A Personal View on the 33% Women Reservation in Urban Local Bodies

In my colony there is a man who is well-qualified in every sense. He is sincere and honest, humble and hard-working. He is benevolent and compassionate, intelligent and talented with great innovative ideas and has a mass following not only in my colony but from all over the town because they see in him the right leadership quality. But if my Ward is taken away by the coming 33% of Women’s Reservation he cannot contest the municipal elections. Whose loss will it be at the end of the day! Think it over.

I can also foresee some uneasy consequences in the near future. For example, Mr T R Zeliang is a popular public leader and his supporters wants him to get re-elected again by any means. But if Peren Constituency is allotted next time to 33% Women’s Reservation what would they do. Will he contest next from Aboi or Meluri or from somewhere else? I am sure he wouldn’t like it one bit.

Yes, women have come up brilliantly and are at par with men in every which way. Be it civil administration, education, medicine, science and technology and even in security forces. They have already toppled the menfolk in university exams and other competitive exams and proved that they are not the inferior sex anymore. All these are very encouraging signs. Given a chance, I am sure they will be equally capable and may even outdo men in certain areas in bringing changes and new developments with more innovative ideas and even cutting down the cancer of corruptions.

For this they deserve to be i the law-making bodies. The only problem is how to get them into it through a right channel without deprivation of men’s democratic rights.

Earlier MLAs from Tuensang and Mon were simply nominated and not elected but they were also conferred the same powers as the rest of the elected MLAs. Is there any chance the state Assembly can work out and formulate a channel so that the womenfolk could enter the legislature/ municipality legally without the ‘hassle’ (to put it lightly) of an election so that men will also not be deprived of their rights and opportunity? Another problem; the power of increasing and reducing the assembly seat is not vested with the state. As a layman I can give no solution under the prevailing situation.

However, what I fail to understand is their (women’s) self-contradictory demands. In the first place, they want that men and women should be in equal terms (which is what it is now).Yet, they insist to be recognized as inferiors by 33%. Is it not a backward step? If you (women) really want to be at par with men why not avail this 100% opportunity which is open to all of us. In schools , in universities and in competitive exams you are doing equally and more often better than men without availing a 33% extra advantage. Think it over again.

Which means that there is no reason why you can’t do better than the menfolk at the hustings. Elsewhere they are doing it. Are you any different from them? Don’t say you are inferior again! You still have the 100% right to join the fray. That is what democracy is all about, – equal opportunity (to prove unequal talents).

In the days of yore, the emergence of Naga women leaders were seldom and very rare due to its prevailing traditions and customary restrictions though the laws were never totally rigid. but today we are living in a completely new civilization. Global village and gender equality will remove all other related issues. Time is ripe. Take the plunge before your personal robot take your place.

But make no mistake. Electoral democracy literally has no democracy in it in Nagaland’s perspective. It is a total sham but we are compelled to live with it. Women folk daring to wade through in these dirty waters of politics may have telling effects in some ways including the domestic front and may even end up in catastrophe. Perhaps the Naga Hoho’s “premature” refer to this? Otherwise I don’t see any other premature.

I am nobody to dissuade womenfolk from joining the fray. It is always open to both men and women all over the democratic world. And I am no male chauvinist. Of all the people on earth I love my wife the most and she is a woman. Likewise, I loved my mother too who was also a woman.

Man and woman are the two sides of the same coin. Only the heads and tails are of different pictures. Likewise there are certain things where male can do better and vice versa.

BUT electioneering is, by no means a child’s play, and more so in Nagaland context. It is not the democracy you find in political science textbooks. Free and fair, they say. Free, maybe (in other connotation) but far from being fair. In Nagaland, it is all about money and muscle power. Of course, you’ll have to start with lots of ground works, strategies and calculations. But in reality it starts like a cold war and ends up in a battlefield (of ballot box). But there are more to it than just that in-between but I feel uncomfortable to put it all in writing for obvious reasons. They say all’s fair in war, and election is a war as far as Nagaland is concerned. Candidates will put every conceivable method to win his war. Illegality and immorality have just been wiped out from their dictionary.

Except for the historic, giant-killing move of Mrs Rano Shaiza in the state’s lone Lok Sabha polls long ago, no woman has come forward to the political chessboard of Nagaland. A few women have dabbled at the hustlings but returned only with ‘”almost even those were” or “nearly” results. But I thought even those were good enough signs considering the circumstances. Don’t make that bygone Lok Sabha poll the beginning and the end of it. And just don’t think about treading backward again but follow the trailblazer.

If the present government cannot formulate an alternative solution out from their magic lamp I don’t think that 33% reservation would be good enough as it will have flaws in its practicalities. Time is running out so why not just join to be at par with the male chauvinistic pigs.

M S Longkumer
Mokokchung