Why Not Dis-empower the Empowered?

Why Not Dis-empower the Empowered?

Written by

SOROOR AHMED

Published on

August 10, 2022

More the elected representatives lesser the ‘power’ to women. We are simply bluffing the womenfolk in the name of ‘empowerment’, argues SOROOR AHMED.

Power is not a very positive expression. It is not only Pitirim Sorokin, who feels that once a power is acquired morality is the first thing to be sacrificed (See his book Power and Morality). Lord Acton wrote: Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. Many other writers and sociologists have written on the same line. Power has the inherent quality of being abused and misused. Holy Books of almost all religions have warned the humanity about it.

Yet we talk of ‘empowering’ people coming from what is called the weaker sections of the society – Dalits, Blacks, tribals, women, other minorities, etc. May be due to lack of appropriate expression we tend to adopt the term empowerment. Otherwise the word sounds somewhat imposing as well as obnoxious.

Instead of ‘empowering’ a huge part of people’s efforts should be made to ‘disempower’ a small but significant section of the people who acquire power and do whatever they like. They are present in all the societies and countries of the world. It is this ‘empowered’ lot that needs to be brought down to the level playing field and compelled to see the reality. But since we lack the courage to come up with the new idea, we go by whatever half-baked stuff is being taught to us by someone else – may be with some ulterior motive too.

How many groups of people in this country or the world are we going to empower? Why not have a grand alliance of the rest to take on the brutally empowered lots of the world, be it of any gender, race, caste, creed or religion. But we in India have gone so much ahead with this ‘empowerment’ business that we fail to realise as to what we are doing.

More than 60 years ago we gave reservation to Dalis and tribals in Parliament and assemblies and thought that we have ‘empowered’ them. Whether we have ‘empowered’ Dalits or not we have certainly made the ruling class of the country much more powerful. They can get away freely by massacring and maiming them and raping their women-folk at will. No law of the land can prevent them from doing that. How many of those involved in the Dalit-hunting cases in the country have been brought to the book is the moot question? In many aspects the situation is even worse than pre-independence India, when these Dalits were not at all ‘empowered’.

Over 15 years ago we made an amendment in our Constitution calling for 33 per cent reservation for women in the urban and local bodies. We thought that we have ‘empowered’ them. In fact, we made the already empowered section more powerful as we did not make any effort to disempower them. We simply think that by electing a few thousands mukhiyas (village heads), pramukhs and sarpanch we will be able to make women powerful. The truth is that we are living in a fool’s paradise. Instead we have made the beasts within the men-folk more powerful. There are innumerable cases of women mukhiyas being stripped to nothing, paraded on the streets and then gang-raped simply because they started asserting themselves. No, this has not only happened in Rajasthan but in many other states.

In Haryana, West UP and many other states caste panchayats, instead of village panchayats (local body) decide the fate of the boy and girl who marry on their own cutting the caste barriers. Nobody takes the view of the 33 per cent of the population. Such boys and girls are lynched while the law of the land remains silent. And in several cases the mother of the boy who dared to commit this ‘crime’ had to undergo gang-rape for what her son had done yet the 33 per cent representation had no say whatsoever. Perhaps this brutal bestiality was not practised so daringly before the 72nd and 73rd Constitutional amendments came into effect to give 33 per cent reservation to women in the municipal corporations, municipalities and panchayats. So in one way we are not actually ‘empowering’ one section of the society, but making the already empowered lot much more powerful.

What will happen after women get 33 per cent reservation in the Parliament and Assemblies can only be foreseen by what is happening at the grassroots level, where all indicators suggest that the lot of women has deteriorated. We are happy that the literacy level among women has increased after independence, but we are not ashamed as to where crores of girls have gone in the last 63 years. In 1941 the backward India under the British subjugation had 1047 girls for 1000 boys. In 2001, after their ‘empowerment’ the figure has come down to 927. All studies suggest that it has gone further down in the last nine years since the last Census. Thousands of brides are getting burnt every year and honour killing is rampant not only in India but also outside.

Is this what we have achieved by ‘empowering’ women, by having a woman Prime Minister and so many chief ministers, ministers, MPs, MLAs and what not.

We have given 33 per cent reservation in the local bodies. But we have coined some funny phrases too, especially in the Hindi heartland of the country. When during the last parliamentary election I went to a village in a VIP Lok Sabha constituency somewhere in the country with a social activist, Manish Shandilya, he asked the people who had gathered around to greet us as to where the ‘MP Saheb’ is. I failed to understand as to what he meant by ‘MP Saheb’ as there was then no Member of Parliament after the dissolution of the Lok Sabha – and after all why an MP will be there. I asked him in his ear: What do you mean by ‘MP Saheb’. He replied: Mukhiya Pati (Husband of the village head).

As he was aware that the panchayat where we had gone had a woman head he deemed it fit to ask for her husband as notwithstanding all tall claims in the last 15 or so years we have failed to ‘empower’ them even at the grassroots level. Only their numbers have increased. The entire work is being done by the ‘MP’ and ‘SP’ (Sarpanch Pati or may be Putra).

No, those opposing the reservation too are not coming up with any convincing argument. They are opposing it because they fear that only the upper caste women would walk away with the 33 per cent reservation. And many other upper caste MPs of Congress and the BJP are resisting this because they fear that if the one-third seats are reserved they may lose their own constituency in the next parliamentary election and will have to look elsewhere.

Nobody is concerned that this so-called ‘empowerment’ is in fact a sinister design to make the powers that be more powerful and befool the 50 per cent of the population. This powerful class is now finding it much easier to deal with women representatives. It is not that earlier the male village heads were an epitome of virtue. But it is an established fact that corruption in panchayats has increased, not decreased as fund and women came together. In the past the panchayats did not have so much monetary power.

If the Women’s Reservation Bill really becomes an Act, the possibility of emergence of MPP (Member of Parliament Pati) and MLAP (Member of Legislative Assembly Pati) cannot be ruled out.

In Bihar, the chief minister Nitish Kumar, just for the sake of politics, gave 50 per cent reservation to women in the local bodies in 2006. Yet there is no denying the fact that their condition is among the worst in the country. Only a few months back a mother of two kids was stripped naked in the heart of the busiest Patna road and paraded for full one and half hours before policemen with TV channels telecasting it. Nothing happened to the perpetrator as he is even more ‘powerful’.

No country – developed, developing or under-developed – in the world has come up with such a fantastic idea of grotesque ‘empowerment’. Yet the women groups are not going on warpath for it. The number of women in Parliament in the West, barring a couple of Scandinavian countries, is much less yet their condition is certainly better than their sisters in Rajasthan, Bihar, UP, Haryana and elsewhere in India.

So more the elected representatives lesser the ‘power’ to women. We are simply bluffing the womenfolk in the name of ‘empowerment’. Let us be honest.