Hustling the State

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Hustling the State

Women’s Movements as Policy Entrepreneurs: Engaging the State in India

Charu Bhaneja

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy

Graduate Department of Political Science

University of Toronto

Hustling the State

Women’s Movements as Policy Entrepreneurs: Engaging the State in India

Charu Bhaneja

Doctorate of Philosophy

Department of Political Science University of Toronto

« 2014 »

Abstract

This study examines the opportunities and constraints women activists confront as they pursue strategies to influence public policy in a fluctuating, diverse and complex political arena. To illustrate this, I suggest that engagement with the state can be efficacious in certain instances

(violence against women) but that in those cases where women face structural constraints (women’s political representation), where the challenges are powerful, opportunity to have an impact is limited.

Examining the extent to which the state has been an arena where women’s groups have been able to demand and achieve change provides significant insights into political environments that shape women’s agency and advocacy within that region. My doctoral thesis takes a multi-level approach in order to understand the impact of women’s movements on the state and its institutions. I maintain that women’s movement activity elicits state responsiveness and I analyze three factors to support my claim. First, I consider what government is in power and how open it is to engagement.

Secondly, I consider how cohesive the women’s movement is on a particular issue and thirdly, I iii

maintain that women’s national machinery can be an effective channel for implementing women’s interests.

Building on theoretical ideas from New Social Movement theory and theories on women and the state, my research forms a bridge by combining a macro-meso-micro analysis that captures both the women’s associational field itself and the complex interactions between civil and political society.

Drawing on data from my qualitative research I demonstrate that national governments do not act

unless otherwise pushed from women’s movements proving that pro-women legislation has not

been possible without the organization and mobilization of women’s groups. The implications of the

findings presented in this thesis suggest that women are the strength of institutions and are

imperative to the functioning of women’s national machinery hustling the state as policy brokers.

Acknowledgments

This study would have not been possible without the support and guidance from a number of individuals who I am deeply indebted to. First and foremost I want to thank my advisor Professor Judith Teichman. It has been an honour to be her Ph.D. student and I am truly indebted to her in getting me through probably one of the biggest challenges of my life. I appreciate all her contributions of time, ideas, and funding to make my Ph.D. experience productive and stimulating. The joy and enthusiasm she had for my research was contagious and motivational for me, even during tough times in the Ph.D. pursuit. Over the years, there were many times I was ready to give up on this endeavour however Professor Teichman’s encouragement and critical insights into my work kept me going. I would like to thank the members of my thesis committee: Professor Jacques Bertrand Professor Arthur Rubinoff and Professor Paul Kingston for their time, interest, and extensive feedback. I feel very fortunate to have worked with such remarkable academics whose wisdom and insights have had a profound impact on my research. I would like to acknowledge the School of Graduate Studies and the Department of Political Science for the financial support they provided throughout my field work phase. I was extremely fortunate to receive this funding without which my field trips to India would not have been possible. I would like to express my gratitude to all the strong, courageous and fiery women who agreed to participate in this study. Your lives and work are a testament to the spirit of women’s activism globally and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to learn from you. A special mention goes to the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in New Delhi for their kind welcome. I am grateful to Mr. Banerjee for granting me institutional affiliation with the Centre, and Dr. Kumad Sharma and Ms. Leela Kasturi for taking the time to familiarize me with the Centre, key members and staff. I would like to especially thank the Library and Information Services staff for their time and help in navigating me through a comprehensive collection of published and unpublished material. Ms. Madhu Shree, Ms. Ratna Sharma and Ms. Deepa Singhal were always available and without their help I would not have had access to a wealth of invaluable research material that was critical to my work. Finally I must acknowledge the unwavering support of my parents, Suresh and Pushpa Bhaneja. Words can scarcely express the gratitude I feel towards you for being the two greatest teachers in my life. You have both always supported me in whatever path I have chosen to take and your persistent faith in me has allowed me to believe in myself. You have been on this journey with me from beginning to end, enduring the triumphs and the challenges. This project is the result of all the time, money, and energy you spent in going with me on my field trips. There is no father in the world that would go to Delhi to drive his daughter around to all her early morning interviews, cutting circles in government offices and waiting around for hours until I was finished. My mother, my best friend, who was emotionally there for me, always kept me smiling and laughing, sweeping me off to the Taj Mahal for my birthday as a weekend getaway I will never forget. For that and so much more, this PhD is as much yours as it is mine.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

ABSTRACT ...... i

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iii

ACRONYMS ...... v

TABLES ...... vii

APPENDICES ...... viii

CHAPTERS

CHAPTER 1 – Introduction: Environments, Movements, and Institutions ...... 1

CHAPTER 2 – The Shifting Political Environment I: From Congress Party Stability to Fractured Coalitional Politics ...... 30

CHAPTER 3 – The Political Environment II: The Ideational Context ...... 56

CHAPTER 4 – Movements Matter: Unity and Difference Collide Over Violence Against Women and Women’s Political Representation ...... 77

CHAPTER 5 – Mobilization: Pushing the Domestic Violence Bill Forward ...... 99

CHAPTER 6 – Reservations for Women: Political Resistance and a Divided Women’s Movement ...... 132

CHAPTER 7 – Government Institutional Responsiveness to Women: Accounting for the two Divergent Cases ...... 172

CHAPTER 8 – Conclusion ...... 207

REFERENCES ...... 219

Acronyms

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam AIADMK All India Democratic Women’s Association AIDWA All India Trinamool Congress AITC All-India Women’s Conference AIWC Asom Gana Parishad AGP Bahujan Samaj Party BSP Bharatiya Janata Party BJP Biju Janata Dal BJD Center for Feminist Legal Research CRLR Centre for Social Research CSR Central Social Welfare Board CSWB Centre for Women’s Development Studies CWDS Committee on the Status of Women in India CSWI Common Minimum Programme CMP Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPM Communist Party of India CPI Community Development Programme CDP Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination CEDAW Criminal Procedure Code CPC Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam DMK Five Year Plans FYP Government of India GOI Indian Administrative Service IAS Indian Electoral Commission IEC Indian National Congress INC Indian Penal Code IPC Indian Women’s Movement IWN Indian Social Institute ISI Institute of Social Studies Trust ISST International Center for Research on Women ICRW International Commission of Jurists ICJ Janata Dal JD Janata Party JP Joint Action Front for Women JAFW Joint Select Committee JSC Joint Women’s Programme JWP Law Commission LC Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative LCWRI Mahila Dakshata Samiti MDS Members of Legislative Assembly MLA Members of Legislative Council MLC Member of Parliament MP Ministry of Human Resource Development MHRD Ministry of Law and Justice MLJ Ministry of Women and Child Development MWCD vii

National Alliance of Women NAWO National Commission for Protection of Child Rights NCPCR National Commission for Women NCW National Democratic Alliance NDA National Federation of Indian Women NFIW National Health Policy NHP National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development NIPCCD National Perspective Plan for Women NPP National Plan for Action NPA National Policy on Empowerment of Women NPWE Nationalist Congress Party NCP Other Backward Caste OBC Panchayati Raj Institutions PRI Planning Commission of India PCI Protection of Women from Domestic Violence PWDVA Rashtriya Janata Dal RJD Rashtriya Mahila Kosh RMK Rashtriya Swayamsevak RSS Research Centre on Women’s Studies SNDT Samajwadi Party SP Scheduled Caste SC Scheduled Tribe ST Seven Sisters Network SSN Stree Sangharsh SS Supreme Court of India SCI Tamil Maanila Congress TMC Telugu Desam Party TDP Uniform Civil Code UCC United Progressive Alliance UPA Union Territories UT United Nations UN United Progressive Alliance UPA Violence against women VAW Vishva Hindu Parishad VHP Women in Development WID Women’s Component Plan WCP Women’s Movement Actor WMA Women’s National Machinery WMN Women’s Nongovernmental Organization WNGO Women’s Power Connect WPC Women’s Political Watch WPW Women’s Reservation Bill WRB Women’s Welfare and Development Bureau WDB Young Women’s Christian Association YMCA

viii

Tables

Table 2.1 - National Parties of India ...... 32

Table 2.2 – Prime Ministers of India ...... 33

Table 2.3 – National Elections of India ...... 36

Table 2.4 – State Parties of India ...... 44

Table 4.1 – Number of Women Elected to Parliament ...... 93

Table 5.1 – Participation of Women’s Organizations: Anti-Domestic Violence Legislation...... 104

Table 5.2 – Features of the Lawyers Collective and Government of India Anti-Domestic Violence Bills ...... 113

Table 5.3 – Features of the Government of India Anti-Domestic Violence Bill ...... 127

Table 6.1 – History of the Women’s Reservation Bill, 1996-2010 ...... 133

Table 6.2 –Political Parties that Opposed the 81st Constitutional Amendment Bill...... 136

Table 6.3 – National Political Parties in Support of the 81st Constitutional Amendment Bill Giving Reserved Seats to Women...... 141

Table 6.4 – Women Members in Legislative Assemblies and their Percentage (2008) ...... 142

Table 6.5 – Organizations Supporting the Women’s Reservation Bill ...... 146

Table 6.6 – Key Features of the Proposed Constitution (Eighty-first Amendment) ...... 150

Table 6.7– Key Opponents of the Women’s Reservation Bill (Original Draft) ...... 155

Table 6.8 – Flaws of Women’s Reservation Bill and Alternatives Proposed by the Forum of Democratic Reform (FDR) ...... 164

Table 7.1- Evolution of Women’s National Machinery in India (1952-2007) ...... 174

Table 7.2- Women’s Table 7.2: Functions of the Department of Women and Child Development and National Commission for Women ...... 176

Table 7.3: Chairpersons of the National Commission for Women ...... 184

Appendices

Appendix A – Subject Interviews...... 236

Appendix B – Sample Questions (State and Non-State Participants) ...... 240

Appendix C – List of Primary Sources...... 245

Appendix D – Organizational Chart of DWCD...... 250

Appendix E – Organizational Chart of NCW...... 251

Appendix F – Domestic Violence Legislation in India...... 252

Appendix G – Participation of Organizations Supporting Anti-Domestic Violence Legislation...... 253

Appendix H– Women’s Reservation Bill (2008)...... 256

Appendix I – Participation of Organizations Supporting the Women’s Reservation Bill...... 260

Chapter 1

Introduction: Environments, Movements, and Institutions.

This research investigates why the Indian state has successfully addressed certain women’s

issues over others. I answer this question by examining the claim that women’s movement activity

improves state responsiveness to issues that affect women. I specifically focus on state responsiveness around two issues- violence against women (i.e. domestic violence) and women’s political representation (i.e. quotas for women in Parliament)- and ask whether and how policy responsiveness to the issues is increased by women’s movement activities. By state responsiveness, I mean whether or not the state responds through established channels in a predictable and widely understood manner to women’s demands; and whether or not state actions address the specific concerns raised by women through policy outcome. This analysis involves not only identifying and addressing the issues in implementing policy, but also an examination of the impact of policy in terms of whether state actions actually address and mitigate the concerns raised by women in each of the policy areas.

State rhetoric in terms of its concern for women has never been lacking. It plays a major role in the formulation of social policies that critically affect women’s status and gender arrangements

(Kasturi, 1996).1 My focus on the state is justified on the basis that women, whether they are

pursuing equal pay, anti-domestic violence laws, reproductive rights, or access to health and

education, must engage with the state and its institutions on some level. Among several groups that

solicit the state such as caste, religious, labour, and environmental, women’s groups have since

1 Gender relations are only one of several forces that have shaped the context of women’s lives in India. Without first placing Indian women’s experiences within the context of other forces (caste and class), which have both enabled and constrained women’s attempts to improve their life conditions through activism, women’s oppression based on gender relations can neither be understood nor eliminated.

India’s independence from British colonial rule in 1947 actively pursued the state for rights, equality,

and enforcement of laws, which they claim are in accordance with the Indian Constitution. The long

history of Indian women’s engagement with the state has established them not only as activists and

actors, but also as policy entrepreneurs because they work from outside formal positions of

government to introduce, translate, and help implement new ideas into public practice.

I emphasize the possibility for women of carving out spaces that enable them to articulate

their interests, and make the state accountable. Women’s movements, especially during the last

decade, have been confounded by the state which simultaneously initiated processes of introducing

innovative empowerment programmes on the one hand and, on the other introduced economic

policies that significantly worked towards impoverishing the majority of women (Arya, 2000). At the

same time however the nature of the engagement between the state and women can be seen as

transactional and suggestive of a more positive role for women. It can be used to understand the

more deliberate and self-conscious initiatives that women undertake in tackling the state and the

constitutive effects that these endeavours generate (Rajan, 2003).

Argument

My central question addresses the extent to which the state has been an arena where women’s groups have been able to demand and achieve change. I recognize that this does not

necessarily produce practical results. In India the real problem is implementation. Laws are at times

merely a window dressing undermined by party leaders out of public view and my intention is not to

downplay the role of courts since the judiciary, as Rudolph and Rudolph note, has been more

proactive in this area in recent years (Rudolph and Rudolph 2001: 127-162). However, addressing

judicial activism in terms of enforcing and strengthening the constitutional goals towards the

protection/rights of women is beyond the scope of the dissertation.

In this thesis, I argue that women’s movement activity improves state responsiveness since it can not only provoke or avert certain government activity but also influence social values and transform political institutions. I suggest three critical factors shape movement activism in eliciting state’s responsiveness in terms of efficacious policy outcome around domestic violence (violence against women) and reserving seats for women (women’s political representation). First, I consider what party/coalition of parties is in power during the period of each policy debate since it sets policy direction for the government. I suggest the different orientations of the governing political party and how open it is to engagement (an openness shaped by its ideology/attitudes to women) is a key variable in shaping outcome. While I emphasize the role of ideas in policy-making (Hall, 1990)

(domestic violence), I also recognize that it is not necessarily enough to explain policy outcome

(reserving seats for women in Parliament), thus I consider that electoral incentives drive policy outcome depending on the issue. The second factor I consider is characteristics of the women’s movement that make it successful in achieving substantive and procedural responses from the state.

Success is most likely where the women’s movement is cohesive in relation to their demands

(movement unity) and in situations where the women’s movement considers the issue as a high priority (issue priority). Third, I take into account the impact of women’s national machinery

(WNM). Women’s National Machineries are the main national bodies that have been delegated authority from the Indian state to not only promote the needs and interests of women, but also to mainstream and institutionalize their concerns into the policy-making process. I suggest that within the Indian context, WNM is only supportive of a particular issue (i.e. predisposed to be activist) when directed by the ruling political party. It is under these conditions that WNM will seek to bring in like-minded movement actors into the arena where policy change can occur. At the same I consider that even when these structures were ‘directed’ to act on either of these issues, WNM lacked legitimacy unless they were also being supported by women’s movement activists. These

4 structures in fact play a minor role because they mirror the goals of the ruling political party.

However I consider their presence significant since they can act as critically important instruments of state responsiveness to women in certain circumstances (though not all).

I demonstrate that the combinations of these three conditions influence the degree of state responsiveness to women’s movement activity in each of the two policy areas examined in this thesis. In the case of violence against women, state responsiveness in the form of efficacious policy outcome resulted in the passage of anti-domestic violence legislation. India’s present anti-domestic violence legislation is in large part an outcome of activist groups (women’s groups, lawyer’s bodies and other NGOs) pressuring the government for a comprehensive law on domestic violence. First, the openness of political leadership to take up the problem of domestic violence combined with the fact the issue did not directly threaten the stability of government had enormous influence on the extent to which women’s movements could increase state responsiveness. Second, the women’s movement for anti-domestic violence legislation was a dynamic movement in which various organizations prioritized the issue and collectively devoted their energies to different tasks that have been complementary rather than contentious. Third, the mobilization from women’s extra state organizations was instrumental in stimulating activism within women’s national machinery (that set of institutions dealing with women’s issues) suggesting that when both the women’s movement and the state bureaucracy responsible for women’s issues interacted that interaction improved state responsiveness.

On the other hand, state responsiveness was weak leading to a delayed policy outcome over the issue of representational quotas, known as reservations2 (as in a fixed number of seats ‘reserved’

2 Quotas, or reservations more commonly known in India, are a form of compensation for historical injustice suffered by identifiable groups and represent evidence of society’s commitment to redress that injustice. Quotas offer greater legitimacy to a political system by ensuring greater representation and by integrating marginalized groups into the mainstream. Quotas indicate that under-representation of marginal groups is not a statement of the

for women) for women in Parliament and state legislatures. The women’s reservation bill has failed

to become law since representation was not a unifying issue for the movement as a whole,

especially for those who wanted special reservations for lower caste and minority women.

Consequently, this resulted in weak mobilization around the issue by women’s movement actors,

preventing the movement from acting as a catalyst for government action. First, although ruling political parties were supportive of the issue, the urgency they felt in keeping their government in power due to existing caste conflicts over reservations prevented political leadership from taking up the issue throughout the policy debate affecting the ability of the women’s movement to elicit responsiveness to the issue. Second, the women’s movement for reservation was less cohesive leaving the movement fractured and divisive. The issue of reservations did not emerge from the

women’s movement itself but rather from within a group of female Members of Parliament. Thus it was not a high priority issue. Finally, women’s national machinery only played a marginal role in the

representation issue largely due to the resistance of ruling parties to pushing the issue forward, thereby failing to promote women’s movement goals on the reservation bill.

For women committed to changing gender relations, my findings demonstrate that the antagonistic relationship between ‘woman’ and ‘state’ confirms the notion that they are mutually

defining. Rather, “the state, as the focus of and antagonist towards of mobilization…is involved in

the construction of the socio-political group ‘women’ as protagonist” (Franzway et al., 1989: 39).

This has particularly been true in both cases analyzed in this thesis. I suggest that women’s

movements were the first to articulate and draw public attention to issues of violence against women

and women’s political representation by putting them onto the public agenda to be taken up and

made part of the governmental agenda albeit in differing ways. I contend the main way that women’s

movements do this at least in India, is through a more diffuse strategy of transforming public

groups’ poor performance but of the system’s poor performance at creating a level playing field (Nanivadekar, 2006: 119).

agendas by political argument; that is the diffusion of perspectives raises new issues for debate and

changes government priorities. Awareness and interpretations of events are advanced in cultural

productions, protest politics, and everyday politics (violence against women) as well as through

formal channels of professional politics (reservations for women) (Patel, 1991). It is through these

mechanisms that a women’s agenda, articulated by women’s groups has entered the public policy

arena.

Contribution of Research

The arguments and data presented in this thesis contribute to an enhanced understanding of how women interact with the state and operate within the wider political system as policy

entrepreneurs or as members of a policy-making process within the Indian context. The research

findings draw attention to an under-researched area of comparative inquiry into the patterns of

interaction between women's movements and the state by examining variations in policy outcome

across two policy debates: domestic violence and representational quotas for women. In doing so,

this research complements existing scholarly work on the nature of women’s political activities and

interaction within party and parliamentary politics at the state and national levels in India (See, for

example, Kapur, 2001; Sadhna, 2000; Nivedita, 1999; Swarup et al., 1994; and Kumari, 1993 and

1992).

Contextual Parameters (1975-2010)

Framed within the post-Emergency period, the study covers the period from 1975 to 2010.

This thirty-five year time span provides an opportunity to examine whether the changing political

and institutional environment provided strategic opportunities to secure a stronger place for

women’s interests in state structures. First, women’s movements made significant gains through the

1970s and 1980s. The declaration of a state of emergency by Indira Gandhi reflected the

development of structural strains in the Indian polity that generated growth and the deepening of

grievances, thus enhancing citizen’s willingness to act politically through movement participation.3

The Emergency (1975-1977) suppressed everybody’s rights. It served as a catalyst for a proliferation

of post-Emergency secondary groups and a media explosion. The 1970s saw the rise and growth of

the civil liberties movement in India in the aftermath of Emergency (imposition of authoritarian

rule) and it was at this time that the second wave women’s movement emerged. Second, the

proliferation of state institutions serving women (particularly women’s national machinery) peaked

in the mid-1980s, reflecting efforts on the part of the government to further follow through on the recommendations of the 1974 report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India (CSWI)4

calling for the establishment of institutional development for women through various

agencies/departments.

Third, although relative stability of the political system afforded under the Indian National

Congress (INC) 40-year rule (1947-1989) allowed some political space to emerge and women were

able to organize, the 1990s marked a significant fracturing of the political party system. Many non-

Congress political parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged rooted in regional

ascriptive identities (language, religion, caste, and others) and became important players in the

national political system. As ruling coalitions have changed over the years, the ability of women’s

movements to negotiate and renegotiate with the government of the day becomes increasingly

complicated. I will examine the implications of this further in Chapter 2.

3 This however does not imply that structural dislocations alone produce movements. System crisis provides the opportunity; whether or not individuals and groups are able to come together to form a collective response depends well on the resources available to them (Calman, 1992; Skocpol, 1979; Tilly, 1978). 4 Established in 1971, the government commissioned the CSWI to make recommendations in three areas. First, the CWSI evaluated the changes that had taken place in the status of women because of constitutional, legal and administrative measures adopted since independence. Second, the CWSI examined the impact of complex processes of social change on various sectors of women. Lastly, the CSWI suggested measures, which would enable women to be full citizens in building the nation. (Arya, 2003: 104).

Theoretical Framework

I situate my analyses within a framework that examines the intersection between social movements, bureaucratic agencies, and the operation of democratic decision-making processes.

Through my examination of the role of women’s movements in effecting state responsiveness in

India, I use social movement theory to understand the impact of women’s movements on the state.

I suggest a blending or synthesis of various aspects of social movement theories will provide a more complete and realistic picture of the Indian women’s movement. Women’s life experiences are varied because of differences based on location (urban/rural), class, caste and religion. Yet there is little basis to assume that women do not negotiate, resist, and challenge power and domination. In

India too, the desire for participatory democracy, for individual and group autonomy, and for a redefinition of politics to include the production of cultural norms are present in women’s movements.

For some women’s movements, the drive to create movement goals is just as important as winning concessions from the state. Whether movements can secure rights for its members and provide social justice largely depends on their organization and strategies, and their relationships with the Indian state. There is no real agreement about whether the women’s movement is home to one large comprehensive movement or whether what exists is a proliferation of different movements and campaigns, which may come together from time to time, to mobilize around certain issues, overriding the differences that sometimes otherwise mark their interactions. Sen explains that:

‘We have a vibrant gender politics in a multiplicity of sites, disciplines, and discourses. We have mobilizations of ‘women’s interests’, frequently fragmented and contested, but each contributing to a dynamic process of radical refashioning of feminine identity. Women, acting in or within collectives, often define and identify themselves through difference and conflict, rather than through similarity or common belonging” (Sen, 2002: 461).

Rather than one voice, there are many, instead of one national federation, a loose network developed and instead of one professed aim and strategy there are multiple within the broader women’s movement. The sheer vastness of the country, its geography, social and regional peculiarities, caste and class difference and the perpetual urgency framed in the locality of immediate issues, all challenge any notion that the Indian women’s movement is fixed, immutable, and static.

Rather it is a highly dynamic and decentralized network of different, experimenting individuals and organizations with, as Gandhi and Shah suggest, an amorphous, multiclass, sporadic, issue-oriented and at times an autonomous movement with several streams of ideological currents and varying strategies (Gandhi and Shah, 1992:23).

To capture the characteristics of women’s movements I rely on new social movement theory

(NSM) to analyze whether and when there is a movement in India. According to NSM, movements emerge in response to political systems that are overly hierarchal, centralized, bureaucratized, and unresponsive (Buechler, 1995 and 1993; Cohen 1985; Melucci, 1989; Touraine, 1985). In the absence of meaningful avenues of participation provided by the state, these movements attempt to create channels for participatory democracy. Thus while such movement’s attempt, in part, to have an impact on state policies, their concern is as much to recapture from the state a space within civil society in which there can be meaningful participation. By doing so, movements hope to alter public opinion and public demands, to change the way people perceive their society and government.

New social movements are more easily able to embrace a diversity of ideological beliefs and choice of tactics because they do not adhere to one single, strict ideology, or demand that participants do the same (Calman, 1989). Their agenda is not shaped by long-term or fixed goals, and the mobilization they undertake is rooted in specific times and places. My analysis of women’s movements that emerged over demanding anti-domestic violence legislation and reservations will

show that some of the impulses and characteristics of new social movements exist in movements

among women, including some of the poorest women (who indeed have caste/class issues).

While I utilize new social movement theory to identify the qualities of women’s movements,

I also rely on resource mobilization theory (RMT) in determining movement activity and the

structural forms movements take (Gamson, 1987; McCarthy and Zald, 1987, McAdam et al, 1996). I

propose that two clusters of conditions may explain the success of women’s movements in gaining

substantive and descriptive responses in policy-making processes (McBride and Mazur, 2007). The

first cluster includes characteristics of women’s movement actors. The second includes

characteristics of the policy environment. These clusters correspond to the resource mobilization

and political opportunity structure/cultural explanations of movement success (see for example,

McAdam, McCarthy & Zald 1996; Rochon 1998). These resources do prove important in the case of

Indian women but as the theory’s points of reference are exclusively western movements, it misses

some other factors that emerge as equally critical to the development of women’s movements in less

developed countries.

In countries such as India, where literacy is low and poverty is high, an educated middle

class can provide a readily politicized constituency, scholarly support and advocacy and leadership.

In Indian women’s movements, educated women have been both a vital “conscience constituency”,

concerned with the future of poor women, and a group acting in its own self-interest. Thus factors

such as interest, organization, strategies, and opportunities are captured by the resource mobilization

paradigm. Political opportunities shape movements based on the meaning that groups attribute to opportunity (Tarrow, 1994). Focusing on the broader political context will be useful for identifying elements that support or constrain the emergence of movements or movement groups through the political opportunity structure model. As it will be apparent in the macro-analysis of the Indian

11 women’s movement, this concept is especially useful in understanding how it has developed and changed due to the changing structures of political opportunity in India.

Moreover, theories on women and the state also provide useful insights into why women’s organizations in India develop an ambiguous, complex relationship with the state, viewing it as an ally in some cases and adversarial in others (Nussbaum et al., 2003; Purushothaman, 1998; Rai, 1996 and 2000, Rajan, 2004). For instance, members of the Indian Women’s Movement (IWN) have criticized the involvement of women from the Movement in state-focused processes. This perspective sees the role of the Indian state as perpetuating violence against women by the implementation of laws that work against women’s interests; by supporting and protecting the interests of those who perpetuate violence against women; and by supporting laws that work to marginalize working class and minority women. Such anti-statist feminists demand that feminist struggles be fought on a different terrain than the state in recognition of the local, concrete and context-sensitive nature of political issues and in response to the heterogeneity of women’s issues and their imbrication with other struggles. While sections of the Indian women’s movement argue that the inclusion of women’s issues and rhetoric in the concerns of the state is an achievement, there is also a viewpoint that argues that such “inclusion” has as its objective the cooption of women’s movements. According to this viewpoint, the ‘feminist’ language has been appropriated, not the politics. According to one critic:

There is a dichotomy in the way the women’s movement interacts with the state. Many in the movement have looked at the state with suspicion, because it has played a major role in the perpetuation of women’s oppression. Yet in its campaigns, the movement has ended up demanding legislative reforms. Why is it so? Is it because women perceive themselves as too weak to work towards alternatives? Or is it that women actually perceive the state as an ally? (Gothoskar, et al. 1994:3022)

To some extent, a familiarity with these debates will reveal the difficulties that Indian women have had in engaging with the state and its institutions. In fact, this discussion is quite relevant since my research findings suggest that the state is the target of women’s demands. Indian women have

12 pressured the state for both legislation against domestic violence and for representational quotas for women. Although many women’s groups have functioned within social movement activity, a significant group of activists also argue that engagement with the state is inevitable in a country such as India where many civil society groups are conservative. Policy change carried out by top-level policy elites is essential to thwart/hold back the influence of reactionary groups whose objective is to constrain the rights of women Therefore it is essential that pro-women’s rights groups lobby the state to counteract the influence of such groups.

Movements and Issues in India: Gender and Caste Identities in the Indian Women’s Movement

Over the last 30 years, a vigorous yet uneven women’s movement has taken shape in India.

A whole range of women from different classes, castes, and communities have participated within an active and dynamic movement with activists drawn from a variety of political affiliations, parties, and groups. The changing status and roles of women combined with the rise of international concern about women’s roles in development has promoted a dramatic increase in concern about the conceptualization of gender.5 In different ways, all cultures use gender as a primary category of social relations. As a social process, gender intersects with race and class. Gender identity manifests in different ways depending on one’s location in the race and class system. Sociological analyses of gender emphasize that gender, like race and class, is a social experience of all. Feminist scholars have persuasively argued for analyses that see race, class, and gender as intersecting and interlocking systems of oppression (Anderson, 1993; Dhruvarajan and Vickers, 2002; Hill-Collins, 1990;

5 Several years of feminist scholarship and women-in-development (WID) research has led to the consensus that gender is a fundamental organizing principle in society. Gender is a primary way of signifying relations of power and of constructing privileges and hierarchies (Scott, 1986); it is not only about women but also refers to a structural relationship between sex categories, linked to the state, the economy, and to other macro and micro level processes. Gender however is not a homogenous category since class, race/ethnicity, religion, region, and age internally differentiate it.

Mohanty, Vorst et al., 1989). I apply this model to the Indian case since the most striking inequalities

in Indian society are those based on caste and gender (Subramaniam, 2006: 4).

The caste system introduced a form of social inequality in India centuries ago and continues

to be the bedrock of social organization in India (O’Neill, 2003). It is a particularly rigid and

oppressive form of inequality.6 The caste system is characterized by a multitude of jati’s (sub-castes)

arranged in a four-fold Varna (caste) system. In between the elite (upper) and the lower castes, are a

large number of both agricultural and artisan castes of middle status. Some of them are land-

controlling castes, and others are disadvantaged economically and usually include the low castes. The

more disadvantaged among this broad spectrum of Indian society are called ‘Other Backward Class’

or OBC’s, which denotes a term of bureaucratic and constitutional derivation for those who fall

outside the four castes.7

Recognizing the existence of gender and caste as determining social relations will enable the

incorporation of both dimensions into this research, thereby avoiding analyses that rest only on one

axis of stratification. Women at the lowest end of an organized hierarchy, such as the caste system,

are likely to be the most vulnerable. However, the fact that women from amongst the lowest level in the hierarchy have less power relative to men and women from other castes means that they can still negotiate through and/or challenge these systems of oppression. The forms and extent of

6 Classically, castes have been divided into five divisions, the four Varna and those beyond the pale of caste. Ranked hierarchically, the first three Varna’s include the Brahmins (priests), the Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors), and the Vaisyas (mercantile classes). The Sudras, the lowest Varna, were the common people, the agriculturalists and artisans. Thus there are four major Varnas and several sub-castes are categorized within a single caste 7 Beyond the embrace of the Varna were the ‘out-castes’, or untouchables, polluted by their traditional life as scavengers and sweepers and therefore relegated to lowest rungs of society. Categorized as ‘Scheduled Castes’ (SC), ex-untouchables, Harijans or today known as Dalits, have been disadvantaged because of the long history of discrimination, socially, economically, and politically. Dalits, unlike tribal communities, exist virtually in every part of the country. India’s tribals are also a marginalized group and included in this categorization as ‘Scheduled Tribes (ST) since they remain socially and economically depressed. Numbering about 10% of the population, tribals live largely in areas they regard as their ‘homeland’. Many of these are designated as reserved or ‘scheduled areas’, where tribal lands and rights are protected by the central government (Weiner, 2002 and 1986).

oppression faced by poor women may vary and depends on whether they are interacting with, men

and/or with women from the higher castes.

However, I avoid any conceptualization that considers only the existence of caste-specific

patriarchy since doing so would constrain the ability to examine the ways in which the oppression of women operates between castes, not just within them shaping gender relations in Indian society

generally. Indeed, the concept of patriarchy is problematic because of its simple assumption that all

women face the same type/degree of oppression from men. This issue is particularly pertinent to the

research presented here because in India, while violence against women cuts across caste and class,

lower castes continually face the collective threat of violence from upper castes. Collective violence

considers that men from lower caste communities are not always able to protect ‘their’ women from

violence from other castes (Dietrich, 1992). Omvedt refers to such violence as social violence (or

social patriarchy). However when such violence becomes “normal”, assaults and rape of lower caste

women by upper caste men are often handled in ways that disregard the rights of lower caste

women, which leave women with no say. Instances of violence against women, therefore, involve

power relations within caste and between castes, and therefore, are not merely ‘caste patriarchy’, but a

caste and gender intersection (Subramaniam, 2006: 60).

Similarly, given the problems of ‘feminism’ as a term within the Indian context8 I use the

terms ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’ with some caution.9 Southern opponents have challenged global

8 Certain ambivalence towards the concept of feminism has been evident in India, even among those who have been part of what as a feminist movement (Chaudhuri, 2006). Chaudhuri suggests that this seems to stem from the disconcerting fact that feminism in India has had to constantly negotiate, define, and distinguish itself in relationship to the West because of India’s situation in an international order that has historically been dominated by the West (Chaudhuri, 2006: xiv). Chitnis (1988) also insists on arguing that a large section of the population recoils from the feminist rhetoric for the simple reason that it does not take adequate account of the historical circumstances and values that render women’s issues different in India from issues in the West. Similarly, Kishwar (1991) objects to the manner that ‘isms’ tend to get reified and applied mechanically whereas all ‘isms’ are both time and culture specific, including feminism, and explains her decision not to use the term because of its close association with the western women’s movement and general unequal balance of power relations between East and West.

south movements that call themselves “feminist” because they represent the imposition of aspects

of western cultural imperialism, and entail the imposition of a conceptualization of gender derived

from white middle-class experiences. This accusation combined with a falsely homogenized representation of the western feminist movement has led to a very real suspicion of ‘feminism’ as a productive ground for struggle (Mohanty, et al. 1991). The scepticism regarding the applicability of

Western feminism gives rise to the importance of understanding how women in different sociocultural and historical locations formulate their relation to feminism.

Moreover, it is imperative to clarify that when I refer to ‘women’s movements’ I recognize that there is not just one over-arching or unified women’s movement in India. The absence of a

single cohesive movement, rather than being a source of weakness, may be one of the strengths of

the movement. Although scattered and fragmented, it is a strong and plural movement made up of a

variety of different strands and structures, and ideologies. Whether it lies in mainly urban,

‘autonomous’ women’s groups in Indian cities, or in large contingents of the various political parties

or the many mass movements around ecological, unorganized labour, peasant, and tribal issues,

women’s movements represents a wide range of ideological positions with a history of political

action and struggle that continues today (Sen, 2004). Within women’s organizations and groups

themselves, a separate set of debates emerge involving the meaning and utility of terms such as

patriarchy, feminism, and autonomy, the legitimacy of a women’s movement, and the relationship of

women’s organizations to other broader platforms for change- all contributing to a fuzzy picture of

what constitutes an Indian Women’s Movement (Chaudhuri, 2004).

It is not my intention to explore the vastness of the contemporary women’s movement in

India. Rather I frame my discussion of the movement in such a way that shows direct relevance to

9 I use quotes around the word ‘empower’(ment) and ‘feminism’ (ist) throughout this dissertation to reflect the open and contested meaning of these terms since the definitions and practices of both often sit uncomfortably with each other.

16 the argument being made in this research. From this, we gain a sense of how both issues- violence against women and political representation for women- emerge within the Indian women’s movement. An understanding of how, when, and why these two issues gain prominence within the movement’s agenda sheds light on the extent to which the state has been an arena where women’s groups demand and achieve change. I thus argue in Chapter 4 that while a strong independently organized women’s movement improved state responsiveness to legislation stopping violence against women (a positive policy outcome), the absence of such organizational coherence on the issue of representation and links to state machinery delayed state action on the issue of representation for women in parliament resulting in no policy outcome.

Women’s National Machinery

In Chapter 7, I introduce the panoply of women’s national machinery in India from 1956-

1992. WNM introduces the category of “women” as a legitimate subject, indeed a priority of policy. Effectively addressing women’s issues when WNM engages with women’s movements suggests not only the existence of WNM but also its impact on policy. Since addressing all of the institutional measures created in India for women since 1952 would be an impossible task I limit myself to focus on those WNM, namely the Department of Women and Child Development

(DWCD) and the National Commission for Women (NCW), which worked on the two key policy debates analyzed in this research. Delineating the role of both agencies in terms of their activism around both policy issues enables an analysis of their effectiveness as potential allies of the women's movement within the state. In doing this, I argue in Chapter 7 that the activism of women’s national machinery around legislation for anti-domestic violence led to a positive policy outcome (legislation against domestic violence) but only because it was under the leadership of a government that was open to engagement with women’s groups due the government’s own position on women’s issues.

While this point suggests that WNM act when governments direct it to, signalling that these

structures may not be all that significant, I argue that they do indeed offer potential for the state to

ally with women's movement activists to produce state responses that advance the movement's

goals. I support this claim by providing empirical analysis in Chapters 5 and 6 that reveal how

women’s activists largely pressed their concerns regarding anti-violence legislation and reservations

on this segment of the bureaucracy to achieve policy goals.

Design of Study

The design of this study involves a longitudinal and comparative analysis covering a 35-year

period from the mid-1970s through to 2010. The research presented in this study will provide a unique source of cross-sectoral and longitudinal information on comparative gender politics and policy in India contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the interaction between the state and the Indian women’s movement, more specifically women’s movement actors. Women’s movement actors are not state employed officials; in this, they share the characteristics of social movement organizations as being, by definition, non-state structures (individuals, informal organizations, and formal organizations). I use the term to depict how individuals, collective organizations, and formal organizations have formed a variety of relationships that act to advance what they see as women’s movement discourse around anti-domestic violence/reservations.

My findings revealed three interrelated causal mechanisms accounting for different policy

outcomes. There are three independent variables:

1. The form of women’s movements largely determines whether movement activity increases state responsiveness. Following resource mobilization theory, women’s movement characteristics include aspects of movement organization, unity, and political resources while political opportunity structure includes aspects of the policy environment. Whether women’s movements are a coherent national network or a diverse set of small loose-knit (and even opposing) women’s groups can determine how they mobilize around key issues. Examining where movement actors are unified in their claims will impact their interaction with the state. Women’s movements in

India have unified on some issues (domestic violence) and remained divided on others (reservations)

2. A political party or coalition of parties in power that provide a more or less sympathetic political environment. Given that resources are political, probing the state’s political will, reflected by top political rulers or lack thereof in taking up issues has enormous influence on the extent to which women’s movements can become important political actors for effecting policy change. The position of the political leadership on women’s issues in general and on my two issue areas in particular, involves the openness of the state to women’s demands. I also consider that electoral incentives drive policy change depending on the issue. As various political parties have diverging views on policy change, the forming of coalitions in government has meant that negotiations over women’s issues can have different outcomes depending on whether they threaten (i.e. reservations) the balance of power within coalitions.

3. Very much linked to the second causal factor is the position and activities of women’s national machinery. The position of Women’s National Machineries on a policy debate will likely affect the insider-outsider relationship of women’s movement actors. The WNM engages with women’s groups to varying degrees depending upon whether it supports the women’s movement on an issue. If movement-agency goals do not align with that of the national leadership, then women’s movements will be wary of approaching Women’s National Machineries to promote their goals and influence policy.

Why Violence against Women and Women’s Political Representation?

Violence against women and political representation are of critical importance to women’s welfare and political participation. The link between violence against women and women’s under- representation in politics is mutually reinforcing. On the one hand, violence influences women’s physical, psychological, and emotional health, limiting their ability to get involved in politics. On the other, women’s isolation from public and community life can contribute to increased violence.

Women who become more involved in community groups and social networks decrease their vulnerability; they get support and access practical solutions such as legal protection, counselling, and advice. We must address the relationship between violence against women and governance because violence against women is a “governance failure”, as is the under-representation of women in politics. Linking both issues is justified since governments would do well to recognise how

violence against women acts as a structural barrier to women’s participation in politics and public

life. Indeed women face the chances of increased risk of violence the further they move into public

life and politics. The relationship between the two needs to be tackled for either to make any

progress (ActionAid, 2010: 40).

The violence against women issue is a particularly useful lens through which to study the

continuous and shifting relationships between women and the state. Security from violence is central

to women being able to achieve and enjoy other rights. Women in India traditionally are subjected to

various forms of violence simply because they are women (Johnson and Johnson, 2001). As in many other societies, gender-based violence or violence against women is a widespread and rampant phenomenon in India. However, violence against Indian women takes on a more severe dimension since some forms of violence are located in the specific cultural traditions and practices distinct to

India- female infanticide and foeticide, dowry deaths, sati (widow immolation), honour killings, and targeted communal violence against women. In recent years attention to violence against women not only as a development issue but also as a human rights concern has emerged in India. The first campaigns of the Indian women’s movement mobilized around violence against women during the mid-1970s particularly on rape, dowry, and sati (widow immolation).

Among all its forms, domestic violence within the familial context is the most prevalent and serious, yet it largely remains unacknowledged and unaddressed (Palkar, 2003: 183).10 It has

received scant attention as a broad social issue in India or as one relevant to public health. While

communities and cultures recognize the problem of domestic violence at an abstract level, there is

10 Palkar argues that although it took a while for Indian scholarship to address this issue, violence against women, the government and women's movements recognize it as a violation of the fundamental human rights of women (Lawyers Collective, 2000). Earlier studies were either condemning India for the cruel treatment of women (Mayo, 1927) or were painting a rather rosy picture based on ancient textual sources (Altekar, 1978). Later writing became centrally concerned with equality for women, (Dhagamwar, 1987; Dhanda and Parashar, 1999; Jethmalani, 1995; Kapur and Cossman, 1996; Kusum, 1993; Nair, 1996; Parashar, 1992; Rajan, 1999; Sarkar and Sivaramayya, 1994; Saxena, 1993) rather than explicitly with protection of women from various forms of violence (Dhagamwar, 1974 and 1992; John and Nair, 2000; Jaising, 2001). More recently, important new studies on gender and law have begun to appear (Agnes, 2000; Chandra, 1998; Rajan, 1999).

20 an equally strong tendency to perceive the problem as not being relevant to one’s own specific community, neighbourhood, or family. Consequently, violence within the home is fundamentally viewed as a private matter among family members, which does not require any response from the community (Nayak, 2003:2)

The term ‘domestic violence’ includes a variety of forms of violence, either within the four corners of the home or within domestic relations, like wife-battering, rape, incest, dowry deaths, emotional abuse, child sexual abuse, forced prostitution, female infanticide, intentional sexual trafficking, and sexual harassment. Women and children become easy victims of such forms of violence because of structural inequalities, economic dependency, low social status, and systematic subordination in the family. Within the patriarchal structure of society, the exploitation, humiliation and ill-treatment of women is a manifestation of conflicting power equations in the family as well as society (Palkar, 2003: 183). Domestic violence, like other forms of violence against women not only infringes on physical and mental autonomy, but also affects women’s health, self-esteem and ability to participate in the development process. Gender-based violence is therefore the most pervasive abuse of human rights (Kerr, 1993). Over the past decade, discernible articulation and documentation of economic, social, and cultural rights have made the links between development practice and human rights apparent.11 Development now recognizes and includes the process of realizing human rights. Within this new framework however, violence against women is not only a

11The United Nations Decade for Women (1975-1985) and the four World Conferences on Women (Mexico, 1975; Copenhagen, 1980; Nairobi, 1985; and Beijing, 1995) played crucial roles in identifying problems critical to women’s participation that were not hitherto conceived as development issues. These efforts helped to arrive at an understanding of how violence affects women’s participation within the processes of development (Boserup, 1970; Kabeer, 1994). Although the Nairobi Conference marked the beginning for many national and international conferences in taking up the issue of violence against women, it was not until the post-Decade period that several initiatives to recognize gender-based violence as the root cause of women’s subordination emerged.

clear violation of human rights, but also a central issue for development practice (Davies, 1994;

Duvuury and Nayak, 2003; Pearson, 1993; Sen, 1998).12

Women's political representation has also been an important concern to women’s movements

worldwide since the early part of the twentieth century. Until the 1960s, the presence of women in

legislatures and other decision-making structures was only a fraction of that for men. Since then, a

movement to increase women's presence in political institutions has grown and spread, generating

debates in most political systems and particularly challenging the claims of inclusion that are made

by representative democracies. Although India has been viewed as a consolidated democracy (Linz,

1996) since 1947, the levels of exclusion for various groups- lower castes, minorities, and women-

from public political institutions still remain critically high (Rai and Sharma, 2000).13 Strategies for

addressing this issue via the use of quotas have been slow in emerging and have thrown up difficult

issues. For those already in power the possibility of quotas seems to threaten to devalue their

position.

The significance of political representation for women is a critical policy issue in

development since it is integral to inclusive participation. Indeed, participatory development can

take many different forms ranging from participation in formal politics and participation in policy

processes to the role of civil society organizations in democratic transitions and decision-making in

12 Three lines of argument converge in delineating violence as a development issue (Burton et al., 2000, Duvuury and Nayak, 2003:1). First, it involves costs, such as those to the health care, justice, and social service systems, and inefficiency, which includes loss of productivity and absenteeism (Moser, 1989; Nayak, 2003: 45; Sen, 1998 and 1997). Second, violence is an obstacle to women’s participation in development. It inhibits their access to education, health care, economic opportunities, and other resources by restricting participation in activities inside and outside the home (Heise 1994; Nayak, 2003:45; Palkar, 2003). Third, the existence of violence against women undermines the broader goals of development (Ashworth, 1993; Bunch and Carrillo 1992; Gorhe, 2001; Kerr, 1993; Palkar, 2003; Peters and Wolper, 1995; UNDP, 1997). Development seeks to realize human rights and therefore must seek to eliminate gender inequality and expand choices. 13 Women’s representation in the lower house of the Indian Parliament has been low throughout the chamber’s history, despite the establishment of democratic institutions and provisions for women’s rights. In decades before independence, women constituted 10% of those jailed for anti-British activities. In the decades since independence, however women have never held more than 8% of the seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. Ironically, arresting women for supporting democracy became easier than electing to the democratic institutions that Indian nationalists were fighting to obtain (Nelson and Choudhury, 1993).

community management. From a gender perspective, the advocacy of participation asks the

question: ‘whose participation’ and what this entails. Differentiated by gender, class, and other social

cleavages, participation can refer to presence, the ability to speak or having an impact decision-

making. As quotas offer instant access to political power and an access to and control over

resources, they are an effective measure for rectifying this deprivation (Bacchi, 1997; Dalherup, 2006

and 1998; Krook, 2004; Nanivadekar, 2006: 120).

However, Rai and Sharma caution that as a mechanism for institutional representation, the reservation of seats can be tricky at best. If such a system recognizes only one dominant form of exclusion- gender, or caste, or race - it can be open to manipulation and monopolization by sub- elites within these groups. Thus, participation through an institutionalized quota system for women

does not always ensure improved/increased female participation in public decision-making or the

promotion of gender interests. This is so because different caste identities of women mean that their

gender policy interests may not align with their caste interests. The urgency given to policy

formulation in one area might not meet the needs of another group of women. I explore this point

further when I compare and analyze the policy issues of domestic violence and reservation in the

empirical component of this dissertation.

In explaining how the state responds to women’s issues, particularly through policy

outcome, this study examines a full range of political/bureaucratic institutions (parliamentary

institutions, legal institutions, and women’s national machinery), and women’s organizations and the

interactions among them. I take the position that structure and agency interact. While acknowledging that

the spectrum of political institutions is broad, I examine state bureaucracies14 and their openness to

women and the development of status-of women structures (Ferguson, 1984; Vickers, 1997). By

14 The fact that the bureaucracy is an emerging and unexplored arena of women’s political activism is something feminist political scientist, Jill Vickers, mentions in her work (1997) as well as Ferguson (1984).

examining state responsiveness to women’s issues through women’s national machinery, I obviously

focus on bureaucratic structures (i.e. Department of Women and Child and National Commission

for Women). However an analysis of a single state institution will yield only a partial picture of how

‘women work the state’ to get issues onto the agenda. Employing this overarching approach allows

me to illuminate the way in which policy outcomes are shaped by the operation of political

bureaucratic institutions (individually or in combination) and by their openness or resistance to

women’s organizations and their demands—a key feature that determines the impact of women’s

organizations on policy outcome. Where some women may be frustrated with their efforts in one

institution, they may be able to make advances in another. My findings in Chapter 7, for example,

reveals that when women’s organizations became frustrated at the resistance of one state institution,

specifically women’s national machinery, to their demands for policy input over the Women’s

Reservation Bill, they also engaged the electoral system, and approached parliamentary institutions

such as Cabinet and the legislature.

I have chosen to focus my research on the national level for a variety of reasons. National government

action has important symbolic and practical consequences, even in decentralized states like India.

National state action can indicate the importance of an issue area to a political community. In India,

although state and local governments were responding to the issue of quota reservations for women in the 1980s, the amount of attention and legitimacy given to the issue in both scholarly and mainstream political circles increased after the passage by the Congress government of the 73rd and

74th Amendment Act that reserved seats for women in village councils. It was the national

government’s recognition of the need for increasing women’s role in political bodies, which

catapulted the issue of extending reservation to the state and national assemblies.

Moreover, a focus on national governments is meaningful in federal systems such as India’s

even when responsibility for the issue belongs to the state or province. The national government in

India frequently interferes in areas strictly understood as constitutionally allocated as the individual state’s domain by tying federal funding to policy changes. In the area of violence, for instance, funding from the federal government for shelters, crisis centres, legal aid, and health services can galvanize state and local governments into action as they endeavour to secure this money. Similarly, although legal reforms with respect to rape and domestic violence tend to be criminal justice reforms regulated by the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), the national government did take action on various legal reforms throughout the 1980s and recently passed a comprehensive domestic violence bill, which became law in 2006. This study does not deal with the regional and local variation in the impact of national policies pertaining to gender. Doing so would constitute another research project given the fact that India is an extremely complex pluralistic, multilingual, and multiethnic society. India has 28 States and 7 Union Territories (UT), with several districts/villages, which have a unique demography, history and culture, language, etc.

This study is a gender-based analysis of policy interventions at the macro-level and is primarily concerned with determining how the state addresses and respond to women’s issues.

Although I do not necessarily focus on women from specific caste groups in any particular local context, I am aware that the policy issues I examine have differing levels of importance for different groups of women. Rather than assume all women have common interests, goals, and values, as so often happens when political analysis compares ‘women’ with ‘men’ as undifferentiated categories of analysis, this research invokes a framework which suggests that women are universally subordinated however the source of their oppressions stem from the multiple patriarchies they experience. The feasibility of this approach frames an analysis around a universalistic methodology while paying careful attention to particularistic manifestations of inequality. When Indian women of different backgrounds came together to forge a political unity on the basis of making appeals to the state to create new policies and laws or amend existing ones to protect women from domestic

25 violence, their unity cut across boundaries of caste, class, region, and religion. This is not to say, however, that women were not aware of these differences or they were not present. Rather there was a need to believe in solidarity, which would push difference into the background (Kapadia,

2002: 224).

Sources of Data

My research is multi-disciplinary, using theoretical and methodological approaches of gender studies, South Asian historiography, and political science. Largely qualitative, I derived data for this research from three main sources. First, I draw on a significant body of secondary literature related to the Indian polity (the state and its institutions), the women’s movement in post-colonial

India; and Indian state discourses on women. I draw from these secondary sources in order to develop the historical and current contextual contours of the study. I construct the sequence of past occurrences that led up to the unfolding of specific events (process tracing) related to policy outcomes. Secondly, I use archival data (Appendix C) obtained through research undertaken in

New Delhi and Mumbai in December 2005 and 2006 and from January-April 2007. While in the field, I collected the following types of data directly pertinent to my two policy areas: minutes of meetings, logs, letters, proposals, local newspapers/dailies, conferences/lectures, pamphlets, formal policy statements, and Government of India reports (Towards Equality, Five-Year Plans, National

Perspective Plan, Ministry of Women and Development Annual Reports listed in Appendix C,

Table 3.1).

Lastly, and most importantly, I conducted 43 structured and unstructured interviews combined with key state and non-state actors regarding a series of topics (Appendix A). The first set of interviews were conducted with women of the Department of Women and Child

Development and National Commission for Women, specifically their directors, concerning the structure, function, and performance of these institutions in order to get a sense of the workings of

women’s national machinery within the Government of India (Appendix B, B.1). These interviews consisted of questions pertaining to how the Department and Commission worked with women’s

organizations, which lobbied the state around both issues in terms of providing them with access to

funding, channelling of resources, and opportunities of influence via consultation/negotiation.

Thus, in these interviews, I explored the interactions between state institutions and women’s

organizations, including organizational strategies for pushing policy initiatives around domestic

violence and reservation, with special attention paid to extra state networks developed to maintain

consultative/collective relations between both bodies.

I held interviews with other key government officials and elites (Appendix B, B.2 and B.3) -

particularly with elite bureaucrats in the Ministry of Human Resources and the Prime Minister’s

Office under both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party governments. The purpose of these

interviews was to obtain a sense of how important issues of women’s representation/violence were

for the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party governments. I sought to ascertain differences based

on party ideology and whether varying predispositions by ruling governments towards women’s

issues in fact created different policy-making environments. I had significant access to party elites,

members, and strategists belonging to both the Congress and BJP, particularly female members

who are important figures in determining how the parties perceive both issues and how they found

their way onto their agendas. These interviews were also important in illuminating which party was

more receptive to the demands and interests of these governmental bodies (Appendix B, B.2). I

also interviewed senior officials and other members of the Planning Commission of India’s Steering

Committee on ‘Empowerment of Women and Development of Children’ and on the Parliamentary

Working Group on the Empowerment of Women (Appendix B, B.3).

Finally, I interviewed non-state actors comprised of women who headed up women’s

organizations and research institutes (Appendix B, B.4), along with women activists and scholars

who were all active on the policy issues of violence against women and reservation (Appendix B,

B.5). These interviews provided an understanding of how the government gave access to women

lobbying the state to address legislative measures for victims of violence and the extent to which it

provided women’s organizations and activists the opportunity to voice their own suggestions and

recommendations, all of which afforded them the opportunity to shape policy itself. These

interviews were also critical in gauging the nature of the relationship between women’s

organizations and state institutions in terms of whether the latter solicited women’s organizations

for their suggestions/recommendations over either pieces of legislation. This material illuminated

the extent to which these bodies were responding to the pressures of women’s group mobilizing

around domestic violence and reservation.

Organization of Chapters

In this first chapter I have introduced the central purpose of the research, framed the

contextual parameters of the study, laid out the theoretical framework based on existing bodies of

literature, underscored my contributions to the field, presented the two cases which are the focus of

my research, and indicated the methodologies I utilized in executing my arguments. In Chapter 2,

“The Shifting Political Environment: From Congress Party Stability to Fractured Coalitional

Politics”, I examine the contextual contours within with my research is framed. Within any given

political context, the stability of government becomes a pressing issue for women’s movement

actors functioning within the state in terms of negotiating their position on the issues of violence

against women and reservation. This analysis will support my central argument since one of the

variables in this research- political party in power - suggests that as various political parties have

divergent views on policy change, the forming of coalitions in government has meant negotiations

over the issues of violence against women and women’s reservations have had different outcomes due to electoral incentives.

In Chapter 3, “The Political Environment II: The Ideational Context”, I analyze how the

ideological orientation of the state projected through nationalist trajectories of Indian nationalism

and Hindu nationalism affect the ways in which women are positioned within them. As an element

of the political environment, ideology too establishes the context that shapes outcome in a very

powerful way. An analysis of the ideological disposition of women within state discourse will thus

illustrate how the place of women within the distinct ideologies of the main political parties has a

powerful impact on the policy outcomes around violence against women and women’s political

representation.

Chapter 4, “Movements Matter: Unity and Difference Collide Over Violence Against Women

and Women’s Political Representation” examines the form of women’s movements and the level of

mobilization around the issues of violence against women and women’s political representation.

This analysis is pertinent since it encapsulates the second variable in the study. I highlight the form that women’s movements take (united or fragmented) significantly affect their ability to interact with the state and its institutions and suggest that their success in achieving policy change depends on getting the state to perceive an existing condition as a public problem.

The findings presented in Chapter 5, “Mobilization: Pushing the Domestic Violence Bill

Forward”, are based on an analysis of empirical data that reveals the combination of the first two variables- ruling political party and the form of women’s movements- powerfully shaped policy

outcome in the policy area of domestic violence. In this chapter I argue the women’s movement that

mobilized around the demands for anti-domestic violence legislation was able to elicit state

responsiveness to the issue of domestic violence. A united women’s movement with the support of

a governing coalition led by the Indian National Congress (INC) and an activist role played women’s

national machinery, created a set of conditions which generated the state’s responsiveness in policy

rendering an efficacious policy outcome in the passage of the Protection of Women from Domestic

Violence Act (PWDVA) in 2005.

In Chapter 6, “Reservations for Women: Political Resistance and a Divided Women’s

Movement”, I analyze how various ruling political parties and a divided women’s movement led to

conditions in which the state was unable to engage women in policy debates over reservations. The

political context of existing caste conflicts over reservations created tensions within the ruling

alliance for women’s movement actors since the movement was not only divided but claims

incompatible with the objectives of political party leadership across three governing coalitions led by

the Janata Dal (1996-1998), the Bharatiya Janata Party (1998-2004), and Indian National Congress

(2004-2009) resulting in inefficacious policy outcomes around the Women’s Reservation Bill (WRB).

Chapter 7, “Government Institutional Responsiveness to Women: Accounting for the two

Divergent Cases”, focuses on the last dependent variable in this dissertation – women’s national

machinery. I use this chapter to examine the interaction between women’s national machinery and

women’s movements; and how engagement or lack thereof affected the two policy outcomes. I

highlight how this interaction evolved to push forward the legislation supportive of ending violence

against women when political leadership supported the women’s movement, holding the issue of domestic violence a high priority. However, when ruling governments lacked enthusiasm over the representation issue due to the threat the issue posed to government stability, influencing the positions and activities of WNM, engagement between women’s national machinery and women’s movement resulted in weak mobilization around the issue from women movements who were unable to influence debates over what was to become the Women’s Reservation Bill.

Chapter 2

The Shifting Political Environment I: From Congress Party Stability to Fractured Coalitional Politics

This chapter presents a discussion of India’s evolving political landscape in order to

illuminate the ways in which, the operation of state institutions create or constrain opportunities for women activists. The degree of stability in political alignments (during shifts between ruling parties in power)15, the nature of elite alliances and the extent to which they provide women with

opportunities to collaborate with elites, determine the nature of negotiations that may or may not

occur between state institutions and women’s struggles within a given political context (Rai, 2003:

225). In particular, the end of Congress Party dominance, the rise of the Hindu-nationalist

Bharatiya Janata Party, the proliferation of caste and regional parties, and a new era of multi-party

coalition governments have all triggered a volatility within the political landscape. These events have

significant implications for women activists since the urgency that political parties feel in the task of

keeping coalitions together means that issues are seen less as immediately relevant to that task

having a powerful impact on policy outcome, as I shall argue in Chapter 6. Personality, ideology,

and support bases have come to divide and fragment parties frustrating attempts to forge stable

national coalitions. Broad political changes in India shape the opportunities for women’s political access and understanding the evolution of the Indian political system will help account for the extent to which a given political system provides plural points of access to women’s movements.

15 As in most democracies, Indian political parties have been grouped primarily based on ideology along a right-left continuum each of which has approached women and women’s issues in very different ways. While the Indian National Congress has historically been the most dominant national party sitting to the centre of the political spectrum, parties led by the Communist Party Marxist sit to the left, and conservative parties to the right, such as signified by the Bharatiya Janata Party. At the same time however, characterizing Indian political parties along a coherent ideological schema and identifying any median political position is fraught with difficulty since within the Indian context, class caste, communal identities tend to cross-cut each other varying across a regionally segmented polity (Adeney, 2005:21).

Structural Crisis of the State under Congress Rule: 1975-1989

The struggle for legislation to end violence against women emerged within the context of the

period of Emergency (1975-1977), setting the stage for a contemporary women’s movement. The

suspension of rights occasioned by the declaration of emergency created several opportunities

facilitating the re-emergence of the women’s movement. Understanding this phase is imperative to

situating the emergence of the women’s movement in India since it demarcates the belief that

existing political institutions at this time were not able to incorporate and expand grassroots

participation and respond positively to demand (Calman, 1992: 21). Political opportunities in the

1970s were critical to the strengthening of the women’s movement in India. The meaning associated

with the loss of freedom after the imposition of internal emergency in 1975 was significant for the

mobilization of marginalized groups, particularly women. The meaning of the imposition of

emergency that was constructed from the loss of freedom served as a cultural symbol around which

women’s organizations re-emerged or were newly founded (Sen, 2002; Subramaniam, 2006: 30). The

response to Emergency led to the increase in the number of women’s organizations founded after

Emergency giving impetus to mobilization as a reaction against repression acting as a catalyst for the

re-emergence of the women’s movement, as I shall argue in Chapter 4.

After the fierce fight for equal rights of citizenship and legislative reform of personal laws16

established after India gained independence, many leaders of established women’s organizations

turned their focus away from legislative lobbying, as they believed that many of the key struggles for

political equality had already been achieved. Instead, they took up issues surrounding the

implementation of social welfare measures created by India’s main national party, the Indian

National Congress (INC) in the 1950s and 1960s (Sen, 2004). See Table 2.1 below for a list of the

16 Personal Laws are simply another term for Family Law governing all matters relating to marriage, divorce, inheritance, succession, adoption, maintenance, guardianship and custody of children in India. The religion of the parties concerned determines most family laws. Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists come under Hindu law, whereas Muslims and Christians have their own laws.

national parties. The government asked prominent women’s organizations to assist them in developing five-year plans, on the assumption that economic growth was imperative and that women would gain from expected prosperity (Forbes, 1996; Sen, 2000).

Table 2.1: National Parties of India Party Party Symbol Abby. Political Position Ideology Founded Indian National INC Centre-left *Populism 1885 Congress *Indian Nationalism (Liberal nationalism) *Social liberalism *Democratic socialism *Social democracy *Secularism Bharatiya Janata BJP Centre-right and *Economic 1980 Party Religious Nationalism liberalism *Gandhian *Socialism Conservatism Bahujan Samaj BSP Centre *Dalit Socialism 1984 Party *Secularism *Social Engineering

Communist CPI Far-left *Communism 1925 Party of India

Communist CPI(M) Far-left *Communism 1964 Party of India *Marxism-Leninism (Marxist)

Nationalist NCP Centre/Centre left *Progressive 1999 Congress Party *Populist *Secular democracy

Source: Election Commission- Political Parties and Election Symbols, 2011

The stated welfare goals of the Nehruvian years (1947-1964) provided legitimacy to his rule

among women’s organization and in doing so co-opted some leaders and activists of the movement

(Mazumdar and Agnihotri, 1995). However, many other women’s organizations were handicapped

either by the ignorance of their new rights or by the burdens of a patriarchal social hierarchy. They

were therefore unable to reduce the vast gap between the goals of the women’s movement for gender equality and the emerging reality. Nevertheless, the women’s question slowly faded from the

33 public arena. Concerns about women’s socioeconomic and political rights remained dormant until the 1970s, emerging again in and around the time of Emergency during 1975-1977. Unlike her father

Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi’s (1917-1984) personalistic and populist politics created a considerably more turbulent Indian political environment. Table 2.2, below provides a list of Prime

Ministers and their term in office. Decision-making in India became more and more centralized in the persona of Gandhi herself (Bahl, 1991; Hasan, 2000; Kamath, 1993; Kohli, 1990). During the early 1970s, Gandhi was able to hold power due to the Congress split of 1969.17 This split involved a conflict within the elite of the party which she won partly because of her political sense and partly because of her populist appeal to India’s numerical majority- the rural poor. Her political strategy, which had been created by Gandhi, targeted the masses of the urban and rural poor. She, however, attempted to do this while still holding together a dominant coalition of urban bourgeoisie and rural landholding classes (Hasan, 2000: 20).

Table 2.2: List of India’s Prime Ministers Name D.O.B. Party Term in Office 1. Jawaharlal Nehru 1889-1966 INC August 15th, 1947- May 27th, 1964 2. Lal Bahadur 1904-1966 INC June 9th, 1964 - January 11th, 1966 Shastri 3. Indira Gandhi 1917-1984 INC January 24th, 1966 - March 24th 1977 and January 14th - October 31,1984 4. Morarji Desai 1896-1985 JD March 24th, 1977 to July 28th, 1979 5. Charan Singh 1902-1987 JP July 28, 1979 to January 14th, 1980 6. Rajiv Gandhi 1944-1991 INC October, 31st 1984 -December 1st, 1989 7. V.P. Singh 1931-2008 JD December 2nd,1989 - November 10th, 1990 8. Chandra Shekhar 1927-2007 SJP November 10th,1990 - June 21st, 1991 9. P.V. Narasimha 1921-2004 INC June 21st, 1991 to May 10th, 1996 Rao 10. H.D. Deve Gowda 1933- JD June 1st, 1996 - April 21st, 1997 11. IK Gujral 1919-2012 JD April 21st 1997- November 28th, 1997

17 Prior to the split in the Congress party, Indira Gandhi struggled with the big party-bosses of Congress also known as the “Syndicate” over the issue of Congress’ role in effecting social change. It was this conflict between Gandhi and conservative elements within Congress that led to the split in the party in 1969 which saw the replacement of the old institutional strategy with an ever-more centralized and statist-populist one (Hassan, 2000: 16). The split consequently created a new party under Indira Gandhi: Indian National Congress Party (I) (“I” representing “Indira”). In effect, the split marginalized the old Congress Party where the new Congress Party of Indira emerged with a ruling strategy based on populism aimed at containing society’s growing expectations and political unrest.

12. AB Vajpayee 1925- BJP October 13th, 1999 -May 13th, 2004 13. Manmohan Singh 1932- INC May 22nd, 2004 - May 18th, 2009 and May 19th, 2009- Current *INC: Indian National Congress * JD: Janata Dal *BJP: Bharatiya Janata Party * SJP: Samajwadi Janata Party * JP: Janata Party

Mrs. Gandhi’s appealed directly to the masses by promising a little something for everyone.

This was her way of co-opting the growing demands from active movements and interest groups.

Her success in capturing widespread support, which in turn translated into sweeping electoral majorities, created a top-down political system to preserve and enhance Gandhi’s personal power

(Brass, 1990). She tried to transform Congress from a federal party to a mass political party in a competitive democracy: it claimed to speak for and to govern in the national interest (Khilnani,

2003: 183). However, such a practice of personalist populist politics could not sustain itself in a framework of a de-institutionalizing centralized state overburdened by the demands for socioeconomic reform/redistribution. The mass political demands being put on the system as ‘in- puts’ strained the capacity of the state to pass and implement development policies (Hansen, 1997:

349; 1990: 90).

By 1975, India witnessed widespread discontent over the failure of Indira Gandhi’s economic policies. Gandhi proved unable to reduce unemployment, control inflation, curb widespread corruption, or avert acute food shortages. The crisis of the Indian economy worsened by the 1970s with the start of the Bangladesh War (1971)18 and the oil crisis (1973) which all

contributed to the diminishing capacity of the state to pursue popular policies (Kumar, 1989). The

political opposition organized mass rallies and protests demanding her resignation. Ultimately, it was

a court ruling from the High court in Allahabad, which convicted Gandhi of breach of electoral laws

that resulted in her losing her seat in Parliament barring her from holding office for six years. She

18 At the call for help from East Pakistan, India Gandhi waged a war against Pakistan which India won consequently creating the independent nation of Bangladesh (See for example: Brass, 1990; Metcalf and Metcalf, 1990; Jalal, 2004).

appealed this decision in the Supreme Court of India which reversed the decision allowing her to stay in office long enough to institute “a national emergency” which entailed a suspension of civil rights. Fearing mass disruption and nationwide protest, Gandhi declared Emergency rule on June

26th, 1975. Invoked under Article 352 of the Constitution of India, the Emergency was in effect

during 1975-1977. This effectively made India a dictatorship straying the first and only time from its

formal democratic path (Kaviraj, 1986; Zins, 1988). Citing ‘extraordinary’ internal threats to national

security, Gandhi addressed the nation on All-India Radio:

“I am sure you are conscious of the deep and widespread conspiracy which has been brewing ever since I began the introduction of certain progressive measures of benefit to the common man and women. In the name of democracy, it has been sought to negate the normal functioning of the government and the economy.... Certain persons have gone to the length of inciting our armed forces to mutiny and police to rebel threats (Hardgrave and Kochanek, 1993: 245).

The recourse to coercion was not only a consequence of the long-term deterioration of the

political system but was also executed by Gandhi as a counterweight to growing opposition

mounted by Jayprakash Narayan under the Janata Party (JP) and its allies (Bose and Jalal, 2003;

Hasan, 2000: 17; Kaviraj, 1986; Zins, 1988: 150-79). Fearing mass disruption and nationwide

protest, the institution of Emergency ensured Gandhi’s power at least for the short-term.

Emergency effectively bestowed on Mrs. Gandhi, the power to rule by decree, suspending elections

and civil liberties- many opposition leaders were jailed, freedom of press was suspended, and

powers of the judiciary were curtailed (Baxter et al. 1998; Bipan, 2003; Dhar, 2000; Hardgrave and

Kochanek, 1993; Syed, 2003). Thousands were arrested, especially political opponents of Indira

Gandhi, who were detained without trial and uninformed of the charges against them. There was

no judicial review of the arrests. Incidents of rape, torture, and murder were numerous. Gandhi

abrogated freedom of press and banned many political organizations. Parliament passed the 42nd

Amendment allowing the government to curb civil rights if they interfered with the “pursuit of economic and social progress” (Hardgrave and Kochanek, 1993: 212-214).

Consequently, the suppression of democratic rights under Emergency mobilized larger

sections of the electorate and encouraged, within civil society, an expanded discourse of political

rights against the state. When Indira Gandhi ended Emergency by calling elections in 1977, virtually

all opposition parties banded together to form the Janata Party, which became a rainbow coalition

of diverse political groups.19 Gandhi lost the 1977 election leading to the dismissal of Congress

from the centre of power for the first time since 1947. Table 2.3 below provides a list of all

elections held in India since 1952. By the end of March 1977, the Janata Party, which had formed

almost overnight, emerged to fill the political vacuum left by Congress (I). The Janata Party

claimed that it wished to bring about a truly federal and decentralized structure, which Indira

Gandhi had repressed under her rule. The attempt to institute new goals on the part of the Janata

Party was, however, short-lived and apart from its brief rule, the Janata Party did not significantly alter the course of Indian politics during the late 1970s (Hassan, 1989 and 2000: 18; Kothari, 2000:

196-7). The failure of the Janata Party coalition to maintain power because of its internal conflicts

of factionalism led to its disintegration and the return of Indira’s Congress in 1980.

Table 2.3: India’s National Elections (1957-2009) Lower House Year Voter Turnout % Winner 1st 1952 45.7 Indian National Congress 2nd 1957 47.7 Indian National Congress 3rd 1962 55.4 Indian National Congress 4th 1967 61.3 Indian National Congress 5th 1971 55.3 Indian National Congress 6th 1977 60.5 Janata Party 7th 1980 59.6 Indian National Congress 8th 1984 63.5 Indian National Congress 9th 1989 Janata Dal-NF Coalition 10th 1991 55.7 Indian National Congress 11th 1996 Janata Dal-UF Coalition 12th 1998 61.9 Bharatiya Janata Party - NDA Coalition 13th 1999 59.9 Bharatiya Janata Party - NDA Coalition

19 The major political parties included the: Bharatiya Lok Dal led by Charan Singh, the Congress (O) led by Morarji Desai, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Swatantra Party and the Socialists.

14th 2004 Indian National Congress - UPA Coalition 15th 2009 Indian National Congress - UPA Coalition *UPA- United Progressive Coalition *UF- United Front *NDA- National Democratic Alliance *NF- National Front

As Prime Minister for the third time (1980-1984), Mrs. Gandhi began to reconstitute her political power based on huge electoral majorities in elections. She had in effect thrown open the state to popular demands and mapped out the idea of electoral democracy onto the Indian political landscape (Hansen, 1997: 348; Khilnani, 2003: 56). Indira Gandhi weakened the Congress party by her repeated attempts to de-institutionalize the party’s role in mediating interests and developing policy (Hansen, 1997).20 India Gandhi even began to court voters based on ethnic and religious affiliation by manipulating communalist groups to her political advantage. Kohli highlights the point that Gandhi’s changing political orientation was evident in the emphasis she placed on Hindu chauvinism and communalism that had great appeal in the ‘Hindi heartland'. This crucial move responded to the mass support of the Hindi heartland Gandhi lost to the Janata Party in 1977. 21

She therefore acted quickly to build-up that support by unleashing themes of Hindu hegemony

(ironically something her father worked on preventing until his death) since playing on identities was an effective way to win votes.22 Hence after the 1980s religious identities became sharper increasing

20 Particularly after the 1969 split, the party fell to the wayside degenerating into an instrument for winning elections: collecting funds, distributing ‘tickets’ or nominations for seats, and conducting campaigns. Rather, the party succumbed to the centralization “fetish” of Mrs. Gandhi. When mediating demands through the party ceased, politicians pressed them directly onto the state. At the same time, as the identity of the Congress dwindled India Gandhi’s personal appeal began to the fill the political vacuum (Hassan, 2000: 20; Kilning, 2003: 45). 21 The Hindi Belt or Hindi Heartland is a loosely defined linguistic region in North and Central India where Hindi languages are widely spoken, either as primary or secondary languages. The nine states include: Bihar; Uttar Pradesh; Madhya Pradesh; Haryana; Rajasthan; Himachal Pradesh; Uttarakhand; Chhattisgarh; and Jharkhand. 22 For example, the calls for an independent state made by the Sikh community, particularly the extremists, gained serious momentum as Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the most notorious Sikh militant, encouraged all Sikhs to question the tenuous authority of the Indian state over its territorial ownership (Khilani, 2003: 52). Escalating violence and the language of self-determination, however, caught the ear of Mrs. Gandhi who used Bhindranwale strategically to plant discord within the Akali Party. Once achieved and she returned to power, Gandhi discarded him, re-established control at the Centre, and resumed ignoring the demands made by Sikh representatives.

the polarization of Indian society along communal lines (Hassan 2000: 23); and this was particularly

so after Mrs. Gandhi’s return to power.23

After the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the country turned to her son, Rajiv Gandhi

(1944-1991) to be the next Prime Minister (1984-1989). Moving quickly to capitalize on the sympathy he had won as the only living son of a martyred mother, Rajiv called parliamentary elections in December 1984, and rode to power on the crest of the largest electoral victory ever won by the Congress Party becoming the sixth Prime Minister of independent India. He sought, albeit ineffectually, to revitalize the Congress Party organization by undoing some of Mrs. Gandhi’s tight centralization of power and by working hard to accommodate non-Congress and regional political parties (Hart, 1988; Hasan, 2000 and 1989; Kaviraj, 1989; Khilnani, 2004; Kohli, 1994;

Kothari, 2000, 1989; 1988; Manor, 1988). Rajiv Gandhi’s most significant break with Congress

Party tradition was the economic opening of India, through trade liberalization and privatization.

Many powerful elements within Indian society had found the high degree of state intervention that

characterized the pre-Rajiv Gandhi years a comfortable arrangement. Economic opening was meant

to end corrupt permit-issuing bureaucrats and inefficient manufacturers who jointly benefited from

captive markets and a cozy under-the-table circulation of ‘black money’ (Hardgrave and Kochanek,

2008).

Alert to the new world of emerging information technology and mobile capital, Rajiv

sought to ally himself with the young modern managers, who like himself found the old ‘permit

23 Salam argues that the 1980s saw the ascendance of Hindu ‘neo-nationalism’ where a very aggressive and extreme anti-Muslim and anti-Sikh flavour emerged (Salam, 1989: 274-7). He states although the causal connections are difficult to establish, some of the most gruesome communal riots occurred during 1980-1984. These cities all experienced major riots which saw the destruction of life and property on a massive scale: Moradabad (UP) 1980; Allahabad (UP) 1980; Godhead (Gujarat) 1980-81; Biharsharif (Bihar) 1981; Pune and Sholapur (Maharashtra) 1982-1983; Ahmadabad (Gujarat) 1982; Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) 1983; and Bombay (Maharashtra) 1984.

license-Raj’ constraining.24 Rajiv’s youth, his emphasis on economic liberalization, technology, and efficiency appeared to mark a new post-independence era for India. Indian business protected by

Indian government policy for three decades was suddenly told that it must learn to compete or

perish. The first budget under Rajiv’s government was marked by several important breaks with

the past. The government took a variety of steps selectively to decontrol and deregulate key

industries in an effort to spur production, diversification, and modernization, enabling the private

sector to bypass time-consuming licensing procedures. Liberalization of industrial policy and tax

reform were accompanied by a major war against tax evaders and unreported ‘black money’

(Hardgrave and Kochanek, 2009: 367). Rajiv however was only able to make limited headway towards economic liberalization. Even after some modest economic reforms such as reducing taxes on wealth/inheritance and lifting regulations governing the size of firms, India remained far removed from the free market vision at this time (Kohli, 1994: 101).

Rajiv’s vision of a ‘new’ India came to an abrupt end as he suffered a tragic fate similar to his mother’s when a Tamil extremist assassinated him in 1991. Rajiv Gandhi was unable to free himself wholly from playing the communal card. His role in Muslim community politics via the

Shah Bano case25 and intervention in Sri Lankan ethnic politics, which struck a chord with India’s

Tamil population, eventually cost him his life. The assassination of both Indira and Rajiv Gandhi

brought an end to the era of Congress’s dominance via family rule revealing a period of contested

nationalisms- particularly regional and Hindu- which began to burst at the seams by the late 1980s.

A period of power sharing was met by various national-level political experiments – mainly in the

form of coalitions- to find a substitute for the old Congress Party rule, especially by the emergence

24 The licence raj refers to the elaborate licenses, regulations and accompanying red tape that were required to set up and run businesses in India between 1947 and 1990. 25 Rajiv Gandhi's Congress government, already troubled by a loss of Muslim support, rushed through the Muslim Women (Protection of Right in Divorce) Act in 1986 along the lines demanded by Muslim leaders in effect revoking the rights of Muslim women to uniform laws applicable to all citizens (sec. 125 of the CPC which awards maintenance to divorced wives). The state justified its action based on the argument that national integrity was at stake since a minority group felt aggrieved (Mukhophdyay, 1998: 189-221).

40 of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political arm of the Sangh Parivar representing the conservative faction of Indian politics26 (Kohli, 2002: 9). Reflecting a change in the Indian political landscape, political parties, regional and national, began mobilizing diverse ‘demand groups’

(Rudolph and Rudolph, 1987) around multiple counts of identities. The issue of quotas for women emerged within this context.

Coalitions Politics and Power Sharing: 1989-1996

The 1990s was a period of growing crisis in India where complex social structures, economic constraints, and political opportunism provided ample breeding ground for the growth of revivalist ideologies and identity politics. At the same time, a fundamental transformation in the Indian political terrain triggered newly empowered backward castes on the one hand and the identity conscious groups -ethnic, religious, gendered- on the other, as contentious social forces. In recognizing these social constituencies, the new thrust of power sharing went beyond the traditional patron-client framework of accommodation of the 1970s and 1980s and became the guiding principle of this transformation. The participatory upsurge among marginalized sections of society qualitatively transformed the very nature and context of electoral mobilization. Politics no longer was played out within the theoretical mould of the Congress system. As the polity moved towards a more participatory federal democracy, Congress revealed itself to be out of tune with the aspirations of the new segments entering the political process. The real rupture took place with Emergency that exposed the limits of authoritarian centralism. It also led to an unprecedented bonding of non-

Congress forces, which managed to cohabit briefly in the first coalition experiment under the Janata

26 The BJP has its base in two extreme right-wing bodies: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is a paramilitary, non-party Hindu nationalist organization; and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which mobilizes religious institutions and personages. The Shiv Sena is a regional Hindu-right political party based in the state of Maharashtra. These bodies including the BJP constitute the Sangh Parivar. Although they all have different responsibilities, they share a purpose in owing allegiance and obedience to the ideological inspiration of the RSS.

Party during 1977-1979. Social constituencies began making political choices of their own

exclusively determined by their identity and socioeconomic necessities. In India today, no political

group or coalition could hold onto political power with an exclusionary agenda or with an agenda of

centralization of power. Instead, coalition politics characterized this period as broadly inclusionary

thus sustaining an era of coalition politics in India (Suresh, 2000: 64).

Changing Political Climate and Implications for Women’s Political Representation

The implications of a changing political climate became particularly significant for women.

Increasing political instability (shaky government-led coalitions), the rise of fundamentalist and

communal forces, the growth of political irresponsibility, lack of accountability and transparency,

and fragmentation and criminalization amongst political classes led to a critical need for women to

access resources and influence policy decisions through an increase in women’s political

representation. It was within this context that the question of providing representation to politically

marginalized groups through affirmative action and more specifically of providing quotas for

women in state representative institutions emerged.

With the breakdown of Congress Party-dominant politics, new political parties emerged in the political system needing to mobilize new constituencies. This need led to the support given by many political parties to the suggestion of increasing the numbers of women within political institutions. Hence, there was an increase in women’s political participation as most mainstream political parties began targeting women as possible constituents mobilizing them into voting blocks.

The increasing turnout of women voters, their role in popular movements and pressure from

women’s movements revived a focus on women’s representation within political institutions.

Women began to construct their own political discourses nurturing their interests and turned from

being docile voters into active ones. Democracy meant more than just elections seen as periodic

rituals of parliamentary democracy or an exercise of citizenship. Rather women interpreted

democracy as a function of political empowerment in which previously marginalized groups, such as themselves, saw the state as a reflexive site of power and resource re-distribution.

The 9th national elections held in 1989 changed the Indian political landscape dramatically in

favour of coalitional arrangements at the centre. This new reality owed its existence primarily to the

increased importance and expanding role of state-based parties, and the necessity of building federal

coalitions, which reconciled regional aspirations with national cohesion. Political forces based on

ideology, caste, community, and region existed as separately organized groups either within the

Congress or as independent political organizations. Although the Indian National Congress

emerged as the dominant party of post-independent India, regional interests and state-based parties,

listed in Table 2.4 below ushered in what was known as a ‘third force’ marking the advent of a

multiparty system in India (Chakrabarty, 2003; Dubey, 2003) during the 1990s. The ‘Third Front' in

contemporary Indian politics defines itself as an ideological alternative to the two major political

formations in Indian politics represented by Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. This third

alternative formed four coalition governments under Prime Ministers V.P. Singh (1989), Chandra

Shekhar (1990), H.D. Gowda (1996), and I.K. Gujral (1997)- all characterized by leftist, secular, and

democratic forces and relying heavily upon regional parties, with support from specific groups

reflecting regional aspirations and demands (Dubey, 2003: 270).

Khilnani argues that even more important than the rise of the Hindu nationalism, which I

address in the section below, has been the emergence of caste categories. The lowest in the caste

order and those excluded from it- Dalits- organized autonomously and withdrew their support from

Congress, which had always portrayed itself as the paternal guardian of their interests (Weiner, 2006

and 2004; Yadav and Palshikar, 2006). Their dissent was encouraged by V.P. Singh (1931-2008),

who had been dedicated to moral probity, social justice, and deposing Congress (Khilnani, 2003:

56). At the time of his death, Rajiv Gandhi had been out of office, and his reputation as ‘Mr. Clean’

had became tarnished by a series of scandals. Gandhi dismissed then finance minister, V.P. Singh,

when he exposed one such scandal pushing Singh into opposing the Congress Party (Hardgrave and Kochanek, 1993; Khan, 2000; Metcalf and Metcalf, 2002: 258). Singh’s image as a politician who sought to expose government corruption made him very popular with the public and opposition parties united under his name to form the Janata Dal-led National Front (NF) coalition.

In the 1989 elections, an electoral pact on the part of the major opposition parties not to contest seats against each other dramatically enhanced their ability to defeat Congress candidates.

As a result, the Congress suffered a major setback winning only 40% of the seats in the Lower

House of Parliament (Lok Sabha). As the 7th Prime Minister of India, V.P. Singh took office at the

head of a minority government (1989-1990) built upon a precarious coalition with Communist parties and the newly ascendant Bharatiya Janata Party ushering in a new era of Indian politics.

Singh returned to the original commitments of the Constitution and to the recommendations of the

Mandal Commission on caste reservations and promised lower castes reservations for education and

employment opportunities.27 Although the question of equitable representation for disadvantaged

groups has been at the heart of Indian political debates since Independence, the early 1990s was

prolific for the re-emergence of demands by disadvantaged groups for preferential representation.28

27 The Mandal Commission in India was established in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to "identify the socially or educationally backward." It was headed by Indian parliamentarian Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal to consider the question of seat reservations and quotas for people in employment and education to redress caste discrimination, and used eleven social, economic, and educational indicators to determine "backwardness." In 1980, the Commission's report confirmed the affirmative action practice under Indian law whereby members of lower castes were given exclusive access to a certain portion of government jobs and slots in public universities, and recommended changes to these quotas, increasing them by 27% to 49.5% (See Christophe Jaffrelot, 2005 and 2003; and Marion Weiner’s work, 2001: 193-225). 28 India has a history of more than 55 years of constitution-backed quotas for various marginalized groups (Nanivadekar, 2006). Article 15 (1) of the Constitution of India prohibits discrimination on the grounds of religion, sex, caste, and place of birth. Articles 15 (3) and (4) state that nothing in this article shall prevent the state from making special provisions for women and children and for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Constitution of India, 1950; Taxmann, 2000). The 1950 Constitution contained provisions to counter and eventually erase the

Table 2.4: State Political Parties of India State State Party Founded State State Party Founded Parties Symbol Parties Symbol Tamil Nadu All India Anna 1972 West All India 1939 Dravida Bengal Forward Bloc Munnetra Kazhagam West Bengal All India 1998 Arunachal Arunachal 1996 Trinamool Pradesh Congress Congress Assam Asom Gana 1985 Assam Autonomous 1987 Parishad State Demand Committee Orissa Biju Janata Dal 1997 Tamil Nadu Dravida 1949 Munnetra Kazhagam Manipur Federal Party of 1993 Goa Goa Rajiv 1998 Manipur Congress Party Himachal Himachal 2004 Haryana Indian 1998 Pradesh Vikas Congress National Lok Dal Jammu & Jammu & 1932 Bihar Janata Dal 1988 Kashmir Kashmir National Conf

Jharkhand Jharkhand 2000 Kerala Kerala 1964 Mukti Morcha Congress

Kerala Kerala Congress 1979 Bihar Lok Jan 2000 (M) Shakti Party

Goa Maharashtrawa 1961 Manipur Manipur 1968 di Gomantak People's Party

Manipur Manipur State Tamil Nadu Marumalarchi 1993 Congress Party Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

damaging effects of the caste system. While some clauses outlawed discrimination on the grounds of caste, others included the notion of positive rights involving state implementation of what are sometimes referred to as affirmative action policies (Allwood and Walia, 2004:381; Weiner, 2001). Originally intended to remain in force for only 30 years, the government extended this provision by three constitutional amendments for 10 years each in 1980, 1989, and 2000.

Mizoram Mizo National 1961 Mizoram Mizo 1997 Front National Front (Nationalist) Mizoram Mizoram 1975 Kerala Muslim 1948 People's League Kerala Conference State Committee Tamil Nadu Pattali Makkal 1989 Bihar Rashtriya 1997 Katchi Janata Dal

Kerala Revolutionary 1940 Uttar Samajwadi 1992 Socialist Party Pradesh Party

Bihar Samata Party 1994 Uttar Samajwadi 1990 Pradesh Janata Party (Rashtriya) Punjab Shiromani 1920 Maharashtra Shiv Sena 1966 Akali Dal

Sikkim Sikkim 1993 Sikkim Sikkim 1984 Democratic Sangram Front Parishad Tamil Nadu Tamil Maanila 1996 Andhra Telugu 1982 Congress Pradesh Desam (Moopanar) Uttarakhand Uttarakhand 1979 Meghalaya United 1997 Kranti Dal Democratic Party

Goa United Goans 1994 Assam United 1985 Democratic Minorities Party Front, Assam Source: Election Commission- Political Parties and Election Symbols, 2011

V.P. Singh, who was in need of solidifying his electoral base, announced that 27% of central government positions would be set aside for Other Backward Classes (OBC’s)29, in addition to the

29 Backward class people is a collective term, used by the Government of India, for castes that are economically and socially disadvantaged and face, or may have faced discrimination on account of birth. The category of Other Backward Classes (OBC’s) is a highly internally differentiated group in terms of their income, occupation, and education; and make up more than half of India’s population (Weiner, 200:202).

22% set aside for the Schedule Castes30 (SC’s) and Scheduled Tribes (ST’s)31 in what was known as

the Mandal Commission (Weiner, 2001:203). The effects were electrifying, particularly in India’s two

most populous states- Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. New lower caste politics emerged and flaunted

their social and cultural origins using them openly to challenge other political factions-namely

Congress and the Hindu right (Khilnani, 2003:57). The significance of this point will reveal itself

when I analyze the issue of women’s political representation via the Women’s Reservation Bill

particularly since the most vociferous opposition to the Women’s Reservation Bill came from

regional caste parties emerging within the Hindi Belt.

While the V.P. Singh government fell, a short-lived successor coalition came in under the

socialist Chandra Shekhar from 1990-1991. His government now faced a desperate balance of

payments crisis exacerbated in the short run by soaring oil prices associated with the Gulf War. It

was clear by the time of the general elections that the most pressing issue facing any new

government would be the implementation of long-resisted measures of macro-economic

adjustment. It was in this campaign however that Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and riding off a

wave of sympathy votes, Narasimha Rao (1921-2004) was chosen as the leader of Congress thus forming a Congress government from 1991-1996 (Hardgrave and Kochanek, 1993: 217-72; Metcalf

30 The Scheduled Castes (SC) is a category accorded special status by the Constitution of India. Considered "outcastes”, the earliest and still most widely known terms used to describe this community are “untouchables” and “outcastes”, and more commonly “Dalits” (oppressed). Dalits are among the poorest of citizens, generally do not own land, and often are illiterate. They face significant discrimination despite the laws that exist to protect them. In addition, they face segregation in housing, in land ownership, on roads, and on buses. Dalits tend to be malnourished, lack access to health care, work in poor conditions, and face continuing and severe social ostracism. Traditionally relegated to the most menial labour with no possibility of upward mobility, these communities are subject to extensive social disadvantage and exclusion, in comparison to the wider community. Thus lacking opportunities for educational, social and economic growth, they cannot integrate with rest of the society. 31 Scheduled Tribes (ST) as a category of peoples first appeared in the Constitution of India. Article 366 (25) defined scheduled tribes as "such tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within such tribes or tribal communities”. There are over 500 communities classified by the government of India as tribes, varying in size, language, social characteristics, and traditional modes of livelihood. They generally live in isolated high regions and in forest areas in the interior of the country or on the frontiers. Regarded as disadvantaged, they were generally isolated and their isolation was associated with backward technology and a relatively un-stratified social structure (Weiner, 2001: 201).

and Metcalf, 2002: 278). The period of Rao’s administration marked the real beginning of economic

liberalization and dismantling of the state in India. However, Rao’s government also introduced a package of reforms to create a more regulated structure of local government that would not only devolve decision-making power to the local level but also guarantee representation for Other

Backward Class women (Manikyamba 1989). The reforms involved the decentralization of power through village councils otherwise known as Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI).32

The issue of social justice not only made backward castes, lower classes, and other

marginalized groups politically assertive, radicalizing the pattern of electoral mobilization amongst

these groups, but it also increased the intensity of political competition which generated regional

politics characterized by leaders with remarkable skills and novel ways of flattering popular cultural

sensibilities. In a representative democracy, such as India’s, politics was not just about individuals

who rationally chose political parties as instruments to pursue their interests. Political life in general

during this period brought increased popular participation and heightened attention to the demands

of previously marginalized groups. Increased political competition triggered the decline of the

Congress hierarchy thereby providing an opening for the political conflicts in what Kohli calls a

“noisy democracy”. The most important competing parties included not only the Bharatiya Janata

Party, but also parties representing lower castes and regional interests.

The regionalization and "ethnification" of parties along caste/religious lines and the

formation of multi-party coalitions marked a shift toward a different kind of accommodative

politics from the internally grand-coalitional politics practiced by the Congress when it was an

encompassing umbrella party (Weiner, 2001). The national parliament formed in 1996, for instance,

contained 28 different parties, more than ever before and elected from the regions. The first United

Front government led by H. D. Deve Gowda won 332 out of the 545 seats in Parliament, resulting

32 Panchayati Raj is a system of governance in which gram panchayats (local self-governments) are the basic units of administration at the village, block, and district level.

in Gowda, from the Janata Dal, becoming the 14th Prime Minister of India.33 The Indian National

Congress and Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist) supported the

United Front externally, and internally by a bloc of smaller parties which represented lower castes

and southern states, which had long felt locked out of power at the federal level. These smaller

parties included for example the Samajwadi Party (SP), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK),

Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), and Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC).

Cabinet was mostly a mix of parliamentary veterans who served in the coalition

Government of Prime Minister V. P. Singh, which collapsed after 11 months in 1990, and political

novices recruited to the Government as nominees of regional leaders who chose to remain as Chief

Ministers in the States. Proliferating regional parties had therefore set their own stamp on the

national political imagination. Ironically, who represented whom became a contentious issue

throwing open a debate which revolved around the wisdom and justice of “preferential” politics– the belief that certain sections have suffered historic injustices and need affirmative action through quotas to realize their constitutional rights (Sharma, 1999). Although the initial debate revolved around backward castes, women’s demands for quotas at all levels of government emerged not long after.

At the same time, the secular consensus began to break down and communal conflicts were escalating, with both majority and minority fundamentalism on the rise (Upadhyay 1992). The growth of right-wing politics encapsulated by forces of the Hindutva (the ideology of Hindu nationhood)34 sparked persistent communal violence and the strengthening of religious ideologies

33 With less than one year in power, from June 1st, 1996 - April 21st, 1997, Congress revoked its support to Gowda amidst discontent over communication between the coalition and the Congress Party. It compromised to support a new government under Inder Kumar Gujral, who was Prime Minister from April 21, 1997 - March 19, 1998. 34 Constructed by Vinayak Damodar (V.D) Savarkar, Hindutva ideology is expressive of this cultural nationalism (Savarkar, 1937). According to Sarvarkar, Hindutva was not to be confused with the religion of Hinduism since the Hindu religion was concerned with the salvation of life after death, the concept of God, and the universe. A broader concept than Hinduism, Sarvarkar argued that Hindus defined Hindutva as being ‘a nation bound by a common culture, history and language, country, and religion’ (Prakash, 2002:14).

and practice. It is within this process, that political groups/parties, particularly under the Hindu

35 nationalist umbrella of the Sangh Parivar , contested the meaning of the concepts of secularism and

equality. This period had serious consequences for women. The accommodation of the state under

the Bharatiya Janata Party resulted in the passage of measures signifying a regression on the existing

rights of women, as new policies attempted to bring back tradition, culture, and the reestablishment

of women’s reproductive role as the only natural, historical one, which I explain fully in the

following chapter.

Bharatiya Janata Party Introduces the Cultural Modern’ State: 1997-2004

In many ways, the identity politics that dominated the 1980s well into the 21st century replete

with secessionist movements, caste assertions, minority discontent, and Hindu nationalism, draws

upon cultural identities, which are often inspired and manipulated by parties and electoral contests

(Hasan, 2000: 23). Indira Gandhi’s strategies to win the “Hindu vote” and, later her son Rajiv’s policies, most notably the Muslim’s Women Bill36, discredited secularism and the authenticity of

secular nationalism. At the same time however, politics of the 1990s witnessed increasing pressures

from the Hindu right on political structures of the state (Embree, 1992). The political and

socioeconomic environment of the 1990s in India saw the most serious religious conflicts including

regional conflicts, which found expression through religion; and caste conflicts continuously

displaced on to religion (Metcalf and Metcalf, 2002).

In this sense, identity politics in India by the late 1990s drastically changed. It was opening up political spaces to accommodate a cultural construct of nationalism as espoused in the Hindutva

(Bhambhri, 2003; Chitkara, 1997; Hansen, 1997; Jaffrelot, 1996; Malik, 1994; Prakash, 2002; Zavos,

35 The Sangh Parivar (Hansen, 1997: 299-347) or “family” of Hindu nationalist organizations is actively engaged in establishing a Hindu Rashtra (nation). 36 In 1986, Rajiv Gandhi slammed through a bill declaring that Muslim women would not have access to civil law in matters of marriage and divorce.

2000). Hansen suggests that cultural nationalism seeks to essentialize the cultural roots of the

‘people-nation’. Like any cultural nationalism, a fundamental ambivalence towards modernity defines

Hindu nationalism. According to Hansen, Hindu nationalism is a way of coping with modernity by

overcoming the challenges of a fragmenting modern world by reconstructing the cultural roots of a

people. The Hindutva supported by the Indian political right, including the Bharatiya Janata Party,

emerged during the early 1990s to impose a hegemonic and homogenous categorical order of loyalty

and discipline on the nation (Hansen, 1997: 289; Jaffrelot, 1996). The increased reliance on communitarian symbols helped map out religious categories onto the political scene and more importantly fuelled Hindu organization’s mass mobilization in an effort to change the political

discourse through the Hindutva’s control over the state. The term “Hindutva” conflates religion and national identity. According to the Sangh Parivar, since Hindus form the majority community in the

country, they should rule India as a Hindu state (Rashtra). Hinduism was the religion of India’s majority community, and what gave India its distinctive national identity, therefore all other religions had to assimilate (Varshney, 2002: 56); and from this, the idea of “one people, one culture” as the

basis of Indian nationalism emerged. This logic excluded minorities from the idea of nation,

defining it in terms of majoritarianism.

In embracing the principles of the Hindutva, the Sangh Parivar, an umbrella organization to

which the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)37, and the Vishva Hindu

Parishad38 (VHP) belong, rejects and liquidates the plural cultural traditions of India. The Parivar

37 The RSS or National Volunteer Organization is a right-wing, nationalist, Hindu, paramilitary, volunteer, and allegedly militant organization for patriotic Hindu males in India. RSS ideology is based on the principle of selfless service to the nation. It was the first Hindu nationalist organization established in 1925 by K. B. Hedgewar, a doctor from Nagpur, as a social and cultural organization in British India to oppose both British colonialism in India and Muslim separatism. Today the RSS is a cadre-based paramilitary organization whose branches (shakhas) train youth in physical strength and self-discipline (Hansen, 1997:291-99; Jaffrelot, 1996: Patanaik, 1998: 131-159; Zavos, 2000: 183-210). 38 The Vishva Hindu Parishad, established in 1964, intended to provide a bridge between the religious establishment and the RSS. Its objectives at the outset are formulated in consolidating “Hindu Society”, to spread the Hindu values of life, to establish a network comprising all Hindus living outside India, and “to welcome all those had

holds that groups, which make up a nation, come together for a purpose represented by a

community of projects, desires, and historic undertakings (Baxter et al, 2002: 113). Such essentials for nation building provided a culture based on peoples shared experience. According to this view, minorities must reconcile themselves to the political dominance of Hindus and the centrality of

Hinduism in the national identity. In this sense, understanding the foundations of contemporary

Hindu nationalism meant couching it within a broader context of the communalization of Indian society (Chhachhi, 1989; Chandra, 1984). On the one hand, the ideology of Hindu nationalism seeks to imagine or construct a community (i.e. nation) based on a common culture- a culture configured by a particular notion of Hinduism. On the other, Hindu communalism is a discursive framework that aligns the interests- social, cultural, political, and economic- of this imagined or constructed community precisely against the interests of other religious communities, particularly, Indian

Muslims. In this way, Hindu nationalism often becomes Hindu communalism: perceiving the former as a contemporary form of the latter (Zavos, 2000: 4-5).39

In addition, the revival of Hindu militancy was a reaction against several political forces fermenting by the early 1990s. These developments included the increasing self-assertion of Indian

Muslims, the fear of Islamic fundamentalism, the conversion of Hindu’s lower castes to Islam,

separatist sentiments of Sikhs in Punjab and Muslims in Kashmir, and the Ayodhya40 issue

gone out of the Hindu fold and to rehabilitate them as part and parcel of the ‘Universal Hindu Society’” (Hansen, 1997: 309) 39 Bipan Chandra’s work on communalism is extremely insightful here. He defines communalism as an ideology that projects the belief that because a group of people follow a particular religion, they have, as a result, common social, political, and economic interests (Chandra, 1984). Communalist discourse attempts to constitute subjects in and through community attachment, particularly through attachment to religious communities, which then come to understand the world around them as one based on conflict amongst religious groups. However, it also important to consider Pandey’s argument that communalism is not necessarily a term specific to religiously configured communities as Chandra suggests above. Pandey recognizes that there is tremendous flexibility in the understanding of communalism. Rather, it can be applied to any form of community that displays an antagonistic stance towards another community be it religious but also linguistic and caste-based communities (Pandey, 1990). 40 The Ayodhya incident was the result of a virulent campaign led by the Sangh Parviar to destroy the Babri Mosque in the city of Ayodhya in Northern India. Many believe that India’s first Mughal Emperor, Babur, tore down a temple built at the birthplace of the Hindu Lord Ram and resurrected a mosque in its place in the 16th century. The campaign, known as the Ram Janmabhoomi (birthplace of Ram) culminated at the site of the mosque

(Hardgrave and Kochanek, 1993: 292; Jaffrelot, 1996: 338; Malik and Singh, 1994: 60-72). These

developments reinforced a sense of insecurity amongst Hindus and ultimately enhanced the appeal

of the BJP’s leadership and programme. The evidence of this lies in the ascendance of the party to

power following the March national 1998 elections. A party at the fringes of Indian politics until the

mid-1980s, the Bharatiya Janata Party rapidly emerged as the principle national party in the following

decade though a series of elections and intense battles over religious sites, rituals, and spaces over

the meaning of shared symbols of Indian culture (Deshpande, 2000; Hansen, 1999; Momen, 2005).

The Bharatiya Janata Party based its clever use of religious symbols to mobilize the masses around the highly emotional issue of re-establishing their control over sacred Hindu sites, converted under Muslim rule. Although the manipulation of religious and cultural symbols caused extensive

Hindu-Muslim riots, the Bharatiya Janata Party became the chief beneficiary of the rise in Hindu communalism. In 1991, it emerged as the second largest party in the Lower House and was the main opposition party by winning 119 seats gaining control over four state governments in north India

(Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) (Hansen, 1997: 406-410; Malik and Singh, 1994: 90).

As a party that sits to the extreme right of the political spectrum, the Bharatiya Janata Party

became one of the first and only right wing fundamentalist parties to be in power. Both the 1998

and 1999 general elections saw the formation of a multi-party coalition government involving the

National Democratic Alliance (NDA). NDA-1 was led by the Bharatiya Janata Party but collapsed

within a year because the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a state political

party in the states of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, pulled out. The Bharatiya Janata Party proceeded

to win the 1999 elections with a greater majority and new alliances with 298 out of 597 seats in Lok

in Ayodhya, which is the bastion of Hindu-right politics. The BJP appropriated this movement by appealing to Hindus in the efforts to secure the Hindu vote. I explain the significance of this movement further in my second chapter.

Sabha. The NDA-2 united two dozen parties with widely disparate histories and ideologies. These parties were mostly ethno-linguistic regional parties including the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra

Kazhagam (AIADMK), the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of Andhra Pradesh, the Akali Dal of

Punjab, the Shiv Sena of Maharashtra, and the Trinmool Congress of West Bengal.41

The majority of the 24 parties within the National Democratic Alliance coalition were regional parties who were primarily concerned with heeding and protecting their own interests. For the most part, political parties such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Biju Janata Dal

(BJD) were primarily concerned with the control of their state governments and had been willing to forgo the direct patronage of central government maintaining a distance from policy decisions at the national level in order to consolidate their state-wise support base. This however was more a situation of circumstance than anything else was since the core of the National Democratic Alliance was the Bharatiya Janata Party. With 182 of the National Democratic Alliance's 298 seats and six times more Members of Parliament than the National Democratic Alliances second largest component, the Bharatiya Janata Party had a commanding position in the coalition that was unassailable (Election Commission of India, 1999).

The dominant position of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha both as the largest party and because of the electoral alliances which supported it meant that it was able to control the distribution of ministerial posts. This meant the BJP as the ruling majority had been able to infiltrate the administration of key policy domains delegating key portfolios to high-profile BJP party members. Key ministries of concern such as the Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of

41 While some alliance partnerships had some historical and ideological resonance, most were the outcome of willingness to gang together against the Congress Party. The Bharatiya Janata Party had fought previous elections alongside the Shiv Sena, sharing a common agenda of Hindi assertiveness; and in the Punjab, the Jana Sangh (a forerunner of the Bharatiya Janata Party) and the Akali Dal had reached accommodations in previous elections. In states such as West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, and Karnataka, the Bharatiya Janata Party forged alliances with a combination of regional parties and break-away factions of the Congress and Janata Dal. Alliance building enabled to Bharatiya Janata Party to extend its influence not only in terms of regional reach, but allowed it to tap into previously hostile social bases of support (Heath, 1999).

Finance, and Ministry of Law and justice, were controlled by members of the BJP whereas other ministerial appointments were seen to have fitted the interests of the particular parties within the coalition. Not surprisingly, the BJP retained control of the Ministry of Human Resource

Development (encompassing the Department of Women and Child Development), a portfolio which was central to the party’s concern with the promotion of a cultural agenda in line with

Hindutva ideology.

This context (the BJP ideology and its emergence on the Indian political stage), therefore, provides an essential backdrop to the struggles of women’s movements analyzed in this study.

Historically, the Bharatiya Janata Party has consistently subscribed to an ideology, which affords very little space for women to move away from their ‘traditional’ roles as mothers and wives. The policy environment during the period of Bharatiya Janata Party rule, particularly the ideology of state leaders, hindered the operation of Women’s National Machineries in support of women’s issues and inhibited access to policy-making arenas for women’s movements for both the issues of domestic violence and women’s reservation. For example, I reveal in Chapter 7, when in power, the

BJP institutionalized its ideas through state structures, including women’s national machinery,

creating a tendency of indifference towards women’s issues, which existed in sharp tension with the

activism of most Women’s movement actors over the issue of domestic violence.

However, the reactionary position of the BJP on the issue of eliminating domestic violence against women came as no surprise considering how the party had been complicit in inciting violence, generally. Statistically, the fastest growing crime rates against women have been in states where the party ruled (ex: Delhi and Rajasthan). Indeed the Bharatiya Janata Party could boast of

having the largest number of Ministers accused of crimes- 171 cases against Cabinet Ministers in

the state of Uttar Pradesh; including cases of rape and attempted rape. Whether it was mobilizing

women to commit acts of violence against women (Ayodhya) or institutionalizing violence through

the state (Gujarat) in targeting minorities and women, the state under a Bharatiya Janata Party

(Hindutva) regime has consistently propagated a culture of violence.

Conclusion

Changes in government are a pressing issue for women’s movements because changes in

political leadership make it necessary to renegotiate their relationship with state actors/institutions.

Coalitional politics and governments posed new challenges to women’s activism in India since the

mid-1990s whereby women’s issues were pushed aside in the struggle to keep ruling coalitions

together. I will demonstrate that this unstable political environment has made the establishment of

policy coalitions and negotiations over the issues of violence against women and representational quotas for women (reservations) very difficult, producing, as we shall see different outcomes in the

two policy cases analyzed in Chapters 5 and 6. These distinct outcomes reflected the very ambiguous

relationship between women and the state in India that arose from this complex and highly

conflictive political environment. As I will show in the next chapter, women’s movements,

especially during the last decade, have been confounded by a state, which simultaneously supported

women by initiating empowerment programmes on the one hand and, on the other hand,

undermined women’s welfare and autonomy by introducing economic policies that significantly

worked towards impoverishing the majority of women. While the national state leadership, in some

respects, played the role of benevolent patriarch, other arms of the state, specifically the police and

judiciary, were either gender blind or anti-women and operated to reinforce women’s ambivalence

towards the state.

Chapter 3

The Political Environment II: The Ideational Context

As an element of the political environment, ideology too establishes the context that shapes policy outcome in a very powerful way. The state’s ideology on the nature and role of women within the nation—an ideology which, as we shall see, has varied over time, is of central importance because it has a powerful impact on how open political leadership is to pro-women policies such as legislation aimed at stopping violence against women and enhancing women’s representation. This chapter constitutes a discussion of the first of three key factors that explain differences in policy outcome across the two cases used in this dissertation. An analysis of the ideological disposition towards women within state discourse will enable us to understand not only the challenges that women have had in engaging with the state but also to what extent the state and its institutions have been able to function within specific cultural contexts which effectively respond to domestic violence and reservations for women.

Indeed, the ideological orientation of the state projected through nationalist trajectories of

Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism affects the positioning of women within these discourses.

This chapter advances the central argument of the dissertation by examining the entrenchment of ideological differences between the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party

(BJP) and by analyzing the performance of both parties relative to their ideological disposition within state policy. First, I suggest that the early nationalist project under the Congress during 1947-

199642 was fluid and permeable creating opportunities for women. At the same time, its policies were marked by ambivalence to women’s roles whereby welfarism was seen as a substitute for real solutions to social problems that oppressed them. In contrast, I show in the following section how

42 This period also includes the one year Congress was out of power from 1990-1991.

the Hindu nationalist project of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party between 1998-2004 was more

static and rigid, reflecting a hegemonic and homogenous discourse central to cultural rejuvenation

and religious orthodoxy. In this case, the possibility of women determining their own roles and

position within the nation were considerably restricted (particularly when compared with the years

of Congress Party rule) since the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideas about women were shaped by

political and cultural objectives of the nationalist project which placed women within regressive

nationalist frames (Kandiyoti, 1991; Moghadam, 1994).43 The analysis presented in this chapter demonstrates why Congress regimes were able to be more responsive compared to the Bharatiya

Janata Party regime in addressing the issues of domestic violence and women’s representation.

Women as Citizens in a Modern-Secular State: The Contradictory Ideology of the Congress Party

The Indian state has occupied a central role in the reproduction of ideas about women’s role in society. From the perspective of women, the most important state policies that affect women are that intervene in the family. For much of Indian modern history, the ideological regime developed by Indian National Congress’ (INC), advocated a vision of a strong and modern democratic state, which was to direct economic development (Chatterjee, 1993:131-66). This vision survived almost five decades (1947-1996) returning in 2004 as the Congress-led United Progressive

Alliance coalition government (2004-2009) and (2009-present).44 The Congress began as an organization for nationalist activity in 1885 and later on as the key catalyst for independence from

British rule evolving into a full-blown political party and system of rule for almost 50 years.

Jawarhalal Nehru (1947-1964) was the first Prime Minister of free India and upon independence, at the helm, Nehru and the Congress system were enshrined into the political culture of India, the

43 I explain this further in chapter 3 under the section “Women as Citizens of a Cultural State: Hindu Nationalism and the Ideology of the BJP”. 44 Congress rule: includes 1947-1975; 1980-1984; 1984-1989; 1991-1996; 2004-2009; and 2009-current.

Congress Party leading the country during and beyond Nehru’s death well into the late 1980s. The

Congress, because of its apparent “openness” to women’s activism in the Indian nationalist movement and liberal orientation of its leaders, as well as its overall strength as a major force for a secular and modern form of nationalism, has traditionally been receptive to the issue of women’s interests in the post-independence era (Agnew, 1979; Forbes, 1988; Kumari, 1998).

The “women’s question” was tied to the nationalist question since many women saw the two as inextricably linked: India was not in control of her own government, so the Congress could hardly institute legal reforms on the status of women. Aware that linking women’s freedom to the nation’s freedom could counter claims that Indians were too backward for self-rule, nationalists supported the women’s movement in order to show that they were more socially advanced than the British were. Liberal Indian feminists formed an alliance with the nationalist movement, largely under the influence of the Congress. This development signalled the emergence of a new political role for

Indian women. Hence, with the struggle for independence, the rhetoric of the independence struggle reformulated the concept of the Indian women from the signifier of national cultural difference in her traditional role, to a modern women (supported to some degree by the discourse of liberal feminism) who would be the model citizen of a new nation-state. This reconstitution of Indian female identity became a critical component of India’s struggle for national independence. The leaders of the Indian independence movement countered the British understanding and criticism of the traditional place of Indian women in Indian society, a criticism that the British used to justify colonial rule. In doing so, the leaders of the independence struggle gave Indian women an activist role in that struggle.45

45 The British used the construct of “Mother India” as propaganda material, which measured the status of women in Indian society. The position of women for the British was an indicator of the modernization of a country; it reflected the ability of its citizens to rule themselves. Practices such as female infanticide, polygamy, purdah, and child marriage came under British criticism and Mayo’s book, Mother India was used to bolster the legitimacy of Britain’s imperial rule in India. Mayo’s infamous 1927 polemic against Indian self-rule berated Indians for their

The Indian nationalism, which arose from the struggle for independence during the early

20th century, reflected a shift to an abstract and universal modernity where the emergence of mass politics called for new modes of nationalist mobilization (Sinha, 2000).46 In this crucial period

when the political and social profile of the new nationalist project was up for grabs, an emerging

liberal first wave women’s movement with the support of leaders of the Congress such as Nehru

played a pivotal role in shaping an Indian nationalist discourse marked by features of modernity.47

In particular, liberal and socialist ideals dominated Nehru’s progressive views on the status of

women. For Nehru this meant giving primacy to the economic sphere because it was only through

a reorganization of economic production and distribution that enough wealth could be created to

ensure social justice for all (Nirmala, 1998; Jayawardena, 1986: 97).

Imagined in this way, women were critical in nation building as equal citizens. At this time,

state discourse thus constructed women’s emancipation within a model of modernization that was

not only associated with national progress and societal transformation but also inextricably bound

to equality and the emancipation of women (Moghadam, 1993:71). In this discourse, women were

marked as gender-neutral subjects in order to fit the normative definition of the citizen-subject in a

new modern liberal state as reflected throughout 20th century Indian nationalist discourse. A liberal

thrust on the ‘free and full development of a woman so that she as an individual could contribute to

national progress’ (Chaudhuri, 1999), theoretically shaped women to become economically

treatment of women and concluded that social customs accounted for the weakness of the Indian race making it clear that “these people were no ready to hold the reins of government” (Mayo, 1927:32) Katherine Mayo’s book Mother India. 46 Indian nationalism was committed to the reform and the rationalization of the structure and organization of society whereby the central organizing principle was the autonomy of the state, and the legitimizing principle was a conception of social justice (Chatterjee, 1993:131-66). It recognized the pluralistic nature of society, rejected the idea of homogenizing society by eliminating religious and cultural diversities, and held that state authority could be used to reform traditional society. Middle-class elites, exponents of Indian nationalism, were wedded to the scientific approach, industrialization, distributive justice, protection of rights and development of a secular polity based on the British system of parliamentary government. 47 Nehru’s progressive views on women had a significant impact since the political ideological regime of the Nehruvian nationalism dominated state discourse for almost five decades. Nehruvian nationalism is modernizing, rationalist, and statist nationalism. The central organizing principle is the autonomy of the state (Chattered, 1993:131-66).

60 independent by being educated and entering the workforce. As a result, the post-colonial Indian state initiated the breakdown of traditional patterns of seclusion48 of women by framing them as model citizens of a new democratic and liberal nation-state (Purushothaman, 1998).

This new concept of the Indian women demanded a change in gender relations as the state penetrated society and transformed existing social and economic spheres. During the 1950s, the split between the private and public spheres blurred as traditional ideas regarding the seclusion of women clashed with the state’s new “modern” expectations of women entering public spaces. While the

Congress under Nehru was equally aware that the move to break socio-legal constraints on women had to be cautiously undertaken, it took Nehru several years before he finally realized the enormity of orthodox opinion arrayed against him in his bid to carry forward progressive legislation. This became clear when Nehru attempted to pass the Hindu Marriage and Divorce Act (1955) and the

Hindu Succession Act (1956) (Som, 2001, 1994:168).49 An inevitable gap existed therefore between the state’s rhetorical commitments to gender equality on the one hand and the reality of the patriarchal Indian family and male property rights on the other, which fiercely resisted change.

The state constructed women’s identities and shaped their empowerment by targeting them as ‘beneficiaries’ of statist development. This could clearly be seen in the 1950s when concerns for women were framed within ideologies based on welfarism/relief aid and voluntarism or the welfare

48 A significant aspect of Indian family life is purdah (from Hindi parda, or “curtain”), or the veiling and seclusion of women. In much of northern and central India, particularly in rural areas, Hindu and Muslim women follow complex rules of veiling the body and avoidance of public appearance. Purdah practices pertain to patterns of authority and harmony within the family. Hindu and Muslim purdah observances differ in certain key ways, but female modesty and decorum as well as concepts of family honour and prestige are essential to the various forms of purdah. Restriction and restraint for women in virtually every aspect of life are essential to purdah, limiting women’s access to power and to the control of vital resources in a male-dominated society (Forbes, 2004:71). 49 The voluminous debates on Hindu Personal Law (also known as the Hindu Code Bill) brought into focus a broad spectrum of ideas on social issues from opposing dominant political forces at the time of independence. Nehru faced an array of opposition from party hardliners and veterans, Hindu fundamentalists within the INC, the Hindu Mahasabha (umbrella organization of Hindu extremists groups), Sikhs, and Muslims. In the face of these contestations, the lack of uniformity on the issue led to a diluted version of the reforms that Nehru had originally envisioned and the effectiveness of these laws in providing women equality were limited in several ways (For analysis, please see: Arya, 2000: 182-214; Som, 2001: 357-387 and 1994).

approach.50 The establishment of the Central Social Welfare Board (CSWB)51 in 1953, the

Community Development Programme (CDP)52 in 1952, and the first five (1951-1978) Five Year

Plans (FYP) initiated by the Congress all promoted welfare and development services for women

and children. Women handicapped by social customs and values, required social welfare services

(such as education, health, maternity and child welfare, family planning, and nutrition for women) as

approaches to remedy them. The emphasis in planning as laid out through first Five Year Plans was

to ensure women’s legitimate role in the family and community.

However beneficial these new institutional arrangements were, they contributed in powerful

ways to the shaping of women’s identity and role as mothers and wives. Although as a supporter of

liberal ideas, the Congress regime was formally committed to the economic, political and cultural

rights of individuals, insofar as women as ‘individuals’ were concerned, the state tended to relate to

them through the family and community and as beneficiaries as wives, mothers, and daughters,

rather than as individual citizens with inherent rights (Chaudhuri, 1999: 124). In this way, the state’s

discourse contained a contradiction between the ideals of individual freedom and equality in the

public sphere and the assumption inherent in its social welfare activities that women are naturally

subject to men within the family. In fact, despite the Indian state’s discourse on gender equality,

various policies reinforced patriarchal hierarchies. However, state discourse was also reflective of the

50 The welfare approach is the earliest approach concerned with development efforts in the Third World. It is rooted in the social welfare model of the colonial administration and post-war development agencies. The welfare approach addresses women "almost solely in their roles as wives and mothers [...] [with] policies for women restricted to social welfare concerns such as nutritional education and home economics" (Razavi and Miller, 1995: 6-7). For this reason, its policies are restricted to social welfare concerns. In the welfare approach, women are passive recipients rather than active participants in the process of development (Moser, 1993: 59-60 and Razavi and Miller, 1995: 6-7). 51 The CWSB was the first and largest institutional mechanism devised by the state for delivering essential services to women. Created outside the governmental framework, the CWSB combined governmental and non- governmental resources to create a network of agencies to deliver services in maternity and childcare, health, education, and training to women (DWCD, 2004). 52 The Community Development Programme was one of the first initiatives created to improve the situation of women in rural India. The government launched the programme with the aim of achieving the socio-economic transformation of village communities by mobilizing both governmental and community resources (Arya, 2000: 77 Mathu and Pandya, 2006; Sujaya, 1992: 85).

62 welfare approach, the dominant development paradigm at that time (1950-1970), whereby the state took a protectionist position for what it perceived to be a marginalized and subordinated group consequently defining ‘women’s’ needs. Seeing the welfare approach as "politically safe", meant it did not question or attempt to change the traditional role of women. Congress implemented programs and policies through the distribution of free goods and services in form of food aid, relief aid, mother-child health programs, and family planning programs (Moser 1993: 61) eventually taking over functions once performed by the patriarchal family.

By the mid-1970s, there was a shift in the state’s ideas over the role of women. The state’s interpretation of constitutional guarantees of equality for women was the right to economic independence and this prompted the state to make provisions for their education and training in skills as contributors to the family and the nation (Subramaniam, 2006). The Congress commissioned the establishment of the National Committee of Status of Women in India (CSWI) in

1971, which drafted a National Plan of Action (NPA) laying emphasis on women’s economic roles.

Influenced by international and national pressure, Congress attempted to reframe women as economic units of development (Arya, 2000: 104-135; Chaudhuri, 1999: 121-22; Yadav and Mishra,

2003: 156) through the development approach.53

At the operational level, Congress allocated special sections within the Five Year Plans and development schemes for women and a special set of programmes tailored to the ‘social’ role assigned to them by the planners. Integration of women in development (WID) became a declared goal of the decade 1975-1985 (Tinker, 1990). Though this concept of integrating women into economic development carried with it ideas of education, employment, equality, and empowerment,

53 The equity approach is the original Women in Development (WID) approach. It was introduced by the WID movement in the United States, and became popular during the United Nations Decade for Women. It is based on the assumption that economic growth has a negative impact on women. The equity approach therefore advocates equal distribution of the benefits of development between men and women. It supports women's integration into the development process through access to employment and the market-place.

63 it was only education and employment which received immediate attention. Hence, the state created policies that allowed women to be part-time workers so they could leave and re-enter the work force to fulfill their child caring responsibilities. Such policies were clearly devoid of any pretensions of equality and empowerment aired by the state. Thus, the main image of women that emerged throughout these initiatives emphasized the state’s ideas of women as mother and unpaid homemaker. The state considered the family as the basic unit of development, spelling out its intentions to focus on the more vulnerable members of the family, which included women (Planning

Commission of India, Sixth Five Year Plan, 1980-85: 321-38). In identifying the family, rather than the woman, as the basic unit of development, the state did not consider women as autonomous primary participants in the development or nation-building process. Perceiving women’s employment as a supplement to family income or as an opportunity enhancing the capabilities of mothers to look after the educational, health, and nutritional needs of children and the family rendered them as secondary-income earners. The state’s ideology, therefore, shaped women’s identities not as heads of households or primary earners of the family, but rather as subordinate and dependent beings.

In this way, the state was constructing and/or reinforcing women’s familial identity (rather than recognizing their individual identity) even though it acknowledged in rhetoric that equality for women was an issue that needed to be addressed (Subramaniam, 2006: 28). The predisposition of the state to define a woman’s identity as a wife and mother cemented women’s images primarily as mothers and housekeepers. While the economic structure, absence of dynamic economic growth, and patriarchal values in society were also important factors in shaping women’s place in the economy, the state’s approach not only relegated women to low and underpaid sectors but also was unable to challenge the gender stereotypes in and outside the home. At the same time, the state still expected women to fulfill their duties within the home, reinforcing the working-mother model:

women were to take up employment, seek training for it, and simultaneously fulfil their

mother/wifely duties (Arya, 2000: 108; Banerjee, 1998; Chaudhuri, 1999: 122; Mukherjee, 1999).

Hence, over the past four decades the state focused on addressing women’s “practical” gender

needs54 continuing to reproduce patriarchal ideologies and practices. Practical gender needs are a response to immediate perceived necessity, identified within a specific context. They are practical in nature and often are concerned with inadequacies in living conditions such as provision of fuel, water, healthcare, and employment (Moser, 1993).

While keeping these images of women alive through the Five Year Plans and other various state policies, the state also began to engage with ideas of ‘empowerment’, ‘participation’, and

‘agency’, which were gaining attention at the international level by the 1990s. The state extended the concept of development to include bringing changes in social attitudes that obstructed the realization of empowerment of women through their own active participation (Arya, 2000: 140;

Chakraborty, 2004; Sahay, 1998) signalling a shift from the development approach to an empowerment one. In the 1990s, the Indian state articulated ‘empowerment’ as mobilizing women into collectives, and as strengthening them to share and question their life situations. This changed attitude on the part of the state would eventually help women participate effectively in discussions affecting greater control over their lives.55 Empowerment approaches, implemented through

government programs, were aimed at raising the self-image and confidence of women, by sharing

and providing knowledge and information, and building collective strength to eventually help

women participate effectively in discussions affecting greater control over their lives. Some of the

programme initiatives undertaken for empowering women during the Eighth Plan period included

54 Practical gender needs are a response to immediate perceived necessity, identified within a specific context. They are practical in nature and often are concerned with inadequacies in living conditions such as provision of fuel, water, healthcare, and employment. For details see, Moser, 1993. 55 Collective empowerment refers in particular to that empowerment achieved because of the collective action of a group. The core elements for collective empowerment include: sense of collective agency; self-organization and management; group identity; and group dignity (Rowlands, 1997: 115-116 and Rowlands, 1997: 23).

the following: setting up of a National Commission for Women in 1992; setting up of Rashtriya

Mahila Kosh (National Credit Fund for Women)56; launching the Mahila Samriddhi Yojana

(Integrated Women's Empowerment Programme)57 in 1993; and the National Policy for

Empowerment of Women in 2001. The adoption of the empowerment approach by the state meant

the leadership now understood that the oppression of women was located in age-old power-based

gender relations existing within family, community, and society, and that it recognized women as

agents in addressing and challenging their situations. The new approach pushed women to locate the sites of their oppression and be aware of their rights.

By articulating ‘empowerment’, the state during the Congress government from 1991-1996

carefully attempted to reconstruct women from passive recipients of welfare and targets of

development to agents of change by providing women the opportunity to engage in dialogues over

decisions which impacted their life and challenge existing power relations. In doing this, the state

related the process of empowerment to three things: exposing the oppressive nature of gender

relations; critically challenging them; and creatively trying to shape different social relations with the

active participation of women (Arya, 2000: 164). To achieve this, Congress drafted and passed 2

pieces of legislation- the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts- that mandated the reservation of seats for

women in village councils in 1992. The rhetoric of social development that looked at ‘uplifting’ or

‘empowering’ women framed women’s political representation through their roles within panchayats

(village councils).

Furthermore, when Congress returned to power leading the United Progressive Alliance

coalition government in 2004 it took bold measures to frame policies and laws that challenged the

56 National Credit Fund for Women was established for women to meet the credit needs of poor and asset-less women. 57 The Integrated Women's Empowerment Programme was established to empower women by institutionalizing their savings so that they can have greater control over household resources.

generic and structural issues of women’s oppression by addressing “strategic” gender needs58 such as

increased political participation of women, rights to property/land, reproductive rights, and labour

protection for women. While the Protection for Woman Against Domestic Violence bill passed in

2006, the government tabled various other bills in Parliament: the Women’s Reservation Bill (1996)

(passed in the upper house of Parliament in March 2010), the Protection of Women Against Sexual

Harassment at Workplace Bill (2010), and the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence

(Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill (2011).

Indeed the bulk of policy-making for women initiated by Congress political regimes were

not only responsive to women’s demands, but also proactive in terms of policy initiatives specifically geared to their interests. As a social democratic-populist party, the Indian National

Congress advocated for the empowerment of all sections of society through providing welfare for

the economically and socially disadvantaged sections of the society; and through "affirmative

action" for weaker sections of society in education and employment. At the same time it can also

be argued that Congress’ performance in addressing women’s interests and needs was previously

marked by a lack of clear perspective over the role and status of women in contemporary Indian

society (1966-1975; and 1980-1984), whereby welfarism was seen as a substitute for real solutions to social problems that oppressed them. While the Congress, for much of the time it was in power, manifested a contradictory attitude towards women, the government of the Bharatiya Janata Party enunciated a set of ideas that signified a reversal of support for women’s interests when it captured state power making systematic attempts to control and shape the ideological vision of large parts of the bureaucracy.

58 Interventions addressing strategic gender interests focus on fundamental issues related to women’s (or, less often, men’s) subordination and gender inequities. Strategic gender interests are long-term, usually not material, and relating to structural changes in society regarding women’s status and equity. They include legislation for equal rights, reproductive choice, and increased participation in decision-making (Moser, 1989).

Women as Citizens of a Cultural State: Hindu Nationalism and the Ideology of the BJP

Political rule under the Bharatiya Janata Party coalition-led National Democratic Alliance

Government (NDA) (1998-2004) was marked by a period of resistance to women’s activism

translating into less openness to women’s activism and interests. State discourse constructed

women within a ‘women-in-the-family or patriarchal project’ revealing that Hindu right nationalism

would not facilitate an incremental change for women. Instead Hindu nationalism restricted

women’s political behaviour, created policies that constructed women as markers or cultural symbols

of the nation, or incited women to engage in violent movements for the sake of national purity.

During the mid-1990s and onwards, I argue that policy access and input from women was

deliberately resisted by the Bharatiya Janata Party to ‘contain’ women within their rigid formulation

of gender ideology.

The emergence of cultural/religious nationalism dated back to the pre-independence period

and took two forms: Muslim and Hindu nationalisms. Muslim nationalism emerged in the early 20th century and led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Muslim nationalism wrapped itself around the two-nation theory, which claimed Hindus and Muslims were two different communities that needed two separate states (Hay, 1988: 228-232; Khan, 1985; Metcalf and Metcalf, 2002: 204-213;

Varshney, 2002; Verma, 2001). Hindu nationalism grew more or less as a reactionary movement against Muslim nationalism and evolved over the idea of Hindu majoritarianism. Hindu nationalism originally arose in a non-political organization, the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh (RSS), during the 1930’s, re-emerging as a movement (Hindutva) which sought to displace the secularist/pluralist/liberalist state discourse promoted over the last four decades by the Congress as specific characteristics of Indian nationalism (Marty and Appleby, 1997). Hindu nationalism

redefined the state as Hindu rather than secular or multicultural and it attempted to shift state

policies in a more authoritarian, centralized, and militaristic direction. Such a move would have

significant implications for women.

Efforts to operationalize the ideology of the Hindutva became a reality when the Bharatiya

Janata Party first came to power in a coalition government in 1996 and again from 1998-2004. Once

in power it sought to control and shape ideological visions of large parts of the bureaucracy,

educational institutions, and the media. In very systematic ways, the party attempted to change policy and the institutional function of the bureaucracy on specific issues around religious, gender, and national identity. In particular, the Bharatiya Janata Party introduced the issue of gender into public discourse, presenting the public with an idealized version of an Indian woman, citizen, and state, drawing from orthodox Hindu and patriarchal sources. These concepts were not new within

Indian public sphere. What was new however were the intensity of the debates and the articulation

of traditional ideas at the highest levels of political power which made such notions appear far more

‘normal’ to the masses.

While claiming full respect for the political and civil rights of all citizens, the Bharatiya Janata

Party has in its political practice demonstrated that its version of nationalism often clashes with

generally acknowledged features of Indian democracy, particularly minority rights and, in particular,

with women’s rights. The party envisions a non-interventionist state in which free markets rule, and self-reliance and individual achievement are the primary factors behind economic prosperity.

Consequently, the Bharatiya Janata Party functions not only as a party of governance, but also a

(cultural and political) movement through its ideology of Hindutva and this has had serious implications for women. The Bharatiya Janata Party propounds the ideology of cultural nationalism as laid out by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh defined as seeking to imagine or construct a community (i.e.: nation) on the basis of a common culture- a culture configured by a particular

notion of Hinduism. Hindu nationalism, as discussed in Chapter 2 delineates ideas about genders

69 and their roles by articulating ideas of masculinity and femininity which, when incorporated into public policy, shape female and male participation in nation building as well as the manner in which the nation is embodied in the imagination of nationalists (Arya, 2000; Banerjee, 2005).

The relationship between the Hindu right and women also dates back to pre-independent

India. The Hindu Right originally limited women to obscure positions in conformance with its generally orthodox gender perspective that women’s main function was a caregiver in the home. As the first Hindu extremist body to emerge, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), established in

1925, began as an all-male organization ignoring any appeals to women since it aimed to keep women bound within a patriarchal system, limiting any challenges to the privileged position of men within society (Sarkar, 1993). It was not until 1936 that the RSS spawned a women’s wing, the

Rashtra Sevika Samiti (women who serve the country) marking the “right-wing” entry of women into the nationalist movement (Bacchetta and Power, 2002). Dr. Keshav Baliram Hegdewar (1889-

1940), the founder and leader of the RSS, opened the doors to women at this time since there was a rapid leftist advance and consolidation within the peasant and trade union fronts. The Rashtriya

Sevak Sangh knew that their social base was very limited because they had mobilized their recruits mainly from high caste, middle class, and urban sections (Basu, 1993a: 80). In order to counteract the strengthening of the Indian Left, a right-wing Hindu counter-mobilization emerged and expanded its base to include women of their own caste/class and families (Sarkar, 1993).

While women were able to establish their own space within the Samiti, their activities were limited. RSS leaders, given their view of women as primarily caregivers, had no interest in broadening the discussion of gender issues or in increasing women’s participation and made no efforts to broaden the RSS gender ideology. In other words, no discussion of gender-specific issues emerged nor initiatives undertaken to join movements which mobilized around gender issues

(Sarkar, 1993: 18). In the early days of the RSS, the aspirations of women were embodied in an

ideology that involved the primacy of patriotic motherhood, thereby interpreting the traditional role

of women (as family caregivers) in a larger, generalized ideological framework. Since the RSS did

not stress women’s formal organizational work, the Samiti placed no priority on women’s issues,

leading a low-priority, and non-innovative existence (Sarkar, 1995: 186). In short, these women,

unlike their counterparts in the mainstream national independence movement, had no plans to

embark on public political activity. Rather, they concentrated mainly on informal work within the

family.

Although communal forces after independence lay dormant due to a ban on the RSS in

1948, the emergence of other Hindu right-wing groups resulted in the slow growth and development

of right-wing Hindu activities.59 Subsequently, the changing political and socioeconomic

environment of the late 1980s resurrected the RSS and the Hindutva movement. To propagate the

concept of a unified Hindu culture and nation- something that never existed as such earlier- the

Hindutva movement needed to reinvent cultural as well as religious ideals (Poggendorf-Kakar,

2001). In this process of creating and negotiating Hindu traditions and values to form a sense of community religious leaders, crafted new models of masculinity and femininity based on old models of female power and family solidarity (Banerjee, 2003; Basu, 2005 and 1999; Chowdhury, 2000; Das,

2004; Mazumdar, 1995; Sarkar and Butalia, 1995; Zacharias, 2001).

The concept of womanhood as Matri Shakti (female power) was a dominant theme within

Hindu nationalist discourse and heavily underscored the Hindutva’s understanding of women’s

“equality” (BJP, 1984; Gupta, 1993; Sarkar and Butalia, 1995). Hindu nationalism related the state to women in only one way: that of defining women in terms of the images of Hindu goddesses - as

59 The assassination of Gandhi in 1948 by a Hindu nationalist, who was a former RSS member and who saw Ghandi as being ‘soft’ on Muslims, resulted in the outlawing of the most aggressive of the Hindu right-wing groups (Mazumdar, 1995). In addition to this, the communal violence that ensued after the partition of India and Pakistan into separate states concerned state leaders. Therefore, the Congress controlled government increasingly checked and regulated the activities of the RSS and other smaller groups in order to keep communal forces at bay.

mothers and wives, who are dutiful and self-sacrificing, chaste, and pure (Kapur and Cossman,

1995). It was within this process of identity construction, that Hindu nationalism attempted to

restore women to a position of “equality” reserved for them within the Indian tradition. Hindu

nationalism re-cast women as guardians of the home, and ‘virtuous mothers’ and ‘ideal wives’.

Within this logic, Hindu nationalism primarily assigned women with the moral responsibility of not

destroying the family by becoming too independent, forcing them to deny their own rights and

freedoms. They were encouraged to resist the ‘Western trap’ defined as consumerism, sexual

promiscuity, and dysfunctional family life - rather to gain respect within and outside the home, and

to exercise public power as ‘a saviour and spiritual mother to the nation’ (Poggendorf-Kakar, 2001:

210 and 218).

Moreover, Hindu nationalism considered women’s struggles for socioeconomic and political

justice as ‘westernized’ concepts and called for women to reject them, since they created

confrontation between men and women disrupting the family unit.60 Given India’s history involving

the extension of rights to women and encouragement towards empowerment under the Congress

Party, Hindu nationalist discourse operates to trap women within two distinct discourses: a

‘traditional’ discourse, which celebrates woman as Matri Shakti and a ‘modern’ discourse in which she is the bearer of rights (Kapur and Cossman, 1995: 105). Women are contained dually through a traditional discourse in which the good dutiful wife performs the ultimate act of self-sacrifice and a modern perspective in which a woman can choose to exercise her rights and function outside the home. The intermingling of both of these perspectives on women (the conservative versus the

liberal rights discourse) is evident in state policies. Although the Hindu right contemplates a ‘modern

60 Patriarchy and claims to cultural authenticity concentrate fundamentalist practices on gender roles and family life (Hawley, 1994; Marty and Appleby, 1993; and Roy, 1994). As a result, the frontier between modernity and the traditional family is a major focus of conflict between fundamentalists and institutions of governance. It is also the proxy for the turbulent terrain between authoritarian and democratic values marking political transitions between traditional and modern regimes.

woman’, by co-opting the women’s movement agenda and vocabulary61, the actual policies of the

state have brought no real change in the situation of women because of the limitations of the

Hindutva discourse and beliefs particularly during the 1990s. Consequently, the appropriation of

gender by political parties, such as the Bharatiya Janata Party, has had the effect of embedding the

viewpoint of women as custodians and symbols of culture and community ever more deeply into

official thinking and policy.

The impact of this was clearly evident in the content of state programmes and the manner in

which they were implemented, revealing not only the contradictions of the programmes/policies but

the symbolic nature of state gestures, which were primarily intent on projecting the Bharatiya Janata

Party as ‘pro-women’ (Arya, 2000: 164). The 9th and 10th Five Year Plan’s (1997-2001 and 2001-2006

respectively) for instance, regressed from previous plans that placed emphasis on empowerment and

instead embedded the role of women as primary caregivers within the household, reviving elements

of its earlier service-oriented welfare approach to social policy. Both plans, produced under

Bharatiya Janata Party governments, regarded women’s education, health, and employment as the

main areas of concern. This approach meant a regression in the state’s treatment of women insofar

as it reverted to the treatment of women as the passive recipients of social welfare in direct

contradiction with its repeated pronouncements about the importance of ‘empowering’ women (BJP

Election Manifesto, 2009, Chapter 10). The 9th plan did emphasize the need to enlarge the access

and control of/ownership of family/community assets by women. However, it also clearly stated that ‘with access to economic assets women would be encouraged to take up self-employment which

61 The Hindu right's appropriation of symbols, slogans, and ideas that feminists had struggled to formulate and to bring to public consciousness was a widespread cause for consternation. The women’s movement, particularly in Bombay, made it acceptable for women to march in the street demanding their rights, and the Shiv Sena and other right-wing women followed this path of action comfortably (Agnes, 1995). Paola Bacchetta notes that the women's wing of the RSS, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, 'borrowed' from feminists' issues such as dowry and health, slogans, and some projects such as income-generating ventures and work in slums. However, in RSS recruitment literature 'it selectively appropriates elements but conveniently effaces all trace of its sources, perhaps because the feminist movement is its most threatening competitor (Bacchetta, 2004).

is more convenient and allows them to play their dual role, within and outside the home effectively’

(9th Five Year Plan, 1997-2001: 327).

Indeed, state policies since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power emphasised the ways in

which women were different from men, and in so doing reinforced sexist stereotypes that

contributed to women's inequality. In constructing women's roles as mothers and wives (maternal

health care and family planning), and rejecting policies that went too far beyond these traditional

roles (expanding employment only in areas which are “most suited for them”), state discourse and

practice under the Bharatiya Janata Party reflected a patriarchal understanding of gender difference

and identity limiting the rights of women (Arya, 2000: 209). To be sure strategies shaped by

prevailing political conditions and electoral considerations did lead the party to broaden its agenda to

include programmes and policies that carried the potential of being beneficial to women. The NDA-

led government adopted the National Policy on Empowerment of Women (NPWE) in 200162, the

Women’s Component Plan (WCP)63, and the National Health Policy (NHP) adopted in 2002.64

While these policies were first given shape by the Congress government, the Bharatiya Janata Party

passed them off as their own (http://www.bjp.org/). Many of these initiatives covered education, employment, health, and programmes designed to improve women’s economic status. However, an examination of various party documents and statements reveals that support for these measures was justified in the name of family and tradition (Singh, 2005).

62 The origins of the NPWE policy lay in the recommendations made in the National Perspective Plan for Women (1988-2000) initiated under the Indian National Congress government.

63 Implemented within the 9th Five Year Plan (1997-2000), the WCP would earmark a minimum of 30% government benefits and funds for women in the programmes of various ministries and departments.

64 The NHP was a forward-looking policy to consolidate the primary framework for the delivery of public health services. Reflected in the 10th Five Year Plan (2002-2007), the goals of the NHP were to raise the population’s health status through ensuring equal access to primary health care for all citizens (Tenth Five Year Plan, 2002: 216). The policy recognizes that women and other “underprivileged” groups disproportionately experience poor access to health services, and it aims to facilitate such groups’ access to basic health-care services. Under the policy, the central government is to give top funding priority to programmes targeting women’s health.

There are many examples of regressive Bharatiya Janata Party policies. For instance, health

policies harmful to women’s health, particularly, reproductive health, were pursued by the party

regardless of the fact that this same government initiated the National Population Policy (NPP) in

2000. The government for example allowed the import and sale of hazardous contraceptives

promoted through the government health sector. In addition, the government had also permitted

Multinational Corporations (MNC’s) to implement clinical trials of their drugs using poor men and

women for experimental purposes further endangering the health of individuals. Meanwhile, the

Bharatiya Janata Party adopted the NPP because of women’s strong opposition to existing anti-

women population policies. While the party initially supported the NPP, it began to back track,

encouraging its state governments to put in place coercive population policies, involving forced

sterilizations. The party also denied women in village councils the right to participate in Panchayati

Raj elections if they had more than two children, hence enforcing the two-child norm. Deputy

Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani and ex-party leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party was

strongly advocating, “a policy whereby all individuals who violate the two-child norm will be

automatically debarred from holding public office and government jobs” (Advani, 2004).65 Finally, successive budgets of the Bharatiya Janata Party have shown lack of concern for women, particularly poor women. Price rises of essential commodities and cuts in social sector spending and privatisation have played havoc with family budgets.

While in power the Bharatiya Janata Party displayed conservative, even reactionary ideas, marking a shift away from even the liberal rhetoric of equal rights for women, which had been laid

65 These call for population control via the two-child norm was alarming considering the big decrease in sex ratios in the 0-6 year group as revealed in the last census from 945 females for every 1,000 males in 1991 to 927 females to every 1,000 males in 2001 (Census of India, 2001). Published in 2001, these numbers should have been a trigger for the government to take emergency measures at every level, social, political, and economic in the attempts to control this extremely disturbing phenomenon. Instead, the government’s population policies, because they involved coercive family planning, only continued to accelerate the elimination of the girl child through female foeticide since families continued to abort female foetuses.

out during the Congress years. This was evident when various bills to benefit women [Women’s

Reservation (1996), the Protection From Domestic Violence Bill (2001), and Sexual Harassment Bill,

(2003)] were successively stalled by the BJP government. While some moderate voices within the

Hindu right support progressive legislative changes favouring women, the extremist voices

dominated and blocked laws to improve the conditions of women. For instance, the BJP blocked

changes to Hindu personal law (such as the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act, the Hindu Women’s

Property Rights Act (1937), the Special Marriage Act (1954), and the Hindu Marriage and Divorce

Act (1955) on the grounds that such changes would all lead to the ‘disorganization within the

family’. Based on this, the notion of equality does not exist within Bharatiya Janata Party ideology

on gender and only goes as far as empowering women to accept their natural roles as mother and

wife.

While state discourse couched within Indian nationalism equated the emancipation of

women with ‘modernity’ under Congress governments, cultural nationalism under the Bharatiya

Janata Party reversed reforms, rendering women as ‘symbols of a nation.” The party injected a

different set of cultural values into laws and policies. State discourse during this time defined

women’s equality in such a way that it did not threaten the traditional Hindu family. Ironically, the

Right wing Hindu nationalism saw women as cultural symbols, existing for serving the interests of

the nation with the same dedication as they would serve the interests of their own family. To break

the structures of traditional family hierarchies and move towards greater equality between the sexes

therefore does not serve the political goals of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Conclusion

This chapter has highlighted the sharp ideological differences between the Indian National

Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party with regard to women, while also noting certain similarities in

that both parties have viewed women’s identity as essentially that of caregivers of the family. The

differences in their perspectives on women were located in the degree of importance given to the caregiver role over other roles/identities. The Bharatiya Janata Party saw the caregiver role as the most important one for women and viewed women’s role in political activism negatively, a perspective that translated into less openness to women’s activism and interests. The difference in official attitude toward women between the pre-1989 periods versus the 1998-2004 periods shaped the way in which the state responded to women’s interests and activism. Under these circumstances, and especially after 1975, political and discursive shifts within the Indian women’s movement, as I will show in Chapter 4, have added pressure on state institutions to engage with issues of gender equality agendas

Chapter 4

Movements Matter: Unity and Difference Collide Over Violence Against Women and Women’s Political Representation

This chapter argues that women’s movements in India when strong and independently organized are important variables in improving government responsiveness. In the case of violence against women, we see that when women’s activism remained united in its demands, as it was over the issue of violence against women, it engendered a positive response from the state. On the other hand, when the women’s movement does not take up an issue in a coherent and forceful manner, government responsiveness is weak. This occurred with the reservation of seats for women in

Parliament, pushing the concern for reservations on and off the political agenda.

Sowing the Seeds: Uniting Against Violence

The contemporary women’s movement emerged initially during the late 1970s as a struggle against violence. The movement involved a period of organization in which women’s groups attempted to build alliances and coalitions and to define the movement’s identity, purpose and strategies. In this process, the women’s movement subsequently expanded its scope of action to address numerous other issues in addition to violence against women, such as the right to employment and equal wages, legal equality, education, health, sexuality, alternative lifestyles, and the environment. Women consistently directed their demands for reform and change to the state.

Many of the campaigns, especially those around women and violence, received widespread media coverage and therefore exposure to and discussion of women’s issues. State response was in many instances immediate and took the form of instituting legal changes, setting up commissions to look into specific issues, funding women’s studies departments, including policies to support women in

Five Year Plans (FYP), creating departments, and drafting and implementing several policy documents. Through these various struggles, the state saw women as a unified constituency in the state’s plan for national development.

Indeed, one of the defining features of women’s movements in India was the insistence on their organization and to some extent ideological autonomy from male dominated institutions.

Historically the Indian women’s movement had been fiercely committed to retaining its relative independence from the state to prevent the lure of resources, influence and power from blunting its radicalism. Traditionally (before 1975), the movement had been characterized by an anti-statist position which echoed serious concerns about working with the state, political parties, and other major institutions for fear that this would result in the movement’s dependence and co-option. This stance changed radically however with the imposition of an authoritarian regime during 1975-1977 under Emergency (See Chapter 2), when the women’s movement re-emerged in response to a crisis of the Indian state which had failed in its “duty” to make the lives of women, as well as men, safe and free from violence.

The dialogue between the state and women’s groups which arose in the post-Emergency years facilitated a shift in the framing of what women’s rights are, reflecting the presence of a large number of organizations that emerged during this time. The ground was now laid for new social movements to emerge, where women’s own voices were given space. The new growth of women’s organizations did not resemble earlier structures. There were no efforts towards widespread organizations targeting all women, but rather what emerged was locally and issue-oriented organizations with more focused agendas, and with women as leaders. From this downwards-up growth of popular movements, leaders were able to utilize their links with the state, now representing groups at grass-roots level with a strong mobilization potential, to both achieve greater impact on legislation and to give the movement a national scope. Many women’s groups drew their

79 visible leadership from the political elite within the Indian National Congress (INC). These female members of the political elite were able to provide direct channels into state agencies. The groundswell of popular movements generated mobilization potential far beyond what they had had in the past, giving shape to a women’s movement that was, by the late 1970s/early 1980s, developed, national in scope, and with horizontal connections (Sen, 2000: 26; Subramaniam, 2006:32). This in fact marked the emergence of the contemporary Indian Women’s Movement comprised of numerous groups that were urban/rural, informal/formal, localized/national and internationally affiliated including localized branches of national organizations (Subramanian, 2001; Desai, 1996;

Desai and Patel, 1985).

What occurred during the Emergency precipitated the emergence and agendas of grass-roots organizations marking the post-Emergency (1977-1989) a critical period. It signalled ‘organizing’ as a dominant feature of the Indian women’s movement since it was in this period when simultaneous interaction with, and strong critique of, the state in its failure to respond to the question of violence against women, emerged. By targeting the state, women’s organizations not only highlighted such atrocities committed against women like dowry and abuse within the family, but also questioned the ways in which the state passed off such acts of violence as private matters that took place within the home and were of no concern to it (Kumar, 2001; Suneetha et al., 2003).

The campaign against rape as violence against women and as a political issue, for example, involved a successful women’s movement campaign critical of the “custodians” of the state- public servants such as policemen, army men, or government officers who made use of their office and powers to abuse, molest, and rape women (Gangoli, 2005; Jain and Rajput, 2003; Kapadia, 2002).

An authoritarian state which arbitrarily afforded its officials the opportunity to be in a position of complete authority and autonomy to act with brute force (as occurred frequently during the

Emergency), provoked many women’s organizations to issue statements condemning police

atrocities and the violation of rights (Butalia, 2002: 219; Calman, 1992: 118- 123; Gandhi and Shah,

1992:47). During 1977-79, women’s groups and many other civil society groups across India began

their campaigns agitating against a number of violations that occurred during the Emergency years.

Various cases of custodial rape across the country included: Laxmi in Punjab, Rameezbee in

Hyderabad, mass rapes in Santhal Parghana (of tribal women), in Marathwada (of lower castes women); and in Aligarh, Agra and Lucknow (of Muslim women). In all these cases, the protectors of

‘law and order’, the police and other state repressive forces, proved notorious as perpetrators of violence against women.

Thus, rape became the focus for the attention of civil liberties groups and women’s groups after a number of much publicized cases involving state officials such as police, army personnel, and government officers. The women’s movement sought to tackle this form of state violence through legislation that recognized custodial rape as a specific and serious offence (Arya, 2000: 216; Butalia,

2002: 210; Gangoli, 2007: 80; Gandhi and Shah, 1992; Mathur, 2004; Mukhopadhyay, 1998; Sen,

2004). Women’s groups demanded action and accountability, expressing their solidarity with the affected women, carrying out investigations into a slew of incidents that had remained out of the public’s eye. These incidents exposed society’s apathy and the state’s tacit collusion in crimes against women. In response to these incidents, women’s groups stressed that rape was a violation of a woman’s right to her body and that it constituted one of the worst forms of violence against women.

Women targeted institutions of the state such as police stations, local development offices, lawmakers, and the judiciary, but over time, the responses of women began to focus on one clear demand: the need to change the law on rape (Calman, 1992).

Rape laws66 had seen no change for nearly 150 years and once women activists began to examine these laws, they realized how flawed they were even in such basic concepts as the definition of rape (Butalia, 2002: 211). It was within this context that collective demands for changing the law against rape surfaced. This demand for changing the law was taken seriously and the Government responded by calling on the Law Commission to look into the grievances of women’s groups and suggest reforms to the rape laws with the objective of removing inadequacies of the law (Arya, 2000:

218). Charged with the responsibility of drafting new legislation after research into existing conditions, the Law Commission held consultations with activists, women’s organizations, lawyers, and victims. The Law Commission worked particularly closely with women’s groups and over time, a comprehensive document containing the recommendations of women’s groups and the

Commission was submitted in Parliament. Although women’s groups demanded a new comprehensive rape law, the new section (376 of the Indian Penal Code) made rape by persons in a custodial situation an offence a notable amendment to the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The new section, passed in 1980, codified the distinction between different categories of rape in a radical way, though it refused to include the demand made by women’s groups that marital rape be included as an offence within the amendment (Singh, 2004). 67

In 1983, due to the angry demands of women an amendment to the penal code was introduced to section 498A for the first time criminalizing domestic violence. The law contained in

66 Rape laws were enacted during 19th century colonial India within the 1860 Indian Penal Code and remained unchanged until 1983. During this period, the law did not take into account specific implications of abuse of power by representatives of the state, criticized by women's groups as being concerned mainly with regulating the sexuality of women, rather than protecting their bodily integrity (Das, 1996; Gangoli, 2007: 81). 67 This meant that in post-independent India, men had the right to rape their wives until the passage of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act in 2006. Section 375 defined rape as sexual intercourse against the women’s will without her consent, and under fear/coercion/not of sound mind (IPC 1983, No. 45, Sec 375). It only recognized rape as an offence in certain cases: statutory rape; gang rape; custodial rape; rape where the victim is under the age of 12; and, rape of a woman when she is pregnant (IPC 1983, Sec 376{2} {a}-{g}). Marital rape was not recognized nor a chargeable legal offence under section 375 of the IPC unless either the wife was under the age of 15 or if she was living separately from her husband “under a decree of separation” (Arya, 2000: 224; IPC 1983, Section 376A).

section 498A gave a woman the right to complain about cruelty practiced by her husband or in-laws.

In a family structure where wife-abuse or wife beating was considered the right of a husband, or something a wife had to bear ungrudgingly, the provision dealt a vital blow to the patriarchal power within the home by husbands who regard wife beating as their matrimonial right. New provisions given under section 498A now gave special protection to a battered wife, providing her with an assured mechanism within the criminal justice system (Palkar, 2003: 187). These legislative provisions not only marked the beginning of state intervention for curbing the issue of domestic violence, but of holding the state accountable for the many ways in which violence manifested itself against women. In addressing the state, women’s organizations were making an important assertion: that of women’s rights as citizens. Not only did they hold the state accountable for the injustice and violation of their rights, but also it was to the state that they turned for redress.

Moreover, women’s participation in agitational politics led to several campaigns for amendments in existing laws and drafting of new legislations relating to dowry, sati, and sexual

harassment. Campaigns against violence became characteristic of militant, angry street

demonstrations and protest marches, to spreading awareness through street plays against particular

incidents of atrocities and against offenders to highlight the issue of violence committed against

women. Women’s groups would immediately take up a case of violence against women such as

dowry and sati; they would mobilize around it, organize protests, lobby for the adoption of the case,

demand rights and justice from the government, and attempt to address the needs of the victims.

Prior to the enactment of these laws, mainstream politics had perceived these issues as personal or

arising out of cultural, familial, and traditional norms thus relegating them to the margins of

political consideration and action (Gandhi and Shah, 1992: 94). The collective use of forms of

political protest however, transformed these “social” issues into political ones, and the private into

the public to hold not only society responsible but also the state for violence committed against

women.

For instance, women’s organizations demanded sweeping changes in the law to deal with

dowry violence and to prohibit the giving and receiving of dowry.68 Legally prohibited since the

1960s, dowry continues to be an embedded element of marriage rituals across various communities.

By the late 1970s, two Delhi-based groups- the Mahila Dakshata Samiti (MDS) and the Stree

Sangharsh (SS) emerged at the forefront of agitations against dowry (Butalia, 2002: 213; Gandhi and

Shah, 1992: 54; Kumar, 1995). The increasingly regular reports in the media of mysterious deaths,

reported as ‘accidents’69 of young women, signaled the attention of the MDS, SS, and other

women’s groups which became gradually more vigilant. They undertook vigorous anti-dowry

campaigns by holding the state and society responsible for atrocities committed against women

(Calman, 1992: 124-137; Jethmalani, 1995; Kishwar, 1999; Kishwar and Vanita, 1991;

Mukhopadhyay, 1998). They began demanding more efficient legislative provisions to deal with

increased property rights for women and better protection for women against domestic violence, particularly ‘bridal deaths’ (Agnes, 2000).

Across India, sporadic demonstrations and protests held by women’s organizations, homemakers, activists, victim’s parents, women and men alike aroused strong public reaction around the issue of dowry violence. Protesters questioned police inaction, highlighted the government’s

68 Modern conceptualizations of dowry not only became a form of extortion and control over the woman and her family but also a catalyst in producing culturally condoned violence against women. Through a combination of increased hypergamous marriages (Blunt, 1969) and the onset of colonialism, dowry changed to an institution that involved bargaining and deal making in marriage negotiations instead of a father’s voluntary gift to his daughter (Butalia, 2002: 212; Gandhi and Shah, 19 92: 52; Palkar, 2003: 184; Puri, 1999; Sen, 1999; Van Willigen & Channa, 1991). 69 By the late 1970s, many women’s groups began to look at the large number of reported ‘accidental’ deaths of young married women and upon careful scrutiny realized that these ‘accidents’ generally followed a disturbing pattern. Often the woman was a young bride who was the target of financial/material demands made by her husband and his family. If she did not comply with the demands, a staged accident would occur (dowry burning) - when a bride is doused in kerosene by her husband and/or in-laws, lit on fire, and left to burn to death (Stein, 1988).

lethargic action to the problem, demanded ostracism of bride-burners/killers and pleaded with

legislators to suggest some system of summary trials for such heinous crimes against women

(Kelkar, 1992: 86-87). Consequentially, the flurry of anti-dowry demonstrations acted as checks on

the husbands and in-laws by exposing the real nature of violence, that is, protracted harassment and

battering of a woman, followed by killing and/or burning her and facilitating an easy escape through

a façade of suicide or accidental death. Moreover, opponents of dowry pressed for effective change

in and implementation of laws for tightening of loopholes in legal procedures and giving due

consideration to women’s unspoken experiences of harassment, torture, and molestation through

proposals for reorganizing the process of making police inquiries into cases of dowry violence

(Mathur, 2004: 62).

The state responded swiftly by reviewing the antiquated Dowry Prohibition Act 1961.

Parliament appointed a joint committee of both houses of parliament to review the working of the

Dowry Prohibition Act in 1982. The revision of the 1961 Act, promulgated as an acknowledgment

of dowry as a social evil and of the state’s recognition that the pervasive phenomenon had to be uprooted (Lok Sabha Debates, 1959: 4436). Although the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 was the earliest piece of legislation to deal with dowry, its passage was more about educating/influencing public opinion rather than seriously tackling violence generated by the dowry system (Agnes, 1995:

86- 107; CSWI, 1974; Mukhopadhyay, 1998: 127-135; Sarkar et al, 1994; Singh, 2002 and 2004:

120).70 Pressure from women’s organizations resulted in amendment of the Dowry Prohibition Act

in 198471 and again in 1986. The 1986 amendment made punishments for the offence or taking or

70 It was impossible to make successful prosecution because the Act was so full of loopholes. The ability to lodge complaints or render convictions under the Act was almost impossible, proving the legislation very ineffective in dealing with the problem of dowry violence. See: Mukhopadhyay, 1998: 127-131; Ranjana, 1999; Singh, 2004: 122 for further analysis. 71 The Dowry Prohibition Amendment Act 1984 now explicitly defined dowry stating that anything given in connection with marriage and given either before or after the marriage would be dowry. The punishment for giving and taking of dowry increased to a minimum period of five years imprisonment [The Dowry Prohibition

85 demanding a more stringent dowry and shifted the burden of proof from the victim to the person being prosecuted for dowry (Sec. 8-A). All dowry offences made advertisements offering dowry in consideration of marriage punishable and denying the perpetrator bail. The amendment also sought to provide preventative machinery by stipulating that state governments could appoint Dowry

Prohibition Officers (Sec 8-B). They would be responsible under the Act to prevent the taking, abetting, or the demanding of dowry, and to ensure that the provisions of the act are complied with

(Gandhi and Shah, 1991; Singh, 2004: 124).

In targeting the state, the women’s movement maintained that the state bears a primary responsibility in not only refraining from encouraging acts of violence against women but also in actively intervening to prevent such acts from taking place. In mobilizing around the passage of domestic violence law, women’s groups struggled to expose the public-private dichotomy which reinforced violence suffered by women, and that everyday violence experienced by them had, until the reforms to the Dowry Prohibition Act, largely remained untouched by legal institutions (Ray,

2006). Thus while initial campaigns against violence began by condemning the state’s complicity in custodial rape, many women’s organizations began a dialogue with state institutions seeking redress for women who experienced various other forms of violence particularly that associated with dowry.

Women’s organizations drew attention to the facts and consequences of violence against women and targeted the state for addressing the issue, necessary legislation and enforcement.

As a result, two things marked women’s activism around issues of violence: the perception of women as victims and asserting their identities as women (Butalia, 2002: 222; Gandhi and Shah,

1991). Whether it was party-affiliated groups or those who saw themselves as autonomous, both directed their energies to the state while at the same time constructing women as victims. Many

Act, Sec 3 (1)] whereas the demanding of dowry became punishable for a minimum period of 6 months (Sec. 4). It made dowry a cognisable offence (Sec. 8) which meant that the police were bound to investigate all offences relating to dowry under the act. The Act also stipulated that women’s organizations and welfare agencies could initiate proceedings on behalf of the victim.

women’s groups strongly argued that the institutions of state and civil society must accept the

responsibility in addressing violence against women. To combat the incidence of violence against

women, several women’s groups lobbied the government to create trauma and counselling centres,

and women’s shelters, funded to provide medical, psychological, and other counselling services and

free or low-cost legal aid. In addition, groups also demanded the establishment of complaint centres

(staffed by women) for investigating cases of violence and for providing women a safe and

confidential environment, gender sensitizing/training for local police forces, and funding various advocacy anti-violence campaigns.

Hence the decade of the 1980s which ended with an extraordinary reassertion of democracy,

fuelled a women’s movement to demand significant changes in the functioning of the state, the

planning process and development strategies. The activism of the women’s movement was part of a

more general grass-roots movement; it was one of the many efforts to reassert the claims of citizens

to participate as equals in the political and development process. These were autonomous groups,

joined not through the structure of formal association but through informal networking, local

leaderships, an emerging feminist press, and an intensification of multi-voiced exchanges. The

various all-India campaigns launched by women engendered a cultural radicalism in which a broad

range of issues and articulating a multiplicity of voices thus gave the Indian women’s movement a

sense of cohesion, a national profile and presence (Patel, 1988).

Allwood and Walia suggest that this marked a phase of self-conscious commitment to feminist politics. On many of these issues campaigns, which began locally and coalesced at the national level, gave the movement a new cohesiveness (Allwood and Walia, 2004: 382). What was significant about women’s groups at the this time, especially of those groups largely made up of middle class urban women, who described their organizations as autonomous, was a belief that the commonality of women’s experiences made for an overarching solidarity among women and this

solidarity was not easily affected by differences of castes, class, or religion. This is not to say however, that women were unaware of these differences or they were not present. Rather these women felt that a belief in solidarity would push difference into the background (Kapadia, 2002:

224). The Indian women’s movement therefore shared the broad consensus of a nationalist, secular and democratic framework with a focus on the specific nature of women’s oppression.

Struggling with Difference: The Breakdown of the Movement’s Solidarity over Reservations

While it was the recognition of gender as an issue that powered the women’s movement and

the multiplicity of issues that women represented, differences among these women grew to fracture

the Indian Women’s Movement by the mid 1990s. The fracturing of the movement reflected the

fundamental transformation in the Indian political terrain of which newly empowered backward

castes on the one hand and the identity conscious groups - ethnic, religious, gendered - on the other,

emerged as social forces to contend with, as discussed in Chapter 2. The sutures of the commonality

of women’s oppression and struggle that kept the movement together for over 20 years began to

rupture. This became evident through a series of events that intensified a process in which

nationalist ideology, religious fundamentalism, communalism, and caste tensions were pitted on the

site of gender, forcing many within the movement to recognize that ‘women’ were deeply divided

not only by religion, caste, and class, but also by their norms and values (Kapadia, 2002). Women’s

actions in response to political developments around particular events (the Shah Bano72 Case,

72 In April 1985, the Supreme Court granted Shah Bano, a divorced Muslim woman, the right to financial support from her ex-husband. The Supreme Court of India (SCI), in reaching its decision cited section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) that requires husbands with means to support destitute ex-wives; and the Muslim community protested this decision vehemently. Although the initial decision was in favour of Shah Bano, it was also a judgment against Muslim personal law (Hasan, 1994). Very quickly, a women’s issue became a communal issue as Muslims challenged the right of the courts to interfere in their law. Throughout India, conservative Muslims argued that this decision was an attack on their identity as a religious minority.

demand for a Uniform Civil Code (UCC)73, and the Deorala sati74 incident) resulted as much from any one or more of these identities as they did from their gender identity (Butalia, 2002: 228; Sen,

2002: 485), leaving the foundations of the Indian women’s movement on shaky ground.

Hence, this period saw a ‘backlash’ against the gains women had made during the 1980s. For instance, with the rise of militant communalism and the polarization of identities along religious lines, the involvement of women in communal campaigns and violence became particularly noticeable (Bacchetta, 1993; A. Basu, 1998 and 1996; T. Basu, 1993; Detreich, 1994; Hasan, 1993;

Kapur and Cossman, 1995; Sarkar, 1997, 1995 and 1993). Initial protests against the assertion of communal identities by women’s groups repeated the predominant assumption of activists of the

1970s and 1980s that women were the victims of violence generated by communal violence. For many activists, women did not go out to create conflicts, they did not cause violence nor participate in it but they remained, largely, at the receiving end of it.

Over the last 20 years, the participation of women in communal violence has increased, including the commission of violence of women against other women. By the 1990s, the issue of violence and violence against women took on completely new dimensions and the Indian women’s movement could therefore no longer hold on to the belief that women were always mainly victims of violence, because some of them had become its perpetrators (Butalia, 2002: 226). During the time

73 The UCC is an optional common code based on secular and egalitarian principles, which would replace the different personal laws of the various religious communities. The Indian Constitution recognizes and sanctions various systems of Personal Laws based on religion and customary practices. Such a constitutional sanction arose out of the need to acknowledge the diversity of Indian society. However, the issue of the UCC has always been a contentious one since it invariably arouses fears about the identity and cultural autonomy of minority groups who may see their long standing customs overturned in the name of a common code, which in fact was a code derived from a code developed by the Hindu majority (Raman, 2001). 74 The most infamous case of sati was in 1987, when an eighteen-year-old widow named Roop Kanwar burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre (sati) in the village of Deorala, Rajasthan. The public outcry that arose from the aftermath of Roop's death prompted the Indian state to revise the 1829 colonial legislation governing sati by toughening the laws on abetment to include a specific prohibition on sati glorification (Sangari and Vaid, 1989). The religious justification for Roop Kanwar's death served as a warning to many liberal Indians of the erosion of democratic rights for women under resurgent Hindu revivalism, making both these issues into a matter of urgent public debate.

of the Shah Bano case, many activists were shocked to see thousands of Muslim women

demonstrating in support of religious leaders who believed that Muslim women should have no

rights in civil law to claim maintenance after divorce. With the Roop Kanwar sati in the village of

Deorala, many activists holding a protest against sati were vastly outnumbered by women who showed up for a counter-demonstration that was organized in support of the practice (Kapadia,

2002: 11). Women’s instigation of violence along with their legitimization of practices viewed as harmful to women’s interests, as evidenced with both these cases, revealed that women themselves collaborated and connived in not only their own subjugation and subordination but against women of minority communities (Agnes, 1999; Kapadia, 2002: 10; Sarkar and Butalia, 1995). This situation was further complicated by the increasing presence of the Hindu right which spawned its own women’s organizations and its own ‘feminist’ language and idiom.

Many Hindu nationalist organizations made efforts to harness the nascent consciousness about women’s rights by co-opting the women’s movements agenda and vocabulary for their own purpose. The women’s wings of the established right-wing organizations such as the Rashtra Sevika

Samiti (RSS), Shiv Sena (SS), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) had created a clever balance between tradition and modernity in order to attract women to become active participants in the struggle against minority groups, especially Muslims. Hindu women’s organizations were set up in the early 1990s to mobilize women from middle and lower income groups with the aim of creating a sense of ‘Hindu culture’ amongst women, through training and consciousness-raising activities. Hindu nationalism considers women as important contributors to the creation of a Hindu nationalist culture, as nurturers, soldiers, and propagators of the Hindu nationalist project. While fulfilling their roles mothers, daughters, sisters and wives, women became defenders of the culture, values, and ethos of Hinduism as their main purpose in life.

The 1990s witnessed a heightening of the mobilization of women by the Hindutva

movement as it emerged as a counter-movement against the Indian women’s movement. During

this time, the Hindu-right began to flaunt its more well-known female leaders to mobilize women in

the demonization of Muslims in an aggressively militant way. This emerging trend became quite

noticeable in 1992 when Hindu fundamentalists demolished a 500 year-old mosque in Ayodhya.

This event involved women who played a visible and vicious role legitimizing and instigating

violence. Women of the Hindu-right not only defended their male counter-parts whom they knew

were guilty of murder, looting, and rioting but they urged men to act violently, to kill women and

children and use rape as a weapon to dishonour the ‘other’ community (Setavlad, 1995). Communal

violence in the western state of Gujarat in 2002 also saw middle-class women from Hindu

communities who were active participants in large scale looting of Muslim shops and factories. They

showed a callous disregard for the thousands of Muslim women raped by Hindu men and the

children killed in the most barbarous manner.

While the issue of religio-cultural community identity was an important challenge to the

women’s movement, the question of caste identity was a more complex question. As discussed in

Chapter 2, shifts in the political landscape during the 1990s provided the stage for the emergence of a

set of factors, which made caste a contentious issue within the Indian women’s movement. Caste

had rarely been an issue for the women’s movement (Dietreich, 1994 and 1992) and most analyses

overlooked parallel caste-based women’s movements such as the Dalit Women’s Movement

(DWM), treating the Indian women’s movement as a purely national occurrence primarily based in

the cities among the more educated. Indian feminists did not always acknowledge the particular ways

in which caste-based discrimination, oppression, and violence affected Dalit women. Dalit women who partially aligned themselves with caste-based political parties and organizations emerged to

broaden the movement by combining caste and gender issues. A force, which provoked the belated

recognition of the particularity of women, Dalit women, reflected the fact that there was a whole

range of differentiated gender interests because women shared multiple identities and multiple

oppressions through their intermingling with multiple social identities in any given locale (Kapadia,

2002:10 and 142-179).75

Consequently, the inter-related processes of the emergence of identity politics and an overt

communalization of the state created divisions within the Indian women’s movement that could not

easily be absorbed by emphasizing women’s oppression as a fundamental basis for unity (Sharma,

2003). It was clear that the notion of an Indian ‘woman’ also included a wide diversity of caste, class,

religious identities, rural and urban. Local challenges thus developed to counter the domination by

what Dalit and minority women saw as an urban-based, educated elite women’s movement, seeking to divert attention from the capital cities to smaller urban towns and rural areas. This opened up avenues for newer groups organized along caste lines to assert themselves within the larger umbrella of the Indian women’s movement. These groups emerged to question the wisdom and power of the urban, educated, employed middle-upper class woman’s perception of the interests and needs of uneducated, poor women from rural, small towns or urban slum areas thus establishing strongholds in thousands of Indian villages.

The recognition of difference surfaced to not only fracture the category of ‘woman’ but also the solidarities among them invoking notions that ‘women’ as a sisterhood and as a political

constituency did not exist in reality. This reality of sharp divisions between women became

75 By the early 1990’s, several autonomous Dalit women’s organizations were established to speak for Dalit women and these begun addressing issues relevant to the lives of Dalit women. Most notably, organizations such as the National Federation of Dalit Women (NFDW) became extremely vocal in defining Dalit identity in terms of human rights and committing itself to initiating positive changes in the lives of Dalit women, such as legal action against caste based atrocities, political empowerment of Dalit women, and economic empowerment against growing pauperization, building self-confidence and leadership. However, conscious that both Dalit men and non-Dalit women could interpret the call for a separate platform as a divisive move, the proponents of such a special forum emphasized that their initiative not be mistaken for a separatist movement. Rather they assert that there is need for strong alliances between the Dalit movement, the women’s movement, and the Dalit women’s movement if their common vision of social, economic, and political equality and justice for all is to be realized (Manorama, 2006).

abundantly apparent over the issue of reservations for women in India where women’s movements

were struggling with issues of fair representation, group rather than individual rights, multiple

strategies for political empowerment, and negotiations with state institutions. Although the issue of

violence took priority on the agendas of many women’s groups during the late 1970s and early

1980s, political representation for women became a major issue by the 1990s.

The issue of reserved seats for women was not new to India and efforts to reserve seats for

women in India, initially emerged in the 1930s when the country still formed part of the British

Empire. Appearing first in 1935 as part of the Government of India Act, fading in 1950 as per the

provisions of the new Constitution76, and resurfacing again in 1988 as part of the government’s

National Perspective Plan on Women (NPP)77 , reservations have had a checkered past in the history

of affirmative action in India. Despite the existence of some policies at the local level78, the faith

among women’s groups that women would be elected to national government without the need for

special intervention meant that no initiatives were taken in this area until the 1970s when the

Committee on the Status of Women (CSWI) noted that the numbers of women representatives in elected assemblies decreased in 1971 from 4.2% to 4.4% in 1952. These figures are shown in Table

4.1 below. Reviewing women’s political participation in its report, the Committee contended that women had a negligible impact on the political process and that though they constituted a numerical

76 This was clearly visible when a proposal to reserve seats for women was presented to the Constituent Assembly of 1946. Members of this assembly succeeded in convincing each province to send at least one female representative (Agnew 1979). Many women members however rejected the idea of reservations arguing that it was enough that the new constitution (which came into effect on June 26, 1950) provided for equality and universal suffrage and that positive discrimination would undermine women’s achievements through merit (Allwood and Wadia, 2004; Tawa Lama-Rewal 2001; Tinker 2003); therefore, putting the issue at rest for almost another decade. 77 The National Perspective Plan for Women (1988-2000) was drawn up to facilitate the mainstreaming of women’s issues in policies and programmes by providing a detailed perspective plan for the social, economic, and political advancement for women (Kumari, 1998: 46). The government linked the NPP to national targets in respect to certain standard development indicators and was one of the first comprehensive reports on women and development (DWCD, website; Mathu and Pandya, 2006). 78 The Mehta Commission briefly mentioned women’s representation in 1957 when Panchayati Raj (units of local government) structures were established deciding to co-opt women to cover the welfare of women and children at panchayat level. Only two states applied this rule: Maharashtra (1961) and West Bengal (1973).

93 majority they were slowly acquiring the features of a minority group because of inequalities of status and political power. The Committee stressed the need for improving the political status of women

‘as an integral aspect of the problem of socioeconomic change and broadening the political elite structure’ (CWSI, 1974: 301).

The CSWI report recommended that women's representation in political institutions, especially at the grass-roots level, needed to be increased through a policy of reservation of seats for women. In a similar vein in 1988, the government’s National Perspective Plan for women suggested that a 30% quota for women be introduced at all levels of elective bodies.

Table 4.1: Number of Women Elected to the Indian Parliament General Elections No. of Women Elected % 1952 22 4.4

1957 27 5.4

1962 34 6.7

1967 31 5.9

1971 22 4.2

1977 19 3.4

1980 28 5.1

1984 44 8.1

1989 28 5.29

1991 39 7.02

1996 40 7.36

1998 44 8.07

1999 49 9.09

2004 51 9.51 Source: Rajya Sabha Secretariat- Reservation of Seats for Women in Legislative Bodies, 2008

Women's groups insisted that reservation be restricted to the panchayat (village council) level

to encourage grass-roots participation in politics. Although the CSWI and NPP both considered

reservations for women at all levels of government and while they initially included arguments for

reserving seats at the national and state level, they ultimately took the view that reserved seats were retrogressive measures that contradicted the principle of equality in the constitution.79 Many

women’s groups rejected the proposals for statutory reservation of seats for women in legislative

bodies because separate constituencies for women would precipitate similar demands from other

various interest groups. Reservations once granted would be difficult to withdraw, because, they

argued, women are not a community and a category hence there was no rational basis for

reservation.80

The consensus around reservations at the local level resulted in the adoption of the 73rd and

74th amendments to the Indian Constitution in 1993 mandating a one-third reservation for women

in panchayat assemblies and earmarking a portion of panchayat spending for women’s planning.81 For

women this meant panchayats had autonomy and resources of their own for the management and

administration of welfare and development programmes for women and children as a transitional

79 During this time, for instance, the NPP committee encountered opposition from autonomous women’s groups and the women’s wings of the various political parties to the idea of mandating reservations at all levels of government. While the report also recommended that political parties give 33% of their tickets to women, it dropped several items that had appeared in the first draft, most notably the proposal to extend 33% reservations to all levels of government, including the state legislatures and the national parliament (Manchanda 1988).

80 However, during this time support for reservation did come from a group of scholars who examined women’s role in the political process. These women argued that 30% reservation of the seats in the legislative bodies for women could not lead to their becoming ‘isolated pockets in the nation’ because women are not marginal to society as a minority group might be. Such a transitional measure to break through the existing structure inequalities will not be a step back from the ‘doctrine of equality and the principle of democratic representation (CSWI, 1974: 303). 81 These bills became laws on December 22nd, 1992. They were ratified by half the states by April 1993, they came into operation as 73rd & 74th amendments to the Constitution of India on 24th April 1993 providing decentralization and one-third reservation in rural and urban local government, respectively (Kaushik, 1993; Rai, 2006: 227). The 73rd Amendment mandated one-third reservation for women in all village, block, and district level bodies; in the posts of chairperson and vice-chairperson across all these institutions; and in the seats reserved for SC’s and ST’s in each body according to their proportion of the population. The 74th Amendment extended these same provisions to municipal corporations in large urban areas, municipal councils in smaller urban settlements, and local councils in areas in transition from rural to urban.

measure to break through attitudes that inhibit most women from articulating their problems and

participating actively in existing local bodies (Government of India, 1974: 304; ICSSR, 1988: 144).

Their passage led to a critical structural change by decentralizing power and redressing the gender

imbalance in the institutions of self-governance (Nanivadekar, 2005; Nath 1996; Sinha 2000;

Suchinmayee 2000; Tawa Lama-Rewal 2001). For example the 73rd amendment was called “a

landmark legislation” which, gave “India the unique distinction of having more elected women

representatives (EWRs) than the rest of the world together.” The 73rd amendment ensured the election of over 10,48,148 elected women representatives out of total 28,51,739 representatives in the country’s three-tier rural panchayats, while the 74th amendment to the constitution ensured the

election of 22,665 women out of total 67,990 representatives in urban local bodies (The Hindu,

November 9, 2010). The overwhelming response by women to these measures and the entry of nearly one million women into Panchayati Raj Institutions was a consequence of active state intervention.

The demands for reservations in the national and state assemblies was also partly due to international influences which emphasized the participation of women in decision making as issues of justice, equity and human rights. In 1995, the United Nations Fourth World Conference on

Women held in Beijing identified ‘inequality between men and women in the sharing of power and decision-making and insufficient mechanisms at all levels to promote the advancement of women’ as two areas of significant concern where action was critical for the advancement of women. The demand for reservations extended at state and national levels followed from women who argued that in order to empower women, women’s movements must enter the political arena not only to redefine that space but also to engage in the brokering of power, which takes place in political institutions. They believed that the process of Indian women coming into their own politically had

96 been slow and halting because Indian culture is apolitical and the forces of tradition had been particularly against the participation of women in politics.

The relatively quick passage of the 73rd and 74th Amendments, the response of women to these two measures in the elections that followed in several states, and the political dynamism demonstrated by them persuaded female Members of Parliament and national level women’s organizations to put forward a joint demand for one-third reservation in state assemblies and

Parliament.82 Many women regarded reservations as an instrument for change anticipating that once women became part of the decision-making process, they would demand participation in development decisions and a reorientation of public policies (Sharma, 1998: 12). Improving representation of women was justified as a means of recognizing each individual’s intrinsic inalienable right to power, resources, and opportunities. Women, historically deprived of these three rights, would benefit from reservations since they offered instant access to political power, access to, and control over resources as an effective measure for rectifying this deprivation (Bacchi, 1997;

Dalherup, 2006 and 1998; Krook, 2004; Nanivadekar, 2006: 120). According to the proponents of reservation, the entry of a sizeable percentage of women into decision-making bodies would enable them to affect public policy and introduce women’s perspectives.

However, the women’s movement for reservations did not effectively influence the outcome of the debates around reservations for women. The basic explanation lies in the political leadership’s reluctance to support representational quotas at the state and national level, combined with lack of unity of the women’s movement on the issue. Many women’s organizations had successfully appealed to the national leadership to pass legislation guaranteeing 30% of seats for women at the

82 These bills for the reservation of seats at the local level passed without controversy through both houses of parliament becoming law on December 22nd, 1992- only two weeks after the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya (Hurst, 2004: 60; Krook, 2001: 11). With the attention of the public occupied elsewhere, the Congress government ratified the Amendments without much discussion by Parliament in April 1993 with the provision that states had to introduce or amend their existing Panchayati Raj Acts accordingly until April 24th. Other explanations point to the fact that national politicians who approved these radical amendments were unlikely to be affected personally by their implementation (Tawa Lama-Rewal 2001).

local level, basing their justification on the role of local government in defending women’s

socioeconomic rights. However, they failed to make the same case for a constitutional amendment

to reserve one-third of seats for women in state and national bodies. Political representation for women at the national level was a priority for the party-based section of the women’s movement and a few national women’s organizations that believed reservations were significant in compensating for the social barriers that prevented women from participating in politics. Yet it was not a unifying issue for the movement since many women demanded reservations for Other

Backward Class and minority women. Reservations for women, in general, would treat women as a homogenous category, which would increase the likelihood of electing only educated upper class- caste women to the Parliament and state assemblies. Lower caste women feared that a national representation quota for women in general would result in representation that failed to represent women fairly insofar as proportionally more seats would go to upper class-caste and professional women. They did not see the point in quotas for women (instead placing more weight on caste quotas) and were not particularly interested in pressing the state for reserved seats for women.

While there was an emerging consensus that political representation was an important issue for women, dissonant voices and differences among women’s groups on the issue of reservation rendered the Indian women’s movement as fractured and fragile. Reservations assume that ‘women’ are a political collectivity, which requires fair representation achieved only through separate representation, guaranteed by quota; and the fact that Indian women remain behind men on all this contention. Only women will promote the interests of women in the process of national growth and development (Sen, 2002: 510). The inference is that men cannot (for social or political reasons) or do not (because they protect patriarchal authority) represent women’s true issues thus women have to do their own representing. Representation is therefore the key issue in the reservation debate. The nature of political collectivity that seeks representation ties into the question of who legitimately

represents whom (Sen, 2002: 509). Cast in this light, reservations in India are a contentious issue

since women do not constitute a homogenous group. This has become increasingly evident since the

late 1980s and early 1990s where social identities such as caste and religion emerged in Indian

politics to fracture the category of ‘women’. The notion of the individual as the bearer of rights is in

tension with the rights of various collectivities since the particularity of women marked by class,

caste, and religion take precedence over the fundamental right of sexual equality (Sen, 2002: 510).

Conclusion

In order to support my claim that the women’s movement was crucial to obtaining a positive

policy outcome this chapter demonstrated how the role of a united and strong women’s movement

secured government responsiveness. During 1970s and 80s, the Indian Women’s Movement

emerged as a cohesive single movement in its unity around violence against women. The strength

and unity of the movement on this issue acted as a catalyst in pushing the issue of violence against

women onto the state demanding change. On the other hand, sharp hierarchies over the issue of

political representation for women in India’s legislature deeply divided the women’s movement.

These divisions grew out of social identities based on caste and religious community. Both of these identities were powerful forces, which in the early 1990s emerged within the Indian political

landscape to fracture the category of ‘women’. A process in which these other social identities took precedence overrode the goal of sexual equality. It therefore became very difficult for the movement to negotiate the issue of quotas for women with the state. Examining where movement actors were unified or not in their claims is imperative since the form of mobilization significantly affected their interaction with the state and its institutions and the next chapter illustrates that the combination of a high level of mobilization and support from the ruling political party powerfully shaped policy outcome in the policy area of domestic violence.

Chapter 5

Mobilization: Pushing the Domestic Violence Bill Forward

This chapter claims the women’s movement that mobilized around the demands for anti- domestic violence legislation was able to elicit state responsiveness to the issue of domestic violence resulting in the passage of legislation. While the wider political conditions determined the state’s response, the push and main ideas for policy action came from outside the state, suggesting that the unified mobilization of the movement pushed the government further than it originally envisioned going on anti-domestic violence legislation. The enhanced state responsiveness resulted from three key factors. First, the women’s movement for anti-domestic violence legislation by bringing together various organizations collectively devoted their energies to tasks that were complementary rather than contentious. Second, the political will in support of women’s interests displayed by various

Congress-led coalition governments encouraged women to increase their pressure on government, which in turn increased subsequent governments’ willingness to open the channels of communication. Third, the ferment from women’s extra state organizations was instrumental in stimulating activism within women’s national machinery (WMN), which in turn, pushed the upper level leadership to respond. This suggests that when extra state women’s organizations and the

WNM interacted they improved state responsiveness even further.

Unity Builds Momentum: The Emergence of Domestic Violence Legislation

In this section I analyze the effectiveness of the movement for anti-domestic violence legislation since the very presence of this movement influenced policy outcome via the enactment of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) in 2005. I contend the strength of the movement acted as a catalyst in pushing the issue of the violence against women onto the

100 state, ensuring that it would bring about policy change. The movement’s success lay in its strength that was characterized by growth and consolidation of the movement, high priority given to the issue, and movement actors that were unified or cohesive in their claims.

The growth of the movement can be traced to the 1970s during the aftermath of Emergency as discussed in Chapter 4. At that time there was great public attention to new and reinvigorated movement ideas which mobilized many women to engage in the struggle for legal reform over existing rape and dowry laws. The movement during this time was characterized by organizations with structure, endurance and regular support, and a communication network. An established communications network for instance, was critical in organizing the movement to mobilize around demanding anti-domestic violence law particularly. Many organizations had created newsletters, bulletins, journals and magazines. Manushi has been one of the best known abroad of Indian women’s journals and its editors Madhu Kishwar and Ruth Vanita believe the journal serves its purpose as a communications link among activists. While the journal publishes many reports of women’s struggles around the country, many other women’s organizations, autonomous (Saheli,

Jagori, Majalis, Sakshi and Action India), and party-affiliated (National Indian Federation of Women and All India Women’s Council) also have their own publications and more recently annual reports to update activists on their activities, strategies, and ways to obtain various types of resources.

In addition, there was an extremely sympathetic national press that facilitated communication among the activists and between the activists and government. The mainstream press — especially the English-language press— has been a vital communication link between the movement, the public and the government. Since Emergency, the press has brought attention to violence against women, especially domestic violence, which moved from being virtually unreported to being front page news. In the wake of the Emergency’s repression of all civil liberties, the press became highly attuned to issues of human rights; one of the clearest indications of this was the

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explosion of writing about women. Additionally activists who took up the issue of violence against

women were elites who had easy access to the press: they were already the leaders of organizations,

party officials, published authors, scholars, they were savvy and they were credible. They strategically

planted ideas for articles and at the very least worked to have their demonstrations and press

conferences covered (Butalia, 1985, Kishwar, 1992: 31).

By the time the movement for anti-domestic violence legislation emerged during the early

1990s, it already had leaders, strategies, and networks it could draw from. The fact that victims of

domestic violence in India did not have specific civil remedies such as injunction or protection

orders, interim relief and other support services became the main concern of women’s organizations

campaigning for legislation to provide effective civil remedies to victims of violence rendering it as a

high priority issue.83 The problem of violence against women in India has traditionally been held as a

private issue and consequently as the victim’s problem. This public-private dichotomy reinforced

violence suffered by women, and consequently everyday violence experienced by them had largely

remained untouched by legal institutions (Ray, 2006). While communities and cultures recognized

the problem of domestic violence at an abstract level, there was an equally strong tendency to

perceive the problem as not being relevant to one’s own specific community, neighbourhood, or

family – in other words, violence against women was the problem of the ‘other’.

Despite the enactment of various pieces of legislation in the 1980s, Kapur and Cossman ascribe the failure of laws to bring about change within a patriarchal structure to the concept of the

83 Although the state enacted various legislations and amendments to existing criminal codes to cover dowry- related domestic violence, other forms of domestic violence remained neglected. Legal reforms were inconclusive and needed go beyond dowry to include instances of sexual abuse, female infanticide, sati, forced prostitution and so many invisible forms of mental torture, abandoning of widows as well as economic deprivation. Moreover, the laws only addressed violence in the context of marriage and its victims, daughter-in-laws, hence, the situation of daughters, sisters, and mothers within the family and the domestic violence faced by them had not been addressed (Kothari, 2005). It was clear that the existing criminal laws were inadequate to meet the needs of the women since other forms of domestic violence and invisible forms of mental torture, as well as economic deprivation remained neglected.

102 family, which is seen as a “basic sacred unit in society,” and “women’s roles as wives and mothers as natural and immutable” (Kapur and Cossman, 1996). These strictures formed the guiding ideology underlying the laws, which expressed dominant social norms and values about domestic violence reflecting a “protectionist” stance taken by the state pertaining to women ended up “reinforcing relations of subordination” (Agnes, 1995; Gooneskere, 2004; Kapur and Cossman, 1996; Johnson and Johnson, 2001 and 1997; Mukhopadhyay, 1998). Consequently, government policies, as discussed in Chapter 3, supported women’s role as caregivers, rather than really getting at equality issues constructing and/or reinforcing women’s familial identity (rather than recognizing their individual identity) even while acknowledging that equality for women was an issue that needed to be addressed.

With awareness around these issues emerging, combined with international forces which began to highlight domestic violence as an endemic and pervasive reality of women’s lives as well as a fundamental violation of their rights84 , discussions of the inadequacy of the legislative and judicial responses in India came to the fore by the early 1990s (Mathur, 2004: 66). Normative shifts at the international level provided significant political space for women to legitimize their demands through expanded transnational networking and increased domestic activism (Choudhury, 2005:21).

The legislative history showed the intensification of the anti-domestic violence movement after the ratification of Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women

(CEDAW) took place (United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, Convention on the

84Following several activities at the UN during the early 1990s the issue was also the centre of focus during the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 (Palkar, 2003: 182). Reinforcing the 1995 Conference, the Beijing Platform for Action (Beijing +Five) reviewed the implementation of the 1995 Conference resolutions in 2000 and recommended further action for proper implementation of CEDAW with specific reference to women’s human rights. India accepted the obligations under the UN Resolution and made an official commitment to formulate and operationalize a National Policy on Women. (http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/states.htm).

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Elimination Of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women: State Parties, 2007).85 This is because the

CEDAW convention allowed nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to get involved in its review process by submitting alternative or shadow reports to the Committee. Information sharing processes and extensive discussions on CEDAW began during the pre-Beijing preparations (1992-

1994) and were conducted throughout the country. The result of these meetings led to the completion of the NGO Report on CEDAW (1995), which served as a lobby and advocacy document for Indian women’s groups who participated at the Fourth UN World Conference on

Women at Beijing (Sept. 1995).

While this exercise drew in NGOs, activists, researchers and lawyers from across the country to contribute to the report, it also facilitated the flow of information about the Convention to a large constituency. It created the necessary momentum and sharpened women’s concerns specifically on areas of discrimination in public and private spheres. The exercise thus became part of a larger process of creating and disseminating popular materials on human rights and women. For example, organizations such as the National Alliance of Women’s organization (NAWO) were active in producing shadow reports (separate reports on CEDAW status sent to the CEDAW committee) from time to time. According to the International Women's Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific

(IWRAW) Report, these additional reports of the NGOs enabled the CEDAW committee to conduct a thorough review and provide recommendations in the Concluding Comments to the states under question (Jaisingh, 2005:23).

The impetus for unity and cohesion within the women’s movement therefore had its origins in

India’s ratification of CEDAW during the early 1990s. The presence of transnational influences and the ratification of CEDAW by the state coalesced in the increasing pressure of women’s groups in

85 The CEDAW Convention emphasizes that discrimination against women and girls violates the principles of equality of rights and respect for human dignity. Altogether it provides a comprehensive framework for challenging various forces that have created and maintained discrimination based on sex (http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/protocol/whatis.htm>)

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demanding that international norms contained in CEDAW be incorporated into the domestic

practices of the state. The movement for anti-domestic violence legislation brought together a collective of party-affiliated organizations, autonomous women’s groups, including grassroots activists, legal and academic activists, women’s non-governmental organizations (WNGOs), and

other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including human rights advocacy groups and think

tanks. It would be an impossible feat to address all these organizations here in detail; however, I do

address the networking of key activists and organizations within the movement for domestic

violence legislation. Table 5.1 below summarizes the main types of organizations.

Table 5.1: Participation of Women’s Organizations: Anti-Domestic Violence Legislation Organization Founded Type All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) 1981 Party-Affiliated Organizations - Communist Party of India (Marxist) Joint Women's Program (JWP) 1977 Party-Affiliated Organizations Mahila Dakshata Samiti (MDS)- the Janata Party 1976 Party-Affiliated Organizations The National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) - 1954 Party-Affiliated Organizations Communist Party of India All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC) 1927 Social Service Organization Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) 1875 Social Service Organization Lawyers Collective (LCWRI) 1981 Advocacy Groups Forum Against the Oppression of Women (FAOW) 1979 Advocacy Groups Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) 1989 Advocacy Groups Multiple Action Research Group (MARG) 1985 Advocacy Groups Research Centre on Women’s Studies (RCWS) 1974 Urban Think Tanks Centre for Women’s Development Studies 1980 Urban Think Tanks (CWDS) Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) 1963 Urban Think Tanks Centre for Social Research (CSR) 1983 Urban Think Tanks Indian Social Studies Trust (ISST) 1980 Urban Think Tanks Indian Social Institute (ISI) 1961 Urban Think Tanks Center for Feminist Legal Research (CRLR) 1998 Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations International Center for Research on Women (ICRW- 1998 Women’s Non-Governmental India) Organizations Jagori 1984 Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations Majlis 1991 Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations Sakshi 1993 Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations

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Shakti Shalini 1987 Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations Swayam 1995 Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations Women’s Action Research and Legal Action 1994 Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations Saheli: A Women's Organization 1981 Autonomous Women’s Organizations Action India 1976 Non-Governmental Organizations Sankalp 1996 Non-Governmental Organizations

The movement was demographically urban with its organizational and ideological

orientation grounded within a rights-based framework of securing strategic gender needs focusing

on women’s rights as human rights and equality. Its leaders and participants in the collectively

operating autonomous organizations and party-affiliated organizations were generally upper middle- class and highly educated. The leaders often had prior experience working within the political system, either as members of political parties or as intellectual leaders who contributed to government-sponsored studies. As a resource, these women were essential for the development of the movement. They were professionals who possessed the necessary skills to lead the movement: they knew how to deal with the state; they created images and symbols and dealt with the media. As a ‘conscious constituency’, these women developed ideas, produced scholarship, and generated publicity. Their skills enabled them to appeal to international and government sources of funding, and establish think tanks that provided scholarly assistance to movement activists.

In this case, while advocacy groups such as the Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative

(Lawyers Collective)86 and the Forum Against the Oppression of Women (Table 5.1) mainly spearheaded the movement for domestic violence legislation, a number of think tanks that engaged

in research and advocacy concerning the policy area of violence against women complemented the

86 The Lawyers Collective is an NGO that was formed by women lawyers in 1980 in New Delhi and Bombay. It is composed of lawyers, law students, and “people committed to the rule of law” (Lawyer’s Collective, 2000). The main objectives of the Lawyers Collective are legal education; research; documentation and literacy; the running of free legal aid centres for poor women; organization of workshops for NGOs, police officials, lawyers, and magistrates; and campaigns for law reform.

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activity of advocacy groups. Urban think tanks such as those listed in Table 5.1 provided numerous

scholarly studies for legal arguments made by the Lawyers Collective in drafting model legislation on

domestic violence. Their members also individually lobbied the state to introduce anti-domestic

violence legislation. The presence of these established think tanks expedited movement activists’

advocacy and lobbying tactics towards the state in passing legislation. For instance, both the Centre

for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS) and Indian Social Studies Trust (ISST) were extensively

involved in the process of lobbying for the Domestic Violence Act as well as drawing up rules for its

implementation. My interview with Dr. Sudarshan revealed the exhaustive advocacy work the ISST

did in advancing a domestic violence bill, primarily where they believed the state had failed to

meaningfully implement legislation (Interview: Dr. Sudarshan, ISST, February 2nd, 2007).

In addition, some of the organizations pressuring the state were autonomous; that is they

were not in any way tied to political parties or the state. These groups maintained their ‘autonomy’

by staunchly refraining from institutional funding, adhering to principles of collective functioning

and opposing the state. In contrast to women’s organizations formed out of political parties, as I

shall discuss below, autonomous organizations do not seek state power. Their rhetoric stresses the

need to empower from the grassroots up and end social hierarchies, a characteristic of new social

movements. Groups such as Saheli (1981) for example, were distinct from non-governmental

organizations since they were issue-based civil society associations to which women willingly

volunteered their time and resources. The central concern of these organizations was the question of

violence against women, initially addressed in terms of the context of the dowry deaths, custodial

rape, and sati during the late 1970s. These groups, although numerous, were relatively small, and placed a strong emphasis on internal participatory democracy. Their efforts focused on consciousness raising and empowering individual women through personal support. Although broadly left-of-centre ideologically, and even socialist/Marxist in their analysis of women’s

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subordination, they were avowedly feminist in their emphasis on patriarchy as determinant of power

relations between the sexes and as the organizing principle of society (Omvedt, 2004 and 1986).

As loosely structured and non-hierarchical, autonomous women’s groups functioned with no

legal or formal status and usually remained exclusively female. While tactics, strategy, and a full

spectrum of political positions were evident on any given issue, a broad consensus usually prevailed

for campaigning and for solidarity around the larger objective of mobilizing around the issue of

domestic violence. Autonomous groups did not necessarily engage in electoral politics themselves.

Rather they lobbied government officials and Members of Parliament and sought to influence public

opinion on issues through agitation and publicity. Thus, the goal of their work was to pressure

government action to securing rights for women (Calman, 1992: 17).

Autonomous organizations clearly positioned their politics against the state, although several

women’s non-governmental organizations such as Jagori (1984) and Forum Against the Oppression

of Women (FAOW) that also operate within feminist frameworks were not so averse to working

with the state.87 These non-governmental organizations are conceptualized as ‘formally organised, legally registered and professionally staffed non-profit bodies that undertake advocacy and/or service delivery activities in respect of some public policy’ (Scholte, 2007). In holding the state

accountable, they work with the State, creating change from within and/or identifying loopholes in

the functioning of programmes and policies in order to ensure state responsibility to stop violence

against women. Hence, these organizations oscillated between working with and against the state, by

collectively lobbying for the passage of the anti-domestic violence bill.

The role of these groups within the movement was a vital resource because they had been in existence since the early 1980s. Their members were not only personally active during the initial

87 Jagori for example, initiated a ‘Safe Delhi’ Campaign on the issue of safety in public spaces, and demanded accountability through its partnership with the state (http://safedelhi.jagori.org/). The organization’s partnership with the state led it to become a part of the Delhi State’s working committee on the issue of ‘Safe Delhi’ (Interviews: Jagori).

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agitations against violence against women particularly after Emergency but had experience and

knowledge of working within political and policy-making arenas when demanding legal reform

during the mid-1980s over rape and anti-dowry laws. While having the ability to share resources, the

activity of these groups was limited by their small numbers and low membership rates; their

insistence on collective decision-making dictated that the organizations must remain relatively small.

Thus the party-affiliated women’s organizations, listed in Table 5.1 with formal links to

major political parties served as an important element and resource for the movement. They played a

role in pressuring for anti-domestic violence legislation by lobbying government officials from within parliamentary structures. With the exception of the Mahila Dakshata Samiti (MDS), based in

New Delhi and with affiliated groups in a handful of states, all of the party-affiliated organizations are national in scale, have local chapters, and are organized hierarchically with national leadership based in the capital. Along with their access to and skills in using media and social networking, the ability of these mass organizations to mobilize large numbers for agitational purposes confers upon them considerable political clout; they have access to high government bureaucrats and to elected officials including the Prime Minister and President.

To a large extent women were organized in order to be available for agitation and mobilized to act as pressure groups against the incumbent government. Although this structure can be very useful for influencing law and government policy, it is less useful from the perspective of empowering the membership. The members give clout to the leadership since it is the leaders who have power, who are recognized elites and who can engage in elite politics. Much of the same can be said about the leaders of the older social service organizations - the All-India Women’s

Conference (AIWC) and Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). While their activities on behalf of women are important parts of their mission, their positions at the heads of these large organizations give them direct access to government decision makers— access that can be insured, if

109 necessary, by helping to organize agitational activities among their membership. Thus agitational activities are a major tactical weapon which serves to publicize grievances, demonstrate inadequacies of government and move it to act, and increase the visibility of the organization.

Hence, groups and organizations spanning the political spectrum, from autonomous women’s groups to party-affiliated ones, organizations and think tanks united in a coalition to pressure the state to take action on the domestic violence legislation collectively. I am by no means arguing the movement placed undying faith in the capacity of the state to provide sufficient redress for women who faced situations of domestic violence; rather the movement was cognizant of the fact that the state had resources and powers- to create law, to police the law, and to expend large sums of money. They all at some level therefore attempted to push the state apparatus, through building public opinion, lobbying, and pressuring the state in a concerted manner and my interview with Dr. Sudarshan, Director of the Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST), reflected this point. She asserts that women’s groups are more effective in bringing about changes in the state policies and law since they act as informal structures that encourage women’s empowerment and leadership

(Interviewed at ISST, February 2nd, 2007). This is clear from the activism which led to the PWDVA

2005 as lobbying was mostly done by women’s groups who initially drafted the bill, and then presented it to the MWCD.

Hustling the State: Women Pushing the Boundaries

I execute my analysis in this section to support my claim that women hustled the state and successfully because they pushed the Indian government further than it imagined. Indeed, although a progressive party, open to women’s demands, was a factor in successful policy outcome, without movement activism the government would have never appropriated the issue onto the agenda.

India’s recent domestic violence legislation was in large part an outcome of a coordinated and

110 cohesive movement lead by the Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative (LCWRI) that mobilized women’s groups to pressure the state for comprehensive law on domestic violence. The movement was not necessarily a single entity but rather a collective force of many groups, noted above, that joined together to mobilize around the passage of an anti-domestic violence bill. It was able to mount considerable pressure on the government and push its ideas of framing a comprehensive law due to its strength and uniform consensus around the Lawyers Collective bill.

The movement was mainly coordinated by the Lawyers Collective which was seen by many in the movement as an expert on addressing the rights of women in law due its extensive research and advocacy efforts aimed at effecting law reform (Navsharan Singh, Interviewed at IDRC Office:

February 13th, 2007). The Lawyers Collective, headed by Advocate Indira Jaising, led the process and provided the frame and language for the law by shifting ideas about the way legal protections reflected and expressed social norms and values in ways that challenged deeply set patriarchal norms.

The Lawyers Collective drafted the model Protection from Domestic Violence Bill (hereafter the

Lawyers Collective bill) based on a radical redefinition and elaboration of the paradigm over the past decade by international bodies, reconceptualising the issue of violence against women within a human rights discourse (CEDAW, 1993; Lawyer’s Collective Women’s Rights Initiative Proposal,

2001; Lawyer’s Collective Women’s Rights Initiative, 2002UNCHR, 1996).88 It was around the

Lawyers Collective bill that a women’s movement for the passage of anti-domestic violence legislation emerged. The Collective’s draft of the civil law was widely circulated amongst members of the civil society and women’s groups across the country during 1999-2005. A massive consensus

88 The Lawyers Collective defines domestic violence as “any act or conduct, which causes bodily pain, harm or danger to life and impairs the health or development of the person aggrieved in a domestic relationship” (Lawyers Collective, 2002: 6). The Research Center for Women’s Studies (RCWS) redefinition however goes beyond Lawyers Collective’s legal conceptualization of physical abuse vis a vis domestic violence to include psychological and sexual violence (Poonacha and Pandey, 1991) by including “all acts perpetrated in the private domain of the home to secure women’s subordination sanctioned by prevailing gender ideologies” (Ghosh, 2004:53).

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building process, in partnership with state level and local organizations, continued until the final

enactment of the law (Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative, 2007).

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Version of ‘Protecting’ Women (1998-2004)

The patriarchal nature of the Indian state, more so pronounced under cultural regimes,

implies that mutual engagement between the state and women is not necessarily symmetrical. On the

contrary, it is clear that more than often not it is the state which sets the terms of engagement and

tends to subvert women’s initiatives thus rendering women’s activism reactive. As we saw in Chapter

2, by the late 1990s movement actors confronted a more difficult policy context because the

Bharatiya Janata Party government was resistant to women’s rights. It was mainly Bharatiya Janata

Party officials from the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Ministry of Law and

Justice who dominated the discussion of domestic violence legislation demonstrating the Bharatiya

Janata Party-led Government did not intend to work with women’s movement actors on the issue

fuelling women’s movement activity particularly during 2001-2003.

Although during this time, key women’s movement actors such as the Lawyers Collective were given formal acceptance as legitimate representatives for the movement’s interests in the policy-making process, the lobbying and advocacy of autonomous women’s groups formed another pertinent strategy aimed at raising issues around the bill, demanding accountability from the state, done both at an individual capacity and collectively. Organizations such as Action India, Saheli and

Forum Against the Oppression of Women campaigned around the need for anti-domestic violence legislation. For instance, during a three year, national advocacy campaign to disseminate the contents of the Domestic Violence Bill, Action India gathered nearly 250,000 signatures from women and NGOs across eight states. Gauri Choudhary, coordinator of Action India, stressed that there was a “common goal and commitment” to ensure the introduction comprehensive legislation

112 on domestic violence (Interview, February 23, 2006). Saheli shifted from addressing individual level case work to intervening at different levels where it was instrumental in organizing sit-ins, demonstrations (dharna’s), rallies, protest marches drawing awareness around the issue to engage with the people (Saheli, 1985), evoke reactions and action. Saheli’s activity involved:

“… court cases, public hearings, joint Parliamentary Committees, Lok Sabha Questions, lobbying with MPs, press statements, writing numerous articles, letters to ICMR, MOHFW, Drugs Controller, NCW, networking with groups in India and abroad, posing as decoy patients, storming meetings, seminars, signature campaigns, producing documents, performing plays, singing songs, distributing flyers, leaflets, posters, sitting on dharnas, marching in rallies …” (Gandhi and Shah, 1992: 50).

Jagori, Swayam, and FAOW also lobbied but more as a collaborative venture for the passage of anti- domestic violence legislation (FAOW, 1990). For example, the Forum’s work on legal reform often landed them in a dilemma: “Our relationship with the State has been a controversial one. As a women’s group we have had to encounter the state and its machinery in almost every action or campaign. Mostly it has been a tight rope walk between making demands from a state and yet establishing and protesting against its oppressive and patriarchal nature” (Forum, 1990: 33).

Even though movement activists continued to lobby the state during the BJP regime holding it accountable not only in perpetrating violence against women but also condoning it through law, these demands fell on deaf ears when the Government unveiled its own version of a Domestic

Violence Bill (Protection from Domestic Violence Bill, 2001) or the Government of India (GOI)

Bill. The “lobbying” that women’s movement actors engaged in (of women’s national machinery, legislature and Cabinet) during the Bharatiya Janata Party regime (1998-2004) involved accusations that the Party was complicit not only in perpetrating violence against women but also in condoning it through law. Ignoring these accusations, the Government unveiled its own version of a Domestic

Violence Bill (Protection from Domestic Violence Bill, 2002). Women’s movement actors were dismayed that while the Bharatiya Janata Party had publicly stated that it encouraged the

113 preservation of the family, it was, at the same time, demanding that women ‘adjust’ to violence committed in the home.

The Minister of Human Resource Development, Murli Manohar Joshi- a member of the

Bharatiya Janata Party- transformed what was supposed to be a progressive piece of legislation, the

Protection from Domestic Violence Bill (2002), into a bill that in fact reflected the regressive gender paradigm of the Hindutva. In this way, the power of the Minister, and the predominance of the

Bharatiya Janata Party ideology over the role of women, resulted in the complete disregard of the more progressive policy proposals put forward by civil society groups. A comparison of the two bills provided in Table 5.2 below demonstrates that the government adopted a bill that completely omitted or modified Lawyers Collective Bill (2001) and instead developed a bill coincident with the patriarchal perspective of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Table 5.2: Features of the Lawyers Collective and Government of India Anti-Domestic Violence Bills Provisions Bill Proposed by the Lawyers Collective: Bill Proposed by the BJP Government: Domestic Violence Against Women (Prevention) Protection from Domestic Violence Bill (2002) Bill (2001) Definition of Any act, omission or conduct which is of Any conduct of the respondent shall ‘domestic such a nature as to harm or injure or has the constitute domestic violence if he: violence’ potential of harming or injuring the health, habitually assaults or makes the life of the safety or wellbeing of the person aggrieved aggrieved miserable by cruelty of conduct or any child in the domestic relationship and even if such conduct does not amount to includes physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal physical ill-treatment; forces the aggrieved and mental abuse and economic abuse” to lead an immoral life; or otherwise (Section 2(e)). injures or harms the aggrieved (Section 4). ‘Self-defense’ No provision justifying violence against a The inclusion of a self-defense clause that family member on the grounds of self- excluded any conduct from the definition defense. of domestic violence that was reasonable for a man’s protection or for the protection of his property (Section 4(2)). Domestic A relationship between two persons who live No provision. Excluded women outside Relationships or have lived together in a shared household, of marital relationships (women in when they are related by consanguinity, common-law partnerships, or those who marriage, or through a relationship in the have married men whose wives have not nature of marriage, adoption or are family been divorced) which meant that these members living together as a joint family women could not take recourse to the law (Section 2(d)). when confronted with domestic violence. Shared The law (Section 3) also covered women in No Provision Household non-matrimonial relationships (sisters,

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mothers, mothers-in law, and live-in domestic help) within any given household. Residence Gives the abused woman the right to No Provision Order continued occupation of the matrimonial home (Section 7). Removal Order Abuser is removed from the matrimonial No Provision home. Protection Protection Officers are not the police or law (Section 5-8) Officers enforcement but drawn from government civil service -Social Welfare Officers, Women and Child Development Officers or Child Development Project Officers - to conduct enquiries into cases of violence. It is the duty of Protection Officers to inform women of their rights under the Act to obtain orders under the Act. The court may direct the Protection Officer or any other authority to remove the aggrieved to a place of safety such as any short stay home run by any accredited service provider (Section 20). Protection The court may pass a protection order ‘Protection Orders’ enabling a Magistrate Orders prohibiting the respondent from: committing to pass three kinds of orders against the any act of domestic violence; entering the respondent: refrain from committing any place of employment/residence of the act of domestic violence; pay such aggrieved; attempting to communicate in any monetary relief as the magistrate deems form with the aggrieved; committing any just; and pass such other directions as may other act as specified in the protection order; be considered necessary (Section 9). causing violence to the dependants, and other relatives who give the aggrieved assistance from domestic violence (Section5). Mandatory Counselling is optional, not mandatory Mandatory counselling of the abused with Counselling (Section 31). or without the aggrieved (Section 11). Monetary The court may direct the respondent to pay No provision Relief monetary relief to meet the expenses incurred and losses suffered by the aggrieved and any child as a result of the domestic violence and includes but is not limited to loss of earnings; medical expenses; loss caused due to the destruction, damage or removal of any property from the control of the aggrieved; maintenance for the aggrieved as well as her children, if any (Section 6). Custody At any stage of the hearing of the petition No provision Orders for protection order, the court may grant temporary custody of any child or children to the aggrieved (Section 8). Compensation It is the duty of Protection Officers to No provision Orders inform women of their rights under the Act to obtain orders under the Act (Section 9). Service Any governmental, non-governmental, No provision Providers voluntary and charitable associations or

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institutions working for the welfare of woman that are registered under Societies Registration Act or any other law and providing medical, shelter homes, counselling, legal and financial or other assistance to victims of domestic violence (Section 2(a)) must be available to women. Source: Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative, Domestic Violence Against Women (Prevention) Bill, 2001; and Government of India, The Protection from Domestic Violence Bill, Bill No. 13 of 2002, 2002. At one level, the fact that the government was introducing the bill meant that it was

acknowledging that domestic violence was a serious issue requiring specific legal intervention. This marked an important departure from past practice since historically there had been a consistent

denial by the BJP of the existence of domestic violence against women and a refusal to address the

issue. To that extent, the introduction of the Government Bill was a significant victory for the

women’s movement, which, as we saw mobilized intensely in the face of government intransience

on the issue. However, in terms of content, the Government Bill not only fell short of what the

women’s movement had been asking for, but it was feared that if enacted, it could have dangerous

implications for women facing domestic violence. Indira Jaising argued that “complex as its

implications are, the point is that this law, if enacted thus, will turn out be extremely dangerous for

women survivors of domestic violence” (Indira Jaising, Interviewed: February, 5th, 2005). The bill

was reflective of the overriding ideological notions of patriarchy, particularly of the Hindu political

right, since it did not recognize domestic violence or an act involving the oppression of women as

crime, but rather saw it as an internal family issue that should be resolved by the concerned parties

to maintain family harmony and dignity (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2004: 99; Karat, 2005: 256-258).89

The government tabled the bill in parliament on March 8th 2002 -International Women’s

Day- but women’s organizations were shocked when they realized that the Government had

89 This was clearly evident in under the section of the bill entitled ‘Statement of Objects and Reasons’ of the Bill: which stipulated that “to provide remedy under the civil law which is intended to preserve the family [emphasis mine] and at the same time provides protection to victims of domestic violence” (Protection Against Domestic Violence Act, 2001:6).

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[instead] presented the government’s bill [instead] of the draft which had been submitted by the

Lawyers Collective (Table 5.2). The Government Bill invited sharp criticism from the women’s

movement that comprehensively denounced the bill’s passage as its implementation would clearly

produce dangerous implications for women facing situations of domestic violence ranging from the

definition of domestic violence to mechanisms intended to give relief to the aggrieved women as

explained below. According to Ranjana Kumari, Director of the Centre for Social Research, “not only is the bill weak but with no provision of resources, it will be difficult for women to get justice''.

She argued that “unless allocations are made for infrastructure and support services like short stay homes and counselling centres, this legislation is unlikely to prove effective'' (Ranjana Kumari,

Interviewed: March 9th, 2007). The changes made by the Government to the version submitted by

the Lawyers Collective were so drastic that the women’s movement galvanized to reject the act in its

entirety.

In fact, the final draft of the Government Bill contained very little of the provisions women

activists had asked for since it did not provide any immediate relief for victims of domestic violence

(Table 5.2). According to Jaising, no one was aware of the stage at which the provisions were

dropped as there were limited interactions with the Ministry after the draft bill had been submitted.

She explains, “as soon as we realized these provisions were missing, we approached the Secretaries

and suggested some crucial amendments…however we were told that any amendments proposed by

the government at that stage would have to have prior Cabinet approval” (Indira Jaising,

Interviewed: February, 5th, 2005). [Instead] new ‘anti-woman’ clauses such as the ‘self-defense’ plea

and defining domestic violence as ‘habitual assault’ provisions, items not in the original draft

submitted by the Lawyers Collective, were added (Lawyers Collective, 2007). In the definition of

domestic violence, the government’s bill did not use the language of rights. Ignoring both the United

Nations and the Lawyers Collective’s definitions of domestic violence, the government’s draft bill,

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although mentioning mental and sexual trauma, left the definition open ended, leading to a plethora

of judicial interpretations. In addition, the Bill inserted the inclusion of ‘habitual’ abuse, which meant that a woman would have to subject herself to repeated assaults to prove that her husband

‘habitually’ beats her (The Protection From Domestic Violence Bill, 2001: Chapter 4(1a)). In this

way, the government’s bill ignored the fact that violence in a household arose out of power

relationships where one person takes it upon [him] self to deprive the other of her/his rights

violating the victim’s rights.90

While there were several areas of conflict between women’s organizations and the

government, such as the fact that the BJP bill excluded women not in marital relationships and the

requirement for mandatory counselling for any women with a domestic violence complaint, the

most important disagreement occurred over the kind of rights (residence, protection orders,

monetary relief, custody orders, and compensation orders) that would be available to the victims of

domestic violence, as illustrated in Table 5.2. Furthermore, the Bharatiya Janata Party Law Minister

proposed to protect the right of the abuser by justifying the inclusion of a self-defense clause, which

excluded any conduct from the definition of domestic violence that was reasonable for a man’s

personal protection or for the protection of his property.91 As stated by Brinda Karat (2002), a

leading feminist-activist in India, “The present Bill legalizes the ideas . . . that in the ideal Hindu

parivar [family] the woman must adjust.” It is this “adjustment” into which a woman is en-culturated

since childhood. It is seen as a virtue and thus exalted through obedience, service, and servility”. In

this way, the legislation on domestic violence was couched in a framework that was regressive for

90While women’s movement actors voiced their concerns about this definition, the Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, agreed to make some changes in the definition of domestic violence. He said that the term ‘habitual’ could be excluded from the definition and some more changes could be considered but he cautioned that such broad based changes should not be suggested since they might not be acceptable within the Ministry of Human Resource Development. 91Jaitley argued that a self-defense plea was an important to safeguard any possible misuse of the law by women. Movement actors negotiated successfully to have the ‘self-defense’ plea dropped before the BJP put it before parliament (the stipulation that violence against a wife is justifiable on the grounds of self-defense), since it would function to legitimize domestic violence.

118 the protection of women against violence. Its excessive glorification of the family meant placing the welfare of the family above the well-being of the victimized woman and shaped the Bharatiya Janata

Party’s policy proposals on the draft domestic violence bill, rendering the bill consistent with its ideological position on gender equality.

A former president of the women's wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Mridula Sinha, is on record as saying that wife beating and domestic violence can often be justified - and that there are cases when women provoke a beating. Any notion of ‘confrontation’ (such as that implied by a tough stand against intra familial violence) that might erode the sanctity of marriage and family was consistently rejected by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Sinha explains that Bharatiya Janata Party policies and laws are more concerned with securing women’s practical needs than with addressing strategic ones. Sinha, saw women’s “liberation” of the 1970s as Western concept, a perspective illustrated by the following question she posed to me in our two-hour interview - “liberation from whom?”

(Mridula Sinha, Interviewed: March 5th, 2007). Sinha bases the status of Indian women on the claims of “because motherhood is a duty of every woman, Government must work to facilitate motherhood through its programmes/policies/laws”.

Thus, the policy proposals put forth by the BJP government worked against providing protection and rights for women. BJP government officials argued that they could not take an

“extreme feminist” position and would have to keep in mind the social context of India. Kiran

Maheshwari, former Member of Parliament, BJP, explains that “the BJP is good clean politics....society is morally decaying in need of saving by espousing family unit with woman as centre” (Interviewed: March 5th, 2007). In fact, the government used the domestic violence bill as a site of resistance to the progress toward gender equality. According to the government’s conservative perspective, any law that proposed legislation that could create divisions within the family by pitting rights against power, and checks on patriarchal privilege by imposing the law,

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undermined the unity of the family and thus the core of Hindu-right wing ideology. The

government’s domestic violence bill reinforced the “sanctity of marriage,” and in the process refused

to look at domestic violence as a human rights issue. Instead, the government saw the struggle to end domestic violence as one that through its very nature challenged the cultural institution of

Indian marriages. Seen this way, the policy goals of the women’s movements on the one hand, and the BJP government on the other were incompatible. In the end, the government in power (and its ideological predisposition) determined what kind of anti-violence legislation was passed. During the

BJP years, state and extra state actors disagreed on whether protection against domestic violence was

a human right. Women’s movements organizations articulated their support for anti- domestic

violence legislation in the language of rights for women (and children and the elderly, i.e.

dependants) within the home. In doing so, they sought to alter the power relations of the patriarchal

household through the mantra of constitutional rights. This signified a major and radical

intervention. The Bharatiya Janata Party government rejected this argument and the understanding

of women’s rights.

New Standing Committee Spurs Women’s Movement Activity

The position taken by the BJP government not only outraged several women’s groups who

after extensive “consultations” with the government, felt betrayed by the state, which they alleged,

made a mockery of the issue of domestic violence, but made the movement even more unified in its

struggle around the push for effective legislation. In fact, the passage of the Government Bill

stalled, in part because women’s groups in India mobilized to prevent its passage despite having

lobbied for such a law over five years (Jaisingh, 2002). In response to this concerted opposition, a

Parliamentary Standing Committee (the Standing Committee) for the Ministry of Human Resource

Development was set up for the specific purpose of re-examining the bill at length both on its

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conceptual approach and with regard to the penal provisions for combating violence against women (Lok Sabha Debates, 2005: 402; The Hindu, June 27, 2005).92

The Lawyers Collective immediately took the lead by obtaining the list of members of this new

Standing Committee of the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The Lawyers Collective

pursued the tactic to identifying and organizing “sympathetic” Parliamentarians into a group of

allies who would support the appropriate recommendations and undertake efforts to recruit partners who would take the campaign forward to their particular region. In this way the Standing

Committee would receive the analysis and recommendations of as many people as possible. Once these processes were complete, the Lawyers Collective synthesised all the changes recommended by

all those it had consulted and forwarded them to the Standing Committee.

The Lawyers Collective circulated a list of the Standing Committee members in order to

mobilize activists to write the Secretary of the Women and Child Department, Dr .Ayyar, to indicate

interest in making presentations before the Committee. As a result, women’s groups in Mumbai,

Calcutta, Ahmadabad, Allahabad, Lucknow, Bangalore, Jaipur and Shillong all issued statements

against the Bill and submitted written appeals to the Law Minister, Arun Jaitley. A number of

conferences and meetings were also organized and held in January 2002 in Delhi and all over India.

These gatherings all, condemned various reactionary provisions of the Bill and strategized the next

steps in the campaign. For example, an advocacy seminar, organised by the Centre for Social

Research on the 15th March, where Law Minister Arun Jaitley was the chief guest, women's groups,

systematically countered the government's arguments on the Bill (Centre for Social Research,

Meeting Notes, 2002). On the bill, Mr. Jaitley said:

“…how difficult the law making process is and a law takes many years to get passed and come into force. It is important to get the agenda across and a matter of routine, Bills get referred to the Select

92 The Committee was appointed by the Chairman of the Upper House and worked under the direction of the Speaker that requested the Committee present a final report with its recommendations to the House.

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Committee of the Parliament and so will the Domestic Violence Bill, so there’s not much to worry in this regard” (Jaitley, 2002).

Indira Jaising, Director of the Lawyer’s Committee, who was also invited to speak on the

government bill responded to Minister Jaitley’s comments by arguing:

“There should be a policy underlying every legislation. The only possible objective of a law on domestic violence can only be to stop violence. Whereas the policy of the GOI Draft seems to be to preserve the family and the marriage, and the same is already achieved by all the marriage laws and civil laws. The only “unoccupied field” is protecting a woman from domestic violence and this present draft does not achieve that” (Jaising, 2002).

By September 2002, the Standing Committee received 27 memoranda containing suggestions and comments on various provisions of the Protection from Domestic Violence Bill

(proposed by the BJP in 2002) from various lawyers, academics, women’s non-governmental

organizations, think tanks, and women’s organizations (Rajya Sabha, 2002).93 The Committee also

heard individuals, representatives of associations, and non-governmental organizations concerned

about the Bill. The Standing Committee made some positive suggestions along the lines

recommended by women’s organizations to amend the bill and submitted its 124th Report on the

Domestic Violence Bill (2002) in Parliament on December 22nd, 2002. While it eventually

succumbed to “consultations” through the Standing Committee, the government ignored the main

recommendations arising from this process since in the end the government’s bill did not incorporate the recommendations made by the women’s movement actors.

As a result, some women’s movement actors decided to bring in external actors in order to

increase the pressure on the government to address the grave deficiencies in its bill. For example, the

Indian Social Institute (ISI) initiated a joint legislative project with the International Commission of

93 Meetings on August 28th and 29th, and September 9th, 2002 of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development heard oral evidence from representatives of institutions/NGOs on the Protection from Domestic Violence Bill, 2002.

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Jurists (ICJ)94, a move that meant it would now intervene in the Indian national debate on domestic

violence. In November 2002, the ICJ undertook a needs assessment mission to India where a large

number of women’s non-governmental organizations expressed concern over the bill during

different regional round-table discussions and bilateral meetings with the ICJ. They claimed that

despite some positive changes recommended by the Standing Committee, the bill was inadequate in

addressing domestic violence or even harmful to its cause.

The ICJ agreed to provide an “authoritative review” of the government’s draft law.95 The

ICJ expert review was conducted in February 2003. The draft bill had been reviewed by Ms. Pramila

Patten, member of the UN Committee on the Elimination on All Forms of Discrimination Against

Women (CEDAW) and a human rights specialist from Mauritius with long standing expertise in this

field. Such a review was based on international human rights law and on comparative experience

from other nations that had recently enacted effective legislation. Part of its objective was to open

up a dialogue and to prevent the draft bill from being adopted in its present form. To achieve this, a

consultation workshop was held from March 13-14th, 2003 in New Delhi. More than 60 representatives from over 50 NGOs from across 14 states in India agreed to participate in the workshop (International Commission of Jurists, 2003: 17-19). The participants considered that the bill in its present form would prove counter-productive for women due to a range of serious shortcomings, especially because it failed to provide any effective recourse remedy for victims of

domestic violence. The participants were of the view that even if the recommendations of the

Standing Committee were to be included, the bill would still remain deficient in many respects,

94 Established in 1952, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) is an international human rights non- governmental organization. The Commission itself is a standing group of 60 eminent jurists (judges and lawyers); including members of the senior judiciary in Australia, Canada, and South Africa and the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, was the president of the Commission from 2008 to 2010. In January 2011, Pedro Nikken took her place and Sir Nigel Rodley is the current president.

95 The expert review highlighted a range of serious shortcomings in the draft and concluded that it failed to provide effective remedies to the victims of domestic violence and would not conform to women’s human rights needs (Report on the Legislative Review Project in India, Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, 2003).

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specifically in terms of the kind of rights (residence, protection orders, monetary relief, custody

orders, and compensation orders) that would be available to the victims of domestic violence.

After extensive review of the draft bill and detailed deliberations, the workshop participants proposed fundamental changes to the bill that included: broadening the definition of domestic violence; expanding the scope of the bill to cover children who are victims of domestic violence; making provisions for female protection officers; informal, speedy, and victim friendly court procedures; monetary assistance; and access to various kinds of social assistance (International

Commission of Jurists, 2003:9-11). In order to enhance the impact of the consultation workshop, a number of steps were undertaken, including media outreach, the distribution of the recommendations, the discussion of the conclusions in high-level bilateral meetings with governmental representatives, and outreach through publications in law journals.

This flurry of activity included a joint press conference with the participation of Ms. Pramila

Patten (Member of the UN Committee on the Elimination on All Forms of Discrimination Against

Women) and Dr. Vineeta Gupta (Secretary General, Insaaf International) on March 15, 2003, in

New Delhi releasing the recommendations to the public and media. A series of bilateral meetings were also held to discuss the recommendations and ICJ’s concern with the draft law. On March 14,

2003, a three-member delegation comprising of Ms. Pramila Patten, Ravinder Joshi and Dr. Vineeta

Gupta met with Dr. Sanjay Paswan, Indian Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment to raise various concerns over the bill. Dr. Paswan suggested that there is a need to identify

“sympathetic” Parliamentarians and organise them into a group so that bill is adopted with appropriate recommendations. The ISI later presented Dr. Paswan with the recommendations in order to engage him in discussion to further the efforts of the workshop participants.

Through the efforts of Dr. Paswan, a meeting was arranged with Ms. Jas Kaur Meena, State

Minister of Human Resource Development. A delegation met with Minister Meena on March 20th,

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2003 who was joined by a senior civil servant from the Ministry of Law and Justice responsible for

draft bill. The delegation presented the workshop recommendations to the Minister and explained in

detail the problems of the present draft. The Minister agreed with the main recommendations on the

definitions of “domestic violence” and “relatives” and promised his personal support in this regard.

After hearing the delegation’s reservations over the Bill, Minister Meena agreed with the main

recommendations and extended her personal support (International Commission of Jurists,

2003:11).

Although the Bharatiya Janata Party coalition-led National Democratic Alliance Government

eventually opened channels of access to societal groups through the creation of the Parliamentary

Standing Committee, it gave very little space for women movement actors to have an impact on the

new policy on violence against women. Rejecting the Lawyers Collectives recommendations and

those resulting from the ICJ consultations created confusion and a fragile situation between the

government and women’s movement actors. The triad of policy actors (Ministry of Law, Ministry of

Human Resource Development, and the Department of Women and Child) formed a cohesive

group that resisted outside input. Since women’s organizations were blocked from arenas such as the

legislature and cabinet where decisions were made, they were unable to influence the policy outcome

over domestic violence. The government rejected their demand in adopting a comprehensive bill to

protect women’s rights that would have incorporated the main features of the Lawyer’s Collective

proposal. However, I argue this situation changed, in the proceeding section, when the Indian

National Congress-led coalition government came to power as the United Progressive Alliance

(UPA)96 in 2004, giving women’s movement actors’ procedural access to achieve policy change since the outcome of the debate coincided with the goals of the women’s movement actors.

96 The UPA coalition won the general elections with a comfortable majority of more than 335 members out of 543 seats in the Lower House with the help of its allies under the direction of Indian National Congress (Election Commission of India, 2004). The coalition consisted of 19 political parties largely supported externally by a

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Indian National Congress Legalizes Anti-Domestic Violence Legislation (2004-2009)

While the combination of factors analyzed above resulted in a failure to produce a satisfactory anti-domestic violence bill (as least as far as the women’s movement was concerned) I claim the situation reverses itself when conditions change under a new government creating political

opportunities for women. Indian National Congress governments after 2004 not only provided an

activist women’s national machinery which I examine in Chapter 7, but also when combined with a

united women’s movement created conditions that produced the most comprehensive anti-domestic

violence policy. Indeed, a unified and strong pressure of the women’s movement pushed the legislation further than policymakers originally intended. Essentially it was the movement which drove the agenda on the issue of domestic violence and looked to Congress as a party that was open to progress and pushed the issue further. As Gargi Chakravarty argues even though “Congress passed the anti-domestic violence legislation it was not possible without the organization and mobilization of women’s groups activism on awareness campaigns” (Gargi Chakravarty, Interviewed at NFIW offices: January 31th, 2007). The movement had independent power since the pressure it placed on Congress, as I argue below, changed the minds of party leaders.

The situation, which came about with the election of Congress, in which a centre-left

governing majority had control of policy decisions, created a policy-making context that was much

friendlier towards women’s movement actors policy goals. When Congress came to power, the

women’s anti-domestic violence bill still had not been finalized and so the enactment of a civil law

on domestic violence was included in the Common Minimum Programme of the UPA coalition.

This was an important step as it gave political significance to the issue of domestic violence making

leftist alliance led by the Communist Party of India and a few regional parties such as the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), and National Congress Party (NCP). The United Progressive Alliance coalition consisted of a variety of intrastate spatial alliances as well as ideological commonalities (anti-Bharatiya Janata Party) and ideological compromises (on economic policy between the Congress and the left) made up the United Progressive Alliance coalition.

126 the new government a target of pressure and campaigns on the part of the women’s movement to pass a comprehensive domestic violence bill of civil nature.

The Government wasted no time in upholding its electoral commitment to the bill and began a dialogue with the women’s movement on the draft proposal initially put forth by the

Lawyers Collective. This time, new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointed Arjun Singh as the

Minister of Human Resource Development. Arjun Singh was the Chairman of the Standing

Committee in 2002 when the Bill had been referred to the Committee. Having as an ally a minister of the government, who had previously contributed to the drafting of a more progressive bill, signalled to women’s movement actors that the government was open to their demands. To prove his government’s commitment to the bill, Arjun Singh assured women’s movement actors that the draft bill Congress developed would be based on the Lawyers Collective proposal.

The Bill drafted under the Congress administration adopted the provisions in the Lawyers

Collective bill including the definition of domestic violence that went beyond traditional conceptions of understanding domestic violence as only being actual or threatened physical maltreatment and was expanded to include physical, verbal, emotion, sexual, and economic abuse (PWDVA, 2005).

The text of the bill conspicuously avoided terms like cruelty and dowry and instead defined the parameters of each form of abuse, which included not only physical and mental abuse, but also abuse in the form of certain deprivations and controlling behaviours. See Table 5.3 below for a summary of the main features of the 2005 bill. Second, the bill also provided for a number of legal actions that abused women could take to ensure their personal safety. Sections 22-27, for instance, provided for safety provisions that included protection orders, removal of the abusive partner from the household, financial relief, and maintaining custodial rights over children.

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Table 5.3: Features of the Government of India Anti-Domestic Violence Bill Provisions Bill Proposed by the INC Government (2005) Definition of For the purposes of this Act, any act, of the respondent shall constitute domestic ‘domestic violence: violence’ (a) harms or injures or endangers the health, safety, life, limb or well-being, whether mental or physical, of the aggrieved person causing physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse and economic abuse (b) harasses, harms, injures or endangers the aggrieved with a view to coerce her or any other person related to her to meet any unlawful demand for any dowry or other property or valuable security (c) has the effect of threatening the aggrieved or any person related to her by any conduct mentioned in clause (a) or clause (b) (d) otherwise injures or causes harm, whether physical or mental (Section 3 (a-d)) Domestic A relationship between two persons who live or have lived together in a shared Relationship household, when they are related by consanguinity, marriage, or through a relationship in the nature of marriage, adoption or are family members living together as a joint family (Section 2(f)). Residence Act provides the right to reside in the shared household, which allows the woman Order victim in a domestic relationship to reside in the same household as that of the respondent whether or not she has the right or title to do so, and that the respondent will not have any right to evict her from the household (Section 21). Removal Act can remove the abusive partner from the shared household and specifies the duties Order of the magistrates in doing so in times of emergencies (Section 23). Protection Officers Protection Protection officers may pass a protection order in favour of the aggrieved and Orders prohibiting the respondent from committing any act of domestic violence against the victim, or trying to communicate with her in one way or the other without her consent (Section 22). Mandatory Counselling is voluntary with a qualified service provider involving the respondent and Counselling the aggrieved either individually or jointly (Section 18) Monetary Respondent is ordered to provide to the victim spouse and her children if any, Relief monetary relief to meet the expenses occurred by the victim because of domestic violence against her. These expenses include loss of earnings, loss of property, and maintenance, either monthly or lump sum one-time payment (Section 24). Custody The Act allows the magistrate to grant temporary custody order of any child or Orders children to the aggrieved on her application for the same, and may refuse to allow any visit by the respondent to the children if the magistrate deems such visits harmful for the children (Section 25). Compensation The Act allows the magistrate to direct the respondent to pay compensation and Orders damages for physical and mental injury (or acts of domestic violence) inflicted upon the aggrieved by the respondent on application for the same by the aggrieved person (Section 26). Service Any voluntary association registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 or a Providers company registered under the Companies Act, 1956 or any other law in force with the objective of protecting the rights and interests of women by any lawful means including providing legal aid, medical, financial or other assistance shall register itself with the State Government as a service provider for the purposes of this Act Section 10 (1). Shelter Homes Shelter will be provided to the aggrieved in the shelter home upon request made by a

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Protection Officer or a Service Provider on her behalf (Section 9 (f)). Legal Aid To ensure the aggrieved person is provided legal aid under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 free of cost (Section 9(d)) Source: Government of India, Protection of Women From Domestic Violence Act, 2005.

Third, the bill articulated specific forms of remedial relief from violence, which provided for the economic security of abused women. The inclusion of the right to secure housing for instance allowed a woman to remain in her marital home or shared household regardless of whether or not she has a property interest in it. Its inclusion would prevent the destitution of a woman allowing her to remain in her home. It was the first time this aspect of domestic violence was explicitly dealt with in any law. This provision was essential in order to obtain the support of all movement actors since they saw the lack of rights within the marital home as a primary factor increasing women’s vulnerability to violence (Lawyers Collective, 2004). Hence, including a clause that would preserve a woman’s right to remain in the household was critically important for women’s movement actors if the law was to be effective. The approach taken by the Congress government was one based on the premise that a woman, regardless of her marital status, has the right to live in her home without violence. The new law granted rights to women in common-law partnerships, sisters, mothers, daughters, widows, and divorced women. The law did not differentiate between married and unmarried women. Instead, it, in effect, attempted to destabilize static notions of the family by encompassing a wide range of female claimants negating the conceptualization of women within the patriarchal household only as wives (Agnes, 2006).

Analysis of the provisions thus revealed that state actors were willing to support the kind of civil domestic violence law demanded by women’s movement actors which would intervene in the home potentially allowing claims to rights that would disrupt the private-public dichotomy. This was evident in the passage of the 2005 Protection of Women From Domestic Violence Act, which reflected the government’s support for a more comprehensive understanding of the issue of domestic violence. In fact, it became the first law in India to explicitly adopt the term ‘domestic

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violence’. After 2005, state policy actors such as the DWCD, the Ministry of Law and Justice and several female Members of Parliament began to frame the problem of domestic violence within a

rights discourse and acknowledged that domestic violence was a widely prevalent and universal

problem of power relationships within a patriarchal household. In this way, the framing of the law

was new as a consequence of women’s movement lobbying.

Politicians and bureaucrats persuaded by the arguments of the women’s organizations produced a fundamental shift in context in which extensive consultation on the domestic violence issue (and on other women’s issues) occurred. Since the government was open to consultation, a broadly consultative process opened the way for women’s organizations to affect policy outcome, particularly in the area of domestic abuse legislation that led to an exchange of views that had an impact on the thinking of some of the political/bureaucratic leadership. The DWCD drafted the

new legislation based on the final revisions proposed by the National Commission for Women and

the Lawyers Collective under the direction of Arjun Singh. Hence, after 2004, the DWCD and the

Commission became allies of women’s movement actors on this policy issue in contrast with what

had been happening during the BJP years, a development explored in more detail in Chapter 7.

Here we see the mutually reinforcing actions of a strongly united women’s movement and a

supportive top political leadership, which, as I will argue in Chapter 7, pretty much directed women’s

national machinery to be activist and supportive. This situation demonstrates that even when the

women’s movement was able to articulate an issue forcefully and clearly, the likelihood of a favourable policy outcome is weak unless there is strong support from the national political

leadership. This new leadership was able to ensure that the women’s national machinery officials worked sympathetically and effectively with women’s extra state organizations. In doing this, a final draft Bill was prepared in collaboration with the Lawyers Collective, the National Commission for

Women and women’s groups, and only after this final consultative process was the bill enacted by

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the government. Passed as the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005), the bill

reflected a significant achievement within the women’s movement since it shifted prior conceptualizations of domestic violence through this legislation (Agnes, 2005).

Conclusion

The nature of the regime in power was indeed critical in determining the ultimate policy

outcome: what government is in power (and its ideological predisposition) had a determining impact

on what kind of anti-domestic violence legislation was passed. Movement actors were able to elicit

only limited state responsiveness under a right-wing coalition government led by the Bharatiya

Janata Party during 1998-2004. In so far as the domestic violence was recognized as a serious issue

requiring specific legal intervention, the proposed bill failed to provide adequate protection to

women. It was only when a new government came to power led by the Indian National Congress

that policy outcome was achieved creating a political opportunity for movement actors to influence

policy. However the potential for state activism was only possible when being pushed by the

women’s movement from the outside. Movement activists were responsible for developing the

concept of violence against women and it is hard to imagine the issue framed as a public one before

women’s movements transformed a public discussion of what had previously been seen as a private

matter. The mutually reinforcing actions of a strongly united women’s movement and supportive

top political leadership including WMN which operated to facilitate a positive policy outcome for

women when a supportive government was in power, resulted in the passage of India’s first piece of

anti-domestic violence legislation. Indeed the history of the anti-domestic violence activism showed

that the Lawyer’s Collective and women’s groups as well as women parliamentarians formulated

most of the draft laws. The law emerged not only from a wide process of debate and deliberation

within the women’s movement but by extensive consultations, as we will see later, with the

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Department of Women and Child. Hence, the eventual positive policy outcome in the domestic violence legislation arose from a combination of a unified and articulate women’s movement and a sympathetic national leadership. Unlike the passage of the Protection of Women from Domestic

Violence Act, Chapter 6 will examine how policy outcome around the issue of reservations reveals a different picture since the Women’s Reservation Bill (WRB) has remained trapped somewhere between the universal language of democracy and social justice and the particular language of caste, ethnic, and religious identity.

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Chapter 6

Reservations for Women: Political Resistance and a Divided Women’s Movement

In contrast to the case of violence against women, this chapter points out that the women’s

movement which emerged to mobilize around representational quotas for women in Parliament and

state legislatures, could not elicit a significant response from the state on the issue of reservations. The

lack of state responsiveness resulted from three key factors. First, I contend the most crucial of the three factors in shaping the impact of the women’s movement was the political party in power. The presence and political leverage of caste parties in the ruling coalition governments led by the Janata

Dal Party (1996-1998), the Bharatiya Janata Party (1999-2004), and the Indian National Congress

(2004 -2009), created a hostile environment due to their divergent coalitional responsibilities.

Second, a divided women’s movement for reservations resulted in its low level of mobilization

which meant that organizations mobilized around the issue in ways that were contentious rather

complementary. The political context of existing caste conflicts over reservations created a situation

in which political consensus and a commitment to the issue affected women’s movement actors’

ability to gain support for the issue from top leadership. Lastly, because of the political context,

women’s national machinery (WNM), unwilling to promote women’s movement actors goals on the

reservation bill, played only marginal and symbolic roles. In fact, they took no official position on

the issue of reservations, a position that made women’s movement actors wary in asking women’s national machinery for support. In this case, policy outcome was to some extent driven by electoral incentives since the issue of reservations directly threatened the stability of coalition governments in power.

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Inhospitable Policy Environment

The history of the Women’s Reservation Bill (WRB) illustrated in Table 6.1 below reveals the variety of failed compromises in the struggle to get the bill passed. Debates around women’s reservation are a classic example of how politics contested around identities can push the concern for representation on or off the political agenda. While most of the support for the law came from within parties and from organizations linked to parties, intense opposition emerged from caste- based parties and consequently the need to keep their support was an important ingredient in blocking the bill from going forward. Even though the bill received support amongst sympathetic leaders within the United Front (UF), National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and United Progressive

Alliance (UPA) coalitions, it consistently faced vociferous opposition from caste-based parties when it came to discussing the bill in both the upper and lower houses leading to its failure to become law. The political context of existing caste conflicts over reservations created a hostile environment preventing top political leadership from pushing forward legislation since it did not include a sub- quota for women from the Other Backward Class category and minority groups.

Each time the ruling government of the day reintroduced the bill, it lapsed and Table 6.1 shows that all three governments at some point during their rule tabled the bill in Parliament.

Opposition by caste-based parties remained constant and only mildly tempered when alternative proposals to the Women’s Reservation Bill emerged. Such alternatives emerged particularly after

2000 and ranged from the Indian Electoral Commission’s suggestion that required political parties to run a minimum agreed percentage of women candidates, to dual-member constituencies proposed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, to Congress’ solution of increasing the number of seats in Parliament.

Table 6.1: History of the Women’s Reservation Bill, 1996-2010 Year MAJOR EVENT: 1996 The United Front Janata-led coalition government introduces the women’s reservation bill for the first time as 81st constitutional amendment bill on September 4th. 1996 Women’s Reservation Bill introduced and referred to Joint Select Committee (JSC) of Parliament.

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1996 The Joint Parliamentary Committee presents its report to Parliament on December 9th accepting the basic premise of the government’s Bill. The amendment that was not accepted was regarding the provision for the reservation for Other Backward Class women. 1998 The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government re-introduces the bill for the second time in the 12th Lok Sabha as 84th constitutional amendment bill on June 26th. 1999 The National Democratic Alliance government re-introduces the bill for the third time in the 13th Lok Sabha on November 22nd. 2001 The National Democratic Alliance government supports Election Commission proposal that suggested that instead of amending the Constitution to ensure 33% of seats for women the same could be achieved by a simple change in the Representation of People’s Act 2002 The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government bill re-introduces the bill for the fourth time. 2003 The bill introduced again by the NDA for a fifth time in parliament. 2003 BJP convened a series of all-party meetings around a new proposal to bring a Constitutional Amendment to convert one-third (or 180 seats) of the Lok Sabha constituencies into dual-member constituencies with one male and one female candidate. 2004 Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government includes bill in the Common Minimum Programme. 2005 Bharatiya Janata Party announced complete support for the Bill. 2005 Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government introduced yet another proposal for women’s reservation, to increase seats in the Lok Sabha from 545 (current) to 726 in order to accommodate 181 new Members of Parliament. 2005 Congress initiated an exercise to generate discussion and debate around the alternative proposal (above) creating the Group of Ministers (GOM) 2006 Congress introduces bill in Rajya Sabha, then refers it to the Standing Committee on Law and Justice. 2008 The Congress introduces the bill for the first time in the Rajya Sabha to avoid legislation from lapsing. 2009 Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice recommends passage of the Bill in December. 2010 The Union Cabinet cleared the bill on February 25th. 2010 The upper house of the Indian Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, passed the bill on March 9th.

However, women’s organizations and caste-based parties rejected the alternatives depending on the proposal and its key provisions. In this way, the difficulty of reaching a compromise on representation and identity issues versus the principles of gender equality held the women’s reservation bill back. While parties embraced quotas publicly in order to appear progressive to win women’s votes, individual men worked secretly to subvert their adoption out of reluctance to give up their parliamentary seats (Gandhi 1996; Kishwar 1996 and 1998; Nath, 1996). Concerned that claims for other groups threatened to divide them women in support of the bill sought to expose the

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true motivations of male opponents by calling attention to the large gap between the official positions taken by the political parties and the actual attitudes of male party members towards reservations. Although no one leader of any party would admit this, most cloaked their opposition in the politics of caste identity. Indeed, there was an additional dynamic at work here not present in the

domestic violence legislation campaign: the reservation bill meant a net loss for the men who were

responsible for its passage. Compared to the policy issue of domestic violence, quotas for women in

Parliament directly attacked the male bastion of power since it meant losing seats to a woman,

revealing that “reservations for women has strictly been a power issue” according to Brinda Karat,

former General Secretary of the All India Democratic Women's Association. (Brinda Karat,

Interviewed at Communist Party of India (Marxist) Headquarters: February 19th, 2007).

Caste Parties Hold All the Cards

There is hardly any party in India that is not conscious of the need to make appeals to

specific castes, co-opting caste leaders into positions within the party, and considering caste during the allocation of seats in parliamentary and state elections (Weiner, 2002: 218-225). This has given

caste parties more power in influencing decisions at the national level. These parties have primarily

based their response to the question of women’s political participation on caste considerations and

specific vote banks. Consequently, caste political parties swear by the principle of reservations

because of their desire to gain votes from the substantial number of citizens who are from the Other

Backward Class (OBC) category.97 For them reservations are instruments to deal with the political

97 The Other Backward Classes (OBCs) is a term used in Indian politics to refer to the relatively wealthier and better educated who are not eligible for government sponsored educational and professional benefit programs. OBC’s are distinguished from Schedule Castes since they have the potential to be upwardly mobile moving off or on the OBC list depending on social, educational, and economic factors. Schedule Castes on the other hand are groupings of historically disadvantaged people that are given express recognition in the Constitution of India that lays down general principles for the policy of affirmative action. They typically include the Dalits, or Untouchables. Because of the provision of reservations for Schedule Castes in the Constitution, a provision can also be made for Schedule Caste women within the Women’s Reservation Bill.

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and social deprivations that Other Backward Classes have suffered recognizing that while there is an imbalance between groups, reservations are in place to rectify that.

While all three ruling parties (Janata Dal, Bharatiya Janata Party, and Indian National

Congress) experienced internal opposition to the allocation of 33% quota representation to women within state legislative assemblies and Parliament, a triad of caste-based parties -Rashtriya Janata Dal

(RJD), Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP), and Samajwadi Party (SP) led the most vociferous opposition against the constitutional amendment since it did not include a sub-quota for Other

Backward Class women. Table 6.2 below illustrates that resistance from the triad of caste-based

parties, amongst several others, was constant throughout the struggle over the women’s reservation

bill. Consequently, in doing so these parties blocked efforts by the respective dominant parties in

their respective ruling coalitions to introduce a constitutional amendment.

Table 6.2: Political Parties that Opposed the 81st Constitutional Amendment Bill Political Parties Name Party Type Basis of Opposition Member(s) Rashtriya Janata Dal Lalu Prasad Caste-based September 1996: Opposed introduction of bill (RJD) Yadav and in Parliament. Kanti Singh November 1996: Tabled an amendment for Samajwadi Party (SP) Mulayam Singh Caste-based the reservation for Other Backward Class Yadav and women. Amar Singh July 1998: Members of the RJD attempted to Janata Dal (United) Sharad Yadav Caste-based prevent the introduction of the bill when a (JDU) formerly Samata party member snatched the bill from the hands Party of Law Minister, Surendra Pratap Yadav who Bahujan Samaj Party Mayawati Caste-based was listed to announce the official introduction (BSP) of the Bill. December 1999: RJD and SP opposed introduction of bill in Parliament by forcing the Speaker to adjourn the legislature three times such that the bill could not be debated. 2002: Opposed introduction of bill in Parliament. May 2003: Opposed introduction of bill in Parliament where heated exchanges on the floor of the Lower House prevented any debate on the bill, with the strongest opposition coming again from the RJD, JDU and the SP, who continued to insist the bill be

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revised to include sub-quotas for OBC’s and Muslims. May 2008: Threatened to withdraw from UPA coalition if Bill was introduced in Parliament. May 2008: In opposition to the Bill Samajwadi Party members tried to snatch its copies from the hands of the Law Minister H R Bhardwaj when he attempted to introduce the Bill in Parliament. March 2010: Bill moved in Rajya Sabha, but voting was deferred after unruly scenes and threats of withdrawal support to the UPA government by SP and RJD. Bharatiya Janata Party Uma Bharti and Religious BJP supports the bill with a quota for Other Maneka Gandhi Backward Class women, but two of its female Members of Parliament opposed it. All India Trinamool Mamata Banerjee Regional Demands a sub-quota especially for minorities, Congress since the Party relies on Muslim votes. Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) Caste-based Demands a provision made for sub-quotas. Shiv Sena (SS) Religious Believes reservations create further divides All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen Religious Demands reservations for Muslims/minorities. Party (AIMIM) Union Muslim League (UML) Religious Demands reservations for Muslims/minorities The Social Democratic Party Regional Women party leaders and delegates of caste communities and other minorities demand a sub-quota.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal is a regional political party, established in the state of Bihar as an offshoot from the Janata Dal party in 1998, and is under the leadership of Laloo Prasad Yadav98.

The RJD is primarily a caste-based party and has been a strong exponent of the advancement of

Other Backward Classes (Palshikar, 2003). The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), established in 1984, is another caste-based party, which is a centrist national political party in India with socialist leanings.

It was primarily formed to represent Bahujans (literally meaning "People in majority"), referring to people from the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes as well as minorities.99 The Samajwadi Party (SP) is another caste-based party similar to the RJD. Since its

98 “Yadavs” are the most politically assertive caste group in modern Indian politics. 99 With the decline of the Congress Party during the 1990’s and the continuing inability of upper caste leadership of the major political parties to satisfy the rising expectations of the educated middle class of the Schedule Caste (Dalits), the BSP sought to challenge their political domination and electoral exploitation of lower castes (Baxter,

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power base has not successfully expanded beyond Uttar Pradesh, the SP is a regional party that is

constantly engaged in a battle for garnering Other Backward Class votes under the leadership of

Mulayam Singh Yadav. Like the RJD, it fights for socially backward communities such as Other

Backward Class, Muslims, and Dalits (for which it competes heavily with the BSP).

Even the Samajwadi Party or the Rashtriya Janata Dal have not demanded quota

representation in legislatures so far because, given their proportion in the population, Other

Backward Classes are fairly represented in the political sphere.100 However, all three leaders of these

parties have demanded that either a much lower percentage (10% as opposed to the 30% being

advocated by those supporting the Women’s Reservation Bill) of seats be reserved for women or a

sub-quota be reserved for women from the backward castes. Combined, they have created a force

strong enough to prevent the passage of the bill by using the caste/class connection to divide

women weakening gender as a cohesive force to unite women. Their acceptance of the proposed bill

has been conditional on the establishment of a 27% sub-quota for women from backward castes.

For them if backward-caste men cannot represent backward-caste women fairly then neither can

upper caste women. In this way, caste-based parties constructed the debate over reservations around

issues of who represented whom reducing the question of reservations to interpreting who in fact

were the disadvantaged groups: Other Backward Class or women.

Consequently, the emphasis of these parties on positive rights for backward castes combined

with a weaker concern about strategic women’s rights (even among the female supporters of these

parties) meant that identities based on caste and community gained primacy over sexual equality.

1998:111-12; op cite, 33). The party gained its political support from undermining the domination of upper castes and advocating its one point programme: proportional representation for all groups in government, bureaucracy, and educational institutions (Hasan, 2002: 384). 100It is difficult to consider Other Backward Class as politically or electorally marginalized in contemporary India even though their socio-economic exclusion is undeniable. Other Backward Class could not really complain about political representation since they accounted for 192 out of 545 of Members of Parliament in the 12th Lok Sabha (1998-1999) and over 200 Members of Parliament, nearly 40% of the total in the 13th (1999-2004) while women, as half the population, made up less than 10% of Members of Parliament.

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Whereas women Members of Parliament and the Minister of Law and Justice clearly framed the issue of reservation in terms of gender equity as explained below, party representatives of the

Rashtriya Janata Dal, Bahujan Samaj Party, and Samajwadi Party maintained that gender oppression was subordinate to caste oppression. Leaders of these parties suggested the so-called reservation for women, without taking into account the caste identity of women, would discriminate against women within Other Backward Class and minority groups. They argued that any scheme of reserving seats for women must reflect caste distinctions prevalent in India since the interests of elite women would not truly represent the interests of all women thus requiring caste/community guarantees within the bill. According to Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, how can “short-haired feminists and their presumptuous claims be representative of the lower class/caste women…gender justice abstracted from all other forms of social justice is an urban middle class concept and therefore of little use” (The Statesman, 1998: 13). This position conflicted with that of the women’s movement that demanded representation for women, as women, and not linked to any special consideration based on caste since the premise of their goal for achieving reservations rested on the principles of gender equality.

Therefore, the crux of the issue is whether the generalized oppression and exclusion of women characteristic of society is a sufficient basis for transcending the divisions of caste, religion, and ethnicity and whether the women’s movement is representative enough to affect such a unity.101

In this way, the saga of the non-passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill reflects the fluidity of the

Indian political situation. With exigencies of coalition politics distracting attention of political leadership, consensus has eluded the bill and the struggles around its passage remained the same from one administration to the next. During the decade-long debate over reservations, the

101 Women elected from those constituencies, which are presently electing OBC men, is possible. In fact, as per a memorandum submitted by the All India Democratic Women’s Association to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for reservations in 2008, the proportion of OBC women MPs out of the total number of women MPs in the 14th Parliament was slightly higher (30%) than the proportion of OBC MPs in total MPs (28%).

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formation of three governments with fragile coalitions under the United Front (1996-1998), the

National Democratic Alliance (1998-2004), and the United Progressive Alliance (2004-2009)

controlled parliament. For all three governing coalitions, the support of caste-based regional parties

remained crucial to their survival. By this time, parties based on regional and caste identities had

gained significant prominence in the political processes and they were able to block change based on

the leverage they had within the various ruling coalitions.

The Politics of a Movement: ‘Reservations’ Over Reservations

In this section I contend the movement for the women’s reservation bill lacked strength since it was not only divided, but was smaller in scope because not all women felt the issue of

reservations was a high priority further contributing to inefficacious policy outcomes. The

movement for reservations, similar to anti-domestic violence, has been demographically an urban

movement, however smaller in scope. While it did grow out of a larger movement for political

representation for women at the panchayat level (village) during the mid-1970s, as I showed in

Chapter 4, the movement for reservations at the national and state level only emerged in 1994. Rather

than emerging from the broader Indian women’s movement, the initial and most forceful impetus

for the bill came from a small number of female Members of Parliament or the women’s section

(‘women wings’) of national political parties (the Indian National Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party,

Janata Dal, Communist Party of India, and Communist Party of India-Marxist). The activism of the

party-section of the movement on the issue of reservations was mainly through their political parties

and all the major political parties listed in Table 6.3.

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Table 6.3: National Political Parties in Support of the 81st Constitutional Amendment Bill giving Reserved Seats to Women Political Party Minister Activity Bharatiya Janata Sushma Swaraj Swaraj supported the bill amendment, despite what she Party acknowledged as its imperfections, and called for its immediate passage. Central to her political support was her assumption the bill would improve the representation of women over time through its implementation and through the education of future legislators. Communist Geeta Mukherjee Mukherjee chaired the Joint Select Committee established to revise Party of India the bill. It was during this process that she re-drafted the bill making it the blueprint for future drafts. Communist Brinda Karat Karat had been an eloquent, unflagging supporter of reservations Party of India since the early 1990s. She fiercely lobbied within her own party for Marxist passage of the bill, and remained consistently vocal publically in calling out ruling governments’ failure in passing the bill each time it was introduced in parliament. Telegu Desam Renuka Chowdhury supported the bill since 1995. Her role as the Minister Party Chowdhury for the Department of Women and Child Development further advanced her support and position on the bill. Janata Dal Promila Dandavate held the first conference of the all female party members Dandavate of Janata Dal demanding the bill be introduced in the first session of parliament in 1996. Since then she has lobbied not only members of her party, but met with leaders of every political party asking them to support the bill. She also organized state conferences, forcing respective ruling governments to go beyond lip service on the bill. Indian National Margaret Alva In 1995, Alva was the first to initiate the idea of reservations at the Congress state and national level for women. Alva proposed to amend the constitution to extend the women’s reservations system to the national and state legislatures. Alva actively lobbied for the bill within her party and made personal efforts in getting larger numbers of women party tickets. Mohini Giri Mohini Giri has been heavily involved in campaigning and lobbying for the bill. During each national election, she has been known to pressure political parties to give tickets to at least one-third of the total candidates being put up for the 1998 general elections. Girja Viyas Vyas was fierce in lobbying members within her own party; and spoke to the resistance within Congress to women’s entrance into formal politics. Nationalist Supriya Sule and Adopting their party’s position on the bill, Sule and Chavan argued Congress Party Vandana Chavan for 50% reservation for instead of 33% originally suggested.

These women argued that the decline in the number of women contestants and representatives in national and state legislative bodies had led to the complete marginalization of women in the political process.102 For example, as shown in Table 6.4 below women’s

102 Table 4.1 in Chapter 4 presents the data for women’s representation in Parliament.

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representation in State legislatures has been dismal. At present the average percentage of elected

women in State Assemblies is 6.94%, the highest being 14.44% in Haryana and the lowest being

1.34% in Karnataka. States like Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Union

Territory of Puducherry have no representation of women in their Assemblies.

Table 6.4: Women Members in Legislative Assemblies and their Percentage (2008) No. State/Union Territory Total Number of Seats Women Members Percentage 1 Andhra Pradesh* 294 28 9.52 2 Arunachal Pradesh 60 0 0.00 3 Assam* 126 13 10.32 4 Bihar# 243 25 10.29 5 Chhattisgarh* 90 5 5.56 6 Delhi 70 6 8.57 7 Goa* 40 1 2.50 8 Gujarat* 182 16 8 9 Haryana* 90 13 14.44 10 Himachal Pradesh* 68 5 7.35 11 Jammu & Kashmir# 87 2 2.30 12 Jharkhand< 81 5 6.17 13 Karnataka* 224 3 1.34 14 Kerala* 140 7 5.00 15 Madhya Pradesh* 230 19 8.26 16 Maharashtra* 288 12 4.17 17 Manipur* 60 0 0.00 18 Meghalaya# 60 2 3.33 19 Mizoram* 40 0 0.00 20 Nagaland# 60 0 0.00 21 Orissa* 147 11 7.48 22 Punjab* 117 7 5.98 23 Puducherry* 30 0 0.00 24 Rajasthan* 200 13 6.50 25 Sikkim# 32 3 9.38 26 Tamil Nadu 234 22 9.40 27 Tripura# 60 2 3.33 28 Uttar Pradesh* 402 25 6.20 29 Uttarakhand# 70 4 5.71 30 West Bengal# 294 37 12.59 TOTAL 4120 286 6.94 Source: *Website of respective Assemblies/State Governments; and # Website of Election Commission of India.

The party-based women’s section believed reservations were significant compensation for

the social barriers that prevented women from participating in politics. They maintained that in

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order to empower women, women’s movements must enter the political arena to engage in the

brokering of power, which takes place in political institutions. Until then (early 1990s), women had not demanded reserved seats, either because entering mainstream political institutions was not a primary goal or because they wanted to do so on merit indicating that the issue of reservations was not a high priority at the time.103

While the main push for reservations came from women’s sections of the main political

parties, the failure of the bill to pass in Parliament jump-started the women’s movement campaign.

By December 1996, a coalition of organizations national in scope formed an alliance with the party-

based section of the women’s movement in support of reservations. The supporters of reservations

for women claimed that a quota for the representation of women was necessary in order to ensure

women’s rights as citizens. Forging citizenship through women’s participation in the political

process became not only central to the functioning and strengthening of democracy but equally

crucial to their struggle against oppression and their ability to challenge the ideologies and

hierarchies which kept them subordinated (Towards Beijing 1995: 89). There was growing awareness

that since governments affect women’s lives, women must be part of them.

According to supporters of the women’s reservation bill, the issue of reservation was central

for achieving a leadership role for women because women’s claims on the political arena were not just about sharing power but changing the nature of power and governance (Jain 1997; Sen, 2000).

In addition to the citizenship argument, many advocates of the bill felt that another purpose of reservations is to provide opportunities for women who have sought careers in social service, but felt stymied by the lack of access to political power. A key shift in women’s politics in the 1990s thus reflected activists’ interest in bringing the issue of social change that many of them pioneered through NGO’s back into the arenas of electoral politics (Singer, 2007:2002). For this group of

103 To refresh, please refer to my discussion on the resistance to reservations by the women’s movement in Chapter 4.

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women’s movement actors, a change in power structures and gender relations was central to the

strategy of transformative politics linking women’s political participation to changes in power

relations.

The organizational and ideological orientation of the movement as a whole was structured

within a rights-based framework of securing strategic gender needs. Together, the party-based

section of the movement and women’s organizations under the banner of Seven Sisters Network

and Joint Action Front for Women coalitions mobilized around their joint demands to seek passage

of the women’s reservation bill. This activity spanned consistently over the last 15 years, and

whether it was Parliament (Speaker and Chairman of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha), political

parties (national and caste-based), the bureaucracy (DWCD Department of Women and Child and

National Commission for Women), the cabinet or legislature (Member’s of Parliament), these women’s organizations specifically targeted the state and its institutions. Regular participation came from the core of the Seven Sisters Network who remained active through their lobbying efforts through demonstrations, delegations, advising, and letter writing to political party leaders, Members of Parliament, and Prime Ministers under different governments. Follow-up activity came from

organizations such as the Centre for Social Research and Women’s Power Connect within the Joint

Action Front for Women, which mobilized nationwide signature campaigns, consultations, and lobbying Members of Parliament. The latter coalition of women’s organizations also included caste- based and minority groups, for example the Tamil Nadu’s Women’s Forum and Muslim Women’s

Forum, that chalked out strategies to continue their struggle in more visible ways described in the following section.

As shown above in Table 6.3, female Members of Parliament from the party-based section of

the movement were perhaps the most critical resource for the movement because they were in the

position to influence other party members on the issue. Female legislators acted as delegates who

145 put forward the priorities of the women’s reservation bill and during the debates, had an important forum — Parliament— to express movement goals. The party-based section of the movement relied on lobbying individual political leaders for a change in policy as a strategy. Here the lines of communication established with influential politicians served as important resource of the movement. For example, Mohini Giri (Indian National Congress) chairperson of the National

Commission for Women (1994-1998) and Girja Viyas (Indian National Congress) also former chairperson of the Commission (2005-2008) were influential Members of Parliament and had close ties to the main party political which made it easier for them to establish good working relations with various ministries. In fact due to the internal lobbying of female Members of Parliament, all the major political parties104 responded by incorporating the demand in their 1996 election manifestos

(Gandhi 1996; Kasturi 1998; Kishwar 1996b; Suchinmayee 2000). Vyas for instance was a former

Union minister and one-time chief of the Rajasthan Congress, and headed the powerful media unit at the All India Congress Committee (AICC). Vyas was fierce in her lobbying members within her own party speaking obliquely to the resistance even within Congress to women’s entrance into formal politics (The Hindu, February 24th, 1998:4).

In addition to individual female legislators, Table 6.5 below lists the women’s organizations that were supportive of the bill after it lapsed in parliament. These organizations only became involved on this issue after the bill was introduced in Parliament in 1996 joining forces with the party-based section of the movement. The women’s movement campaign involved two overlapping umbrella organizations. One of the umbrella organizations that orchestrated support for the bill has member organizations with close links to the political parties. The left-leaning National Network of

Women’s Organizations, more popularly known as the Seven Sisters Network (SSN), was named after its seven founding organizations formed in the early 1980s. Most of its organizations are party

104 The political parties included: the Indian Congress Party, the Janata Dal Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Samata Party and the two Communist Parties (CP-India and CP-Marxist).

146 affiliated organizations, established by political parties but are, at the same time, distinct from the women’s wing of parties (with the exception of NFIW and AIDWA). In 1995, the Seven Sisters

Network demonstrated unanimous support for reservations among national level women’s organizations when it went on record declaring the need for reserved seats for women in all elected bodies at all levels (Towards Beijing, 1995).

Table 6.5: Organizations Supporting the Women’s Reservation Bill Seven Sisters Network (SSN) Organization Type Campaigning Activities All India Women’s Conference Party Affiliated-Indian National Congress pressuring public opinion, (AIWC) lobbying government, All India Democratic Women’s Party Affiliated- Communist Party of India writing petitions, Association (AIDWA) (Marxist) organizing marches, Centre for Women’s Development Non-Governmental Organization protests, demonstrations, Studies (CDWS) and research Mahila Dakshata Samiti (MDS) Party Affiliated- Janata Party National Federation of Indian Party Affiliated- Communist Party of India Women (NFIW) Young Women’s Christian Party Affiliated- Indian National Congress Association (YWCA) Joint Women's Program (JWP) Non-Governmental Organization Joint Action Front for Women (JAFW) Organization Type Campaigning Activities Action India Non-Governmental Organization Conferences, Conscious/Awareness Raising Centre for Social Research (CSR) Non-Governmental Organization Advocacy, Lobbying, Conferences, Research Forum for Child Care and Creche Non-Governmental Organization Lobbying, Protest Services (FORCES) Demonstrations Guild of Service Non-Governmental Organization Lobbying, Protest, Demonstrations, Conscious/Awareness Raising Jagori Non-Governmental Organization Lobbying, Protest, Demonstrations, Conscious/Awareness Raising Muslim Women’s Forum (MWF) Non-Governmental Organization Protest, Demonstrations National Alliance of Women Non-Governmental Organization Advocacy, Lobbying, (NAWO) Conferences, Research Demonstrations National Federation of Dalit Caste-based/Non-Governmental Protest, Demonstrations. Women (NFDW) Organization

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Resource Group for Women and Non-Governmental Organization Protest, Demonstrations. Health (SAMA) Tamil Nadu’s Women’s Forum Caste-Based/Non-Governmental Protest, Demonstrations. (TNWF) Organization Women Power Connect (WPC) Non-Governmental Organization Advocacy , lobbying efforts involving one-on- one meetings, letters, Research, consultative meetings, and capacity building through lobby training. See Appendix G for a brief description of the organizations listed.

The importance of leadership from the party-affiliated organizations was a critical resource for generating movement activity (Oberschall, 1973). In mobilizing women around the passage of the women’s reservation bill, leaders of the movement were already in place; and mobilization was facilitated by the existing structures of authority and communications encompassed by party-

affiliated organizations.

The second umbrella organization was the less politically aligned Joint Action Front for

Women (JAFW), formed as a collective in 1984. Today it has roughly 97 organizations under its wing. It initially emerged to combat and end practices of "sati" (the burning of a woman on her husband's funeral pyre) and dowry deaths. Since 1990, JAFW has not only worked for education, equality, and empowerment with a special focus on violence against women, it has also emphasized good governance through political empowerment of women through its relentless campaigns for reservations. JAFW consists predominately of autonomous women’s associations with a leftist leaning,

which believes that collaborating with women’s organizations that are associated with political

parties will strengthen their negotiating and lobbying power and ability to influence policy. Aligned

with JAFW were several other key actors within the movement whose activities were primarily

advocacy-based and working to ensure the effective implementation of gender-friendly legislation

and promoting active participation of women in policy outcomes (See Table 6.5 above). These

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organizations developed systematic campaigns for reservation through their lobbying efforts, which

involved one-on-one meetings, letters, research, consultative meetings, and capacity building

through lobby training.

While the movement yielded considerable resources, leadership and strategies from the

female Members of Parliament and party-affiliated groups, it lacked unity and cohesion.

Representation was not a unifying issue for the movement as a whole, especially for those who wanted special reservations for lower caste and minority women. Consequently, this resulted in weak mobilization around the issue by women’s movement actors, preventing the movement from acting as a catalyst for government action. The women’s movement for reservation was not only smaller in scope but also less cohesive than the women’s movement supporting anti-domestic violence legislation, leaving it fractured and divided. Political representation was a priority for the party-based section of the women’s movement and a select few national women’s organizations that believed reservations were important. Despite the activities of the pro-reservationist organizations, there were many women’s groups who were not behind the bill. Not all women’s groups viewed reservations as mechanisms for institutional representation and several activists and scholars seriously questioned the efficacy of reservations as an instrument for achieving the goal of equality.

All Talk and No Action: Women Getting Hustled by the State

In this section I extrapolate an analysis to support my claim that without a strong and united women’s movement, women were not able to elicit a policy response over reservations, and were instead hustled by the state. As in the case of activism around anti-domestic violence legislation, I reveal the engagement between the state and non-state actors is interactive and dynamic since each side constantly reacted in response to the other. However the movement for reservations lacked a critical mass to elicit the government in responding to its demands. The women’s movement for the

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passage of the bill was confined to a triad of actors (the party-based section, the seven national

women’s organizations and the National Commission) that dominated the campaign for reservations

for women. This movement was persistent and struggled throughout the policy debate over

reservations to influence governments to pass the original bill and was for the most part well

coordinated. While other organizations were involved in campaigning around the passage of the bill,

their activity was more random and sporadic and there was little coordination amongst them unless

mobilized by the national women’s organizations.

Combined with the fact the women’s movement lacked strength in numbers, and as more

organizations jumped on and off the bandwagon of reservations, the movement became increasingly

fragmented. Women could not agree over the bill and because some women either rejected the

original bill, or supported alternative bills, they could not present a united front. Due to the lack of

unity and strength of the women’s movement on the reservation bill, supporters of the bill were not in a position to push the reform forward especially in the face of ruling governments who needed to win the support of caste-based parties in order to stay in power. Thus, the political context of existing caste conflicts over reservations limited and directed the scope of what political leadership could do over policy debate on reservations since ruling coalitions were dependent on caste-based parties to maintain power making electoral incentives a factor in policy outcome.

Policy Struggles and Failed Outcomes over the Women’s Reservation Bill (1996-2010)

The 1996 general election saw the formation of a multi-party governing coalition- the United

Front - led by the Janata Dal, a centrist party formed out of the Janata Party (JP) in October 1988, forming two governments between 1996 and 1998. The women’s reservation bill was a government initiative drafted by the Prime Minister Deve Gowda and the Ministry of Law and Justice in 1996.

Prime Minister Gowda called a meeting with the Union Law Minister, Ramakant Khalap, asking him

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to draft the Constitution Amendment Bill for one-third reservations of seats for women. Khalap and

his team within the Ministry quickly worked on drafting the bill and in a matter of days, Cabinet

approved it, submitting the notice of the bill's introduction as the 81st Constitutional Amendment

(Women’s Reservation) on September 12th, 1996. The bill proposed a minimum one-third

reservation for women in the Lower House and state-level Legislative Assemblies for an indefinite

period where constituencies would be reserved through rotation. Women within schedule caste and

tribe groups received parallel sub-reservations of 7.5%, and in States with less than three seats there

was no reservation.105 Table 6.6 below summarizes the main terms of the bill.

Table 6.6: Key Features of the Proposed Constitution (Eighty-first Amendment) Bill (1996) Section Features Section 2 (1) Reserves one-third of the total seats in the House of the People (Lok Sabha) for women. Section 2 (3) Reserves one-third of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) in the House of the People (Lok Sabha) for women. Section 2 (3) Reserves one-third of seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the House of the People (Lok Sabha) for women. Section 2 (2) The seats were to be reserved for women by rotation in the manner laid down by law of Parliament. Section 3 Provides for similar reservations in State Legislative Assemblies. Section 3(2) Provides for one-third of the seats reserved for women to be filled by direct election to the House of the People (Lok Sabha) to be allotted by rotation to different constituencies. Section 3(3) Provides for one-third of the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to be filled by direct election to the House of the People (Lok Sabha) to be allotted by rotation to different constituencies. Source: Rajya Sabha, Reservation of Seats for Women in Legislative Bodies: Perspectives, New Delhi, 2008: 10- 11) However, the debate in the Parliament over the bill reflected stiff opposition from several

quarters. The very make-up of the United Front coalition produced a lack of internal coherence

since the implications of reservations for a handful of leaders representing caste and minority

interests meant that one-third of all seats in the state and national assemblies reserved for women

105 While the Indian Constitution has since long provided for reservation for SCs & STs in state employment, civil services, political posts, education (private and public), etc., a similar reservation has only recently been provided for OBCs but only for education. Thus, while the women’s quota is sub-reserved providing for SC and ST women, the same rule does not exist for OBCs.

151 would cut into the long-deprived representation that these groups had struggled for.106 The political threat to the position, power, and privileges of a male-dominated Parliament brought to the fore serious divisions within political parties and various interest groups. Although many parties had enthusiastically embraced this idea during elections earlier that year, a large number of male parliamentarians voiced opposition to the introduction of the bill in Parliament, because without revisions to incorporate sub-quotas for Other Backward Class and Muslims the bill would promote upper caste Hindu women, which is a valid concern.

Women in parliament protested these attempts as disingenuous, noting that such objections had never been raised during debates over reservation at the local level and in fact had never been a focus of concern in the years since its implementation (Balasubrahmanyan 1998; Nath 1996). They suggested that attention to minority women was simply a convenient excuse for male leaders who did not want to lose their own seats in parliament, as evidenced by the fact that none of these men had taken any steps in the past to promote women within their own parties or communities. In particular, they noted that Other Backward Class men were in an excellent position to incorporate a large number of women, given that they occupied approximately 200 of the seats in the 541-member

Lok Sabha (Krook, 2005: 13).

Amid the parliamentary conflict the bill was referred to a Parliamentary Joint Select

Committee (JSC)107 under the chairpersonship of Geeta Mukherjee, a female Member of Parliament from the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The Committee created an opportunity by the Janata

Dal government to generate a dialogue amongst state and non-state actors giving access to women’s movement actors to offer their input in the Committee hearings. During this time, along with the

106 Two-thirds of the 21 Cabinet Ministers belonged to lower castes and religious minorities (Muslims and Sikhs) who instead of rejecting the whole idea of reservations effectively mobilized around the demand for a sub-quota for Other Backward Class and minority women. The majority of the cabinet opposed the reservation bill for women because of the fear, that without privileged quotas for lower caste women, such a bill would deprive the lower castes of political representation because upper caste women would fill most of the women’s quota. 107 The Joint Select Committee had 21 members from the Lok Sabha (Lower House), 10 from the Rajya Sabha (Upper House), and one-third were female Members of Parliament’s of the total.

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party-based section and the National Commission for Women, the Seven Sisters Network was also

very active in taking the campaign forward and became increasingly vocal and visible especially after

its first debacle in Parliament. The ‘gang of 7’, an alias used by Jyotsna Chatterjee (Director of the

Joint Women’s Programme), began by using the opportunity of the JSC to voice concerns over the

provisions of the bill. In consultations with the Select Committee of Parliament, the delegation of

Seven Sisters, for instance, submitted a memorandum to the Committee expressing deep concern

over the demand for a separate quota for minority and OBCs within the one-third reservation for

women, seen as diversionary tactics being used by certain political parties to sabotage the bill

(Memorandum by the Seven Organizations, 1996).108 At the same time however, the ‘pro-

reservationists’ did not invite most of those who wanted to see improvements in the bill to present

their opinion and to engage in dialogue. The Committee gave those who were willing to

rubberstamp the bill a hearing, and invited the few dissenters, who failed to make any dent. The

Committee presented the bill to Parliament without any modifications whatsoever (Kishwar, 1996).

Thus in its final report the Committee rejected the call for Other Backward Class sub-quotas and – in addition to several small technical adjustments – recommended that the bill be passed into law as soon as possible (Mukherjee, 1997). In the days leading up to the vote on the bill, several parties issued a whip instructing its Members of Parliament to vote in favour of the bill. However by defying a party whip, backward caste Members of Parliament outright opposed the bill stalling the vote ensuring the lack of a quorum and to press their case for the inclusion of sub-quotas for OBC

108 In presenting their arguments, the national women's organizations countered all charges of elitism for not recommending reservations for women of `other backward classes', they point out that (a) they had requested the quota within the sections which already enjoyed reservation within the Constitution; and (b) they saw the need for a Constitutional amendment to force all political parties to undertake the much needed reforms within their own structures. This is because little had been achieved in more than two decades since the CSWI's recommendations to the political parties and resolutions made by many political parties themselves. The women's delegation emphasized the crisis facing India's democracy with increasing political instability and growth of irresponsibility, fragmentation and criminalization.

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and minority women.109 Scuttling of the Bill triggered a storm of protests from several women

Members of Parliament and national women’s organizations. The National Commission for Women

Chairperson, Mohini Giri, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat, and noted

women’s activist Vimal Farooqi for instance all publicly condemned the stalling tactics adopted by

the Government and various political parties (Brinda Karat, Interviewed: Communist Party of India

(Marxist) Headquarters: February 19th, 2007).

Karat has argued that the Bill ought to have been passed in its original form stating that reservation was a step in the right direction of ensuring more participation of women in politics: “we will ensure its passage, if not today, then tomorrow” (The Pioneer, September 14th, 1996:4). Women

Members of Parliament were outraged over why the Other Backward Class question had to be linked to that of women. Geeta Mukherjee claimed that “let this bill be passed...we can have another bill for OBC’s which requires a separate constitutional amendment and then automatically OBC women will receive reservation” (Times of India, September, 16th, 1996:8).

Facing fierce resistance, the party-based section, the National Commission for Women and

Seven Sisters coalition lobbied not only the Prime Minister, but all the political parties, leader of

parliamentary groups, the Speaker and Chairman of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha respectively to

ensure the passage of the Bill. In February 1997, women’s organizations and the National

Commission for Women launched a new campaign calling for passage of the bill in the coming

109 Objection from male MP’s came in a variety of ways. First, Members of Parliament, Nitish Kumar (Samata Party), Ram Kripal (Janata Dal), and P.N. Siva (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), amongst other party members of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Parties demanded the inclusion of a sub-quota for lower castes and tabled a separate amendment. Second, a signed memorandum from 80 male MP’s from different parties (mainly the BJP, Janata Dal, and Samajwadi Party) was given to the Prime Minister, Deve Gowda, notifying him that they would vote against the bill in its currents form since it ignored the rights of OBC’s and minorities. Similarly, Chief Ministers of Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, and Arunachal Pradesh in their joint memorandum to the Committee had requested exemption from the reservation of seats on the grounds of cultural specifications and lack of adequate eligible trained female candidates among the tribals of North India (Interview, January 29th, 2007). Third, Chief Ministers of Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, and Arunachal Pradesh in their joint memorandum to the Committee had requested exemption from the reservation of seats on the grounds of cultural specifications and lack of adequate eligible trained female candidates among the tribals of North India (Interview, January 29th, 2007).

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session of parliament. They argued for full acceptance of the Select Committee’s recommendations

and accused detractors in parliament of making demands for Other Backward Class sub-quotas

simply to undermine the bill (Balasubrahmanyan 1998; Nath 1996). In efforts to pressure the Prime

Minister, Mohini Giri led women’s groups, mainly those belonging to the Seven Sisters Network, to

stage a rally in front of parliament to support early passage of the bill. Later that day at an

International Women’s Day function on March 8th, 1997, Prime Minister Deve Gowda pledged to

seek a ‘consensus’ on the Women’s Reservation Bill in order to reintroduce it in parliament the

following month.

Before the bill could be introduced, however, parliament passed a motion of no-confidence

against Deve Gowda.110 Congress withdrew its backing from Gowda’s government and

compromised to support a new government under Inder Kumar Gujral (April 1997-March 1998).

Shortly upon coming to power, Gujral announced that his government was committed to providing

reservation for women and would also strive to reach a consensus among all the political parties to

ensure smooth passage of the bill (Yadav 1997). However at the end of the year, Congress withdrew its support from the governing coalition and new elections were announced for January 1998.

Around this time, female opponents began to focus increasingly on the negative implications

of the Women’s Reservation Bill. Vocal during the early stages of debate (Gandhi 1996; Kishwar

1996a; Kishwar 1996b), these women took advantage of male opposition to the bill to call attention

to its potentially negative implications for women’s social and political status in India. Table 6.7

below shows many feminists were in fact not in favour of or ambivalent towards the bill instead

supporting either alternative versions which included sub-quotas or complete rejection of bill

revealing a split in the women’s movement on the issue.

110 With less than one year in power, from June 1st, 1996 - April 21st, 1997, Congress revoked its support to Gowda amidst discontent over communication between the coalition and the Congress Party.

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Table 6.7: Key Opponents of the Women’s Reservation Bill (Original Draft) Non-Governmental Organizations Name Type City Position/Activity Nari Shakti Andolan WNGO Delhi Supports the alternative Women’s Reservation Bill circulated by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR). Muslim Women’s WNGO Delhi Objects to the Bill on the basis it Welfare (MWW) will increase under-representation of Muslims in government. Demands a provision for a sub- quota for Muslim women, non- Muslim, and OBCs Women. Indian Social Studies WNGO Delhi Supports the alternative Women’s Trust (ISST) Reservation Bill circulated by the ADR. Association for NGO Delhi Opposed the original bill by Democratic Reforms pointing out serious flaws and (ADR) appealing that it be improved. Drafted an alternative Women’s Reservation Bill which proposed outline in Table 6.8 Centre for Study of NGO Delhi Co-drafted an alternative Women’s Developing Societies Reservation Bill with the ADR (CSDS) Lokayan NGO Delhi “” All India Forgotten WNGO Hyderabad Opposes the bill on the grounds Women’s Association that it is undemocratic because (AIFWA) women are not an oppressed class who need their own representatives in the Parliament to address their specific issues. True Equity Network WNGO Hyderabad “”. (TEN) Akshara Resource WNGO Mumbai Supports the alternative Women’s Centre Reservation Bill circulated by the ADR. Majalis WNGO Mumbai “” Activists/Academics/Lawyers Name(s) Institution City Position/Activity Sonal Mehta People’s Union of Human Ahmadabad Endorsed the alternative proposal Rights Movement for of Women’s Reservation Bill put Secular Democracy forth by the ADR. Falguni Joshi Centre for Social Justice Allahabad “ Swapna Mukhopadhyay Institute of Social Studies Bangalore “ Ronki Ram Department of Political Chandigarh “ Science-Punjab University ” Parsann Kaur Cell for Women Welfare Chandigarh “ Professor Devaki Jain Indian Social Studies Delhi “ Madhu Kishwar Editor- Manushi Delhi “

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Professor Ashis Nandy Centre for the Study of Delhi “ Developing Societies ” Gouri Choudhury Director-Action India Delhi “ Professor Meera Mitra Trustee /Advisor Delhi “ Women’s Action Research ” and Legal Action (WARLAW) Snehlata Goel President-Nari Shakti Delhi “ Andolan ” Professor Badal Delhi School of Economic Delhi “ Mukherjee Delhi University ” Professor Gail Omvedt Fellow-In-Residence at the Kasegaon “ Indian Institute of ” Advanced Study Professor Manjusha Shivaji University Kolhapur “ Deshpande ” Flavia Agnes Lawyer and Co-Founder - Mumbai “ Majlis ” Hasina Khan Awaaz-E-Niswan Mumbai “ Jyotsna Rautray Small and Marginal Orissa “ Farmers Association ” Koraput Professor Shanti Ojha Editor- Jago Bahan Patna “ Razia Patel Sangharsh Vahini Pune “

Many feminists wrote against reservation in the popular media expressing their concerns that

the women who would benefit from reservation would not alter existing power structures in politics

or effect policy change beneficial to women at large. Maneka Gandhi, for example, retorted the bill

in its present form was designed to elect wives, mistresses, and daughters while their men will run

the actual show pointing out those only women with political connections and influence can hope to

be elected. These women would therefore not be democratic representatives of women since they would potentially be acting as the mouthpieces for their male kin with little or no effective contact with ordinary Indian women (Gandhi, 1996; Randall, 2006: 67; Sen, 2000: 50). 111

111 Proponents of the WRB however have challenged this argument. For example, Margaret Alva, veteran Congress parliamentarian, retorts, “Being wives and daughters doesn’t make them less women.” Besides, as Vibha Parthasarathi, former Chairperson of the National Commission for Women, observes, “Don’t men come in, too, as relatives/protégés, using family influence?” (Rajiv Gandhi came to power as Indira Gandhi’s son and became prime minister, despite his lack of political experience. Laloo Prasad, a leading opponent of the bill, for example,

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There were also other opinions from women activists and scholars who seriously questioned

the efficacy of reservations as an instrument for the achievement of the goal of equality. They

focused on the fact that even experiences with women’s reservations in the Panchayati Raj

Institutions had not been entirely positive and that women would have to struggle and negotiate for

an extended period of time before they could reach Parliament (Gandhi, 1996: 18; Raman, 2002).112

At the broadest level, they worried that setting aside seats for women would admit and reinforce the

weakness of women by imposing an artificial solution to improve their access to politics

undermining their legitimacy as political actors by implying that they were incapable of entering

politics on their own (Balasubrahmanyan 1998; Gandhi 1996; Kishwar 1996a; Nanivadekar 2003b).

The reservation bill for them did not reflect the idea of equality between men and women.

According to this perspective, a woman should participate in politics because of her merit, because

she was capable and fervent and not just because she was a woman. Equal rights discourse thus

prevented many of these women from accepting any special provisions vis a vis ‘preferential’

corrective legislation such as those proposed by the bill. One could argue that these opponents to

the bill interpreted “equality” in a literal sense and saw affirmative action measures as a threat to the

full recognition of women’s achievements before and after independence. Some feared that this

measure would simply produce tokenism, co-opting women rather than providing meaningful change (Rai, 1999). Their faith in the political establishment reinforced their meritocratic predisposition. These women saw reservations as a retrograde step and a violation of the principle of equality as guaranteed by the Constitution of India (Roy, 2006: 21; Sharma, 2000:73 and 1998a: 27).

very craftily made his own wife, Rabri Devi, chief minister overnight when he had to vacate the post after faced with the threat of a charge sheet in a corruption case (Narasimhan, 2002). 112 They pointed out the flaws in the manner in which PRI’s have functioned: the crying need for training of women; access to resources; and the need for greater gender sensitivity among the administration (AIDWA, 1996; Buch, 1999; Geertz, 2003; Heerah, 2006; Hurst, 2004; Sharma, 1998; Kishwar, 2006; Pant, 2002:21-47; Rural Development Consortium, 1995; Sachetena, 1995; Sen, 2002: 48).

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Furthermore, some Other Backward Class female Members of Parliament, fearing that they would be condemned for demanding women’s representation at the expense of caste solidarity, felt pressured not to support a law that would favour upper caste women candidates and oust Scheduled

Caste/Scheduled Tribe men from their constituencies. At the same time, Other Backward Class male Members of Parliament used the issue of sub-quotas for Other Backward Class women to divide women on the issue even further since they argued that reservation for women only strengthened upper caste dominance because the women likely to benefit from reservation were likely to be those with greater social and educational opportunities. Many Other Backward Class women’s groups faced the dilemma of whether to advocate women’s representation (and risk accusations of supporting a bourgeois demand) or to uphold class solidarity but relinquish women- specific demands.

Upper caste and upper class women who were already empowered and needed no special mechanisms for change were criticized leading to increased tensions amongst movement actors.

Some activists suggested that female Members of Parliament were unrepresentative of women as a whole supporting the sort of criticism raised by some of the caste-based parties. Rai’s study reveals that “39 (7.2%) women representatives in the 1991-96 Indian Parliament were mostly middle-class, professional women with little or no links to the women’s movement” (Rai, 1998:2). More specifically, they expressed concerns that women who would benefit from reservation would not alter existing power structures in politics or effect policy change beneficial to women at large. This opposition was based on the premise that reservations would treat women as a homogenous category increasing the likelihood that educated upper class-caste women would be elected especially since the bill did not provide for sub-quotas.

If the quota system did not recognize multiple oppressions, it could lead to political exclusion on grounds of class as well as gender/caste/race. As a former Member of Parliament,

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Uma Bharti for example, though acknowledging the need for greater representation for women, also opposed the legislation because it did not provide guarantees for women from the Other Backward

Class category. She argued that the most oppressed segment of society was in fact backward caste women and their voices were the most limited in government (Nath, 1996: 9-10; Singer, 2007: 215).

Although Bharti’s party’s (BJP) platform supported the reservation bill, she, as a Backward

Class/Caste women became a spokesperson for the demand to amend the bill to include sub-quotas for lower caste women.

These debates kept the issue of reservations on the political agenda through the January

1998 elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance- ushered in March

1998- not only committed to it in its election platform, but also managed to introduce the bill four times in Parliament: 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2003. The partial explanation for this could lie in the fact that Bharatiya Janata Party leadership, under Prime Minister Vajpayee, supported the bill as part of its bid to present the party as moderate and socially progressive. This strategy was in all probability more to do with political expediency than securing seats for women since the Bharatiya Janata Party constantly worked to keep pace with the Congress which at this stage had already implemented, a

33% reservation for women in party posts. Hence, the Bharatiya Janata Party was supporting the

Women’s Reservation Bill to pacify sections of its electoral block – women, whom according to one estimate comprised 30% of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s three million supporters (Delhi Times,

December 22nd, 2000). The Bharatiya Janata Party kept the issue alive by listing the bill for every parliamentary session to please its constituency of women.

Moreover, whereas caste-based parties were dominant actors in the previous government, they were minor players in the National Democratic Alliance coalition freeing up the political

160 leadership from the need to maintain itself in power by catering to caste-based parties.113 Still, divisions within its ranks based on caste and accusations of upper caste dominance have meant that the Bharatiya Janata Party has had to embrace coalition politics and has taken in all manner of ideologically incompatible coalition partners in tow.114 These difficulties have created tensions between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)115, which remains deeply committed to an overall vision of control and organizational unity for a complete ‘Hindu’ society, and the Bharatiya Janata

Party, which has had to reinvent itself to cope with the need for lower caste support. In an attempt to emerge as the major oppositional political force to the Indian National Congress, and faced with the inability to find coalition partners in 1996 to form a government, the Bharatiya Janata Party attempted to alter its image to widen its appeal.

To do so, it had to back off passing the Women’s Reservation Bill in order to appease not only the smaller caste-based parties within National Democratic Alliance and lower caste BJP party members, but also Other Backward Class voters who are opposed to reservations for women without sub-quotas. Thus while the Bharatiya Janata Party’s position on reservations for women was initially based on the original bill (1996) the party was always split between those who believed that backward caste women were doubly oppressed, and so should a have place within the quota, and those who argued the bill be passed without sub-quotas. In every effort to avoid disgruntling the

Bharatiya Janata Party’s growing band of Other Backward Class Members of Parliament, the Party would bring the bill to Parliament either without taking a consensus in advance, or taking the

113 However to be sure, when the Janata Dal Party had splintered into several factions in 1997 turning into powerful regional-caste voting blocs- Rashtriya Janata Dal (Bihar); Samajwadi Party (UP); Janata Dal (Secular) (Karnataka); and Janata Dal (United) (Bihar)- it was only the latter party which joined the electoral National Democratic Alliance merely based on power brokering. 114 Characterized as a Hindu nationalist party fiercely opposed to Muslim culture, the BJP perpetuates a “Brahminical Social Order” in which upper caste Hindus dominate and oppress the lower castes in Indian society. 115 The RSS is a right-wing, paramilitary, volunteer Hindu nationalist group.

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decision to push it on the basis of support of Congress and Left parties (Pant, 2002: 57; Thakkar,

2000: 9).

Upon assuming leadership the party announced that it would seek early passage of the

Women’s Reservation Bill (Balasubrahmanyan 1998). However, when the Bill was introduced during

the summer session of Parliament, party members of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Bahujan Samaj Party

and Samata Party attempted to prevent the introduction of the bill (The Hindu, July 14th, 1998) by

literally shredding the bill on the floor of the House (Balasubrahmanyan 1998; “Bill that reserves

women’s political history” 2004; “Indian parliament refuses women quotas” 1998; Krook, 2005: 18;

Rai and Sharma 2000). The events which transpired in Parliament mobilized women’s movement

activists but rather sporadically and in isolation from one another. While women’s groups across the

country such as Asmita in Hyderabad, Adithi in Bihar, and the Tamil Nadu Women’s Forum

emerged to demand the passage of the bill, more than a dozen organizations in Delhi including the

All India Women’s Conference, the YWCA, and the Working Women’s Coordination Committee all

chalked out strategies to continue their struggle in more visible ways. For instance they decided to

observe July 29th, 1998 as ‘black day’ and distribute black badges and pamphlets in public places.

They also planned demonstrations in front of Central Government offices if the Bill was not

considered in the current session of Parliament (The Hindu, July 16th, 1998).

Mohini Giri again led demonstrators outside the Parliament demanding the tabling of the

84th Constitution Amendment Bill. Women shouted slogans against those Members of Parliament

who opposed the bill (SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and RJD leader Laloo Prasad Yadav). The

demonstrators also presented a letter of protest to the Prime Minister which was signed by various

national organizations such as the Mahila Dakshata Samiti, All-India Women’s Conference, and the

Joint Women’s Programme. They urged Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to take the necessary steps to ensure the passage of the Bill in Parliament. While he described the scuttling of the Bill as a

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disgrace and said the physical intimidation by a handful of Members of Parliament prevented the

introduction of the Bill, Vajpayee failed to give any firm commitment to women’s organizations or

women Members of Parliament for the re-introduction of the bill.

Instead the bill was deferred by the government which cited the lack of consensus over the

amendment as the reason. The various sides immediately blamed each other for these developments:

pro-reservationists accused men of sabotaging the amendment to preserve their own seats in

parliament, while opponents pointed out that no Other Backward Class or Muslim women stood up

to defend the bill in solidarity with the pro-reservation women’s lobby (“Indian parliament refuses

women quotas” 1998; Kishwar 1998a). Leaders of several political parties criticized the Bharatiya

Janata Party for abandoning the Women’s Reservation Bill, while Prime Minister Vajpayee faulted the Congress Party for his government’s inability to pass the amendment, noting that his coalition lacked the two-thirds majority necessary for undertaking constitutional reform on its own

(Balasubrahmanyan 1998; Krook, 2003: 18“Indian parliament refuses women quotas” 1998).

In the absence of any solution to these disagreements, the bill officially lapsed in April 1999 with a no-confidence vote against the government that resulted in the dissolution of parliament.

New elections returned the Bharatiya Janata Party to power in October 1999 and even though party

leadership initially declared its commitment to the bill, it still hinged on the need for consensus.

Efforts to achieve ‘consensus’ were made in 2000, for instance, when the BJP strongly supported an

alternative proposed by the Indian Electoral Commission (ECI), listed in Table 6.1. However

women’s movement actors outright rejected this proposal since they saw the ECI’s draft as a way for

the government to convince its allies to forget the women’s reservation bill in its original form and

instead consider the ECI’s alternative bill (The Hindu, 2000: 10). Jayanthi Natarajan, a female

Member of Parliament and social activist, claimed “the Commission's proposal came at an

inopportune time, giving the government a loophole to weasel out of its commitment to pass the

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Bill” (The Hindu, December 26th, 2000:10; The Telegraph, December 22nd, 2000: 1). Natarajan sentiments were echoed by other movement activists frustrated with the government’s attempts to reach consensus around a new proposal without consulting women’s movement actors by inviting them to the meetings, or meeting with them separately to solicit their comments and recommendations on the proposed alternative.

Dr. Bidyut Mohanty argues that “BJP’s resistance to women’s voices on the bill fuelled their activism around the campaign for its passage even more” (Bidyut Mohanty, Interviewed at the

Institute of Social Science: February, 12th, 2007). She explains the Party’s back and forth stance on the issue triggered a storm of protests from several women’s Members of Parliament and women’s organizations. For instance, the Seven Sisters Network (SSN) took immediate action by issuing a

Joint Memo to the Chief Election Commissioner to withdraw the proposal for reservation for women in party lists as an alternative to the Bill in April 2000 in order to force consultations with political party leaders. The Seven Sisters Network followed up this activity in December 2000 when a joint delegation met Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi to protest against his calling a meeting of political parties to discuss the diversionary proposal to amend the People’s Representation Act to ensure one-third representation of women in lists of candidates of political parties.

Opposition to this proposal however also came from women who rejected the original women’s reservation bill. Influential activist Madhu Kishwar (editor of Manushi) argued that a women’s reservation law would result in parties fielding the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of existing male politicians to ensure that seats remained in their caste control (Kishwar, 1996; 1996a;

1996b; 1998; 2000; 2005; 2008). Since very few women politicians have an independent electoral base, those uncertain about who would control the campaigns and activities for new women

Members of Parliament were concerned that reservation would make women even more dependent on male bosses of their party to win elections. In such a situation, some opponents argued male

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politicians would find it easy to bring in their wives and daughters as proxies to keep the seat “safe”

for them until the next election when they would likely to be able to reclaim their seats. As a result,

in 2000, Kishwar along with eminent scholars Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan, Dhirubhai Sheth, and

Yogendra Yadav established the Forum of Democratic Reform (FDR) and produced an alternative

proposal- ‘Women’s Representation in Legislatures’- to rectify what they perceived as major flaws of

the original bill as shown below in Table 6.8.

Table 6.8: Flaws of Women’s Reservation Bill and Alternatives Proposed by the FDR Women’s Reservation Bill (1996) Women’s Representation in Legislatures (2000) Flaws identified by the FDR: Amendments to rectify the flaws: One-third seats are reserved, and such reserved A law should be enacted amending The seats are rotated in every general election. This Representation of the People Act, 1951, to make it rotation will automatically result in two-thirds of mandatory for every recognized political party to incumbent members being forcibly unseated in nominate women candidates for election in one- every general election. third of the constituencies. There is resentment about reserved seats for SCs Among seats reserved for SCs and STs also, one- and STs being frozen in the same constituencies third of the candidates nominated by recognized over a long period of time. Inevitably, there will be parties shall be women. vociferous and justified demands for rotation of seats reserved for scheduled castes, and in some cases scheduled tribes, where their population may not be very large. Women legislators, when elected, will not be able to Each political party can choose where it wishes to nurture their constituencies on a long-term basis, nominate women candidates, duly taking local and thus will be deprived of a strong political base political and social factors into account. and will forever be regarded as lightweight politicians. This in effect will make their presence in legislatures ornamental, and will not lead to a more effective participation in politics. This Bill is completely silent about women's A law amending Articles 80 and 171 of the representation in the Upper House and Legislative Constitution should be enacted providing for Councils. women's reservation of one-third of the seats, elected or nominated, to Upper House/Legislative Councils. Corresponding amendments need to be made in the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution and, the Representation of the People Act, 1950. Source: Forum for Democratic Reforms (2000)

Opponents argued that reservation would ensure that women enter electoral battles against

other women and never receive an opportunity to contest against men. Another concern was that

men, because they controlled the political parties, would limit women to only 33% representation.

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Even though there would be no legal bar preventing women standing for election from general

constituencies the possibility that women might be barred from running for election in a non- reserved constituency could emerge. Reservation would therefore form a ceiling rather than a minimum where women would run only within the reserved category, thus confining women and their interests to 33% (Basu, 2003: 45; Kishwar, 2006: 11 and 1996a; Pant, 2002: 64; Suchinmayee,

2000:244).

Ignoring the proposal circulated by the Forum of Democratic Reform, the Bharatiya Janata

Party government sought to introduce the original bill for the fourth time in May 2003. Heated

exchanges between political parties prevented any debate on the Bill, with the strongest opposition

coming again from the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samata Party which continued to insist the Bill be

revised to include sub-quotas for OBC’s and Muslims. In response, the Speaker of the House, Murli

Manohar Joshi convened a series of all-party meetings in July 2003 which converged around a new

proposal to create dual-members constituencies in one-third of all electoral districts. The Seven

Sisters Network (SSN) again took action by writing an open letter to the Prime Minister- Atul Bihari

Vajpayee- expressing concern over reported alternatives being made by the government to scuttle to

the Bill. The letter was unequivocal in its statement that alternative proposals such as accepting

double member constituencies where women are to be elected would not be acceptable and that

only the bill in its original form should be passed (Dr. Jyotsna Chatterji, Interviewed: January 30th,

2007).

With no resolution in sight, the BJP also lost power at the centre during the general

elections, ushering in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance coalition in May 2004. A change

in government signaled to women’s movement actors that a political party which has done more

over the years to promote female candidacies than any other party would finally see the Bill through.

This optimism promoted the Seven Sisters Network to issue a joint appeal to Congress President

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Sonia Gandhi to demand inclusion of the assurance to pass the Women’s Reservation Bill in the

Common Minimum Programme (http://aicc.org.in/index.php/manifestos/detail/2004#29).

Former President of the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW), Gargi Chakravarty believes

that the Congress “genuinely tries to support the bill but gets trapped in pandering to the interests of

its coalition partners” (Gargi Chakravarty, Interviewed at NFIW offices: January 31th, 2007). While

the Congress Party stood for secularism and minority rights, the electoral coalition it lead consisted

of partners who were predominately caste parties116 that included the Rashtriya Janata Dal,

Samajwadi Party, and Bahujan Samaj Party (representing the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and

Bihar), who had the worst record in terms of improving women’s socioeconomic conditions.

Consequently, the coalition government, led by the Congress had in total 19 parties which

meant that like his predecessors, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had to perform an extremely fine

and precarious balancing act to keep all coalition members content. In this context, the passage of

the bill became a dicey issue since a constitutional amendment required two-thirds majority for

passage and this support would have to come from the members of Parliament from Other

Backward Class, Caste/ Tribe Members.117 This meant obtaining support from the Forum of Other

Backward Class, a powerful pressure group made up over 140 members (Hindustan Times,

November 23rd, 2006: 14). In addition, both the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal strongly objected to the introduction of the bill; and as coalition partners of the United Progressive Alliance they had enough influence to stall its passage in the present form on the grounds that the bill was anti-Dalit and anti-minority.

During this time, the site of the debate was primarily parliament and the main actors were political parties. Only high–ranking party officials took a position in public discussion and legislative

116 Most of these caste-based parties are more or less democratic socialist and secular, and sit to the centre-left of the political spectrum, sharing an aversion to the Hindu nationalist agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. 117 A majority of each houses and not less than 2/3 majority of each house present and voting approve bills presented in either house of the parliament.

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deliberations. Non-institutionally-based participants were present as experts at committee hearings, workshops or in the media. However much of their struggle was restricted to the streets where many women’s groups continued to actively lobby and organize campaigns and demonstrations around the passage of the women’s reservation bill. The National Federation of India Women (NFIW) for

instance, mobilized nationwide signature campaigns and rallies or 'dharnas' in their pursuit for

demanding reservation. My interview with Gargi Chakravarty (President of NFIW) revealed that

NFIW has worked constantly around the issue of reservation by pressuring public opinion/lobbying

government/writing petitions and campaigns (Interviewed January 31th, 2007).

Chakravarty speaks of the NFIW organization as a ‘pressure group’ that pushes government

and makes demands. The efforts to enroll large numbers of women in affiliated local organizations

are in substantial part to build pressure on government. An example of this activity was the mass

mobilization of women across India in a sari-signing campaign during 2005 where women were

asked to sign their saris (some in blood) as a sign of solidarity over the immediate passage of the

women’s reservation bill (Interviewed January 31th, 2007). Similarly, joint action between four

women’s organizations- FORCES, the Guild of Service, SAMA and the Muslim Women’s Forum--

participated in a three day dharna (protest) before Parliament to press for the passage of the

Women’s Reservation Bill.

While the above groups mobilized women in an ad hoc manner through protest and

demonstrations, Women Power Connect (WPC) developed a systematic campaign for reservation

through lobbying efforts involving one-on-one meetings, letters, research, consultative meetings, and

capacity building through lobby training. In 2005, WPC wrote to all the Members of Parliament

seeking their support for demanding the introduction of the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament

during the monsoon session. Letters were sent by all WPC members as part of a signature campaign

on the issue, and more than 10,000 signatures were collected. Key members of the WPC, such as

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Dr. Ranjana Kumari Director of the WPC, also met with Ms. Krishna Tirath, Chairperson of the

Parliamentary Committee on the Empowerment of Women (PCEW), to solicit her support in expediting the tabling of the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament.

Another delegation was separately led by the All India Democratic Women’s Association

(AIDWA) under Brinda Karat. The delegation comprised of the Seven Sisters Network and the

National Federation of Dalit Women, submitted a memorandum promoting the idea of tabling and passing the bill in the upcoming Monsoon Session of Parliament (The Hindu, August 4th, 2006: 15).

Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh assured the delegation that the women's reservation bill would be tabled in Parliament in the next session as negotiations were transpiring with other political parties to arrive at a consensus on the issue. Dr. Singh told the AIDWA that he supported the bill and felt that it should be passed at the earliest but some political parties had reservations over it, according to the AIDWA general secretary, Sudha Sundararaman. Demanding immediate introduction of the bill in its present form, the memorandum sought to open up a dialogue on the issue and put it to a vote, emphasizing the struggle of several women’s organizations in fighting for its passage over the last decade. They charged the government with purposely delaying the bill in the name of an

“illusionary consensus” (The Hindu, August 4th, 2006: 15). The various proposals which delayed the bill have only been generated to create diversionary tactics in diluting the focus of the bill and produce a consensus which already exists amongst the major national parties (enough to pass a bill).

Despite clear assurances given in the UPA’s election manifesto - Common Minimum

Programme - AIDWA’s memorandum chastised the government for failing to introduce the bill in any session of Parliament held in the past 2 years (http://www.congress.org.in/). Dr. Ranjana

Kumari, Director for Centre for Social Research and President of the Women’s Power Connect, argued that the UPA government “had no proposal except the promise they made in the party manifesto and CMP…they are just paying lip service to the whole issue.” She claimed that “they

169 have not initiated any process, unlike the NDA-BJP led government which had at least tabled the bill for discussion” (Asian Age, July 27th, 2006: 13).

However, Congress leadership was determined to push the passage of the women’s reservation bill finding significant mention in the Presidential address to Parliament that efforts would be made to get the bill passed with no changes simply mandating one-third reservation for women in Parliament and assemblies. While the Congress and both Communist Parties leaders were sympathetic to the issue of reservations for women, there were opponents to the bill even within these parities who were urging other party opponents to stall its introduction in the Lower House.

In order to avoid continued blockage of the bill, Congress acted cautiously and strategically instead introducing the bill in the Upper House of Parliament so it would not lapse. In the 245-member

House, the bill required the backing of at least 155 members, and the UPA had the clear support of

165 members including members from the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left parties thus managing to get the bill passed in the Upper House of Parliament in 2010. The Congress government however has yet to get the bill passed in the Lower House, which would then effectively make the bill a law.

Considering that the issue of reservations, as compared to domestic violence, was high on the agenda of the political executive and political party leaders- nearly every political party claimed to support the legislation in some form - none of three ruling governments managed to pass the reservation bill through both Houses of Parliament. As we saw in Chapter 2, when in power, neither the Congress Party nor the BJP party had a majority in the parliamentary lower house and needed to negotiate for support from several smaller parties. In order to avoid any threats of withdrawal from the coalitions, all three ruling governments had to pacify the opposition of smaller parties by backing off passing the bill and therefore these caste-based parties became a determinant in the policy outcome. When women’s movement actors became involved in the campaign for the bill’s passage, the controversy whipped up by political parties and their Members of Parliament left the women’s

170 movement involved in the reservations issue weak and divided. By raising concerns over sub-quotas, many Members of Parliament, mostly male, “masked their own insecurities about losing seats to women” in demands for sub-quotas (Brinda Karat, Interviewed: February 19th, 2007). Instead of outright claiming they were against reservations for women, they sabotaged it by entangling the issue with caste, arguing that reservation would only help women of a particular class/caste who are already privileged thus pitting women against women.

Conclusion

In this chapter I analyzed how a weakened movement in addition to the strong opposition coming from within caste-based political parties and from within the larger political parties decreased state responsiveness. It was determined that the activities and impact of the Indian’s women’s movement on policy outcome could not be understood apart from contextual circumstances in which they operated. In this case, the failure of the bill’s passage lies in the fact that all three governments were unable to achieve an efficacious policy outcome due to the weight of caste-parties within governing coalitions, and due to the very serious concerns held by some women’s movement actors. The pressing need to maintain a ruling coalition gave these parties considerable power in influencing decisions in Parliament and thus blocked the bill from going forward. Combined with a divided women’s movement that could not present a united front, policy outcome for reservations for women remained bleak. In this case policy outcome, in the face of fierce opposition from small political factions that held out the threat of destabilizing governing coalitions in order to get their way, was ultimately determined by electoral incentives. Since I have examined the distinct positions of political leadership of ruling government coalitions and the interaction of the women’s movement with the state in this chapter and the previous one, I use the

171 last chapter to analyze the last variable -women’s national machinery - as its role is heavily dependent on political will and the level of political mobilization of women’s movements.

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Chapter 7

Government Institutional Responsiveness to Women: Accounting for the two Divergent Cases

This chapter specifically addresses women’s activism and their interaction with state

machinery in relation to the policy issues of violence against women and women’s political

representation. The argument and analysis I put forth in this chapter is significant because it is also

indicative of why we see two very different outcomes in policy arising from the responsiveness of

state machineries concerned with women’ issues to respond to women’s movements. I argue that

the unified role and impact of the women’s movement and a women policy-friendly environment

provided under the Indian National Congress particularly, after 2004 led to fostering significant

engagement between Women’s National Machinery (WNM) and women’s organizations and

evolved to push forward legislation supportive of ending violence against women. I also however

suggest that the engagement between WMN and the women’s movement for reserving seats for

women in Parliament was lacking due to the combination of a fractured women’s movement and

inability of top leadership to support the issue arising from the opposition from caste-based parties

within ruling coalitions. This situation blocked the engagement between WNM and women’s

organizations making policy outcome difficult to achieve revealing that in fact women’s groups are

the strength of institutions and imperative in functioning of women’s national machinery in India.

Women’s National Machinery: Boon or Bane?

I suggest in the following sections that the capacity of state institutions to pursue gender equality issues in terms of concrete policy outcomes around violence against women and women’s political representation were powerfully shaped by the wider policy-making environment and the impact of women’s movements. Below, I analyze the activism of Department of Women and Child

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Development and the National Commission for Women over the domestic violence and reservation issues. I focus on these two institutions because the former is the nodal agency for women’s issues, and the latter is concerned with laws affecting women. Apart from these two bodies, Table 7.1 below reveals a host of committees, ‘specialized cells’118, departments,

commissions, and ministries dealing with women’s issues have been created over the last five

decades in India whereby international factors (as well as domestic ones) were instrumental in

driving forward their establishment.119 It was the creation of the National Plan of Action for

Women and the International Decade for Women (1975-1985) which gave impetus to women’s

national machinery and resulted in new policy initiatives emerging on political agendas to advance

the status of Indian women. When the Indian government received a reminder from the United

Nations about its earlier request to prepare a report on the conditions of women, confusion arose

since there was a lack of clarity within the government as to which Ministry or Department would

field this request.120

118 During the 1970’s, another initiative to expand WNM occurred with the establishment of gender focal points (Women's Cells) within various Central Ministries and Departments. Initially the Ministries of Labour, Education, and Rural Development were set up to deal with issues pertinent to women. Over the years however, several other Ministries began to develop their own ‘gender desks’ such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, and Industry. 119 These changes were followed by the establishment of a number of special structures for women such as divisions within ministries (Labour Ministry, Ministry for Science and Technology, Ministry for Rural Development, Ministry of Industrial Development, Ministry of Agriculture), parallel women-specific agencies (such as Women’s Directorates in the states in place of umbrella directorates for social welfare), and separate institutions for economic advancement of women (such as the Women’s Development Corporations). In addition, there were short-term committees, boards, and commissions constituted by and retaining links with the state (once they are terminated), usually meant for specific tasks, such as investigating particular aspects of women’s lives or to help plan and formulate policy (i.e. Planning Commission Working Committees and Groups on women’s employment, organizations for rural women, status of women in science and technology which involved the appointment of extra state actors). 120 It was only with the submission of the report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India (CWSI) to Parliament in 1975 that national machinery took shape. The lack of procedure in formulating policies and programmes forced the Indian government to take action by appointing the CSWI. The Committee recommended the creation of specialized agencies for women’s development, and the government responded with a National Plan for Action (NPA) for women in 1976 to serve as a guideline both at the national and state levels for the establishment of new policy measures taken for women.

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Table 7.1: Evolution of Women’s National Machinery in India (1952-2007) Year Institution Mandate 1952 Community Development Launched to promote agricultural development and to provide Programme (CDP) welfare services to rural areas. 1953 Central Social Welfare Board Established to fund and support the activities of voluntary (CSWB) organizations in the field of social welfare. 1964 Ministry of Social Welfare and Department of Social Security charged with the responsibility of Security (MSWS) looking after social welfare, welfare of backward classes, and labour. 1966 Department of Social Security is Housed within the MSWS, Department of Social Welfare now re-designated as the responsible for the welfare of women, children, and the disabled. Department of Social Welfare 1971 Ministry of Education and Department of Social Welfare re-located to the MESW. Social Welfare (MESW) 1976 Women’s Welfare and Established as a division of the Department of Social Welfare, the Development Bureau (or the WB was to act as the main coordinating body within the Women’s Bureau-WB) Government of India initiating measures for women’s development. 1976 Ministry of Labour –Women’s As a mechanism for integrating women in development within Division (Cell) sectoral Ministries such as labour, the WD’s role was to formulate/coordinate policies for the female labour force within the framework of economic policies. 1978 Ministry of Rural Development- Created to ensure that development programmes incorporate the Women’s Programme needs of rural women. 1979 Ministry of Social Welfare The Department of Social Welfare elevated to the status of an (MSW) independent Ministry composing of different units for women, children and the disabled. 1984 Ministry of Social and Women’s The MSW renamed to Ministry of Social and Women’s Welfare. Welfare (MSWW) 1985 Department of Women and Established within the Ministry of Human Resources Development Child Development (DWCD) responsible for implementing programmes for women’s development. 1992 National Commission for An autonomous government body established to safeguard the Women (NCW) rights and interests of women. 1993 Rashtriya Mahila Kosh Its main objective is to facilitate credit support or micro finance to (National Credit Fund for poor women, as an instrument of socio-economic change and Women) development. 1996 Planning Commission of India- Bears the responsibilities for fulfillment of the commitments made Women & Child Development in the Five Year Plans through the formulation of Division (PCI-WCDD) programmes/policies and their implementation towards inclusive growth towards women’s agency and rights. 1997 Parliamentary Committee on Constituted by Parliament in 1997 to review the effectiveness of Empowerment of Women measures taken by the Government for the empowerment of (PCEW) women and suggest necessary correctives for improving the status/condition of women. 2007 Ministry of Women and Child Department of Women and Child Development elevated to Development Ministry Status.

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However, support for the move to expand women’s national machinery also came from

those governments, such as Congress, that had sympathetic leaders who had progressive ideas about women’s issues (Kumari, 1998: 44-45 and 59; Rai, 1995; Rahlan, 1998: 362). Rajiv Gandhi’s presidency (1984-1989) established the Department of Women and Child Development and the

National Commission for Women to initiate policies and programmes for women. This development suggests two things. First, although the party shifted somewhat from its ideological orientation of being a secular-pluralist party to politics reflecting expediency, corruption, and communalism, it still made women’s issues somewhat of a priority (Aslam, 1989: 274-75; Hardgrave and Kochanek, 1993: 363; Khan, 1989: 59; Manor, 1988; Sengupta, 1985). This however leads to the second point that as a new leader winning the 1985 federal elections, Gandhi was also tapping into a vast and underrepresented vote block - women.121

For Gandhi, a renewed focus on women was to be an important policy plank of his

government. The reorganization of the Ministry of Social and Women’s Welfare in 1984, for

instance, was vital, as the concern for women’s development would bring the Ministry in close contact with other ministries and departments of the national government. At the time, this re-

organization reflected the view of ‘development’ in an integrated and holistic manner. Based on the recognition of women’s productive role as a basic unit of development rather than there being mere beneficiaries of governmental programmes or recipients of welfare measures discussed in Chapter 3,

the government established the Department of Women and Child Development in 1985 (Goel,

2004: 151-178; Sujaya, 1992: 42), followed up in 1989 with steps taken by Gandhi to set up a

121 One cannot dismiss the notion that the incentive for creating these institutions was, in part, that of securing votes. This point is quite plausible considering how support for the NCW came from Rajiv Gandhi just as the political system was fracturing due to the increasing inability of Congress to rule effectively by the late 1980s. Making women’s issues, especially those already gaining attention such as the NCW and women’s reservation a priority, was, therefore, a vote-getting tactic. Even after Gandhi’s assassination in 1991, the Indian National Congress (INC) came back to power under the Narasimha Rao government. This government enacted the National Commission for Women Act in January 1992, creating an autonomous statutory body.

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National Commission for Women (National Commission for Women, 2001). Table 7.2 below summarizes the mandate and functions of both institutions.

Table 7.2: Functions of the Department of Women and Child Development and National Commission for Women DWCD NCW

Established Established in 1985, the DWCD marked NCW was created in 1992 as an apex body the greatest achievement of institutional to monitor and influence state policies, building for women, as it was a permanent located inside the government and yet part of the administrative framework of the independent of the government, placing it Government of India provided with in the dual role of a watchdog body that considerable political power. was to constantly scrutinize and check policies of the state which affected women. Mandate The broad mandate of the DWCD is to The NCW is responsible for enforcement promote social and economic of the constitutional guarantees on the empowerment of women through cross- equal status of women by investigating all cutting policies and programmes, matters relating to the legal safeguards for mainstreaming gender concerns, and women provided by the Constitution of creating awareness about their rights and India and to make recommendations to facilitating institutional and legislative Government for their effective support. implementation. Function The DWCD was armed with judicial The NCW functions through five divisions powers and direct access to parliament and (Cells): parliamentary committees. Its main • Legal activities (Policy/planning; Coordination; • Complaints Advocacy; Research/information Research dissemination) are carried out through 7 • bureaus: Monitoring • • Women’s Development and Welfare Public Relations Bureau • Gender Budgeting and Girl Child Bureau • Child Development Bureau • Child Welfare Bureau • Plan, Research, Monitoring & Evaluation • Statistics and Finance and 6 associate autonomous organizations: • Rashtriya Mahila Kosh • Central Social Welfare Board • National Commission for Women • National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development, • Central Adoption Resource Authority • National Commission for Protection of Child Rights

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Structure • 1 Minister of State • 1 Chairperson • 1 Secretary • 5 Members • 3 Additional Secretary • 1 Member Secretary • 4 Joint Secretaries • 1 Joint Secretary • 1 Economic Advisor • 1 Deputy Secretary • 1 Statistical Advisor • Approx. 36 persons administrative • 9 Directors and technical staff • Approx. 45 persons administrative and technical staff Programmes Programmes range and cover the following Programmes range and cover the following areas: areas: • Framing and implementing legislation • Parivarik Mahila Lok Adalats and • Institutionalizing Gender Budgeting empowerment camps (PMLAs) processes (WCP) • Legal Awareness Programmes (LAPs) • Training/capacity building for • Relief and Rehabilitation to victims of employment/ income generation Rape (STEP) • Gender sensitization modules for • Institutionalizing Gender Budgeting training police, administrative/judicial processes (RMK) services. • Welfare and support services(Short • Enquiry Committees Stay Homes/Swadhar) • Public Hearings • Awareness generation and gender sensitization Annual 740.35 Crores (Total for ‘Women’s Welfare’ • 7.85 in Crores Budget category- this include only those programmes/services which specifically target women) Source: Ministry of Women and Child Development, Annual Budget, 2010-2011.

The Department for Women and Child and Development and National Commission for

Women have fared well in terms of providing a useful focal point to address specific policy issues.

Earlier national machineries tended to be marginalized and ghettoized in social and welfare sectors

but more recently they have begun to move into central decision-making locations within the

bureaucracy. For example, the Department was elevated to Ministry status in January 2007. Ministry- status has not only provided opportunities of increasing accountability of government service provision to women but also shifted the locus of decision-making and resource allocation thus changing the institutional structure, rules, culture and practices of government. The same can be said of the National Commission for Women. The lack of constitutional machinery, judicial ability and

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social interest formed the impetus and need for the formation of the Commission. Created as a

statutory commission outside government, it has investigative authority of gender-related issues, to

receive complaints, summon persons to appear before it, and mediate in the event of disputes

providing women expedited and cost-free judicial recourse (Giri, 1998: 39-66).

Thus, the presence and functionality of both the Department of Women and Child

Development and National Commission for Women to act as conduits of the state was intended to provide formal avenues for women. It was assumed that women’s groups would have access to state decision-making mechanisms of government resulting in greater policy responsiveness through these policy machineries. However as Ms. Sarajoni, a retired Indian Administrative Service officer, explains “the state is a prime mover, a colossus and yet remains totally alien to women. Its strength is inaccessible to women...they never get a feeling that the Government is for ‘me’ too!” (Sarajoni,

Interviewed: December, 13th, 2005). She further claims the goal of machineries should be used as “a

conduit for the state and women to understand each other”, expressing that instead these

machineries have become “isolated without links to reach out to women”.

With an institutional framework for women’s issues that involved both resources and direct access to the political leadership one would expect positive policy outcomes. However a range of political, institutional and financial constraints limited the effectiveness of both national machineries.

First, the Department and Commission both suffered from inadequate human resources and recruited staff that had little knowledge of gender issues. While this was a critical weakness of the

Department, for instance, it in actuality acted as an opportunity for women’s movement activists to engage with the Department over a range of policy/programmatic interventions. My discussion with C.P. Sujaya revealed that indeed “there is a dependent relationship between the state institutions and movement activists since staff is less skilled and often look to women’s groups for

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knowledge around specific issues” (Interview at the ISST, February 15th, 2007). In the proceeding

section I show that this holds true in the formulation of anti-domestic violence legislation.

Most of the Department’s staff (Desk Officers, Section Officers, and the Under-Secretary)

for instance, carries out traditional administrative activities with the exception of the

Director/Deputy Secretary and Joint Secretary who are members of the Indian Administrative

Service (IAS) and are seconded for fixed periods to the Government of India (Hardgrave, and

Kochanek, 2008: 108-111; Sujaya, 1992: 183).122 Consequently, these officials posted in the

Department might not have any previous experience of working in the area of women and development and are given assignments without regard to their specialization. They are instead from

a generalist category which is a pool of civil servants who through a variety of postings acquire a

broad skill set that makes them effective administrators. Assigned the tasks of planning,

coordinating and supervising an administrative system, an officer is a general administrator and

during the course of his/her career moves from one position to another, but the nature of their job

remains administrative rather than technical/specialist. Due to this, the DWCD is lacking technical

advisors to inject their expertise in the various policy areas related to women (Goel, 2004: 172).

While the Department lacks staff with expertise or specialization especially where the

knowledge of gender issues is not considered important for their appointment to senior posts, the

Commission has a shortage of staff because it lacks the power to appoint its own staff (Arya, 2010:

16-17. The Commission lacks the administrative powers to appoint its staff having critical

implications for the autonomous functioning of the Commission. In 1992, when the Commission

was first constituted, it was provided with a staff of 28 in various categories. However from the very

122 The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is a key component of the Indian bureaucracy. Its members are chosen by a centralized process and trained together. They are initially assigned to particular states, and serve varying proportions of their careers at the state and national levels. IAS Officers thus have far greater exposure to the field but their involvement in the Department is quite short-lived because of the rapid turnover of IAS Officers. The quick changes, from one type of job to another, make the knowledge of IAS officers superficial.

180 beginning it raised the issue of inadequate staff in its Annual Reports (Annual Report, NCW, 1994-

95 pp.2-3, 1995-96 pp.2-3). Though nine more posts were created in January 1997, these were related mainly to housekeeping and administration. To meet their requirements the Commission decided to make ad hoc appointments by appointing a number of consultants (mainly retired governments officers and experts in various fields) to meet their requirements in specialized work such as review of laws, and analysis of government policies (Annual Report, NCW, 1996-97, pp. 1-

2).

Second, there is the lack of coordination between the Department and the Commission.

Without true leadership or coordination, the Department and Commission lack lobbying and negotiating skills making them dependent not only on political leadership of the day which directs them to act but women’s organizations whose leaders have become strategic and savvy through their own activism as I show in the following sections of this chapter. The Department perceives itself and its work as the centre of power and authority while other government agencies and non- government agencies, and commissions are seen only acting as institutional support (Mazumdar et al., 2001). Its status as a ‘nodal’ agency relegates the Department atop of the structures that form women’s national machinery in India. This approach implies a sense of power, flowing from the centre to the periphery or from top to bottom that prevents the Department from acting as a coordinating body that establishes horizontal linkages with other Ministries/Departments. As the

‘parent department’, the Department of Women and Child Development, for instance, considers the

National Commission for Women as a subordinate body. There is a tussle for power between the

Department and the Commission, in which the Department has constantly tried to control the

Commission, administratively and financially, thereby crucially impacting its autonomy (Karat, 2005).

Despite the vast functions elucidated in the National Commission Act (National

Commission for Women, 2001), the Commission has not been able to assert whatever powers it has

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to carry out its mandate. This is the result of a lack of a high-level commitment, lack of a strong

internal constituency and dependence on external funding. Although the Commission has solid

constitutional and legal status, its ability to maintain organizational responsibility and accountability backed by planning procedures and management support structures which can transform policy into practice, remain weak. The Commission is not located at the highest political level since it is often dependent on the Central Government and the Department of Women and Child Development for

funding, resources, and staffing. The head of government needs to take responsibility for opening

up the governmental structure in this lateral way. As I have shown throughout this dissertation, the

position of the head of government (Prime Minister) is relatively weak since the last four

governments have been part of unstable coalitions. This multi-layered political situation means that

the Commission is caught up in negotiating its position among the many different positions and

pressures that it encounters (Rai, 2003: 235).

The lack of adequate powers reflected the Commissions perception as a body with little

status within government machinery. Without the powers to intervene in high-level decision-making,

previous Chairpersons have raised concerns about the difficulties they encountered when dealing

with officials who were not cooperative and refused to recognize their position as an apex body on

women's issues (Arya, 2009). As I will explain below, the role of the Commission, compared to the

Department, around the passage of the women’s reservation bill was activist in the sense that it

attempted to lobby and campaign around its passage. In 1998, the Commission drafted its own

version of the bill. However neither the Department or the Ministry of Law and Justice responded

to the recommendations put forth by the Chairperson, Mohini Giri. For example, the Department’s

Annual Reports from 1998-2004 did not include the bill on it’s ‘must do’ list of the review of various

laws concerning women that it sent to the Commission consequently ignoring the NCW draft

(Mohini Giri, Interviewed: February 21st, 2007).

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Lastly, the Department and Commission are both victims of ad-hoc appointments since

political patronage and electoral demands are influential over appointments of ministers and the

activities of national women’s machineries. Women's Ministries/Departments are notoriously tied to

the political interests of ruling parties, often through the parties’ women's sections, or to ruling

families. Hence, women’s ministries and departments have been filled with ruling party

appointments. In this scenario, women’s national machineries simply became a vehicle for

promoting and legitimizing the ruling party. Both the Department and the Commission’s role under

the Congress and the BJP, for example, was more than anything political—it responded to the

political needs of the current government. C.P. Sujaya argues that “women’s national machineries in

India have little political clout to do the work, but in fact it is women’s movements that are actively mobilizing and organizing around key issues” (Interview at the ISST, February 15th, 2007). If the

Department and Commission are to maintain their networks in civil society they need to demonstrate their autonomy from dominant political forces, which I argue below, proves quite difficult in the case of women’s national machineries in India.

Activism Against Domestic Violence: Women’s National Machinery and Women’s Movements as Allies

In this section, I claim that women’s national machineries activity, specifically in relation to changing the process and outcomes of policy debates is, more crucial in framing the policy debate around the issue of domestic violence than reservations. To support this claim I analyze the position and activities of WNM in opening up any effective channels to encourage political space for women’s organizations to consult over policy debates around violence against women and women’s political representation in the proceeding sections. While the position of women’s national machinery on the passage of the Domestic Violence bill was not strongly supportive during the

Bharatiya Janata Party years (1998-2004), this shifted when Congress came to power in 2004

183 resulting in the passage of a bill reflecting the demands of women’s organizations. First, I examine how the stiff opposition of the Bharatiya Janata Party and lack of support given to women’s national machinery even in the face of very strong pressure from unified women’s movement actors lead to inefficacious policy outcome for anti-domestic violence legislation between 1998 to 2004. I then demonstrate that even when these same conditions existed under the Congress party in 2005, movement actors were able to [had the opportunity to] lobby successfully for policy change.

Women’s National Machinery during BJP Rule (1998-2004): A mouth piece for the Hindutva

In marked contrast to that which occurred under Congress Party rule, the Department of

Women and Child Development and the National Commission for Women, under the direct control of Bharatiya Janata Party hardliners, excluded women from policy debates over anti-domestic legislation ensuring the law would be drafted according Hindutva gender ideology. Although movement actors were united, present, and determined to contribute to the policy debate, they had no allies within the Department or Commission to create an insider-outsider partnership which would act as a catalyst for policy development in this area. Consequently, the legitimacy and accountability of the both agencies was questionable for movement actors because their engagement with women’s organizations was weak during the Bharatiya Janata Party years.

As shown in Chapter 2, the dominant position of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the lower house of Parliament as the largest party meant that most of the major institutions within the

Women’ Policy Machinery came under the control of prominent members of the BJP, people with strongly held conservative views about women. The Department for instance was controlled by

Ministers who were powerful leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Ministry of Human

Resources Development (encompassing the Department of Women and Child Development), a portfolio which was central to the party’s concern with the promotion of a cultural agenda in line

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with the Hindutva ideology was firmly under the direction of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

(RSS)123, a right-wing Hindu nationalist organization. The Minister for the MHRD was Murli

Manohar Joshi- a staunch supporter of the RSS and an influential leader within the Bharatiya Janata

Party. While Sumitra Mahajan, a BJP party member who had strong conservative views on women’s

rights within the BJP (Mahajan, 2005), was put in charge of the Department of Women and Child

Development, Arun Jaitley, another social conservative, had a tight grip on the Ministry of Law and

Justice, which became a source of proposed laws that victimized the very women who needed to be

protected.

The Department under the aegis of the Ministry of Human Resource Development faced a

dominant policy culture which emanated right-wing conservative undertones and in effect were co-

opted as part of the state's efforts to control or 'deal with' the movement without changing process

or policy As Table 7.2 shows, the NCW was also made-up of all BJP members who were politically

appointed. As Mohini Giri, former Chairperson for the National Commission of Women (1995-

1998), explains “since Chairpersons of NCW are influenced by political parties the political nature of

the appointments has affected the autonomous functioning of the Commission both in its

monitoring and recommendatory roles” (Mohini Giri, Interviewed February 21st, 2007).

Table 7.2: Chairpersons of the National Commission for Women Years Held Chairperson Political Affiliation 1992-1995 Jayanti Patnaik Indian National Congress 1995-1998 Dr. Mohini Giri Indian National Congress 1999- 2002 Vibha Parthasarathy Bharatiya Janata Party 2002- 2005 Dr. Poornima Advani Bharatiya Janata Party 2005-, 2008 and 2008- 2011 Dr. Girija Vyas Indian National Congress 2011- Current Mamta Sharma Indian National Congress Source: http://ncw.nic.in/frmListChairpersons.aspx

The Commission does not have the power to select its own members since the power is vested with the Government and Members are handpicked by the ruling government and

123 The RSS is a right-wing, nationalist paramilitary volunteer Hindu nationalist group. Please see Chapter 2.

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nomination has been based on influence rather than merit. The nature of these appointments

affected both the autonomous functioning of the Commission as well as its approach to the issue of

domestic violence because the Commission was constrained to act against those in power or those

who have appointed them. The Fourth Commission was constituted in January 2002 under BJP-

appointee Dr. Poornima Advani (2002-2005), a lawyer of the Bombay High Court. Advani had long

established political ties to the party and was known for her soft stance taken towards the BJP. Not

only did Advani give a clean report to the Gujarat government and alleged that the cases of violence against women during the 2002 Gujarat riots, where women were brutally raped and murdered were creations of the media (Flavia Agnes, 2004 ), she also authored a NCW report on rape (NCW, 2000)

which reflected patriarchal and Hindu right-wing assumptions.

Consequently, the series of events from 2001-2003, as I explain below, reveal that women’s

national machineries were inhibited from opening up any effective channels to encourage political

space for women’s organizations to consult over various clauses in the bill which women’s groups

deemed inimical to women’s rights within the domestic violence bill. In this way, the presence of

women’s national machineries was symbolic having been restricted from getting involved with such

policy proposals and therefore they were unable to advocate for movement goals in the policy

process

In 2001, the Lawyers Collective submitted its own draft to the Department hoping the bill

and its overall framework would eventually be enacted. However, the Department failed to consider

the Collective’s recommendations that included many made by women’s organizations. It also failed

to establish any process by which women’s organizations could influence the policy process. This

became evident when a number of the Lawyer’s Collectives proposed provisions that were modified

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to suit the patriarchal perspective of the Bharatiya Janata Party.124 No one was aware of the stage at which key provisions of the bill, listed in Table 5.2 (Chapter 5), were dropped (i.e. defining domestic

violence, safety, and specific forms of remedial relief). Interaction between the Department and the

Lawyers Collective after the draft bill had been submitted to parliament was limited. There was no record of any consultations between the Department and women’s organizations either in the form of women’s organization representation on government committees, presentations as public hearings, or informal consultation.

Movement actors found it extremely difficult to influence decision-making around the bill.

Although during this time, key actors such as the Lawyers Collective were given procedural acceptance as legitimate representatives for movement interests in the policy making process, it was mainly BJP party officials from the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the Ministry of Law and Justice, and the Department that dominated the dynamics. Decision-making during the BJP years was not determined by a process of bargaining amongst state actors with participation from a variety of women’s organizations. Rather it was restricted and organized with participation from regular actors (state) who dominated the policy field. Thus the main actors in formulating the government bill- the DWCD under the aegis of the Ministry of HRD and the Ministry of Law-

formed a tight circle. While the Lawyers Collective had submitted a draft law which had the wide

support of women’s organizations, the Government draft bill was prepared in relative secrecy by

bureaucrats from within the Ministry of HRD granting no access to other actors to comment or an

opportunity to veto. In this way, both the Ministry of HRD and the Department excluded the

women’s movement from policy input when the government presented its own bill.

124 Please refer to Table 5.2 in Chapter 5 which lists the provisions for the bill proposed by the Lawyers Collective [Domestic Violence Against Women (Prevention) Bill (2001)] and the bill proposed by the BJP Government [Protection from Domestic Violence Bill (2002)].

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Although the creation of a Parliamentary Standing Committee for instance, provided a

channel of access for women activists it in actuality gave little space for women movement actors to

enter decision-making arenas by completely disregarding the recommendations they made. When

women’s movement actors met with Sumitra Mahajan, she agreed to send a written communiqué to

the Ministry of Law and Justice indicating that the bill would not come up for discussion without

having been referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Human Resource

Development Ministry (discussed in Chapter 5, pp: 120-122). Various women’s groups, urging the

government to introduce the bill in the Parliament with the amendments suggested by the Standing

Committee, sent petitions to the Minister of Human Resources Development.125

While Mahajan assured women’s movement actors that the Department was not ‘rigid’ and

would be willing to revise the bill as per the suggestions of the Standing Committee she ultimately

supported her party’s version of the domestic violence bill, ignoring entirely the recommendations

of the Lawyers Collective. Mahajan’s justification of her position reflected her adherence to the

right-wing Hindu position on women: she opposed a bill that took a strong stand against violence against women, claiming it was not the Government's intention to ‘break up families’. Rather, its objective is to safeguard the institution of the family through the Protection from Domestic

Violence bill, she said (Telegraph, March 20th, 2002).

The extent to which officials during the BJP government were adverse to consultation of women’s groups is reflected by the fact that Dr. R.V. Vaidyanatha Ayyar, Secretary of the

Department of Women and Child Development, claimed if the Ministry had consulted with

women’s groups before introducing the bill in Parliament, it would have taken six months longer

125 Some of the amendments suggested by the Standing Committee for example included: dropping the self-defence plea under section 4(2) and mandatory counselling for victims under section 11; a provision for the right to residence of the aggrieved person in matrimonial home; service provider provided in the Bill should be a woman’s organization; and must cover other relationships that extend beyond only legal marriages (Parliament of India, Rajya Sabha, 2002: 2-4).

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before the bill was put before parliament (Centre for Social Research, 2002). Consequently, without

heeding the opinions of women’s groups and considering their recommendations, the Department of Women and Child introduced a bill with regressive provisions. The political leadership in effect

prevented women’s national machinery, especially the Department, from opening up any effective

channels of communication for women’s organizations or indeed, from encouraging the expansion

of any political space for women’s organizations to consult over various clauses in the bill. During

the Bharatiya Janata Party period in office, neither the women’s movement nor women’s national

machinery thus had any perceptible role in effecting policy proposals made by the BJP. When the

government lost the 2004 national elections, all pending bills, including the Protection from Domestic

Violence bill (2002), lapsed with the dissolution of Parliament in 2004.

Indian National Congress: Working for Women?

What seems to be outstanding during the BJP years is the way in which the government and

women’s national machinery were able to subvert the wishes of the extra state organizations even

though they were so unified and activist. This situation however changed dramatically during the

period of Congress rule (2004-2009) when women’s national machinery operated to facilitate a

positive policy outcome for women. The activity undertaken by the Department and Commission

reflected the government’s political will to act to get a comprehensive bill on domestic violence

passed and links between women’ organizations and women’s national machinery thus became

significant after 2004 when the new Congress government came to power in May 2004.

Former Joint Secretary, Parul Debi Das explains leadership within the Department was

critical because it selected the issue of passing a domestic violence law as a major area of focus that

dictated the major policy orientations of the DWCD (Interview, March 12th, 2007). This factor is

significant since it largely depended on the party/parties who set policy direction for the

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Government during the period of the policy debate. This new leadership was able to ensure that the

women’s national machinery officials worked sympathetically and effectively with women’s extra

state organizations. During this period, interaction between government officials and women’s

organizations was critical in shaping the Department’s position on anti-domestic violence legislation.

An interview with the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Women and Children under

the Ministry for Human Resource Development, Ms. Savithri, revealed the initial objective of the

Department was “to introduce a progressive bill where no prior comprehensive legislation existed

previously” (Interview: Ms. Savithri, January 10th, 2006). If enacted, the bill would make financial

provisions for the establishment of Short Stay Homes (shelters) and Protection Officers (to enforce

court orders), and the Consolidated Fund of India would be used to cover the expenditure. Savithri

explained that in using the Lawyers Collective bill as blueprint, the Department of Women and

Child Development would not only formulate a domestic violence bill in collaboration with the

Lawyers Collective but ensure the bill received wide support from women’s groups before the government enacted it.

A variety of mechanisms for consultation between the Department and women’s

organizations were attempted by the new Minister of Human Resource Development, Arjun Singh,

regarding the bill. Consultations ranged from seats on government committees such as the Inter-

Ministerial Committee, to public hearings and informal consultations held by the Department with a handful of organizations. Singh, who acted as chair of the Human Resource Development

Parliamentary Standing Committee in 2002, was well aware that providing a system of formal representation would exclude smaller and weaker organizations. To rectify this problem he preferred organized public hearings combined with wider consultations in order to reach women who were not necessarily part of the organized women’s movement.

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Singh believed that forging links with women’s organizations through the creation of formal and informal structure was an effective method to obtaining policy input from women’s organizations. This interaction was critical in shaping the Department’s scope for action and illustrated to some extent the level of legitimacy and accountability of the Department of Women and Child. The most effective manner in which to foster these linkages was to focus on processes rather than structures allowing for the Department to be more flexible and provide an open system that was hospitable to women’s demands. The Department held renewed extensive consultations separately with organizations that had been excluded from the policy discussions that took place in a closed fashion during the BJP years. During June 2004 - March 2005 several women’s movement actors were invited by the Minister of State in charge of the Department of Women and Child,

Kanti Singh, to a series of discussions on the proposed bill with the Secretary and members of the

Department of Women and Child. As a way for the Department to establish and maintain legitimacy by involving women’s organizations, an inter-ministerial committee was also established in June

2004 under the direction of the Ministry of Human Resource Development to review the draft legislation. The inter-ministerial committee was organized as strategic move to overcome bureaucratic resistance and co-ordinate policy on domestic violence. The inter-ministerial committee was chaired by the Secretary of the Department of Women and Child Development,

Parul Debi Das, and was comprised of representatives from the Ministry of Social Justice and

Empowerment, Department of Health & Family Welfare, the Planning Commission, Law & Justice, and a Member Secretary of the National Commission for Women to examine and fine tune the final version of the bill.

Although the Committee was composed of concerned Ministries and Departments, capacity building through consultations across concerned non-government organizations was critical in opening channels of access for movement actors to obtain their recommendations on the new bill.

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By initiating a formal process of seeking proposals on provisions and rules of the bill, organizations

such as the Lawyers Collective, AIDWA, and Action India were invited to make presentations to the

Inter-Ministerial Committee. Involving the participation of women’s organizations was considered

by Minister Singh as crucial for the Department in establishing and maintaining legitimacy. This

could only genuinely be done by forging links with women’s organizations through the creation of

formal and informal structures where the Department could respond to the demands made and

issues raised by various groups of women around the passage of a comprehensive civil law for

domestic violence bill.

While the inter-ministerial committee met regularly to review action taken within respective

Ministries, the draft bill, based on the Lawyers Collective original draft (1999) was widely circulated among lawyers and women’s groups for their feedback and criticisms during June 2004 and August

2004. By October 2004, the Department re-examined the bill and identified specific areas that

required the key provisions suggested by women’s groups, specifically with the Lawyers Collective

and other women’s groups such as Action India and the All Indian Women’s Federation of Lawyers,

activists from institutes such as Centre for Women Development Studies, and lawyers for a fixed

period of time. Upon the inclusion of the recommended provisions that were solicited during the

initial round of consultations, the DWCD re-drafted the bill and conducted a second round of

consultations with the same movement actors in order to strengthen the law and ensure its effective

implementation.

In soliciting the recommendations and advice of various women’s organizations, the

Department drew on the organization’s vast experience and working knowledge within the area of

domestic violence throughout the decision-making process. Since the Department’s staff was less

skilled in formulating legislation in an “unoccupied field” where no previous law existed, it looked to

non-governmental organizations for knowledge. In this way, the Department was dependent in part

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on the quality of its links with women’s organizations and non-governmental organizations

representing women’s interests. This point is rather significant since it feeds into the argument I make in Chapter 5: domestic violence legislation was in large part an outcome of movement activism.

Thus negotiations between the Department and women’s organizations, under the new

direction of the Ministry of Human Resources Development, occurred in an effort to form a

consensus over the content of the law. A piece of legislation, movement actors hoped, would establish the intervention of a law within the home in order to protect women from domestic violence and thereby perhaps help to mitigate the impact of patriarchal ideologies of marriage, family, and property that often sanctioned violence against women. The government believed that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s proposed bill was woefully inadequate; the Department, in particular,

was well aware that the enactment of the bill, in a form that addressed the pressing need to

comprehensively deal with violence against women, would not only address the demands of

women’s organizations but would also have far-reaching positive consequences for women.

This new law, therefore, signified a palpable shift in the ideological orientation of the

government, even the Congress government, and marked important progress in the achievement of

a broader acceptance of women’s rights and human rights. Indeed the Department after 2004 had

become an ally and under the leadership of the Indian National Congress which was seen as ‘more’

progressive by women’s organizations since it was visibly committed to reviewing provisions of the

bill in consultation with women movement actors. Under the Congress administration, the

Department worked with women’s movement actors ensuring that it could represent their key policy

concerns (that is demands for rights to the household, protection orders, monetary relief, custody

orders, and compensation orders in cases of violent domestic abuse) and interject them into the

debate surrounding the new law on domestic violence.

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According to former Secretary of the Department of Women and Child Development

(2004-2006), Reva Nayaar, the general perception of the Ministry was that since the bill on Domestic

Violence against Women would be a Central Act, the Central Government should fund its implementation upon its passage. During this time, she argues “the Ministry took the lead in pushing for budgetary allocations that would be channeled for creating public awareness around the bill and for creating the required infrastructure for effective implementation of the bill when it became law”

(Interviewed March 6th, 2007). After the conclusion of the inter-ministerial committee, and consultations with selected movement actors, the DWCD re-drafted the bill and held final consultations with the Lawyer’s Collective in early 2005. Once complete, the staff of the DWCD reviewed and evaluated the recommendations, including those that came from consultations held by the NCW, fine-tuned the final version of bill and submitted the Protection of Women from Domestic

Violence Act (2005) for introduction during the Monsoon session of Parliament on August 23rd, 2005 passing as law on August 24th, 2005. The provisions of the government’s bill –the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005) - are listed in Table 5.3 in Chapter 5. Thus, women’s national machinery operated within a women-friendly environment, which encouraged women’s political activism, and involvement enhancing women’s movements interaction to have an impact on policy outcome.

Women’s National Machinery: Marginalized Participants in the Women’s Political Representation Debate (1996- 2009)

In this section, I claim that the roles of the Department and Commission in debates over the passage of the Women’s Reservation bill were marginal suggesting that these institutions remained under the thumb of ruling governments- the Janata Dal Party (1996-1998), the Bharatiya Janata

Party (1998-2004), and the Indian National Congress (2004-2009). Caste-based political parties combined with a period of national leadership with a distinct predisposition to Hindu nationalism

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(with its traditional view of women) created a situation in which the women’s national machineries

could only have a minor role leading to ineffective engagement with women’s organizations. The

political reasons as to why women’s national machineries could not get behind the reservation bill

forced it to act merely as a trustee evading a position on an issue that not only left out the issue of

sub-quotas but was not a priority or goal of the women’s movement. My interview with Romi

Sharma, Under Secretary/Public Relation Officer- National Commission for Women, reflects this

point as she argues that with regards to the bill, connections with women’s groups depended on the

political parties who mobilized the activism of the machineries (Romi Sharma, Interviewed February

20th, 2007).

Although many women welcomed the bill, an equal number of activists were hesitant, doubtful, indifferent, and even hostile to idea of one third reservations for women. They believed

the proposal to provide reservations for women solely based on their gender rested on simplistic

assumptions about their identity ignoring the multifaceted gender identity of women that was in

constant interface with their class, caste, and community identity. In this way, women’s movement actors remained divided on the issue and so did not present the coherent united front that they did for the domestic violence bill. Due to the lack of unity and strength of the women’s movement on the reservation bill, however, it was highly unlikely that supporters of that bill would be in a position to push the reform forward even had the government been open to policy input from women’s organizations, which it was not on the this issue.

Leadership Matters: Exclusion of the Women’s Movement from the Women’s Political Representation Debate Under the Janata Dal Party (1996-1998)

During the Janata Dal government, the weak position of the National Commission for

Women and the lack of priority of the women’s reservation bill on the Department’s agenda meant little incentive was taken to engage with movement activists on the issue. However the movement

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for reservations during this time was relatively small confined only to a few female Members of

Parliament and a coalition of seven national women’s organizations indicating that a larger broader movement had not yet emerged to pressurize the government on the issue. While the ownership of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence bill came from women’s organizations that drafted the bill and then presented it to the DWCD, it was the Ministry of Law and Justice that drafted the women’s reservation bill. To be fair, the drafting of the bill was not technically in the domain of the Commission or the Department’s mandate since it was a constitutional amendment and because of this it was structurally excluded from high-level policy-making. However, the

Department as a bureaucratic agency with policy-making functions was inside policy-making arenas,

which allowed it to provide input on the bill in terms soliciting advice, criticisms, and

recommendations from women’s movement actors.

Under the leadership of Mohini Giri (1995-1998), the National Commission for Women

spearheaded its campaign around the passage of the bill mainly through lobbying, advocacy, and

consultative measures. A social activist and leader in the women's movement, specializing in human

rights and gender justice, Dr. Giri is renowned both nationally and internationally for her committed

work in empowering women politically, socially, legally and economically (Mohini Giri, Interviewed

at Guild of Service Office: February 21st, 2007; Giri, 2006). In 1996, she was one of the first women

to organize a meeting of women leaders to strategize an agenda which placed critical emphasis on

the demand for reservation where over 200 women, including parliamentarians, representatives of

major political organizations, activists, and scholars gathered to create a critical mass. The result of

this meeting yielded consensus on the demand for a legal requirement that all legislative bodies at

the state and national level reserve one third of their seats for women (Mohini Giri, Interviewed:

February 21st, 2007).

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Studying the original women’s reservation bill, the Commission penned its own draft in

1997.126 However this draft fell on deaf ears since many of its recommendations had not been given

due consideration by various departments and ministries such as the Department for Women and

Child and the Ministry of Law and Justice (MLJ). The fact that there was no time limit for the government to respond to the recommendations sent to it by the Commission and also because the recommendations are not binding on the government reduced the NCW to a mere recommendatory body (Arya, 2010: 45). Consequently, the Commission was excluded from high-level consultations, making little impact on the debate over reservations.

The Department, on the other hand, remained stagnant on the issue. The DWCD was going through periods of instability brought on by fragile governing coalitions from 1995-1998. The

Minister in charge of the DWCD was constantly changing and its mandate in defining the scope of the activities and general orientation was in constant influx. For example, in 1997 Kanti Singh was

appointed the Minister of Women and Child under I.K Gujral’s United Front coalition government

and a few months later she was shifted to the far more powerful Coal Ministry (Manushi, 1996).

Similarly, under the succeeding National Democratic Alliance BJP-led coalition government, Uma

Bharti was chosen as Minister for DWCD but was later replaced with Sumitra Mahajan due to

Bharti’s running feud with then Minister of Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar

Joshi.

The lack of leadership taken on the issue of reservations was also reflective of the DWCDs

failure to address women’s representation through strategies for mobilizing women at all levels of

government. For the most part the Department relegated its activism to two areas: providing advice

126 While the Commission’s draft contained key provisions similar to the Joint Select Committee draft such as the reservation of one-third seats for women in state assemblies and Parliament, it also recommended that out of the seats already reserved for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, one third would be reserved for women belonging to either category and the constituencies reserved for women will be selected by rotation for 5 years.

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on the draft bill and internal lobbying of individual political leaders to support the bill; however, this largely depended on which government was in power and the actual leadership of the Department.

The female Ministers in charge of the Department, for example, the United Front (Kanti Singh) and

National Democratic Alliance (Uma Bharti) were against reservations for women that did not

include a sub-quota for women belonging to Backward Castes. This was not surprising as both these

Ministers were themselves ‘Other Backward Class’ Members of Parliament. The Department, under

their direction, distanced itself from an issue, which it perceived as controversial. While the

Department gave its official support in public and in the media, it made no efforts to become

involved with the campaigns and consequently did not incorporate women's movement goals into

its own positions on the policy issue.

The Department had been the victim of ad-hoc appointments since political patronage and

electoral demands were very influential in appointments of ministers of national women’s

machineries. While Prime Minister Deve Gowda (1996-1997) came from the largest party in the

coalition, the Janata Dal, which had 43 parliamentary seats, he was not the Janata Dal's national

leader; that post belonged to Laloo Prasad Yadav. Known for his caste-based politics, Yadav’s

influence and weight within the coalition was significant and he articulated the most vocal

opposition against reservations. He had the support of several other influential Members of

Parliament within the Janata Dal such as Sharad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Kanti Singh- all

influential Other Backward Class leaders. Laloo Prasad Yadav personally endorsed Singh for

Minister for Human Resource Development. She became not only the only woman in Gowda’s

government but also the only woman from the Other Backward Class category.

Kanti Singh had no real prior experience either in the federal civil service or with ‘feminist’

issues and no previous ties to the women’s movement. She provided little stimulus for women’s

issues and the DWCD during this time emphasized education and income-generating schemes for

198 women and depressed classes. An interview with C.P Sujaya reflected Kanti Singh’s vision of the

Department in early 1990s that worked along a pattern of addressing women’s practical gender needs and not strategic gender needs viewing women as victims not agents (Interview, February

15th, 2007). Sujaya argued that comparatively less resources and emphasis placed on generic and structural issues of women’s oppression by the Department gave greater attention to the delivery of services, particularly around poverty alleviation. The DWCD implemented a number of poverty alleviation programmes, such as Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY), Sampurna Gramin

Rozgar Yojana (SGRY), National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and the mobilization of Self Help Groups (SHGs) which provided skill building, training, and linkages with micro-credit institutions.

In doing so, however, the DWCD failed to make a connection between women’s participation in politics and poverty. Amartya Sen highlights this theme in his book Development as

Freedom, arguing that increased and widespread participation in political decision-making does in fact reduce poverty and increase development opportunities (Sen, 1999). Without addressing women’s unequal share of power and decision-making as a critical area of concern, concrete actions to ensure women’s equal access to, and full participation in, power structures and to increase women’s capacity to participate in decision-making and leadership, the Department’s position on political representation for women was negligible during this time.

Even though the women’s reservation bill was a government initiative, based on the policy for reservations originating in the Congress government’s National Perspective Plan,127 it was not a priority issue for the Department. This was evident by analyzing Department’s Annual Reports

127 At this time, Rajiv Gandhi’s government identified women’s status as a new priority issue and to this end, the DWCD under his government prepared the NPP, which acknowledged the problem of under-representation and recommended a proposal to extend 33% reservations to all levels of government, including the state legislatures and the national parliament. Although this proposal was eventually dropped, the blueprint for reservations already existed and in 1996 Margaret Alva, an ex-Minister of DWCD, in fact proposed the Women’s Reservation Bill.

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which did not make mention of the bill under its list of legislations for review (DWCD, Annual

Report. 1996-2004). In fact, the DWCD had few programmes which emphasized women’s roles in

politics through selecting, training, and supporting women to run for elections, leadership

programmes or even programmes to increase the numbers of women voters through voter

education drives.128

As the Minister for the Department of Women and Child Development, Kanti Singh was in

the first instance a member of her political party, which meant that her main concern on the issue of

reservations for women would be the impact it had on her party. Hence, her position on the bill was

that of her party’s: she would only support reservation quotas for women if the bill also included a

reservation quota for the backward classes. Singh neither advocated nor rejected the bill in public,

nor did she make use of her influential position within the Rashtriya Janata Dal to start a debate on

the subject within her party. Consequently, the DWCD was not active on the issue and this was

evident since the Department did not articulate women’s movement goals nor did it make any real

efforts to bring movement activists into the policy debate.129 Compared to her predecessors Singh

was not overtly supportive of women’s groups and she was not in close contact with female spokespersons of other parties. Singh did not engage in the debate over reservations for women from a gendered perspective nor did she work to influence the debate by gendering it since she saw it through a caste lens. The Department’s relationship with the women’s movement hit an all time low especially since the women’s movement itself was already divided limiting the extent it could mobilize around the bill. Even though its mandate enabled it to provide comments and

128 To be sure, the DWCD did launch Swayamsidha (self-awareness) but only in 2001, that was geared to enhance women’s roles in politics through selecting, training, and supporting women to run for elections. The DWCD’s participation in two programmes partnering with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the Governance Programme of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) which supported and promoted panchayats to enhance governance capabilities of local women leaders. However, the DWCD launched these only in 2009 and confined these initiatives, to the local level. 129 However, the Department’s intervention over the domestic violence bill during this time was irrelevant since the anti-domestic violence bill only emerged in 2001.

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recommendations on the bill, the DWCD kept out of the debate thus minimizing its engagement

with movement actors. Due to this posturing, the Department’s role was marginal despite the fact

the reservations for women had a prominent place on the political agenda.

Women’s National Machineries under BJP Rule: Maintaining a Stiff Resistance to Women’s Movements (1998- 2004)

The extent to which women’s national machinery have been able to function within specific cultural contexts has been an important variable in determining policy outcome since the political party in power provides a more or less sympathetic policy environment in which it responds to women’s movements activism. Women’s national machinery under the National Democratic

Alliance (NDA) coalition government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party during 1998-2004 continued

to play an insignificant role over the reservation issue and this meant that action had to be taken by

movement actors lobbying from outside the state without much consultation and consensus from

women’s organizations on the issue. Without regular participation of women’s national machineries

in debate over legislation reserving seats for women within the national and state assemblies, the

WNM was not able to represent women’s movement goals since it had no success in convincing

leadership to place the issue on the agenda. The Bharatiya Janata Party did little to open up the

debates surrounding reservation to either the Department or Commission.

The appointment of a woman from a backward caste may also have had a significant impact

on the reluctance of the Department to support quotas for women, as women. The Bharatiya Janata

Party chose Uma Bharti as Minister for DWCD who was a female Member of Parliament from the

Other Backward Class category. The question of how to assure representation for Other Backward

Class women that led to a proposal to guarantee a ‘quota within the quota’ was in fact originally

raised by Uma Bharti and because of this proposal, the Department under her direction stayed away

from advocating quotas for women as women.

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In order to avoid controversy, the Department gave its official support to the bill in public

and in the media, while making no efforts to become involved with the campaigns. Consequently,

the Department could not incorporate women's movement goals into its own position on the policy

issue, thus discouraging women’s political activism and involvement on the issue perhaps because

the department head understood that the majority of women might not support quotas with sub

quotas for Other Backward Class and minority women. However without actually soliciting

women’s movement actors for their advice and suggestions, the Department eliminated any

opportunity for engagement. For example, Human Resources Development (HRD) Minister Murli

Manohar Joshi told a gathering of women politicians that the government preferred not to introduce

the bill in an atmosphere of tension, acrimony and controversy. But Joshi’s plea did not satisfy

participants at the gathering organised by the National Commission for Women (NCW), nor did the

conciliatory speech by his junior minister (Department of Women and Child) and Sumitra Mahajan

who said “Today or tomorrow the bill will be passed, if it can be done in an atmosphere of goodwill

it will be better” (IPS, December 17 1999).

Thus a closed-door meeting with a select few women produced little opportunity in forging links with women’s organizations through the creation of formal and informal structures where machineries could respond to the demands made and issues raised by various groups of women around the passage of the bill. Dr. Jyotsna Chatterji, Director of the Programme for Women (JPW)

states that many women activists, particularly the ones representing the Seven Sisters Network, were

extremely frustrated by the feeling of being cut-off from deliberations over the bill. She goes on to

argue that the BJP acted arbitrarily in achieving consensus amongst the political parties, at the

expense of hearing the voices of women (Dr. Jyotsna Chatterji, Interviewed: January 30th, 2007).

During 2000-2003 when the Bharatiya Janata Party held meetings with the Prime Minister

(Atul Bihari Vajpayee), political parties, and the Ministry of Law and Justice to resolve the ongoing

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differences around the women’s reservation bill and discuss possible alternatives to the bill (Chapter

6) it did not include the Department or Commission in high-level meetings. Whether it was the

Election Commission’s proposal to amend the People’s Representation Act in 2001 or the proposal

to create dual-members constituencies the party by-passed the DWCD and the Commission. For

instance when BJP was attempting to reach consensus around another alternative to the bill- a

proposal to create dual-members constituencies in 2003- the party by-passed the DWCD instead, communicating the new proposal to the Speaker of the Lower House who asked the Ministry of

Law and Justice to draft a new bill. Within a matter of days the Bharatiya Janata Party National

Executive approved a resolution to pursue a constitutional amendment. Again, the Bharatiya Janata

Party government made no show of opening channels of access to societal groups giving little space for women movement actors to have an impact on the bill and it was therefore not confronted with demands it did not agree with.

Consequently, under the Bharatiya Janata Party government, the constellation of policy actors (the Prime Minister, leaders of political parties, Cabinet Ministers, Parliamentary committees,

Parliamentary representatives, and bureaucrats within the Ministry of Law) formed a tight policy network, which virtually excluded movement actors from policy access. Blocked from arenas where decision-making took place, women’s organizations were unable to influence the policy debate over reservations for women. Since the Department of Women of Child did not prioritize reservations on its agenda due to the continued lack of leadership on the issue and the National Commission for

Women was limited in its own capacity since the government ignored its draft of the bill and recommendations on a series of other drafts, both agencies played marginal roles over debates for reservation.

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Consultation and Progress on the Reservation bill under the Congress (2004-2009)

The situation under the Bharatiya Janata Party shifted when the Congress-led United

Progressive Alliance (UPA) government came to power in 2004 opening up the discussion around the reservation debates more so than they had been under previous governments. The change in political leadership was significant because it revealed that WNM under Congress became active on the issue more so than it had under previous ruling governments. In attempting to uphold its commitment to introduce the bill new Prime Minister Manmohan appointed Renuka Chowdhury as the Minister for State for the Department of Women and Child from 2006-2009. She had a reputation of supporting and struggling for various women’s issues (Kumari and Kidwai, 1998).

Chowdhury in fact managed to push through the Domestic Violence Act in 2006 and because of this track record Prime Minister Singh’s decision to place her in charge of the Department was an attempt to cut through the resistance from male ministers and Members of Parliament to the women’s reservation bill.

Chowdhury, a Congress Member of Parliament, took a more proactive approach to the bill and under her leadership, the general direction and approach of the Department began to shift.

Chowdhury was vocal and active on the issue and included the issue on the Department’s mandate so as to prevent the agency from being excluded from an already restricted policy environment. A direct channel to the Department under her leadership spurred movement activity to lobbying and organizing new campaigns and demonstrations around the passage of the bill. Although the

Congress-led government was still restrictive in that it selected only a few women’s organizations with which to consult, the appointment of Chowdhury reflected the Department under new leadership was gradually becoming a spokesperson for the concern of women’s groups and thus with her leadership (2006-2009) the department became more open. She had supported the bill since its introduction in 1996 and it was during this time the Department took a stand on the issue

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when it lobbied to get the bill passed in its original form (without sub-quotas). Chowdhury’s support of the bill was evident in three ways: first, her personal lobbying to get the bill passed; second, by voicing her concerns publicly over the delayed passage of the original women’s reservation bill

(Hindustan Times, March 5th, 2007; Lok Sabha Debates, Winter Session, November 27th, 2006; and

The Hindu, March 9th, 2010); and third, by including it on the Department’s mandate to

demonstrate to women’s organizations that both the Department and the government were

committed to making progress on the bill.

For instance, her work to get the bill passed included the submission of the Memorandum to

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in August 2006. Chowdhury prepared a Memorandum conveying

the disappointment of women’s groups at the unexplained delay in tabling the bill in Parliament and

urged the government to fulfill its promise by expediting the introduction of the bill and allowing for

an open debate in Parliament. Chowdhury also organized consultations with women’s groups who

were concerned over the repeated delays over the bill. By monitoring the progress on the bill,

Chowdhury organized consultations with experts on women’s issues in collaboration with Women

Power Connect (WPC). A delegation of WPC’s member organizations met Chowdhury to discuss a

plan of action with regard to the Women’s Reservation bill (WPC, Annual Report, 2006-2007:14).

WPC prepared an Action Plan keeping in mind its goal of facilitating the passage of the legislation in

Parliament by the winter session. Four major strategies during this time were drawn up: initiating a

signature campaign for the Reservation bill, submitting a Memorandum to the Prime Minister and

other relevant Cabinet Ministers on this issue, meeting Members of Parliament and sensitizing them

by giving them enough material about the issue and requesting them to raise questions in the

Parliament and finally, meeting the women’s wings of all political parties and seeking their support.

In line with the Action Plan, a country-wide signature campaign was also launched by WPC to

demand tabling of the 33% Reservation bill in Parliament.

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Similarly, Krishna Tirath, who took charge of the Department in 2010, maintained a similar

position to that of Chowdhury’s. Tirath was the former head of the Parliamentary Women's

Empowerment Committee, and was a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for the

Women’s Reservation Bill in 2008 and an active supporter of the bill. Her participation in debates

over the bill in the Upper and Lower Houses of parliament affirmed her support to the bill in

addition to lobbying of various political parties to speak up in support of the bill during the debates.

In this way, women’s national machinery, with supportive leadership under the Congress, gradually

became a site to facilitate the demands of women’s groups into the debate around the bill. However,

the movement for reservations remained very much divided between women within government in

collaboration with women’s advocacy groups/coalitions who mobilized for the passage of women’s

reservation bill and women who supported the idea of reservations but pushed for a re-drafting of

the bill to include sub-quotas for women from the Other Backward Class category and minority

groups. Women’s movement actors, who were admittedly divided on the issue, were far less

involved in this debate than was the case for the Domestic Violence bill and because of this they were not able to fully engage with women’s national machinery to participate in and gain political responses on policy goals.

Conclusion

Over the last 50 years, India has established a dizzying array of institutions and policy

initiatives to deal with women’s issues. Arguably, the situation of women ought to have improved

considerably more than it did. However, there was a gap between institution building and actual

policy outcome. Impact on policy is obviously far more important than the mere presence of pro-

women policy institutions. I therefore claimed that support of top-level policymakers for women’s

issues determined the extent to which women’s movement actors could become important political

206 actors that have an impact on policy outcomes favourable to their interests. This chapter demonstrated the interaction between women’s national machineries and women’s organizations influenced the two policy outcomes in different ways. Over time, women’s national machinery was inclined to support certain types of women’s issues over others; in particular, it had a history of supporting policies to address women’s practical gender needs. Its activities were also heavily influenced by what government was in power and consequently, women’s national machinery became an intermediate variable that responded to women’s demands when the general policy- making environment (leadership) was “friendly.” Women’s national machinery became an arena for demand making and input into policy under Congress, but resistant under the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was not open to women’s demands for a comprehensive anti-domestic law. However, when it came to policy debates over reservation, the marginal role women’s national machinery played prevented it from engaging with women’s movement actors to participate in and gain political responses on policy goals. Hence, women’s national machinery helped push forward legislation to stem violence against women but resisted legislation to increase women’s representation in

Parliament.

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Conclusion

In the preceding chapters, I have extrapolated an analysis that answers the central question I

put forth in this dissertation- why certain women’s issues have been successfully addressed by the state in India while others have not. The study presented cross-issue (between violence against

women and representation) findings by examining what conditions determine state responsiveness.

Was the state more responsive when faced by a cohesive movement that was unified, prioritizing the issue high on the agenda? Were Centre-Left governments more sympathetic to movement goals than Right-wing governments? Were policy processes that welcomed outside groups the best

environment? Or did it all depend on how various conditions worked together? The assumption behind this study was that women’s movement had independent power since they were able to pressure governments in incorporating issues onto their agendas. However their success in eliciting state responsiveness depended on a variety of conditions working together and that there was not just one path to success. The search for explanations examined how these potential causal factors occurred together to produce, or not produce, a specified outcome.

This research has shown that women’s movements were a necessary ingredient for the articulation of violence against women and women’s political representation as policy issues.

However, women’s movements alone were not sufficient to produce a government response. Allies inside government were critical: where there were policy makers sympathetic to the women’s movement or even part of it, the issue was more likely to be adopted by top political leadership as part of the decision-making agenda. I considered that Women’s National Machineries could play effective insiders only if there was determined leadership and a political will to articulate and act on tangible commitments.

The political context in India since the late 1980s gave rise to a host of new complexities and tensions. A multi-party political system characterized by coalition politics, the advent of economic

208 liberalization, and new social conditions all posed new challenges for women’s movements to negotiate with governments. Growing pressures on the political system due to increasing social disparities strained governments due to a multitude of multifarious demands made on the system under conditions of competitive politics. Thus, the environment faced by movement activists presented different opportunities and constraints depending upon what party or coalition of parties were in power.

The state carried a particular set of notions via woman’s role and image maintaining an ideological framework of patriarchal relations, and because of this, the state was a constant focus of women’s concerns and activism. What was particularly relevant within these ideological debates was the manner in which state ideology was translated through policies that affected women. To demonstrate this point, the ideological differences between the Congress Party and the Bharatiya

Janata Party were examined by interrogating the [ideological] role that state policies played in not only promoting equality, but also challenging patriarchy exemplifying that some political regimes were more responsive than others in addressing the issues of domestic violence and women’s representation. Even though the state periodically claimed its policy-making was ‘gender-neutral’ and even ‘women’-friendly, as analyzed under Congress rule, the lobbying by women’s movements of the federal government continuously revealed the patriarchal biases of the state. Consequently, a patriarchal state, more so, as it was shown, because of a strong nationalist ideological orientation under the Bharatiya Janata Party, stimulated the cohesiveness of the women’s movement and its ability to speak with one voice on issues evident in the struggles surrounding violence against women and women’s representation, which accrued in various forms of engagement (i.e.: formal and deliberate exchange, regulation, address, demand and negotiation).

Women’s movements that emerged to mobilize around the passage of an anti-domestic violence legislation and legislation for women’s political representation did engage in a form of

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political mobilization in which membership and action were based on claims of justice: they both

had in common individual mobilization, motivated by a sense of injustice, and the drive for social power, through social mobilization against deprivation, survival, and the need to affirm identity

(Fuentes and Gunder Frank, 1989). Women’s movements effectively mobilized around the issues

arguing that women’s organizations must be successful in getting the state to perceive an existing

condition as a public problem if they are to achieve policy change. The implications of this were

reflected in varying policy outcomes across both issues whereas a unified and coherent women’s

movement held the issue of violence against women as high priority, the movement for reservations

was fractured since many women questioned the efficacy of reservations as an instrument for the achievement of the goal of equality, and thus reservations was not a high priority issue. Examining

where movement actors were unified, or not, in their claims was imperative since the form of mobilization significantly affected their interaction with the state and its institutions.

The state indeed responded to the women’s movements when it undertook legal reforms

related to criminalizing domestic violence, but it also retreated against the issue of reservations since

it clashed with entrenched political interests, namely caste, indicating that electoral incentives drove

policy outcome over this issue. The nature of the regime in power was significant in determining the

ultimate policy outcome: what government is in power (and its ideological predisposition) had a

determining impact on what kind of anti-violence legislation was passed. This was especially

apparent during the Bharatiya Janata Party years, given the stiff (and successful) resistance of that

government to a “progressive” anti-domestic violence bill, even in the face of unified and very

strong pressure from civil society. The legal strategies of the Party constrained the empowerment of

women because the Hindutva conceptualization of the role of women saw women as repositories of

religious beliefs and the keepers of purity and integrity of the community.

210

In effect, its policy proposals on domestic violence legislation lacked any emancipatory or

transformative potential for women, and in some respects were regressive. On the other hand, when we saw the United Progressive Alliance- Indian National Congress coalition government come into

power, it created an environment that allowed for a moderately open policy process involving the

consultation of women’s organizations. The government afforded the new law a high profile, and

this recognition was an important first step in creating a law on domestic violence that could be used as an instrument to fight legally imposed impediments on the basic rights of women. Indeed, under

the rule of the INC after 2004, an activist WNM (illustrated in Chapter 7) combined with a united women’s movement was the conditions in which the most comprehensive policy response was produced.

I also revealed that the implications of caste stratification in Indian society have been one of the main reasons women are the weakest amongst the weak, and caste stratification when

accompanied by gender inequality adds further to their plight. While the issues of quotas has shed

light on the importance of creating a critical mass of women in decision-making arenas,

'empowerment' for all women still remains problematic because Other Backward Class and minority

women have been excluded from legislation which would reserve seats for women in parliament.

Divisions within the women’s movement for the passage of the Women’s Reservation bill in addition to the strong opposition coming from within caste-based political parties and from within the larger political parties were key factors in the failure of the bill to become law. Indeed, electoral incentives drove the outcome of policy. However one cannot rule out the fact that the Indian

National Congress was the only party which at least pushed the bill through Parliament, knowing full

well that it would lose coalition partners as a result.

The government in power and level of mobilization emerged as much more salient factors

resulting in weak mobilization around the issue from women’s movements. Although many women

211

welcomed the bill, an equal number of activists were hesitant, doubtful, indifferent, and even hostile

to the proposed measure. They believed the proposal to provide reservations for women solely

based on their gender rested on simplistic assumptions about their identity ignoring the multifaceted gender identity of women that was in constant interface with their class, caste, and community identity. In this way, women’s movement actors remained divided on the issue and so did not present the coherent united front that they did for the domestic violence bill. Due to the lack of unity and strength of the women’s movement on the reservation bill, however, it was highly unlikely that supporters of that bill would be in a position to push the reform forward even had the government been open to policy input from women’s organizations, which it was not on the this issue.

Women legislators and coalitions of autonomous and integrated women’s actors acted as delegates who put forward the priorities of the bill as opposed to the WNM which instead acted as trustees taking a position on issues that were not movement priorities.130 Though women

parliamentarians were united by gender (in their support for the bill), their numbers were insufficient

to alter the status quo towards greater equity particularly in the face of fierce opposition from small

political factions that held out the threat of destabilizing governing coalitions, in order to get their

way. The emphasis on representation for backward castes compared with representation of women,

as women, revealed that caste and community rights gained primacy over sexual rights.

Consequently, the political context of existing caste conflicts over reservations rendered women’s

movement actors claims incompatible with the objectives of political leadership, which sought support

from smaller caste-based parties by extending quota representation to Other Backward Classes and

minority women within these castes, leading to an inefficacious policy outcome.

130 This does not however mean that the positions are not movement interests, rather that movements were not at that particular time giving priority to the issues being considered by WNM.

212

The analysis presented in this work also has important implications regarding institutional innovations aimed at achieving improvements for women revealing that if the political will among top leadership is not there, then women’s national machineries are not of much use. It was found

that when the state and its institutions were characterized by a culture of ‘openness’, it was more

likely that women’s movements were able to work with state institutions, and thus more likely that

policy outcome favoured women’s demands. Given that the Department of Women and Child

Development was under the direction of the Hindu right, it was inhibited from opening up any

effective channels to encourage political space for women’s organizations to consult over various

clauses in the bill which women’s groups deemed inimical to women’s rights within the domestic

violence bill.

Although movement actors were united, present, and determined to contribute to the policy

debate, they had no allies within the Department or National Commission for Women to create an

insider-outsider partnership, which would act as a catalyst for policy development in this area. On

the other hand, when the Government changed hands, and Congress came to power, women’s

organizations were given procedural access and were able to achieve policy change. The new

government became the target of pressure and campaigns to pass a comprehensive domestic

violence bill of civil nature. The position of women’s national machinery on anti-domestic violence

legislation was shaped by the influence of the women’s movement as a political force and was

therefore able to promote the movement’s goals making them part of the terms of the debate in

policy arenas. In this way, both the Department and Commission became allies of movements actors

within the state on this policy issue as opposed to agencies of the state's efforts to control or 'deal

with' the movement without changing process or policy as was seen when the Bharatiya Janata Party

government was in power.

213

A different scenario presented itself over the issue of reservations. Women’s movement

actors, who were admittedly divided on the issue, were far less involved in this debate than was the case for the Domestic Violence bill and because of this they were not able to engage with women’s

national machinery to participate in and gain political responses on policy goals. The weak position of the National Commission for Women and the lack of priority of the bill on the DWCD agenda meant very little effective action was taken on behalf of movement actors lobbying from outside the state. Ministers in charge of the Department within, for example, the United Front (Kanti Singh) and National Democratic Alliance (Uma Bharti) Governments were against reservations for women, which did not include a sub-quota since they themselves were Other Backward Class Members of

Parliament themselves.

The fact that State Minister for the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the

National Commission for Women and women Members of Parliament are in the first instance

members of their political parties, was pertinent in the case for reservations since reservations had the potential of altering the make-up of the political parties by intervening directly in the matters of inner party functioning. Submission to the general rules of the political game was required from both the women’s national machinery and female Members of Parliament. In this case, characteristics of the women’s movement were therefore less influential than the policy environment in securing the desired state response and WNM activities around the passage of the bill. Both the women’s national machinery and the women’s movement functioned within a particular environment which to a large extent determined their scope of action. What is politically acceptable or not is prescribed by governing parties.

Consequently, the activism of the Department of Women and Child Development and

National Commission for Women specifically in relation to women’s movement activism was

marginal in framing the policy debate around the issue of reservations as compared with the anti-

214

domestic violence bill since they became vehicles for promoting and legitimizing the ruling party. In

this way, the significance of the role of state and movements show that movement activists can

develop fruitful alliances with women’s national machineries only if top political leaders direct policy

machineries to do so.

While the research presented in this dissertation has further stimulated the narrative of

comparative inquiry on social policy and feminist advocacy in India, it also highlights the need to

broaden the theoretical and empirical scope of adequately capturing the significant effects that social

movements and political institutions have on each other in India and other parts of Asia. Therefore,

in addressing this issue what emerges from my argument and data are the interplay of multilayered

dynamics of policy environments, women’s movements, and formal institutions that explain why the

state responds to women’s issues in particular ways. First, my research underscored that the activities

and impact of women’s movements on policy outcome could not be understood apart from contextual circumstances in which they operated. Women’s national machinery activities, and to a lesser extent characteristics of women’s movements were less influential than the government in power in securing the desired state response. Both WNM and women’s movements function within a particular policy environment, which largely determines their scope of action. What is politically acceptable or not is prescribed by governing parties. Thus in India, the political environment with respect to women’s rights was affected by four major trends: the breakdown of Congress system of rule; the emergence of new currents of cultural nationalism; the rise of social forces based on caste/class; and a political system that was dominated by coalition politics. These four processes were/are, as demonstrated throughout the chapters, interrelated in complex ways and combined to form part of a new political configuration that played a critical part in bringing about policy changes for women.

215

Second, my findings presented evidence that the conceptualization of women’s movements

and particularly women’s movement strength can increase scholarly understanding of the dynamics

of gender policy formation. Looking at women’s movement strength in terms of both mobilization and institutionalization helps discover important patterns of both descriptive and substantive representation in India. Perhaps more importantly, the results reveal that women’s movement actors more frequently participate in particular mobilization structures (protest, informal networks, coalitions, policy campaigns) to articulate demands, which may reflect the importance of such structures to women’s movement success in producing policy outcomes that include women’s movement ideas. The analysis of women’s movement strength was important for examining policy formation because these structures were the means by which women’s movement actors gained access to the policy system and attempted policy change. The ability to utilize certain structures determined the ability of women’s movement actors to affect policy formation and achieve success

in terms of producing efficacious policy outcomes.

The experience of women’s movements in India demonstrated the symbiotic relationship

between the state and social movements. Women’s movements engaged women in interpreting and

transforming state policies. This is not just the case of movements using available resources and

opportunities to mobilize women. Rather, activists in India organized women to engage the state

institutions effectively, while at the same time attempting to transform them, particularly women’s

national machineries. The emphasis on active engagement and empowerment of women whether in

small autonomous groups or party-affiliated groups revealed women built alliances and coalitions

across the divides of class, race, language, ethnicity and other diverse identities, engaging in

collective action that changed policies and decision-making structures. I projected, through my

analysis, the idea that woman’s movements as new social movements can therefore be very

influential. In fact, the research presented in this dissertation showed that women’s movements (i.e.

216

violence against women) were more effective avenues of policy influence than electing large

numbers of women, voting, traditional lobby groups, or political parties. Examining the degree of

participation of women as activists outside the state to further movement discourse and policy goals

enabled me to analyze the range of strategies adopted by movement actors in working within a

variety of state institutions. Accounting for the broad range of potential institutional (Parliament,

Legislatures; Bureaucracies/Higher Civil Service; Political Parties) access for women’s organizations

revealed an equally wide range of strategies adopted by activists outside the state to achieve their

goals. These findings provided a more nuanced understanding of the way in which women’s

organizations, interacting with state institutions, were able to shape policy outcome.

Third, in examining state responsiveness, my research contributed to an understanding of

the role and impact of Women’s National Machineries in India, which is still an emerging scholarly

field. I analyzed the efficacy of women’s national machinery in terms of how they help women’s

movement actors obtain their political objectives in policy debates and to what extent they act inside

the state to further movement goals. However, this ‘activism’ very much depended on the support

from leadership of the government which was an intervening factor in the position and activities

around which women’s national machineries would act. Examining both policy cases uncovered that

constraints of these machineries mostly lay in lack of political will, which ultimately questioned the

importance of these institutional innovations in achieving improvements for women. The relevance

of women’s national machineries in India poses the dilemma over whether do away with these

structures altogether or supplement their work through alternative ways. Therefore, the Indian

example has many insights to offer to women engaged in similar struggles in other countries and

contexts (Rai, 1999). First, it points to the ‘rethink’ within the women’s movements regarding

strategies of empowerment regarding an engagement with the state and its institutions. It is now increasingly seen as an essential part of women’s struggles to improve their lives. Second, the Indian

217

example critically points to the importance of the recognition of difference among women and

women’s groups. Resolving whether to support women’s equality or give priority to community

interests that undermine gender justice raises crucial questions for feminist politics. Feminist politics

cannot be located only in a gender equality framework or identity politics. Concerted engagement

between women’s movements rather than disjointed activities would help in arriving at a common understanding on women’s issues. It would also help bridge the divergent perspectives, thus providing the possibility of managing or transcending differences among women to create a political community that is vibrant, dynamic, and multi-dimensional. Third, the landscape of advocacy for both issues, particularly anti-violence, has been significantly altered by global shifts. The international context was quite important in getting domestic violence and women’s political representation off the ground and pushing them forward. The presence of transnational influences not only coalesced in the increasing pressure of women’s movements in demanding that international norms contained in CEDAW be incorporated into the domestic practices of the state, but also affirmed that women's persistent exclusion from decision making was substantially hampering the achievement of democratic transformation, women’s empowerment and achieving the goals of sustainable development. This awareness was reflected in the platform for action developed at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, one of the goals of which was to increase women's participation in political institutions.

Thus, while this research certainly has its limitations in terms of whether the propositions developed reflect patterns in other regions, policy sectors, and time periods within India at regional and locals levels or comparatively amongst other nations, it has contributed to recent discourse around the nature of women’s political interaction in India within party and parliamentary and bureaucratic politics particularly at the national level (Kapur, 2001; Sadhna, 2000; Nivedita, 1999;

Swarup et al., 1994; and Kumari, 1993 and 1992). By contextualizing women’s activism within a

218

broader political approach this dissertation has analyzed how women movements interact with the

state and operate within the wider political system as policy entrepreneurs or as members of a policy

network within the Indian context. Ultimately, my findings suggest that the concern for the presence of women within decision-making arenas and advocacy politics in India, especially in terms of the strategies women employ in advancing their own agendas through the state, is salient in light of the recent events in India regarding the fatal gang rape of a woman in New Delhi in December 2012.

Hence, expanding theoretical and empirical scholarly studies that examine women’s issue-oriented

politics via state processes in India is critical in capturing a full picture of women’s politics either at

the level of informal activities at the grassroots or local-level, or at the formal parliamentary and

federal-level politics.

219

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Appendices

236

Appendix A Breakdown of Interviews

Table 1.1: Government Category Name Organization/ Designation Date Total Institution

Ministers

Senior Level Parul Debi Das Ministry of Women Director March 12th, 2007 1 Officials and Child Development

Dr. Syeda Planning Commission Member March 12th, 2007 1 Hamid India

Mr. Mahesh National Commission Deputy January 8th, 2006 1 Chandar Arora for Women Secretary

Mr. Suresh President House Director December 17th and 2 Acharaya 20th, 2005

Mr. R.K. Johan Ministry of Women Deputy January 3rd, 2005 1 and Child Secretary Development

Ms. R Savitri Ministry of Women Deputy January 3rd and 4th, 4 and Child Secretary 2005; January 10th, Development 2006; and February, 8th, 2007

Middle Level Ms. Vijaya National Commission Joint Secretary February 20th, 2007 1 Officials Moorthy for Women

Smt. Romi National Commission Under February 20th, 2007 1 Sharma for Women Secretary/ Public Relations Officer

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Political Parties Karat Communist Party of Member of February 19th, 2007 1 India Parliament and General secretary of the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) from 1993–2004

Mridula Sinha Bharatiya Janata Party Former Member March 5th, 2007 1 of Parliament BJP and Mahila Morcha President

Kiran Bharatiya Janata Party Former Member March 6th, 2007 1 Maheshwari of Parliament and General Secretary of BJP

Menka Gandhi Bharatiya Janata Party Member of March 13th, 2007 1 Parliament TOTAL 16

Table 1.2: Non-Government

Category Name Organization/ Designation Date Total Institution

Women’s Dr. Jyotsna Joint Programme for Director January 30th, 1 groups Chatterji Women 2007

Gargi National Federation of President January 31st, 1 Chakravarty Indian Women 2007

Dr. Ratna Centre for Feminist Director February 28th, 1 Kapur Legal Research 2007

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Ms. Naina Sakshi Director January 11th, 1 Kapoor 2006

Nasreen Faiyaz National Alliance of Liaison January 10th, 1 India Secretary 2006

Nandita Gandhi Jagori Member January 9th, 1 2006

Laxmi Murthy Saheli Activist January 5th, 1 2006

Ms. Kaveri Lawyers Collective Lawyer December 1 Sharma Women’s Right 27th, 2005 Initiative

Veena Nayyar Women's Political Director December, 1 Watch 27th, 2005

Academic Dr. Maitrayee Jawaharlal Nehru Professor- February 9th, 1 Chaudhuri University Centre for the 2007 Study of Social Systems

Dr. Mary John Centre for Women’s Chairperson- February 12th, 1 Development Studies Centre for 2007 Women's Development Studies

Dr. Saraswati Jawaharlal Nehru Professor- February 9th, 1 Raju University Centre for the 2007 Study of Regional Development

Activist C.P Sujaya Ministry of Women and Joint Secretary February 15th, 1 Child Development (1985–1989) 2007

Dr. Mohini Giri National Commission Former Chair February 21st, 1 for Women Women (1994– 2007 1998)

Reva Nayaar Ministry of Women and Former March 6th, 1 Child Development Secretary 2007 (2004–2006)

Research Dr. Navsharan International Senior January 7th, 2

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Institutes Singh Development Research Programme 2006 and Centre Officer February 13th, 2007

Dr. Ratna Institute of Social Director February 2nd, 1 Sudarshan Studies Trust 2007

Dr. Bidyut Institute of Social Head of Women March 2nd, 1 Mohanty Science Studies Division 2007

Dr. Ranjana Centre for Social Director March 9th, 1 Kumari Research 2007

Dr. Sushila Centre for Development President January 5th, 1 Kaushik Studies and Activities 2006

Dr. Kumad Centre for Women’s Chairperson December 1 Sharma Development Studies 28th, 2005

Leela Kasturi Centre for Women’s Visiting Fellow December 1 Development Studies 28th, 2005

Nirmala Buch Centre for Development Visiting Fellow December 1 Studies and Activities 28th, 2005

TOTAL 23 * Interviews were conducted in two segments from December 15th 2005–January 22nd, 2006; and January 26th, 2007–April, 2nd, 2007.

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Appendix B Sample Questions: State and Non-State Participants

B.1: State Actors (Department of Women and Child and National Commission for Women)

Organization/Issues 1) In what context was the DWCD or NCW created? What is the organizational setup of the XXXX? 2) How long have you worked at XXXX? 3) In what capacity? 4) What is the overall mission of the XXXX? 5) What types of issues/areas does the XXXX focus on? 6) Does the XXXX focus and/or specialize in particular legal/policy issues? 7) Is the passage of the domestic violence legislation and women’s reservation an area of concern for the XXXX? 8) Was either of these issues a priority for the XXXX?

Functions/Structure 9) What are some of the core functions of the XXXX? 10) How does the XXXX carry out its activities? 11) Does the XXXX oversee the work of sectoral ministries and departments whose policies affect women within the government such as education, health, agriculture, education, labour, etc.?

Activities/Strategies 12) When did the issue of domestic violence and/or women’s reservation become an area of concern for the XXXX? 13) What were the initial steps the XXXX took in bringing awareness to either issue? a) legal awareness/review of laws b) counselling c) research d) campaigns e) media f) workshops/seminars 14) What programmes/policies/projects have the XXXX initiated past/present in combating violence against women and increasing women’s political representation? 15) What role did the XXXX play, if at all, in drafting the domestic violence bill and/or the WRB? 16) Were the activities of the XXXX via each policy area to: review; revise; amend; evaluate; and/or recommend? 17) What steps were taken by the XXXX to evaluate and discuss the problems in the Governments domestic violence (2001) bill? 18) Does the fact that the NDA government drafted its own bill reflect its position on women via marriage/family?

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19) When the bill was received by the XXXX after the coming of the UPA government, how was the decision-making process around the Domestic Violence bill structured? 20) In your experience, are some governments more receptive in passing ‘women-friendly’ legislation than others? 21) Did the XXXX take an official position on the WRB? 22) Did the XXXX have any input on the WRB? If yes, in what capacity? If not, what were the reasons for this? 23) Were there any extensive lobbying efforts undertaken by the XXXX towards political party leaders, MPs (especially female), and OBC/minority MPs? 24) At any point did the XXXX draft its own WRB? If so, when and what became of this draft? If not, what were the reasons for this?

Coordination/Networking/Consultations 25) What type of interaction does the XXXX have with non-state actors who were actively campaigning on both issues? 26) Were they given any opportunities to participate in the decision-making process via the domestic violence bill or women’s reservation bill? 27) Which groups, institutes, activists, and/or scholars did you consult with? 28) How were they contacted? In addition, during what stage of the policy-making process were they solicited to provide their recommendations? 29) Was any of their feedback included in the drafts of either of the bills? 30) Has the XXXX collaborated with XXXX on the issue of domestic violence legislation and/or women’s reservation? g) If so, what was the nature of these consultations?

B.2: State Actors- Members of Parliament/Political Party Members

Party Ideology/Issues 1) How long have you been a member of the XXXX? 2) What is the party ideology on women’s rights/issues in India? 3) Do you consider that your party’s perception of the respective roles of women and men in politics and in society in general has changed? 4) Do you attribute this change to the action of women within the party itself? 5) Do you consider that the presence of women has brought about any change in the internal culture of your party? 6) From your perspective, do you think your political party’s structure is receptive to women? 7) What is the role of the women’s wing of the XXXX? 8) When in power, what has the XXXX done in terms of national gender equality policies, strategies, and programmes for women? 9) Is the issue of domestic violence and women’s reservation a priority for the XXXX? 10) What is the position of XXXX on these issues?

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Activities/Strategies of the Bharatiya Janata Party 11) While your party was in power, it drafted its own DVB, and there seemed to be much criticism and controversy regarding the passage of it. Why? 12) Did you think the piece of legislation would be an effective measure to combat the violence women in face in their homes? 13) Did leaders of the BJP meet with women’s groups mobilizing around its passage? Which groups? 14) Did the Minister of HRD and/or Minister in charge of the DWCD solicit any comments or recommendations from women’s groups? 15) Were any the comments included in the re-drafting of the bill? 16) What did the BJP government do to appease women’s groups who were outright in opposition to the government bill? 17) What was the outcome of the bill under your government? 18) For the BJP via WRB: What is your view of the current status of women’s participation in the political process? Is it improving? 19) Does the BJP believe that gender quotas or reservations can be an effective policy tool for increasing women’s political participation? 20) Are there existing programmes by your party that encourage women to become candidates, or leadership roles? 21) What were the efforts of the BJP in introducing the women’s reservation bill? 22) Did the BJP support the original draft of the bill circa 1996? 23) There are alternatives to the bill; did the BJP endorse any of these? 24) Were there any consultations with women’s groups on the WRB? Which groups? 25) What was the outcome of the bill under your government?

Activities/Strategies of the Indian National Congress 26) What was the status of the DVB when Congress came to power in 2004? 27) Did Congress via the Ministry of HRD draft its own bill? 28) Did leaders of Congress consult with women’s groups mobilizing around its passage? Which groups? 29) Did the Minister of HRD and/or Minister in charge of the DWCD solicit any comments or recommendations from women’s groups? 30) Were their comments included in the re-drafting of the bill? 31) What was the outcome of the bill under your government? 32) What is your view of the current status of women’s participation in the political process? Is it improving? 33) Does the Congress believe that gender quotas or reservations can be an effective policy tool for increasing women’s political participation? 34) Are there existing programmes created by Congress that encourage women to become candidates, or leadership roles? 35) What were the efforts of the Congress in introducing the women’s reservation bill? 36) Did the Congress support the original draft of the bill circa 1996? 37) There are alternatives to the bill; did the Congress endorse any of these? 38) Were there any consultations with women’s groups on the WRB? Which groups? 39) What was the outcome of the bill under your government?

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B.3: State Actors Continued- Government Officials

1) How long have you been with the XXXX? 2) In what capacity? 3) What issues, specifically related to women, has the XXXX been working on? 4) Does the XXXX work closely with the DWCD and/or NCW? a. If so, in what capacity? Can you provide some examples of your collaboration with either agency? 5) Is the DVB or WRB an issue for the XXXX? 6) What has been the extent of your involvement in either issue? Advocacy, lobbying, consultations? Or evaluating and providing recommendations on the draft bills? 7) Has the XXXX held consultations with key women’s groups on either of the issues? 8) How likely is a particular issue to get onto the government agenda if women’s groups are not actively mobilizing around it? 9) Do you believe that it is in fact women’s movements which are the strength of state institutions? 10) The government drafted it’s on DVB in 2001, why did this bill fail to pass? 11) Once passed, what needs to be done by the government to implement the bill? 12) Do you think the DVB will work to protect women from instances of domestic violence? 13) Why do you think has there been so much controversy in passing the WRB? 14) It’s been 10 years now since the bill was first introduced. What, in your opinion, needs to be done to get the bill passed? 15) Is it a matter of government or what party is in power? 16) Do you believe this bill will ever be passed?

B.4: Non-State Actors- Non-governmental organizations/research institutes

Organization/Issues 1) How long have you worked at (organization’s name)? 2) In what capacity? 3) What is the overall mission of your organization? 4) What types of issues/areas does your organization focus on? 5) Does your organization focus and/or specialize on particular legal/policy issues? 6) Is the passage of the domestic violence legislation and women’s reservation an area of concern for your organization?

Activities/Strategies 7) What were the initial steps your organization took in bringing awareness to both issues: a) legal awareness/review of laws b) counselling c) research d) campaigns e) media f) workshops/seminars 8) In terms of DV legislation, did your organization actively campaign or mobilize around its passage? 9) Has your organization collaborated with other organizations on the issue?

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10) There were two bills drafted on domestic violence: what were the main differences in the government’s bill and the bill circulated by the Lawyers’ Collective? 11) Did your organization provide any feedback on either of the bills? 12) Does the fact that the BJP-led NDA government drafted its own bill reflect its position on women via marriage/family? 13) Was the Congress-led UPA government any more receptive to the demands of women’s groups? 14) Since the bill has become law, is there any sense that it brings relief to victims of domestic violence? 15) In terms of the WRB, has your organization campaigned around its passage? 16) Did your organization provide any feedback on the WRB? 17) What do you think have been the main obstacles to the passage of the WRB? 18) Why has neither the BJP nor Congress been successful in getting the bill passed? 19) Do you believe that quotas will in any way lead to the empowerment of women? 20) Do you think it matters which government was in power in terms of passing the bill? In your experience, are some governments more receptive in passing ‘women-friendly’ legislation than others?

Coordination/Networking/Consultations 21) At any time, was your organization solicited by the government to comment/evaluate or propose recommendations on the DV and/or WRB? 22) How would you characterize the relationship between your organization and the DWCD/NCW? a) What has been the nature of this relationship? b) What has the organization’s experience been regarding these relationships? 23) Did your organization hold any meetings or consultations with DWCD and/or NCW around either of the campaigns? c) If yes, then what was the outcome of these consultations? 24) Do you believe the DWCD/NCW have been helpful in your organization’s campaigns around either domestic violence legislation or reservations? 25) Has your organization collaborated with other governmental agencies on either of the two campaigns for domestic violence or women’s reservation? 26) Has your organization undertaken any joint initiatives with non-governmental organizations on either of the two campaigns?

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Appendix C List of Primary Sources

Table 3.1: Government Materials

Category Source Publication Parliamentary Lok Sabha Protection from Domestic Violence bill. August 23rd, 2005. 5th Session, 14th Lok Sabha. Protection from Domestic Violence bill. August 24th, 2005. 5th Session, 14th Lok Sabha.

Lok Sabha Protection from Domestic Violence bill. bill No. 13 of 2002.

Lok Sabha Protection from Domestic Violence Act. Act No.43 of 2005.

Lok Sabha Constitution (Eighty-First Amendment) bill. bill No. 100 of 1996.

Lok Sabha Report of the Joint Select Committee on the Constitution (Eighty-First Amendment) bill. Lok Sabha Secretariat: New Delhi. 1996.

Lok Sabha: Committee on Functioning of National and State Commissions for Empowerment of Women Women. New Delhi. Lok Sabha Secretariat: New Delhi. 2003.

Rajya Sabha Constitution (One Hundred and Eighth Amendment) bill. bill No. XXX-C of 2008.

Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel Public Grievances, Law and Justice, 36th Report on the Constitution (108th Amendment) bill. Rajya Sabha Secretariat: New Delhi. 2008.

Rajya Sabha: Parliamentary Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee Standing Committee on Human Resource Development, 124th Report on Protection Human Resource from Domestic Violence bill. New Delhi. 2002. Development

Government Election Commission of 13th Lok Sabha Statistical Report (Volume 1). New of India India Delhi. 1999.

14th Lok Sabha Statistical Report (Volume 1). New Delhi. 2004.

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Department of Women VI & V Periodic Report on CEDAW 2006-2011. and Child Development Draft 20 Nov 2011. New Delhi. 2011.

Annual Report: 2010-2011. New Delhi. 2010.

Results Framework Document: 2009-2010. New Delhi. 2009.

A Handbook of Statistical Indicators on Indian Women. New Delhi. 2007.

Report of the Working Group on Empowerment of Women for the 11th Five-Year Plan. New Delhi. 2006. II & III Periodic Report on CEDAW 1997-2005. New Delhi. 2005.

Platform for Action: 10 years after, India Country Report. New Delhi. 2004.

Ministry of Human Report of the Working Group on Empowerment of Women Resource Development for the XI Plan. 2005.

II & III Periodic Report on CEDAW 1997-2005, Department of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Human Resource, Government of India 2005.

National Perspective Plan for Women. New Delhi. 1988.

Country Report prepared for the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing. New Delhi. 1995.

Ministry of Social Welfare Towards Equality, Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India. New Delhi. 1975.

National Commission for Annual Report 2009-2010. New Delhi. 2009. Women Annual Report, 2009-2010. New Delhi. 2009.

Women in Governance. New Delhi. 2003.

Gender Equity: Making it Happen. New Delhi. 2001.

The Genesis and Making of the National Commission for Women. New Delhi. 2001.

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Sarala Gopalan. Towards Equality: The Unfinished Agenda. Status of Women in India. New Delhi. 2001.

Annual Report. 1996-97. New Delhi. 1996.

Annual Report: 1995-1996. New Delhi. 1995.

Annual Report: 1993-1994. New Delhi. 1993.

Planning Commission Report of the Steering Committee on Empowerment India Of Women and Development of Children for the Eleventh Plan (2007-2012). New Delhi. 2006. Tenth Five-Year Plan: 2002-2007. New Delhi. 2001.

Report of the Steering Committee on Empowerment of Women and Development of Children for the Tenth Five- Year Plan (2002-2007). New Delhi. 2001. Tenth Five-Year Plan: 2002-2007. New Delhi. 2001.

Ninth Five-Year Plan: 1997-2002. New Delhi. 1996.

Sixth Five-Year Plan: 1980-85. New Delhi. 1979.

Table 3.2 Non-Government Materials

Category Source Publication Annual Reports Women’s Power Connect Annual Report, 2009-2010. New Delhi. 2009. Annual Report, 2008-2009. New Delhi. 2008. Annual Report, 2007-2008. New Delhi. 2007. Annual Report, 2006-2007. New Delhi. 2006.

Brochures/ National Federation of Indian Geeta Mukherjee. Unite in Support of Pamphlets Women One-Third Reservation for Women. Pamphlet. New Delhi. 1997.

Mahila Morcha-Bharatiya Janata Sangeetha Singh. Women Should Have Party their Legal Rights. New Delhi. 2005.

Mahila Morcha-Bharatiya Janata Sumitra Mahajan et al. Inspiration: Party Women Marching Towards Progress. New Delhi. Date Unknown.

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Election Bharatiya Janata Party Tasks Ahead: Immediate and Long-term. Platform Discussion Paper. New Delhi. 2005. Documents Bharatiya Janata Party – To Build a Prosperous Powerful Nation, Party Platform 2009 (15th national Recall India’s Past. New Delhi. 2009. election) Bharatiya Janata Party – An idea whose time has come: India as Party Platform 2004 (14th national Developed Nation and a Great Power. election) New Delhi. 2004. Bharatiya Janata Party- Party Vote for a Stable Government and an Able Platform 1998 (12th national election) Prime Minister. New Delhi. 1998. Indian National Congress United Progressive Alliance: National Common Minimum Programme of the Government of India. New Delhi. 2004. Indian National Congress- Party Lok Sabha Elections 2009: Manifesto of Platform 2009 (15th national election) the Indian National Congress. New Delhi. 2009. Indian National Congress- Party Lok Sabha Elections 2004: Manifesto of Platform 2004 (14th national election) the Indian National Congress. New Delhi. 2004. Indian National Congress- Party Lok Sabha Elections 1998: Manifesto of Platform 1998 (12th national election) the Indian National Congress. New Delhi. 1998. National Democratic Alliance- An Agenda for Development, Good Election Manifesto 2004 (14th Governance and Peace. New Delhi. 2004. national election) National Democratic Alliance- For a Proud, Prosperous India: An Election Manifesto 1999 (13th Agenda. New Delhi. 1999. national election)

Memorandum Seven Sisters Network “Joint Memorandum on 33% Reservation for Women in Parliament and State Assemblies” to The Honourable Speaker of the Lok Sabha Somnath Chatterjee, November 22nd, 2006.

“33% Reservation for Women”, Letter to Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Priyaranjan Das Munshi, December 1st, 2006. Newsletters Women’s Power Connect Connect: Quarterly Newsletter Oct/2010. Newsletter X, Jan/2008 Newsletter VI, Sept/2006 Newsletter IV Jul/2005 Newsletter II, Jan/2005

Newspapers Asian Age July 27th, 2006: 13

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The Deccan Herald August 13th, 2005: 13 The Delhi Times December 22nd, 2000 The Hindu August 4th, 2006: 15 August 23rd, 2005: 1 August, 10th, 2005 June 27th 2005 February 25th, 2005 Friday, December 7th, 2001 December 26th, 2000:10 February 24th, 1998:4 July 16th, 1998 July 14th, 1998 The Hindustan Times November 23rd, 2006: 14 July 21st, 1996 The Telegraph December 22nd, 2000: 1 The Times of India May 28th, 2006 August, 18th, 2005: 11 February 9th, 2005 December 23rd, 1999 September, 16th, 1996 Press Release National Commission for Women “Need for Immediate Affirmative and Joint Women’s Action Front Action to Honour the Political commitment for Women’s representation in Parliament and State Legislatures”, 1998. Seven Sisters Network “Women’s organizations welcome the decision of the UPA-Left Coordination Committee to introduce the Women’s Reservation bill in the current session of Parliament”, November 23rd, 2006. Proceedings of Action India and National Centre for “The Implementation and Meetings, Advocacy Studies Enforcement of the protection of Conferences Women from Domestic Violence and Symposia Act, 2005.” Narrative Report. National Women’s Conference February 20th/21st, 2006. Delhi. Centre for Social Research Government of India Domestic Violence bill, Minutes from meeting, March 15th, 2002. Centre for Social Research. New Delhi. Unpublished C.P Sujaya National Machinery for the Advancement Manuscripts of Women in India; and A Study of National Machinery in India for the Integration of Women, Population & Development.

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Appendix D

Organizational Chart of the Ministry of Women and Child Development

Source: Ministry of Women and Child Development

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Appendix E

Organizational Chart of the National Commission for Women

Source: National Commission for Women

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Appendix F Domestic Violence Legislation

The Protection From Domestic Violence bill, 2002 A bill to protect the rights of women who are victims of violence of any kind occurring within the family and to provide for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.

BE it enacted by Parliament in the Fifty-third Year of the Republic of India as follows:—

The Protection From Domestic Violence Act, 2005

An Act to provide for more effective protection of the rights of women guaranteed under the Constitution who are victims of violence of any kind occurring within the family and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.

BE it enacted by Parliament in the Fifty- sixth Year of the Republic of India as follows:-

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Appendix G

Participation of Women’s Organizations: Anti-Domestic Violence Legislation

Organization Founded Mandate/Activities

Action India 1976 The organization works to spread and increase the awareness of human rights and social justice and has been working on domestic violence issue since 1993. All India Democratic 1981 AIDWA is an independent left-oriented women's organization Women’s Association committed to achieving democracy, equality, and women's emancipation. (AIDWA) AIDWA is a national level mass organization of women and believes the emancipation of women in India requires fundamental systemic change. It upholds secular values and challenges and resists cultural practices demeaning to women.

All-India Women’s 1927 AIWC is non-governmental organization dedicated to uplifting women Conference (AIWC) and children. AIWC has been represented on several Parliamentary committees set up for legal reforms and amendments framed for women's welfare.

Center for Feminist CFLR was established to promote women's rights, primarily through Legal Research conducting workshops and seminars for women and the development of (CRLR) feminist legal research in India. Centre for Social 1983 CSR serves as a key research and advocacy centre in India. Its mission is Research (CSR) to restructure gender relations through research, development, counselling, capacity building, networking, and advocacy.

Centre for Women’s 1980 CWDS is a long-established independent academic institution devoted to Development Studies studying the status and condition of women. The Centre is an active (CWDS) member of the National network of women’s organizations composed of 7 member organizations actively campaigning against multiple forms of violence against women.

Forum Against the 1979 The Forum Against the Oppression of Women aims to provide a Oppression of common platform for women from different political parties, progressive Women (FAOW) groups, community organizations, and individual women to come together and plan sustained campaigns. Indian Social Institute 1961 ISI works for social advocacy. This involves monitoring, networking, (ISI) campaigning, and lobbying for changes in national policies.

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Indian Social Studies 1980 ISST is dedicated to conducting research and action programmes to Trust promote social justice and equity. While the ISST attempts to bridge the (ISST) gaps between research, action, and policy debate, much of its activities and research address domestic violence in Delhi. International Center 1998 ICRW is a private, non-profit organization that first opened its office in for Research on Delhi to coordinate a groundbreaking five-year study documenting the Women (ICRW-India) prevalence of domestic violence in the country. The organization is committed to economic/social development with women's full participation. Jagori 1984 Jagori was started by a group of activists from the larger women’s movement in India. It identifies itself as a ‘women’s training, documentation, communication and resource centre with the aim of carrying forward feminist consciousness’. Joint Women's 1977 JWP is a large church-based organization which works in 14 states. In Program addition to their consciousness-raising work, the JWP has been a part of (JWP) the ongoing national campaign towards the PWDVA. Lawyers Collective 1981 The Lawyers Collective is a group of lawyers, law students, and legal (LCWRI) activists committed to the use of law as an effective instrument for empowering and changing the status of women. Mahila Dakshata 1976 The MDS is a women’s organization established in New Delhi to combat Samiti (MDS) the alarming increase in the incidence of dowry deaths. Majlis 1991 Majlis Legal Centre is a forum for women's rights discourse and legal initiatives. It is a group of women lawyers and social activists committed to informing, educating, and empowering women on their legal rights. National Federation 1954 The NFIW was established to support the struggle of women for of Indian Women equality and justice in political, socioeconomic, and cultural spheres. (NFIW) Research Centre on 1974 The RCWS undertakes several research projects with a very broad-based Women’s Studies research focus, which has led to theoretical studies, and action-based (RCWS) projects.

Saheli: A Women's 1981 Saheli is a non-funded feminist collective established as a crisis Organisation intervention centre. It aims at raising/addressing issues of VAW and has taken up issues of: rape; domestic violence; dowry murders; and sexual assault. Sakshi 1993 A violence intervention center in New Delhi. They provide training, research, counselling, credit, and education Sankalp 1996 Sankalp is a national, multi-sectoral non-profit development agency in India. SANKALP has been adopting innovative strategies and programmes to create an enabling environment for achieving gender equality and the advancement of women.

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Swayam 1995 Swayam was created with the objective of addressing the issue of VAW and the inequality experienced by women across class, caste, and religion. It envisions establishing the right of women to have violence-free lives through initiating process of self-confidence facilitating empowerment; challenging the societal acceptance of VAW; demanding accountability from the state and working in a collaborative manner with other organizations. YWCA 1875 An umbrella organization affiliated to the World YWCA with 65 local associations in India. The YMCA works for women's empowerment through a variety of programmes, including leadership training, advocacy, and community development. The YWCA runs 40 women's residences across the country providing housing for working women as well as emergency shelters.

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Appendix H

THE CONSTITUTION (ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTH AMENDMENT) BILL, 2008

A BILL further to amend the Constitution of India.

BE it enacted by Parliament in the Sixty-first Year of the Republic of India as follows:—

1. (1) This Act may be called the Constitution (Ninety-Sixth Amendment) Act, 2010. (2) It shall come into force on such date, as the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint.

2. In article 239AA of the Constitution, in clause (2), in sub-clause (b), for the words “Scheduled Castes”, the words “the Scheduled Castes and the women” shall be substituted.

3. After article 330 of the Constitution, the following article shall be inserted, namely:— “330A. (1) Seats shall be reserved for women in the House of the People. (2) As nearly as may be, one-third of the total number of seats reserved under clause (2) of article 330 shall be reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes, as the case may be: Provided that where the seat reserved for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes, as the case may be, in relation to a State or Union territory is one, then, in every block comprising of three general elections to the House of the People, the seat in the first general elections shall be reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes and no seat shall be so reserved in the other two general elections:

Provided further that where the seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes, as the case may be, in relation to a State or Union territory are two, then, in every block comprising of three general elections to the House of the People,— (a) one seat shall be reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes in the first two general elections in such a manner that the same constituency is not reserved for women in both the aforesaid elections; and (b) no seat shall be reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes in the third general elections.

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(3) As nearly as may be, one-third (including the number of seats reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes) of the total number of seats to be filled by direct election to the House of the People in a State or Union territory shall be reserved for women and such seats may be allotted by rotation to different constituencies in that State or Union territory in such manner, as Parliament may by law determine: Provided that where the seat, not being a seat reserved for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes, in relation to a State or Union territory is one, then, in every block comprising of three general elections to the House of the People, the seat in the first general elections shall be reserved for women and no seat shall be so reserved for women in the other two general elections:

Provided further that where the seats, not being seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes, in relation to a State or Union territory are two, then in every block comprising of three general elections to the House of the People,— (a) one seat shall be reserved for women in the first two general elections in such a manner that the same constituency is not reserved for women in both theaforesaid elections; and (b) no seat shall be reserved for women in the third general elections.”

4. In article 331 of the Constitution, the following proviso shall be inserted at the end, namely:— “Provided that where such nominations are made, in relation to every block comprising of three general elections to the House, one seat shall be reserved for nomination of a woman of Anglo-Indian community to every House constituted after first two general elections and no seat shall be reserved for the women of that community in the House constituted after the third general elections.”

5. After article 332 of the Constitution, the following article shall be inserted, namely:— “332A.

(1) Seats shall be reserved for women in the Legislative Assembly of every State (2) As nearly as may be, one-third of the total number of seats reserved under Clause (3) of article 332 shall be reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes, as the case may be: Provided that where the seat reserved for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled

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Tribes, as the case may be, in relation to a State is one, then, in every block comprising of three general elections to the Legislative Assembly of that State, the seat in the first general elections shall be reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes, as the case may be:

Provided further that where the seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes, as the case may be, in relation to a State are two, then, in every block comprising of three general elections to the Legislative Assembly of that State,— (a) one seat shall be reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes in the first two general elections in such a manner that the same constituency is not reserved for women in both the aforesaid elections; and (b) no seat shall be reserved for women belonging to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes in the third general elections.

6. In article 333 of the Constitution, the following proviso shall be inserted at the end, namely:—

“Provided that where such nomination is made, in relation to every block comprising of three general elections to the Assembly, the seat in the Assembly constituted after the first general elections shall be reserved for nomination of a woman of the Anglo- Indian community and no seat shall be reserved for the women of that community in the Assembly constituted after the second and the third general elections.”

7. After article 334 of the Constitution, the following article shall be inserted, namely:— “334A. Notwithstanding anything in the foregoing provisions of this Part or Part VIII, the provisions of the Constitution relating to the reservation of seats for women in the House of the People, the Legislative Assembly of a State and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi shall cease to have effect on the expiration of a period of fifteen years from the commencement of the Constitution (Ninety-sixth Amendment) Act, 2010:

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Provided that nothing in this article shall affect any representation in the House of the People, the Legislative Assembly of a State or the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi until the dissolution of the then existing House, Legislative Assembly of a State or the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, as the case may be.”

8. The amendments made to the Constitution by the Constitution (Ninety-sixth Amendment) Act, 2010 shall not affect any representation in the House of the People, the Legislative Assembly of a State or the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi until the dissolution of the House, the Legislative Assembly of a State or the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, as the case may be, in existence at the commencement of the said Act.

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Appendix I

Participation of Women’s Organizations: Women’s Reservation bill

Organization Affiliation Founded Mandate/Activities

Action India Non- 1976 See Appendix E. Governmental Organization

All India Democratic Party Affiliated- 1981 See Appendix E. Women’s Association Communist Party (AIDWA) of India (Marxist)

All India Women’s Party Affiliated- 1927 See Appendix E. Conference (AIWC) Indian National Congress Asmita Resource Non- 1991 Asmita works to better the socio-economic status of Centre for Women Governmental women and communities in India. Organization

Centre for Social Non- 1983 See Appendix E. Research (CSR) Governmental Organization

Centre for Women’s Non- 1980 See Appendix E. Development Studies Governmental (CWDS) Organization

Forum for Child Care Non- 1989 FORCES is a national network of organisations and and Creche Services Governmental individuals concerned with issues relating to women (FORCES) Organization working in the unorganised sector Guild of Service Non- 1971 The Guild for Service is a national voluntary Governmental developmental organization dedicated to the Organization empowerment of marginalized women.

Indian Social Studies Non- 1980 See Appendix E . Trust Governmental (ISST) Organization

Jagori Non- 1984 See Appendix E. Governmental Organization

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Joint Women's Non- 1977 See Appendix E. Program Governmental (JWP) Organization

Mahila Congress Party Affiliated- of 1984 The Mahila Congress is the women's wing of the the Indian Congress party. The key objectives of the MC are to National Congress ensure women’s participation in public life, Party eliminating discrimination against them, and improving their socioeconomic conditions. Mahila Dakshata Party Affiliated- 1977 See Appendix E. Samiti (MDS) Janata Party Mahila Morcha Party Affiliated- of 1980 The Morcha is an independent organization but (MM) the Bharatiya fully subscribes to BJP ideology. The MM believes Janata Party in improving the daily conditions of women and places emphasis on ensuring women their rights but also retaining the family unit. Muslim Women’s Non- MWF is involved in Legal Literacy for Muslim Forum (MWF) Governmental women, voicing concerns of Muslim women to Organization government on matters concerning their rights.

National Alliance of Non- 1995 See Appendix E. Women (NAWO) Governmental Organization National Federation Caste-based/Non- 1995 NFDW’S aim is strengthen the Dalit Women’s of Dalit Women Governmental Movement and evolve a national network of all (NFDW) Organization those individuals/groups who are working for and amongst Dalit women. NFDWs aim is to develop Dalit women’s leadership and create core groups to take forward its agenda into the regions and at the grassroots level.

National Federation Party Affiliated- 1954 See Appendix E. of Indian Women Communist Party (NFIW) of India SAMA Resource Non- 1999 SAMA engages with issues of women and health in Group for Women Governmental the context of the autonomous women’s movement and Health Organization and seeks to locate the concerns of women’s health and well-being in the larger context of socio- historical, economic, and political realities. Stree Shakti Non- 1998 Stree Shakti aims at harnessing individual and Governmental collective energies of organizations engaged in Organization human welfare.

Tamil Nadu’s Caste-Based/Non- 1991 The TNWF is a state-level initiative for women's Women’s Forum Governmental rights and gender justice. It works against all forms (TNWF) Organization of discrimination—not only gender-based discrimination, but also caste-based discrimination, and discrimination against Dalit women.

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Women Power Non- 2004 WPC is a non-profit, national level organization Connect (WPC) Governmental dedicated to gender justice and women’s Organization empowerment. It is one the largest advocacy bodies for women in India, with a membership base of more than 1000 individuals, civil society organizations, women’s groups, academic institutions, women leaders, and experts. It lobbies government on issues that concern women to ensure effective implementation of gender-friendly legislations and policies.

Women’s Political Non- 1991 WPW works to promote development and Watch (WPW) Governmental democracy for women who live below the poverty Organization line. They advocate and implement economic and social programs in the hopes of maximizing women's capacities, resources, and opportunities. They often help by electing and appointing women in sufficient numbers to local governing bodies.

YWCA Party Affiliated- 1875 See Appendix E. Indian National Congress