Correcting a Gender Injustice In India

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**WarOne**

http://goodnewsdaily.com/show_story.php?ID=9976

Now I do not consider myself a feminist. I have actually gone out of my way to tell one of my feminist teachers one semester I was not a feminist. This is because feminism is an extreme to which action must be taken in order to balance a male dominated world. If women became dominant, then masculanists would need to counter balance and so forth. What India is doing in this article is pass a bill that would introduce a quote system designed to give women more of a voice in government.

I support finding a balance in this debate, as it balances the government's representation.

There are members of India's parliament that oppose this bill. Some also want social or class equality in the government. Since they are attempting to correct a gender bias in politics, I agree there should be other reforms as well if they decide to approve this bill.

NEW DELHI — India's government introduced a bill to parliament Monday that would reserve one-third of the legislature's seats for women, angering socialist lawmakers who tore up papers and tried to tear out microphones.

The protests stalled debate and voting on the proposal until at least Tuesday. The bill has faced strong opposition since it was first proposed more than a decade ago, with many political leaders worried that their male-dominated parties would lose seats under a female quota system.

But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government, which was re-elected last year, is confident it has enough support this time and presented the bill to parliament on International Women's Day.
The bill is an attempt to correct some of the historical mistreatment of women in this South Asian country. Most Indian women receive far less education than men and are weighed down by illiteracy, poverty and low social status.

On Monday, a U.N. report said 96 million women in Asia have "disappeared" because of a gender gap that deprives them of access to health care and good nutrition, including about 43 million in India. Sex-selective abortions were also blamed.

The socialist groups argue that a portion of the women's quota should be set aside for minorities and lower castes, which have been socially and economically disadvantaged as well.

The main opposition parties, including right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party and communist groups, already have announced their support to the legislation.

But socialist lawmakers blocked the proceedings after the chairman of the upper house of parliament announced that the bill was introduced by Law Minister Veerappa Moily.

Lawmakers belonging to the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party rushed to the seat of the chairman and tore copies of the bill, throwing its pieces in the air.

They also tried to snatch away the microphones in front of the chairman, Hamid Ansari, but they were pushed back by marshals.

The bill would raise the number of female lawmakers in the 545-seat lower house to 181 from the current 59. It would nearly quadruple the number of women in the 250-seat upper house. The bill would also apply to state legislatures.

The two socialist groups opposed to the bill announced withdrawal of their support for the coalition government, led by Prime Minister Singh, as a mark of protest against the bill.

"There is no threat to the government," said Jagdambika Prasad, a governing Congress party leader. Singh's government still enjoys the support of 289 members in the 545-seat Lok Sabha, the powerful lower house of parliament.

**sebster**

I'd have thought they'd be better off targetting people with long criminal records and people currently facing criminal investigation. Whatever country you're in you think you've got criminals in government, you have no idea compared to India. About a third of them have faced or been convicted of a serious crime - and I'm not talking fraud, I'm talking murder and kidnapping and the like. Lot of mobsters get into office in India by controlling the vote in their empires.

**dogma**

India has most of China's problem, but none of China's centralized authority to deal with said problems. It is very nearly the text book case for a strong state in developing nations.

**JEB_Stuart**

dogma wrote:India has most of China's problem, but none of China's centralized authority to deal with said problems. It is very nearly the text book case for a strong state in developing nations.

Agreed. India's attempt to be "Western" in some aspects both culturally and economically are causing enormous problems for their country. It simply is not ready for that stage yet, and its leaders should recognize that....

**dogma**

Its not just their leaders. The IMF, World Bank, US, and to a lesser extent the UN have a long history of providing strong incentives to countries that liberalize. Often forgetting, or disregarding, the fact that democracy allows the corrupt to undercut the efforts of those people who really are working with the national interest in mind. Authority is a great thing when its given to the right people.

**WarOne**

But on the same token, India was under a Western form of imperial rulership for a great deal of the 19th and early to mid 20th century. In China's case, external Western forces pressured China, but never had a direct form of rulership of them, ruling by proxy via corporations and spheres of influence. China's closest form of Western rulership came under Japan when Japan invaded Manchuria and launched a successive number of Japanese-Sino wars that largely repressed and brutalized Chinese citizens and did not really introduce Western principles of governing.

India is attempting to use the mechanisms and philosophies it was handed. To change that would probably mean a revolution in the structure of government and the way people live their lives relative to the state's whims.

I do not know how India would fare with China's form of governing, but I personally would not want to see it. Their two cultures are very deviant from one another and imprinting a strong centralized government on India would mean a strong shift away from the freedoms the people have today.

That being said, China's political party is not free from criticism of their handling of their own people and how free is India truly when a great deal of their people have to struggle to survive as well as live in fear of sectarian violence that springs up from time to time.

And as for international influence, the IMF and World Bank are organizations that have been criticized of aligning nations to a Third World-First World economic structure where the Third World is incentivized to bring their economies into a global market that forces them to export goods used by First World nations and give huge tax incentives and reduce trade barriers to First World products in return.

**dogma**

WarOne wrote:
India is attempting to use the mechanisms and philosophies it was handed. To change that would probably mean a revolution in the structure of government and the way people live their lives relative to the state's whims.

Yeah, I didn't really address that idea, but its certainly true that any state is constrained by the beliefs of its electorate. Though corruption certainly grants politicians additional power to shape the body politic. Tragically, corrupt politicians usually aren't interested in making positive changes.

WarOne wrote:
I do not know how India would fare with China's form of governing, but I personally would not want to see it. Their two cultures are very deviant from one another and imprinting a strong centralized government on India would mean a strong shift away from the freedoms the people have today.

But those freedoms are a largely alien concept. The legacy of the caste system still plays itself out in the Hindutva movement, and it isn't as though India is significantly more diverse than China. That said, there is little incentive for the current state to seize more power, and few international supporters would laud such an endeavor; as you have nicely illustrated.

WarOne wrote:
That being said, China's political party is not free from criticism of their handling of their own people and how free is India truly when a great deal of their people have to struggle to survive as well as live in fear of sectarian violence that springs up from time to time.

Yeah, that's always the rub.

WarOne wrote:
And as for international influence, the IMF and World Bank are nations that have been criticized of aligning nations to a Third World-First World economic structure where the Third World is incentivized to bring their economies into a global market that forces them to export goods used by First World nations and give huge tax incentives and reduce trade barriers to First World products in return.

Yes, I meant to allude to those criticisms. They also have a tendency to treat economic liberalization as a panacea, largely because that's how the West (and the US in particular) looks at it.

**WarOne**

dogma wrote:

WarOne wrote:
I do not know how India would fare with China's form of governing, but I personally would not want to see it. Their two cultures are very deviant from one another and imprinting a strong centralized government on India would mean a strong shift away from the freedoms the people have today.

But those freedoms are a largely alien concept. The legacy of the caste system still plays itself out in the Hindutva movement, and it isn't as though India is significantly more diverse than China. That said, there is little incentive for the current state to seize more power, and few international supporters would laud such an endeavor; as you have nicely illustrated.

The funny thing about China and India is that they do have very diverse ethnicities within their borders. China however has a significant amount of Han, and there is no secret that these Han Chinese have been Hannitizing other regions where local minorities are being displaced (thus fulfilling the mandate to make China stronger and more secure, blah blah blah). So China's diversity is not very apparent (the ethnic Tibet people being the most recognized internationally) despite their recognition of 55 separate ethnic minorities within the country (yes, China's government actually has classifications of ethnicities, but it shouldn't be a suprise because Soviet Russia operated on a similar principle).

India has much more diversity as you mention with the caste system along with religion, region divides, and any other number of differing ways of life and looks that make India a much harder nation to govern, espcially since the nation's population is so large and the ability to manage its people has been at best an Adam Smith sort of economic model in terms of governmental interference of the people (a very invisible hand; though the context of that is market forces and not government...I hate when metaphors run away from me). India does have a legacy of freedom, but only in modern times and only after suffering years of repression and indoctrination by Victorian England. China...well...they are free to obey the state I suppose, and move their houses a thousand miles away when China sez so...

**dogma**

WarOne wrote:
The funny thing about China and India is that they do have very diverse ethnicities within their borders. China however has a significant amount of Han, and there is no secret that these Han Chinese have been Hannitizing other regions where local minorities are being displaced (thus fulfilling the mandate to make China stronger and more secure, blah blah blah). So China's diversity is not very apparent (the ethnic Tibet people being the most recognized internationally) despite their recognition of 55 separate ethnic minorities within the country (yes, China's government actually has classifications of ethnicities, but it shouldn't be a suprise because Soviet Russia operated on a similar principle).

Its also worth noting that a massive amount of the India Muslim population was removed by the creation of Pakistan.

That being said, the cultural diversity of India is often overplayed. Its a large country with many differing peoples, but it isn't the Mos Eisley cantina. The real handicap comes from the lack of a legate ruling ethnicity akin to the Han. Which is to say that we agree, at least in part.

WarOne wrote:
India has much more diversity as you mention with the caste system along with religion, region divides, and any other number of differing ways of life and looks that make India a much harder nation to govern, espcially since the nation's population is so large and the ability to manage its people has been at best an Adam Smith sort of economic model in terms of governmental interference of the people (a very invisible hand; though the context of that is market forces and not government...I hate when metaphors run away from me). India does have a legacy of freedom, but only in modern times and only after suffering years of repression and indoctrination by Victorian England. China...well...they are free to obey the state I suppose, and move their houses a thousand miles away when China sez so...

Well, I could argue this all the way back to the Mongol conquest, but I don't really feel like it at the moment. I'll simply say that it seems to me that the difference between India and China is not a matter of diversity, but the legacy of control.