The abacus of aspiration enumerates the formula of ambition. Numbers tell taller stories than politicians speaking about their track record. But nailing the narrative is the problem. Last week, parliament created history by passing the 128th amendment to India’s 63-year-old Constitution in less than 24 hours. But the power of politics is in nuances, not demagoguery. For over four decades, India’s gentler sex has been promised one-third reservation in the Lok Sabha and assemblies, giving them more numerical political power going by the rhetoric.
But does power lie in numbers or the final count? The current share of women in the power matrix tells a sad story. In spite of there being enough of them in every walk of life, from politics to corporates, their representation is disproportionate to males, although female literacy rate in 2021 was at 91.95 percent. Patriarchy calls the shots. All the three pillars of Indian democracy—legislature, executive and judiciary—are dominated by gents. Women in India have been denied access and entry, which they deserve, to the rooms with power. For them, roaming up and down the corridors of power has been the only badge of honour.
The tone for the marginalisation of women in public life was set after the Congress party came to power in 1947. All of India’s fourteen prime ministers have pontificated about empowering the fairer sex, but none of them endowed major political or executive responsibilities on their female colleagues. Surprisingly, even the liberal Jawaharlal Nehru couldn’t find enough women ministers. Never since independence have women got even a 20 percent share in the Cabinet. The number of female Union ministers rarely crossed the half-a-dozen mark; even in the largest Cabinet of 34 ministers headed by Vajpayee, there were just two.
Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur was India’s first female Cabinet-rank minister. But during his second term, Nehru didn't entrust women with Cabinet posts; only Lakshmi Menon was made deputy minister for external affairs. Lal Bahadur Shastri and later Indira Gandhi did not accommodate enough women ministers. They created the junior-most post of deputy minister to accommodate favourites. During 1962-67, there were just five women in the Council of Ministers and they held insignificant portfolios. When Indira returned to power in 1967 with a reduced majority she didn’t appoint a single woman to the Union Cabinet; there was one minister of state and two deputy ministers. Even after she romped home for the third time in 1972 with a two-thirds majority, she stuck to the three-woman formula of junior ministers, including Nandini Satpathy.
When she lost in 1977, luck didn’t smile on the gentle sex. Morarji Desai added only four women as ministers of state without important portfolios. However, when Indira returned to South Block again in 1980 with over 350 seats, her heavy dependence on male colleagues was evident—she picked only three women ministers of state, including Sheila Kaul, a relative. However, it was Rajiv Gandhi who tried to break the glass ceiling; of his 401 MPs, twelve women were in the Council of Ministers. Still, not one held Cabinet rank. Only Kaul got independent charge of education and culture.
During 1989-91, women lost their political clout in the House. Both V P Singh and Chandra Shekhar, billed as messiahs of social justice, gave poor representation to women MPs in their governments. Singh appointed a minister of state and a deputy Minister. It was P V Narasimha Rao, the accidental prime minister, who holds the record of appointing women ministers, with a dozen of them in his council, and was the second PM to have a woman Cabinet minister. Among his twelve female colleagues, Sheila Kaul was the second Cabinet-rank woman minister; a rare event after 40 years. However, Rao didn’t believe that women could handle sensitive and important portfolios like finance, defence, home, HRD, commerce or finance.
Congress puppets H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral lacked the clout to choose their Cabinets. The only prominent female minister in the Vajpayee government with full Cabinet rank was Sushma Swaraj in 1998. In his second term, the number of women went up to eleven, with three Cabinet ministers. But men got the best jobs.
Manmohan Singh, despite his party’s commitment to women’s reservation, chose only two women Cabinet ministers in 2004—Ambika Soni and Meira Kumar—while the eight female ministers of state received insignificant portfolios. Singh broke records at some point during his second term with fifteen women ministers, with five given Cabinet ranks. Again, none of them held finance or strategic portfolios, except ally Mamata Banerjee, who ran railways.
The situation improved radically when Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014. He inducted ten female ministers and set a record by appointing Sushma Swaraj as India's first female external affairs minister and Nirmala Sitharaman as a minister of state with independent charge of the commerce ministry. Smriti Irani was made the first Cabinet-rank woman HRD minister since independence. Modi raised the bar later by appointing Sitharaman first as defence minister and then finance. During his second term, the number of women with Cabinet rank is two, while their total number is eleven.
Now the states. Since 1947, India has had only fourteen women chief ministers as against 350 male CMs. It was the Congress which chose the first woman CM—Sucheta Kripalani of Uttar Pradesh in 1963. Since then it has had just five women CMs and the BJP one less. The remaining six have been from regional parties. In fact, the smaller parties have had more women CMs than the national outfits.
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Since the Male Club has always headed the states and political parties, membership was restricted by gender to lead the executive. As of now, only three women are chief secretaries of states out of a total thirty-six. Less than half a dozen ladies head state police forces. Not a single woman has ever become director of CBI, ED, IB and other agencies. No feminine touch at the top of the Election Commission, armed forces, Supreme Court or RBI either. Hardly a dozen women are CEOs of the 200-odd public sector companies. Not a single cabinet secretary, defence secretary, home secretary, or finance secretary has belonged to the fairer sex till now.
Just raising the female numbers in legislatures isn’t going to empower India’s womenfolk. In political hierarchy they still yield to the male whip, not wield it. A numerically enhanced status could remain only symbolic if the spirit is not followed. The system needs a calculated institutional and structural transfer of power from men to women in policy making. Numbers proverbially speak for themselves, but silence will speak louder if the roar of reform emerges from only the throat of paper tigresses in the chauvinistic jungle of politics.