The failure of a reform to increase women’s political participation in India

Translated by Martina Marino

In India, a constitutional reform aimed at increasing the number of women in Parliament, through the introduction of a fixed quota reserving one-third of parliamentary seats for women, has been rejected.

The rejection of the reform is not so much due to opposition to greater female representation: women currently hold only 14% of parliamentary seats, and the adoption of quotas to ensure greater political participation for women enjoys broad support.

However, the reform proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi also included other changes to the composition of Parliament. Among these were an increase in the number of lawmakers from 543 to 850 and new criteria for the allocation of seats.

These changes would have followed demographic criteria that favored the more populous northern states, to the detriment of the southern ones, which are characterized by lower birth rates and higher levels of human and economic development.

Since the late decades of the last century, India has sought to reduce its extremely high birth rate, which had forced economic resources to be spread across a vast population, worsening the problem of widespread poverty.

To address the demographic issue, a number of highly controversial measures have been adopted over time, such as forced male sterilizations in the 1970s and, later, female sterilizations incentivized through financial aid.

However, the states that have been most successful in slowing population growth are those in the South, where policies have been implemented to promote female participation in the labor market, education, and sex education. Among them, Kerala stands out—a southern state where fertility rates are comparable to those of some European countries. Along with other southern states, Kerala also records some of the highest human development indices in the country.

Northern states are also those where nationalist and Hindu right-wing forces enjoy greater support, represented by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, while in the South more left-leaning political forces tend to prevail: suffice it to say that Kerala is often governed by the Communist Party.

It was primarily these southern states that opposed the constitutional reform proposed by Modi, arguing that the changes were intended to favor his party by reducing the political weight of states that contribute significantly to the country’s economic development. Moreover, the reform would have been based on the 2011 census, which is now outdated for a country like India, where the population continues to grow.

For this reason, M.K. Stalin, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu—a state located in the far south of India—set fire to the text of the reform and hung a black flag outside his residence, as a sign of protest against measures considered a threat to the integrity of the world’s largest democracy.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi criticized the instrumentalization of the women’s issue by Modi to alter the electoral system: “This has nothing to do with women’s empowerment; it is an attempt to redraw India’s electoral map,” he said.

Therefore, the electoral reform rejected by Parliament raises a highly complex set of issues that go beyond that of female representation. Above all, it highlights the economic, political, and cultural inequalities that divide the country. But most importantly, it underscores the need to maintain a critical perspective toward those who instrumentalize these inequalities and sensitive issues, such as women’s political representation, to consolidate their electoral support.

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