Women's reservation bill: Historic day in India (3/9/2010)

Congratulations gals! You won half the battle.

I am not writing this blog to congratulate you. I am here to share some of my thoughts on reservation.

Personally, I do not like the concept of reservations (except train reservation ... just kidding). Technically, reservation is not the solution, it is a workaround. A workaround which can not be undone (ctrl+z) in future.

Over the time, people (politicians) came up with different flavors of the reservation. SC/ST reservation, OBC reservation, minority reservation and so on. Still more to come.

So, why it is a workaround?

Do you like cricket? Team like Kenya, Canada, Bangladesh are not a good competitor to win World Cup (Ok, ok, ... sometimes they do surprise in league matches). Is it a good idea if their score starts from 100? It will make them enough competitive and they may win the next world cup.

What if in Olympic 100 meters race, a player from malnourished country starts the race 50 meters from the start line.

We are not addressing the actual problem. We are just providing a workaround for today.

So, why it can not be undone?

Reservation will always be part of vote bank politics. You can give reservation to some section of the society but you can not take it back. In future, if that section of the society are NO MORE backwards, no politician will dare undo the reservation.

Let us come to women reservation discussion.

Problem is, we do not have enough women representation in parliament.
Workaround is women reservation bill.

But this is democracy. Our parliament members represent majority of the country. Each member represents majority of his/her area. If majority does not want a woman, it is a democracy. If society is gender biased, you need to find a solution to educate the society. Reservation is not the democratic solution. Reservation just tells us that man and woman are not equal.

Enough for tonight. Now start criticizing me :)

P.S: Good part of women reservation is that, in next election, we will definitely see some new faces and hopefully honest.