Will we have enough Women to take advantge of 33% Reservation?

The country was celebrating the ‘victory’ of Women’s Bill after it garnered adequate support on the floor of Rajya Sabha (Upper House of India’s Parliament). I am not sure what 33% reservation in Parliament can do for women, but I am sure about what it cannot do. It cannot stop gendercide in India.

Recent edition of The Economist carries a cover story on the issue. In an article titled Haryana’s lonely bachelors, the hypothetical portrayal of movie mathrubhumi – a nation without women - seems to have come alive. The movie is about the most skewed sex ratio with no females in the entire village. It is the most disturbing movie I have ever watched and was thankful that it was a work of friction. But perhaps, I drew my conclusions soon.
‘Haryana’s lonely bachelors’ depict how mathrubhumi is becoming a reality.
BALJEET SINGH dandles his baby daughter on his knee, a picture of contented fatherhood. Last year the 37-year-old Hindu truck driver became the envy of his friends when he married a 16-year-old Muslim from Assam, in India’s north-east. The unorthodox marriage suited both. Mr Singh’s romantic life had become a casualty of India’s preference for boy babies, which in his state, Haryana, has led to the most skewed sex ratio in India: 116 to 100, according to the 2001 census, compared with a national average of 108. By the age of 30, says Mr Singh, he had given up hope of finding a girl from his own village, Nandgaon, or from his state.

In the full length article The Worldwide war on baby girls, The Economist throws light on the menace of gendercide in many parts of the globe. One particular observation about India was disturbing, though I was not surprised by it. Coming from an educated middle class family, I have heard many stories of how young couples still long for sons.

In Punjab Monica Das Gupta of the World Bank discovered that second and third daughters of well-educated mothers were more than twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday as their brothers, regardless of their birth order. The discrepancy was far lower in poorer households. Ms Das Gupta argues that women do not necessarily use improvements in education and income to help daughters. Richer, well-educated families share their poorer neighbours’ preference for sons and, because they tend to have smaller families, come under greater pressure to produce a son and heir if their first child is an unlooked-for daughter.

Will we have enough women to contest for the seats so pompously promised by the Women’s Reservation Bill?