The One Flaw

Women's reservation bill restricts freedom of choice for Indian electorate

2010-03-11T03:19:00.000-08:00

Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister four times. Gender discrimination failed to prevent Jayalalitha and Vasundara Raje from coming to power in TamilNadu and Rajasthan. A woman from a family with no political background, Mayawati, heads Uttar Pradesh, India's largest, and arguably, most patriarchal state. Delhi has re-elected Shiela Dixit despite her gender. Sonia Maino, bahu of India's "first family", commands loyalty of India's largest political party and its supporters.

Clearly, Indian electorate have already proved their non-discriminatory nature in electing women to positions of power without any form of legislation or coercion. What then, is the pressing need for the women's reservation bill?

The bill reserving one-third of MP and MLA seats for women is a pseudo-progressive bill that will restrict electorate's freedom. In the name of politically empowering women, one-third of the nation will be prevented from electing the candidate they consider most suited to represent them in parliment and state assemblies.

235 million strong electorate, larger than population of Pakistan, cannot vote for men in one election at least. As the bill proposes a round robin system for seat reservation, during 15 years of the bill's life (if not extended), the entire nation will probably have a artificially limited selection of candidates and live with its consequence for 5 years.

In addition to limiting freedom of choice, the bill will degrade democratic mechanisms. Independent women candidates will have little incentive to nurture their constituencies as round-robin method keeps away traditional political big guns for only five years.

Small political parties that bank on charisma of one or two candidates will suffer the most.Only large parties, such Congress and BJP at national level, and DMK, etc at state levels have the resources to rally their electorate irrespective of candidate.

Candidates from smaller parties will be shunted to cold storage when women's quota is applicable to their constituency. Rebuilding their image after 5 years of reduced public visibility is a uphill task. A task in which many of them will fail, from the lack of resources.

Policies or the lack of it - I

2009-04-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

2009 election campaign by Congress-I, or rather, the party of fake "Gandhis" and their chamchas was a stark reminder that India still has a long way to go as a democracy. Attempts to make Kandahar into a political issue, nearly a decade after the incident, and the virtual lack of grilling by media, was a reminder to any serious observer that anything and everything goes in Indian public debates, as long you are on the good books of the media.

A revelation by Jaswant Singh, of internal divisions, back then in NDA cabinet, about Mazood Azhar and his friends, begs us to ask ourselves, i.e the Indian citizens - "What is our policy response to terror attack? or more specifically, to hostage situations?"

India should be prepared for more terror strikes. Pakistan is looking increasingly like it'll be victim to two troubles, Taliban and economic collapse. Like the chicken and egg problem, one will be hard pressed to identify which was the cause of other. The world is suffering from hangover of parties during boom, and the bill for the parties will be due in a couple of years. But Pakistan and Islamic terrorism in general, have not been effected by these cycles. A careful analysis by followers of Pakistan will reveal that Pakistan would have gone the way of Dodo, irrespective of how rest of world economy performed. Pakistan is finished, there is no doubt about it.

India is unfortunate to have Pakistan as its neighbour, and that is not going to change, ever. Youth of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Gaza have been largely raised and educated with focus on one goal - Establish their "God's" writ, or rather, writ of clerics who quote "him", on the whole world.

One good thing, or bad thing, depending on which side you see it from, is that their new Jihad has given push to innovation in defence equipment. The Jihadis themselves have been good at exploiting some of the cheaper technology breakthroughs. A average Jihadi is comfortable using GPS, Satellite phones, mobile phones and radio technology. They have been the pioneers of 21st century low-cost warfare strategies so far. And the world has not seen the last of their innovations yet.

Their low-cost innovations mean they can hang around for long time through all economic cycles. An expansive supply of brainwashed manpower from large part of Middle-East and Africa also means one can't nip them anytime soon. It is a open question on what will happen when petro-dollars start running out. But my bet says it will just add more manpower from oil-states to the die-as-a-jihadi queue.

But all of the above is bad news for India. Of the countries Jihadis love to victimize, India is the weakest. And whenever the Jihadis have the need to display their macho-ism, they will do a low-cost strike on India. We will have more Kandahars, 26/11, Hazratbals and Akshardams.

But in digging up Kandahar, 10 years later, parties like Congress have displayed that they are very much capable of putting their interests much ahead of the country's interest. And they are lesser of evils. Every major incident will be made into a opportunity for mud-slinging.

We need a template for making decisions in terrorism related incidents to keep cheap political posturing out of it. The incoming government should take this up on a high priority, the next jihadi attack may be only couple months away, or maybe sooner.

More noise on the N-deal

2008-07-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

N-deal discussion has all been about the wrong things, and its frustrating to see egos take over even when decisions involve important issues like the country's independence to develop nuclear weapons. As the second most populated country, the world's largest democracy, a peace loving nation that has not started wars since a few thousand years, and with a clear no-first-use doctrine, there is little left to argue about why India should not maintain and build its stockpile of nuclear weapons when nations magnitudes smaller and with lesser direct external threats are authorized by world community to be nuclear weapons state. Yet, Indians continue to accept that they only deserve to be treated as second class citizens on world stage.

But the N-Deal shadowed an even more important issue that is rarely discussed in public spaces. Reforms in power sector rules and regulations can do more to improve India's energy situation than the N-deal ever will. Benchmark setting transmission losses, inept maintenance of power generating stations, voltage fluctuations, Gird failures, citizen deaths from accidental contact with exposed electric wires..... the list of sins by Government run power utilities is too many to list.

Private sector managed power supply to Mumbai and Delhi (now) have been exemplary. But why are they being artificially limited to those two cities? In a country that has been a stable democracy for past 60 years, with abundant natural resources and skilled manpower , India's infrastructure should have matched that of more developed country at-least 30 years ago. There is no doubt anymore that India's public institutions are a miserable failure. Public companies run by Governments have been a reasonable success in places Europe, Israel, Singapore. But Govt. run institutions have done more harm than good for this country. Mismanaged Government funded institution attract young talent with offers of life long employment thereby taking away good talent from the market place. Pensions and benefits for retired employees who never worked in their offices is a double whammy for India's tax payer who has to foot the bill without getting any benefit. Government procurements favor products produced by other Government companies which are usually substandard and thereby maim the quality Eco-system. Too much Government involvement in areas beyond its scope is as big a plague to India's growth as corruption is.

Telecommunications market in a good example to show that India's private sector is competent and can deliver as good as anybody else in the world. Call charges are cheap, link quality is good, customer service is acceptable and coverage is reasonable (considering that mobile companies have been here for little more than a decade). One no longer has to wait years for a phone connection, wait days to get a dead phone repaired or stand in queue for hours to pay a bill. It is a perfect example of why Governments should only focus on governance and not try to play the good angel role.

As if to drive the point home, load shedding is back in Karnataka, at peak monsoon season. As the state's power supply is largely Hydel based, agony in summer next year will be a nightmare for most citizens.