Why women should not have to enter power through the bargains of existing power
By Avani Bansal
Women’s equality cannot be made contingent upon political arithmetic.
Women should not have to enter power through a door controlled by negotiations among those who already hold it.
Women’s representation in legislatures is not a technical favour to be granted after political actors finish rearranging their own distribution of seats. It is a democratic necessity that has been acknowledged for decades.
Yet the current moment forces us to confront a deeper question: why is women’s equality once again being made dependent upon political processes that are not fundamentally about women at all?
When women’s reservation is tied to delimitation, the site of women’s equality shifts away from the question of representation and into the terrain of political bargaining among existing power structures.
This is where the problem begins.
Women’s equality should not have to pass through the filters of negotiations over census timelines, redistribution of seats between states, or recalibration of political power among dominant actors.
Women should not have to wait for political actors to first settle their own questions of power before women receive their share of it.
The constitutional promise of equality cannot become contingent upon the convenience of political sequencing.
Women’s reservation has been discussed in India for nearly three decades. The need for greater representation of women in Parliament and State Assemblies is no longer contested. India’s legislatures remain disproportionately male, despite women constituting nearly half the population.
Women’s reservation is therefore not a symbolic reform. It is a structural correction.
But structural correction cannot be built upon structural postponement.
By linking women’s reservation to delimitation, the government has bundled together two very different constitutional questions.
Delimitation concerns how seats are distributed across states based on population changes. It affects federal balance, regional political voice and the equilibrium of representation within the Union.
Women’s reservation concerns who occupies those seats.
The two issues are conceptually distinct. Yet they are now being presented as part of a single constitutional pathway. When unrelated constitutional questions are bundled together, political outcomes can appear predetermined even before democratic debate fully unfolds.
Women’s equality becomes tied to processes whose timelines remain uncertain.
Equality is acknowledged in principle but deferred in practice.
This raises a serious concern.
Is women’s reservation being positioned in a manner that allows political actors to claim commitment to gender equality while postponing actual redistribution of political power?
When complexity is introduced into reform design, complexity itself can begin to serve a political function. The effect is subtle but significant.
Support for women’s reservation becomes morally mandatory in public discourse. But the structural pathway through which reservation becomes operational remains uncertain.
Women are told equality is coming – but only after institutional processes conclude. Women’s equality cannot become the terrain on which existing power centres negotiate their relative advantage.
At the same time, the debate has also revealed another weakness in our democratic culture – the reduction of constitutional questions into simplified binaries.
Support the Bill, or oppose women’s empowerment.
Ask questions about design, and risk being portrayed as obstructing equality.
Such binaries weaken democratic reasoning.
The Constitution does not ask citizens to suspend critical engagement in the face of reform. Nor does it require unquestioning acceptance of institutional design choices simply because the objective of reform is widely supported. Constitutional democracy allows us to hold two truths at the same time.
Women’s reservation is necessary. And the manner in which women’s reservation is structured matters. The question is not whether women deserve representation. The question is whether women’s representation is being implemented in a manner that is both timely and fair.
There is also a further dimension that cannot be ignored. Women are not a homogeneous category. Social hierarchies shape access to political opportunity.
If reservation does not account for diversity among women, representation risks being captured by those who already possess social and political capital.
The demand that OBC women be adequately represented within the framework of reservation reflects a legitimate concern about distribution of opportunity within representation itself.
Political participation must expand across social backgrounds. Otherwise reservation risks reproducing exclusion within inclusion. The demand for a caste census must be understood in this context. Data is not a procedural obstacle. Data is an instrument of fairness.
Without reliable information about social composition, it becomes difficult to design public policy that reflects social realities.
Ensuring that representation includes women across communities strengthens the democratic legitimacy of reservation.
Women’s reservation must therefore not be delayed. But it must also not be designed in a manner that leaves significant sections of women structurally under-represented.
Timeliness and inclusion are not competing objectives.
They are complementary requirements of democratic equality.
The present moment therefore calls for clarity.
Women’s reservation should not be made contingent upon delimitation. Women’s reservation should not become a bargaining chip within negotiations unrelated to women’s representation itself. Women’s reservation should not produce representation that excludes women who face the greatest structural barriers to entering public life.
If the objective is genuine equality, constitutional pathways exist that allow implementation without bundling women’s representation with delimitation.
Reservation can be operationalised within the existing structure of constituencies. Rotation of reserved constituencies is a well-established institutional mechanism already used in local body reservations. Political parties themselves possess the capacity to ensure meaningful representation of women through transparent ticket allocation.
Parliament can legislate frameworks that ensure representation becomes effective within a defined timeframe. Institutional design should facilitate equality, not defer it. India’s constitutional framework is capable of accommodating reform without collapsing into false choices between speed and fairness.
The Constitution does not ask women to wait for power. It asks institutions to share power fairly.
And constitutional commitments must be honoured without conditions that postpone their realisation.
