Lesson 5- Debates on Representation in Parliament Important Notes

 Lesson 5- Debates on Representation in Parliament

The debate around the representation in Indian political system is not neoteric but it has a long history. The phenomenon is not gravitated around a solo entity but it is surrounded by numerous identities like caste, gender, culture, religion, region etc. The idea of political representation and its implementation in India is quite a complex task as the concept has faced various challenges regarding what to represent, whom to represent and in what perspective the representation shall be, therefore with the changing time many new complexities have emerged for instance the demand of Jaat Communities to be included in Other Backward Classes reservation.

 

Historical Narrative of Representation

The founding vision of India is intrinsically plural and egalitarian in conception. While an egalitarian society seems to be utopia and the utopia of egalitarianism was based on the idea of equality. According to Buddhist philosophy “human beings are absolutely on equality with one another and the concept of equality is not fragmentary and sectional but complete and universal”. In the West ‘idea of equality’ became a universal phenomenon only after the French revolution. Every existing society whether in past or present has gone through some sorts of inequality in every sphere of life and that inequality is natural and functional in character. Naturally, all human beings are born equal but the practises of discrimination and inequality based on caste, colour, race, creed etc. are socially constructed and it was accepted all around the world.

The notion of superiority and inferiority among castes resulted in injustice, inequality and backwardness of castes at lower end in the hierarchy. The discrimination and inequality based on caste could be either individual or society centric directly affecting the development of society. Each caste group in the hierarchy was supposed to pursue their caste occupation and had limited scope for the occupational mobility. The prevailing structure of caste led to social backwardness of castes at lower end and simultaneously led to social, economic and educational inequality.

To frame the law of the land, the Indian Constitution, in December 1946 the Constituent Assembly was established. The main challenges before the members of the Constituent Assembly were to established a society based on equalitarianism and the basic features of it has been incorporated in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution. After a hard work for three years of the Constitution Assembly the world’s largest Constitution came into force on January 26, 1950.

 

General Elections and Representation of SCs and STs in Parliament: 1952-2019

The Constitution of India under the provision of Article 330 and Article 332, provides provision for reservation of seats in favour of Schedules Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Lok Sabha and in the Vidhan Sabha. The representation of SCs and STs in this article has been discussed into two phases i.e. before liberalisation (1952-1989) and the post liberalisation (1991-2019).

The reservation of seats for the SCs and STs brought a significate change in the compositions of the Lok Sabha. This was happening for the first time the deprived classes were making laws for every citizen of India and this was a high political and social emancipation for the SCs and STs communities. From 1952 to 1967 the representation of the number of SCs Member of Parliaments did not show significant change with the exception of 1957 election which reflects increment of 10 seats for SCs in comparison to the 1952 election, whereas for STs representative the number of Lok Sabha members gradually increased like in 1952 it was only 29 seats which raised to 40 seats in 1967. The changes in the seats shows that either of the community members got elected from the general seats. For 1971 to 1989 the representation of the members of SCs and STs communities remained stable with maintaining a very small change in seats.

The politics in the post liberalization period was the era of assertion of caste and identity. This was also the era of coalition government at the centre and few political parties based on the identity of SCs and STs had given a positive impact on the politics. The BSP was the newly emerged political party which gained the status of National Party in this era. For the period of 1991 to 1999 there is no significant changes marked in the number of the elected Lok Sabha Members from the SCs and STs communities however, from 2004 to 2019 collectively the total number of SCs and STs representative was all time high like in 2004 and 2009 the number was 136, for 2014 it was 131 and 138 in 2019. The 2019 General Election was a new phase for the SCs and the STs representation. In this election the SCs and STs won total 138 seats which is the highest since independence. In 2019 General Elections total 33 STs candidates contested the elections on the general seats. But only 4 could manage to register their victory and all the 4 candidates were from BJP.

 

Representation of Women

The practice of democracy has a long tradition and it has been in transition from Platonic era to the contemporary times. In most of the countries the right to vote was restricted to the men and in some states to the privileged men but in India the right to vote was granted to everyone who has attained the age of 18 years irrespective of castes, religion and gender etc. and this process provided an opportunity to every citizen to feel like the part of decision-making process. Through the elections the voters elect send their representative to the Parliament and in the states assemblies who make policies and make decisions on their behalf.

In most of the countries including India maximum number of parliamentarians or the legislature belong to the male group and women are inadequately represented in the apex decision making bodies. There has been old demand of equal representation of women in the legislative bodies but this demand took the serious note in the 20th century when the feminist political scientists around the world brought these issues into the academia.

Women’s organizations like All India Women Conference, 1927; Women’s India Association, 1917 and National Council of Women in India, 1925 gave a new momentum to the demand of the representation of the women to the main stream politics. In 1917, Sarojini Naidu advocated that “when franchise was extended to the people of India, women be recognized as people”. But when the Montague’s scheme of reforms for India was published it completely ignored women. In 1928, when Simon Commission came to India the women members requested for reservation of four seats for women in the legislature so that they could table the interest of women however the Commission left the decision to incorporate women’s reservation on the will of provincial governments. The above discussed incidences reflect that women have been kept out of the main stream politics deliberately.

The number of women parliamentarians from 1952 to 2019 has increased but the number in comparison to male parliamentarians is not adequate. The above figure reveals that in comparison to the first general elections 1952 the number of women parliamentarians increased by three times in 2019. The presence of women in the first two Lok Sabha was the same. The politics of India before liberalisation of the Indian Economy was under the dominance of the Congress System, except the 1977 elections. In 1975 country faced the largest attack on the democratic ethos by imposing emergency provision in India. From 1971 onwards a dramatic increment in the proportion of electorate from the deprived sections like SCs, STs, OBCs, Muslims and women were marked in comparison to the general electorate.

 

The Janata Party always presented itself as the biggest supporter of the marginalized groups including women but in 1971 when Janata Party voted to power the total number of women parliamentarians was only 21 which was the lowest since 1952. The number increased to 45 during Rajiv Gandhi regime. In 2014 and 2019 under the leadership of Narendra Modi the number of women parliamentarians have reached to the highest level since 1952 i.e. 68 and 78 respectively and many of them hold the important ministry of the government of India like late Sushma Swaraj was a dynamic foreign minister; Nirmala Sitaraman hold the ministries like the defense and finance in 2014 and 2019 respectively; Smriti Irani had the important ministry of Human and Resource Development etc. There are a few countries in which the number of women representatives are higher or comparatively equal than the men like (according to 2010 data) Rawanda 56.3%; Sweden 46.4 %; South Africa 44.5%, Iceland 42.9 % etc. The presence of women parliamentarians and the policy enacted by them give a positive impact on the young women and simultaneously incorporate the gendered idea to the policy so that it can impact positively the lives of the women.

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Representation of Other Backward Classes and Muslims

A. Other Backward Classes:

The implementation of Mandal Commission and the rise of the political parties based on caste identities forced many main stream political parties to realise the strength of the Other Backward Classes as a result many political parties started incorporative OBCs candidates in their parties and BJP which is said to be the party of upper caste gave major seats to the OBCs in the 1990s general elections. The assertion of OBCs caste identities in 1990s was on its peak.

However, the presence of Other Backward Classes in the parliamentary politics had very less impact on the presence of Upper Castes. The presence of OBCs and the SCs and STs in the 1990s in the Lok Sabha changed the social demography of the Parliament, increased in the number of OBCs in the apex legislative bodies has been defined as ‘second democratic upsurge’ by Yogendra Yadav. Yogendra Yadav, in his idea of second upsurge says that the social composition of the legislatures at the centre has gone through significant change and there has been participatory upsurge among the underprivileged castes and groups like women.

In 1952 total number lower caste Lok Sabha members were 59 which went to 70 in 1957. The number became 69, 87, 84, 107, 91, in 1962, 1967, 1971, 1977, and 1980, respectively. The major changes in the presence of OBCs Lok Sabha Members was registered after 1991 elections. In 1991 the total number of OBCs Lok Sabha Member was 128 which came to 125 in 1996 and 128 in 2004. In 2019 election the presence of Other Backward Classes was lowest since 1991. In this election only 120 OBCs registered their victory.

In comparison to 2010 Assembly election the number of MLAs from Yadav community increased from 39 to 61 in 2015, Kurmi representation declined from 18 to 16 but there was marked an increase of an MLA of Koeri from 19 to 20.1 In 2015 State Assembly elections the Mahagathbandhan provided 134 seats out of 243 seats to backward classes in which 35% were from Yadav-Kurmi communities, 39 and 40 seats were provided to upper castes and SCs-STs respectively.

B. Muslims Representation

Being the second largest population in India according to the religious identity Muslims have inadequate representation in the Parliament. The Muslims demanded separate electorates in the Constituent Assembly however it was not granted on the ground that it might create more social divides in India on the basis of religious identity. After partition approximately more than 35 million Muslims choose India as their motherland. The Muslim population in India is mostly concentrated in the Northern part of India like in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.

Since the first general elections 1952 the number of Muslim representatives was static and it varies between 11 to 34. However, a major rise in the number of Muslim representatives could be marked in the seventh general election in which the total number of representation of Muslims raised to 49 which was more than 4 times to the 1952 elections and it declined by 7 seats in 1984 as the total number of Muslim representations dropped to 42. The Mandal and the Mandir politics in the early phase of the 1990s takes Indian political system to a new turn and since then the number of Muslim representatives did not rise above 34 seats.

The Muslim representatives claim that the number of their representation is not in accordance with their population for instances the presence of Muslims in 2014 Lok Sabha should have been 66 but only 23 got the place in the Lower House of the Parliament. They also see the rise of BJP as the major reason for their decline in the Lok Sabha because of politics of Hinduism and the Hindu culture.

 

This fact cannot be denied that the representational politics provides an opportunity to the law makers to make impactful policies for the betterment of the marginalized and the backwards. The politics of representation has been successful to some extent to bring changes in the demography of the Lok Sabha but it has failed to bring inclusiveness among their own fellow communities. The era of 1990s was the period of upsurge of the OBCs but the upper backwards like Yadavs, Koiri, Kurmi etc. were the most beneficiary of the upsurge. The extremely backward castes like Nai, Teli, Kumhar, Badhai, Dhanuk etc. are still looking for their representation. The number of Women members has also increased but they are still lacking the recognition and the main stream media does not provide much space to the women members.

The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes are in better position in comparison to the other backwards, Muslims and Women registering victory on the unreserved seats and that signals about the political empowerment of the SCs and the STs.

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