Soroor Ahmed
Power is not a very positive expression. It is not only Pitirim Sorokin, who feels that once a power is acquired morality is the first thing to be sacrificed (See his book Power and Morality). Lord Acton wrote: Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. Many other writers and sociologists have written on the same line. Power has the inherent quality of being abused and misused. Holy Books of almost all religions have warned the humanity about it.
Yet we talk of empowering people coming from what is called the weaker sections of the societyDalits, Blacks, tribals, women, other minorities etc. May be due to lack of appropriate expression we tend to adopt the term empowerment. Otherwise the word sounds somewhat imposing as well as obnoxious.
Instead of empowering a huge section of people efforts should be made to disempower a small but significant section of the people who acquires power and do whatever they like. They are present in all the societies and countries of the world. It is these empowered lot who need to be brought down to the level playing field and compelled to see the reality. But since we lack the courage to come up with the new idea we go by whatever half-baked stuff is being taught to us by someone elsemay be with some ulterior motive too.
How many groups of people in this country or the world are we going to empower? Why not have a grand alliance of the rest to take on the brutally empowered lots of the world, be it of any gender, race, caste, creed or religion. But we in India have gone so much ahead with this empowerment business that we fail to realize as to what are we doing.
More than 60 years back we gave reservation to Dalis and tribals in Parliament and assemblies and thought that we have empowered them. Whether we have empowere Dalits or not we have certainly made the ruling class of the country much more powerful. They can get away freely by massacring and maiming them and raping their women-folk at will. No law of the land can prevent them from doing that. How many of those involved in the Dalit-hunting cases in the country have been brought to the book is the moot question? In many aspects the situation is even worse than pre-independence India, when these Dalits were not at all empowered.
Over 15 years back we made an amendment in our Constitution calling for 33 per cent reservation for women in the urban and local bodies. We thought that we have empowered them. In fact we made the already empowered section more powerful as we did not make any effort to disempower them. We simply think that by electing a few thousands mukhiyas (village heads), pramukhs and sarpanch we will be able to make women powerful. The truth is that we are living in fools paradise. Instead we have made the beasts within the men-folk more powerful. There are innumerable cases of women mukhiya being stripped to nothing, paraded on the streets and then gang-raped simply because they started asserting themselves. No this has not happened only in Rajasthan but in many other states too.
In Haryana, west UP and many other states caste panchayats, instead of village panchayat (local body) decides the fate of the boy and girl who marry on their own by cutting the caste barriers. Nobody takes the view of the 33 per cent of the population. The boy-girl duo are lynched while the law of the land remains silent. And in several cases the mother of the boy who dared to commit this crime had to undergo gang-rape for what her son had done yet the 33 per cent representation had no say whatsoever. Perhaps this brutal bestiality was not practised so daringly before the 72nd and 73rd Constitutional amendment came into effect to give 33 per cent reservation to women in the municipal corporations, municipalities and panchayats. So in one way we are not actually empowering one section of the society, but making the already empowered lot much more powerful.
What will happen after women get 33 per cent reservation in the assembly and Parliament can only be foreseen by what is happening at the grass-roots level, where all indicators suggest that the lot of the women have deteriorated. We are happy that the literacy level among women have increased after independence, but we are not ashamed as to where have crores of girls gone in the last 63 years. In 1941 the backward India under the British subjugation had 1047 girls for 1000 boys. In 2001, after their empowerment the figure has come down to 927. All studies suggest that it has gone further down in the last nine years since the last Census. Thousands of brides are getting burnt every year and honour killing is rampant not only in India but also outside.
Is this what we have achieved by empowering women, by having a woman Prime Minister and so many chief ministers, ministers, MPs, MLAs and what not.
We have given 33 per cent reservation in the local bodies. But we have coined some funny phrases too, especially in the Hindi heartland of the country. When during the last parliamentary election I went to a village in a VIP Lok Sabha constituency somewhere in the country with a social activist, Manish Shandilya, he asked the people who gathered around to greet us as to where is the MP Saheb. I failed to understand as to what he meant by MP Saheb as there is at present no member of Parliament after the dissolution of the Lok Sabhaand after all why an MP will be here. I asked him in his ear: What do you mean by MP Saheb. He replied: Mukhiya Pati (Husband of the village head).
As he was aware that the panchayat where we had gone had a woman head he deemed it fit to ask for her husband as notwithstanding all tall claims in the last 15 or so years we have failed to empower them even at the grass-roots level. Only their numbers have increased. Almost the entire work is being done by the MP and SP (Sarpanch Pati or may be Putra).
No those opposing the reservation too are not coming up with any convincing argument. They are opposing it because they fear that only the upper caste women would walk away with the 33 per cent reservation. And many other upper caste MPs of Congress and the BJP are resisting this because they fear that if the one-third seats are reserved they may lose their own constituency in the next parliamentary election and will have to look elsewhere.
Nobody is concerned that this so-called empowerment is in fact a sinister design to make the powers that be more powerful and befool the 50 per cent of the population. This powerful class is now finding it much easier to deal with women representatives then the menfolk in the past. It is not that earlier the male village heads were an epitome of virtue. But it is an established fact that corruption in panchayats have increased, not decreased as fund and women came together. In the past the panchayats do not have so much monetary power.
If the Womens Reservation Bill really becomes an Act the possibility of emergence of MPP (Member of Parliament Pati) and MLAP (Member of Legislative Assembly Pati) can not be ruled out.
In Bihar the chief minister Nitish Kumar, just for the sake of politics, gave 50 per cent reservation to women in the local bodies in 2006. Yet there is no denying the fact that their condition is among the worst in the country. Only a few months back a mother of two kids was stripped naked in the heart of the busiest Patna road and paraded for full one and half hours before policemen with TV channels telecasting it. Nothing happened to the perpetrator as he is even more powerful.
No country developed, developing or under-developed in the world has come up with such fantastic idea of grotesque empowerment.. Yet the women groups are not going on warpath for it. The number of women in Parliament in the West, barring a couple of Scandinavian countries, is much less yet their condition is certainly better than their sisters in Rajasthan, Bihar, UP, Haryana and elsewhere in India.
So more the elected representatives lesser the power to women. We are simply bluffing the women-folk in the name of empowerment. Let us be honest.
Power is not a very positive expression. It is not only Pitirim Sorokin, who feels that once a power is acquired morality is the first thing to be sacrificed (See his book Power and Morality). Lord Acton wrote: Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. Many other writers and sociologists have written on the same line. Power has the inherent quality of being abused and misused. Holy Books of almost all religions have warned the humanity about it.
Yet we talk of empowering people coming from what is called the weaker sections of the societyDalits, Blacks, tribals, women, other minorities etc. May be due to lack of appropriate expression we tend to adopt the term empowerment. Otherwise the word sounds somewhat imposing as well as obnoxious.
Instead of empowering a huge section of people efforts should be made to disempower a small but significant section of the people who acquires power and do whatever they like. They are present in all the societies and countries of the world. It is these empowered lot who need to be brought down to the level playing field and compelled to see the reality. But since we lack the courage to come up with the new idea we go by whatever half-baked stuff is being taught to us by someone elsemay be with some ulterior motive too.
How many groups of people in this country or the world are we going to empower? Why not have a grand alliance of the rest to take on the brutally empowered lots of the world, be it of any gender, race, caste, creed or religion. But we in India have gone so much ahead with this empowerment business that we fail to realize as to what are we doing.
More than 60 years back we gave reservation to Dalis and tribals in Parliament and assemblies and thought that we have empowered them. Whether we have empowere Dalits or not we have certainly made the ruling class of the country much more powerful. They can get away freely by massacring and maiming them and raping their women-folk at will. No law of the land can prevent them from doing that. How many of those involved in the Dalit-hunting cases in the country have been brought to the book is the moot question? In many aspects the situation is even worse than pre-independence India, when these Dalits were not at all empowered.
Over 15 years back we made an amendment in our Constitution calling for 33 per cent reservation for women in the urban and local bodies. We thought that we have empowered them. In fact we made the already empowered section more powerful as we did not make any effort to disempower them. We simply think that by electing a few thousands mukhiyas (village heads), pramukhs and sarpanch we will be able to make women powerful. The truth is that we are living in fools paradise. Instead we have made the beasts within the men-folk more powerful. There are innumerable cases of women mukhiya being stripped to nothing, paraded on the streets and then gang-raped simply because they started asserting themselves. No this has not happened only in Rajasthan but in many other states too.
In Haryana, west UP and many other states caste panchayats, instead of village panchayat (local body) decides the fate of the boy and girl who marry on their own by cutting the caste barriers. Nobody takes the view of the 33 per cent of the population. The boy-girl duo are lynched while the law of the land remains silent. And in several cases the mother of the boy who dared to commit this crime had to undergo gang-rape for what her son had done yet the 33 per cent representation had no say whatsoever. Perhaps this brutal bestiality was not practised so daringly before the 72nd and 73rd Constitutional amendment came into effect to give 33 per cent reservation to women in the municipal corporations, municipalities and panchayats. So in one way we are not actually empowering one section of the society, but making the already empowered lot much more powerful.
What will happen after women get 33 per cent reservation in the assembly and Parliament can only be foreseen by what is happening at the grass-roots level, where all indicators suggest that the lot of the women have deteriorated. We are happy that the literacy level among women have increased after independence, but we are not ashamed as to where have crores of girls gone in the last 63 years. In 1941 the backward India under the British subjugation had 1047 girls for 1000 boys. In 2001, after their empowerment the figure has come down to 927. All studies suggest that it has gone further down in the last nine years since the last Census. Thousands of brides are getting burnt every year and honour killing is rampant not only in India but also outside.
Is this what we have achieved by empowering women, by having a woman Prime Minister and so many chief ministers, ministers, MPs, MLAs and what not.
We have given 33 per cent reservation in the local bodies. But we have coined some funny phrases too, especially in the Hindi heartland of the country. When during the last parliamentary election I went to a village in a VIP Lok Sabha constituency somewhere in the country with a social activist, Manish Shandilya, he asked the people who gathered around to greet us as to where is the MP Saheb. I failed to understand as to what he meant by MP Saheb as there is at present no member of Parliament after the dissolution of the Lok Sabhaand after all why an MP will be here. I asked him in his ear: What do you mean by MP Saheb. He replied: Mukhiya Pati (Husband of the village head).
As he was aware that the panchayat where we had gone had a woman head he deemed it fit to ask for her husband as notwithstanding all tall claims in the last 15 or so years we have failed to empower them even at the grass-roots level. Only their numbers have increased. Almost the entire work is being done by the MP and SP (Sarpanch Pati or may be Putra).
No those opposing the reservation too are not coming up with any convincing argument. They are opposing it because they fear that only the upper caste women would walk away with the 33 per cent reservation. And many other upper caste MPs of Congress and the BJP are resisting this because they fear that if the one-third seats are reserved they may lose their own constituency in the next parliamentary election and will have to look elsewhere.
Nobody is concerned that this so-called empowerment is in fact a sinister design to make the powers that be more powerful and befool the 50 per cent of the population. This powerful class is now finding it much easier to deal with women representatives then the menfolk in the past. It is not that earlier the male village heads were an epitome of virtue. But it is an established fact that corruption in panchayats have increased, not decreased as fund and women came together. In the past the panchayats do not have so much monetary power.
If the Womens Reservation Bill really becomes an Act the possibility of emergence of MPP (Member of Parliament Pati) and MLAP (Member of Legislative Assembly Pati) can not be ruled out.
In Bihar the chief minister Nitish Kumar, just for the sake of politics, gave 50 per cent reservation to women in the local bodies in 2006. Yet there is no denying the fact that their condition is among the worst in the country. Only a few months back a mother of two kids was stripped naked in the heart of the busiest Patna road and paraded for full one and half hours before policemen with TV channels telecasting it. Nothing happened to the perpetrator as he is even more powerful.
No country developed, developing or under-developed in the world has come up with such fantastic idea of grotesque empowerment.. Yet the women groups are not going on warpath for it. The number of women in Parliament in the West, barring a couple of Scandinavian countries, is much less yet their condition is certainly better than their sisters in Rajasthan, Bihar, UP, Haryana and elsewhere in India.
So more the elected representatives lesser the power to women. We are simply bluffing the women-folk in the name of empowerment. Let us be honest.
