Woman elected as house speaker

By Ranjit Devrj

NEW DELHI, (IPS/GIN) —India's list of top women politicians grew after the country's Parliament elected Meira Kumar as the speaker of its powerful lower House.
The Lok Sabbah, or lower parliamentary house, also is known as the House of the People.

Meira Kumar
Kumar, a former career diplomat, will join Sonia Gandhi, India's most powerful politician and leader of the ruling Congress party Pratibha Patil, India's President Mayawati, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populous state, and Sheila Dixit, chief minister of the state of Delhi, which houses the national capital as a powerful female politician.
"What we are seeing is better acceptability of women in top political situations," said Ranjana Kumari, president of Women Power Connect, an influential grouping of some 700 women's organizations and individuals.
Kumari said that Kumar's election as speaker of the Lok Sabha — the law-making lower house of Parliament — is crucial at a time when serious social issues concerning women such as female feticide, domestic violence, and dowry deaths dogged the country.
Dowry deaths are defined as women who are murdered by husbands or in-laws who are attempting to extort in increased dowry.
"Most importantly," Kumari said, "the women's bill [to reserve 33 percent of seats in Parliament and state assemblies for women] which has been hanging since 1997, thanks to opposition mounted by male legislators, now has a chance of being passed."
The women's bill was introduced into the Rajya Sabha, or upper house, last year.
Kumari said that until the bill was passed, women were likely to be elevated to top political jobs because of family connections or for their ornamental value. "Even the appointment of Meira Kumar as speaker has clear political value."
In 1993 the Congress party government empowered about a million women when it legislated to reserve 33 percent of seats in local bodies for women.
Apart from further improving the Congress party's image as a party that supports women's rights, the fact that Kumar happens to be Dalit [people at the lowermost rung of the caste ladder] is seen by many as having value in terms of winning over a sizeable bank of votes. Dalits number 160 million of India's billion plus population.
Caste and gender arithmetic worked in favor of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), coalition in the general elections that ended May 16 — with the party dramatically improving its own strength in the Lok Sabha.
Kumar is one of only 59 female legislators elected to the 543-seat lower house of parliament, the major parties having shied away from fielding too many women candidates. "This trend can be reversed only by implementing quotas for women," Kumari said.
Sanjay Kumar, a well-known psephologist and fellow at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, said that women increasingly occupying top political positions while being considered to have low 'winnability' in elections is one of the many paradoxes of India's political system. "Political parties need to change their mindsets more than bringing in a quota system."
"For the first time a woman member has been elected speaker, and that, too, a woman from the Dalit community," said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in parliament soon after Kumar was formally installed as speaker. "In electing you ... we members of parliament pay tribute to the women of our country and the great contribution that they have made," Singh said.