Reservation for women in Parliament.

After some lull, there is again talk of pushing through the bill that calls for 1/3rd (33.3%) reservation for women in the Indian Parliament and other state law-making bodies. I am
all for equal rights for women, but reserving a set percentage of seats for women is in my
opinion making them more equal.

I respect the rule that reserves seats for women on buses & sometimes even go out of my
way to ensure that a standing woman gets a seat that's wrongly occupied by inconsiderate
males. But to reserve a set number of seats in the highest law making body or for that
matter any law-making body, is wrong.

We already have certain constituencies that have been reserved for certain sections of
people, which itself needs to be undone, in my opinion. For eg. to be able to stand for
elections to my municipal ward in Kerala, you need to be a woman and also need to
belong to the SC/ST. This is absurd for various reasons :

1) This negates the right of people belonging to other sections from standing for office.
For eg. if I want to stand for the municipal elections from the constituency to which I
belong to and where we pay our property taxes, I can't. I see this as an infringement
on my rights as a citizen of India.

2) Reservation (in any sphere) usually results in talent being subverted and my ward
is an apt example. The major parties could not find in their ranks women who also were
SC/ST, to put up as candidates. Finally after scrambling for 'suitable'candidates that fit
the reservation criteria, they ended up putting 4 women candidates who were in no way
fit to respresent us. Neither did they have political awareness or enough education or
even street-smartness to do things that would benefit our ward.

3) When women are taking on men in almost all domains from tech-jobs to the Army,
I don't see a reason why they need an unfair advantage in the form of reservation,
when it comes to political representation.

If at all there is concern about not enough women coming into politics, why not enforce
a rule that requires all political parties to have 1/3rd of their candidates as women ?
That way, even if some party puts up a women candidate for my constituency, I still
retain the right to contest from there - even as an independent. Also, we can leave the
decision on their worthiness to the electorate as is intended in a democracy.

My only concern with the stand I take here is that it is inline with the stand taken by two
Indian politicians I detest - Laloo yadav and Mulayam Yadav. Ofcourse they are against
this bill because they would rather have the women confined to the house and if possible
the kitchen. And in their opinion, if 1/3rd seats are reserved for women, it means that
many seats less for the males to contest from.

While most politicians today are there to line their pockets, there must be atleast a few
who are there so that they can do something for the country. And this is what I believe
should be the criteria for standing for public office & not something like gender or caste.