nation received was not the reservation for women but a bill designed to fail. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has now gone on the offensive after the collapse of the bill, almost as if the entire purpose was to take the political discourse to a new level of confrontation and bitterness against the Opposition. This is the sorry state Indian democracy has reached. Led by the BJP, this is a culture that has fashioned politics in the image of a boxing ring in which the Opposition must be surprised, shocked, and knocked out every step of the way. The issues surrounding women’s reservation are only the latest example of trickster politics contributing to a climate of increased political heat, reduced trust, and the erasure of any scope for bipartisan actions that should be a part of everyday governance in a democracy.

Consider that the bill linked to reservation for women (the 131st Constitution Amendment Bill) arrived in the midst of important, hotly contested state elections. Without any prior circulation or consultation, the Bill—which requires a two-thirds majority in the House—was introduced with surprise clauses: a new and hurried delimitation exercise that would increase the Lok Sabha seats from 543 to 850, reserving 33 per cent of the strength for women before the 2029 polls. The government should have known that such a drastic change would not pass without due consultation. The inevitable collapse of the Bill then became the ground for a renewed attack against the Opposition as part of the BJP’s election campaign.

Quite obviously, the Bill was opposed by the Southern states. Passing the Bill meant that the Southern states would lose seats proportionally as their populations reached fertility or near-fertility levels, while the Northern, BJP-controlled states would gain seats despite (or because of) poorer development efforts. Furthermore, how can a government that has never built confidence with the Opposition be trusted with redrawing parliamentary boundaries in a delimitation process that is not due for several years yet? Lack of support for such a plan was obvious.

Yet came the Bill, followed by its expected collapse, and the BJP appeared to use this as fodder for a new slanging match to present itself as a supporter of women’s reservation while the Opposition was painted black. The sorry episode was made worse by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the nation on April 18, which reduced a high public office to a party appendage amid state elections. Instead of a non-partisan explanation of the fiasco over the Bill, the address resembled pamphleteering for and by the BJP.

The Prime Minister named the opposition parties and blamed them for not wanting reservations for women when the issue at stake was deep mistrust in the government and its short-term agenda for the 2029 elections. In the process, an opportunity to rise as a statesman-leader duty-bound to explain, clarify, and bring the nation together was lost. The loss may count for nothing in the BJP’s playbook, but it marks one more notch down on the slippery slope towards a breakdown of trust that further reduces the space for engaging across the aisle.

A widening trust deficit

Meanwhile, the issue of reservation is now languishing amid political noise that avoids the real question: How can the government immediately implement the reservation for women, as the Opposition has indeed demanded, without waiting for a new delimitation process and all the contentious issues it brings? Over the weekend, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) introduced a private members’ constitution amendment bill to implement 33 per cent reservation of seats for women based on the current Lok Sabha strength, without requiring delimitation or census reports. It is noteworthy that it is the Trinamool Congress that has the highest number of women in the Lok Sabha as a percentage of its sitting members at 38 per cent (11 women out of 29), while the BJP sits at a low of 13 per cent (31 women out of 240).

In sum, what the entire exercise achieved was the breakdown of what is sometimes described as vertical trust and horizontal trust. The former is between the ruling class and the people who elect them. The latter is trust among citizens, who must jointly work the levers of the democratic State and its institutions to watch and exert the required pressure to keep the rulers in check. A balanced give-and-take is thus the lifeblood of a democratic order. But as a vocabulary of violence takes hold and as shriller voices are encouraged, they shrink the space for civil discourse and reduce democratic voices. The resultant reduced trust signals a declining democratic order that should be the biggest worry for the nation at this stage. The bill that failed thus tells the deeper story of all that is going wrong in the Indian democracy, bit by bit, in areas that are clearly visible and sometimes in many invisible ways.

The tone set at the top is liable to be mimicked by party leaders and workers down the line. Consequently, the same concoction of violent language, threats, or bullying will be tried in a hundred other ways across the country in situations that may never hit the headlines but will deliver their tiny blows to break democracy and turn people off. With its superior budgets, the BJP may claim a win for today, but its actions are body blows to the democratic spirit of a nation that still famously recalls the first special address to the nation – the “tryst with destiny” that inspired not only India but also the world.

(The writer is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR; Syndicate: The Billion Press)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)