The passing of the women’s reservation bill in Parliament is a historic event. It promises to overhaul the composition of the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies, with a significantly large presence of women. Interestingly, the debates in the House revealed the reemergence of an old fault line that had once disrupted the passage of a women’s quota bill in the Rajya Sabha in 2010. MPs from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress, among others, demanded sub-quotas for the other backward classes (OBCs). Though the OBCs do not constitute a voting monolith, parties have been sensitive to this large block of diverse castes, particularly after Mandal changed the country’s political landscape in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
Parties such as the SP, RJD, JD (U) and the DMK have been votaries of OBC empowerment through reservation. The Congress, however, is a late entrant into this group. The rise of the BJP since 2014 has seen religion trump caste in the political war of identities. The women’s reservation bill itself is still facing uncertainty. Even though it has been passed by the Parliament, there is no certainty when it will be implemented. This seems more like a political gimmick ahead of the general election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The passing of the women’s reservation bill in Parliament is a historic event. It promises to overhaul the composition of the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies, with a significantly large presence of women. Interestingly, the debates in the House revealed the reemergence of an old fault line that had once disrupted the passage of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-225104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorial"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}