The Women’s Reservation Bill, a much long awaited and controversial Bill allocating 33% of seats in Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies to women, finally fizzled out. Looking back on it we can now discuss whether the Bill was really significant politically and socially or was it just another ornamental gesture designed to please the women’s organizations and MP’s?

I personally agree the later view. It is not that I do not believe in female empowerment. Being a woman I strongly support upliftment of the female sex especially the Indian rural women. But I don’t think that the Bill can actually achieve it’s ideological aim.

One aspect of the Bill sought to create a separate quota for OBC women. It argued that the reserved seats would mostly be bagged by the urban educated women who have no familiarity with the problems faced by their illiterate rural sisters. The argument does have an iota of truth in it but OBC reservation is definitely not the solution to it.

We do not want just women. We want women who are good leaders and politicians, strong-willed visionaries who have sterling qualities, to whom we can entrust our future. If an OBC quota is created the only qualification a candidate would require is to be a woman and an OBC. Deserving candidates with the required qualities would lose out.

Politics is a field where your worth is tested every moment. Only women who have it in them to reach the top rung by their own efforts are worthy of the posts they occupy. Neither do we need a female leader who uses her family name, not even leaving her dead husband’s memory nor do we want an illiterate buffoon for whom the transition from a housewife to a CM is as easy as transition from the kitchen to her Pati Parmeshwar’s bedroom.

In the villages of Haryana and elsewhere, male relatives rule in the name of women elected to Panchayats and Parishads. A disguised version of this scenario prevails at the national level too. Politics in India has always been a male bastion and we require dynamic women leaders to make inroads into this system. If Kiran Bedi had been cuddled and pampered by the IPS she would not have made such an excellent officer.