India's women's reservation law promises much. For marginalised women, it may deliver little
IN 2016 A newly elected Dalit woman sarpanch (village head) in Haryana was barred from her own office. She conducted panchayat meetings sitting on the floor outside while her upper-caste male deputy presided within. Such indignities are common for women from India's Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and religious minorities who enter politics. Together these groups form roughly 70% of India's population. Yet they remain strikingly absent from its legislatures.
The numbers are damning. In the 2019 Lok Sabha, women held just 14.4% of seats. Of these 78 female MPs, barely a dozen were from Scheduled Castes, fewer than ten from Scheduled Tribes, and exactly one was Muslim. OBC women are harder to track—India does not publish caste-disaggregated data for MPs—but estimates suggest 20-25, mostly from dominant castes like Yadavs and Jats. State assemblies show similar patterns. Muslim women legislators across all of India's 28 states can be counted on two hands.
In August 2023, after 27 years of legislative failure, Parliament passed the Women's Reservation Act, reserving one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women. Proponents hailed the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (Women's Power Salutation Act) as transformative. Critics note it will not be implemented until after the next delimitation exercise, likely post-2029. And for women from marginalised communities, a more fundamental question looms: whose empowerment is this?
Quotas within quotas
The act provides proportional sub-reservations for SC and ST women—roughly 7-8% of seats for the former, 3-4% for the latter. This matters: when implemented, several dozen SC/ST women will certainly enter Parliament, compared with barely 20 today. But glaring omissions remain. There is no provision for OBC women, despite OBCs constituting 40-45% of India's population. Nor for religious minorities. The fear is that upper-caste women, armed with superior education, resources and social networks, will capture most seats.
Women's groups from marginalised communities have demanded sub-quotas. OBC activists want at least 15% reserved within the 33%. Muslim organisations seek minority representation. Parliament could legislate such quotas—it has done so for SC/ST women—but political will is absent. The BJP, which controls Parliament, resists further sub-categorisation. Opposition parties, despite pro-quota rhetoric, have done little when in power.
Experience at local level offers sobering lessons. Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Kerala have implemented 50% reservation for women in panchayats (village councils). Bihar alone has over 100,000 women sarpanchs. Yet studies show only 30-40% actively participate in decisions. The rest are "proxy rulers"—elected women whose husbands, fathers or brothers wield actual power. The phenomenon is so widespread it has spawned terms like "Sarpanch Pati" (sarpanch's husband) and "Sarpanch Sasur" (sarpanch's father-in-law).
Why tolerate such arrangements? Social pressure, fear of violence, lack of education and economic dependence all play roles. Women sign blank papers; men attend meetings and control bank accounts. Reservation meant to empower becomes another tool of control. Chhattisgarh has done better than Bihar, largely because it invested in training and support systems. The lesson: quotas without capacity-building produce tokenism, not empowerment.
Presence without power
The few SC/ST women who have reached prominence illustrate both possibility and constraint. Phoolan Devi, the "Bandit Queen" who became a Samajwadi Party MP in 1996, symbolised Dalit women's rage against oppression. Rural Dalit women across north India saw themselves in her. Yet her party gave her no ministerial post, no real authority. She was a symbol, not a decision-maker. Her assassination in 2001 outside her Delhi home remains unsolved—a metaphor for how threatening empowered Dalit women are to existing power structures.
Meira Kumar, India's first Dalit woman Speaker of the Lok Sabha (2009-2014), followed a different trajectory. Daughter of Dalit icon Babu Jagjivan Ram, she had political lineage—privilege within marginalisation. Educated and measured, she was "acceptable" to the mainstream. Yet even she faced ceilings. In 2017 Congress fielded her as presidential candidate against BJP's Ram Nath Kovind (also Dalit). Both parties were playing identity politics; neither offered genuine empowerment.
For every prominent figure, thousands of anonymous women face daily violence. Crimes against SC women under the Prevention of Atrocities Act rose from 11,000 cases in 2014 to over 15,000 in 2022, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Many involve elected representatives. A 2021 study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences found 23% of Dalit women panchayat leaders in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana reported threats or violence, including sexual harassment.
Take Rajkumari (not her real name), a Dalit sarpanch in rural Rajasthan. Elected in 2015, upper-caste men immediately refused to attend her meetings. When she sought funds for toilets in the Dalit settlement, she was threatened with rape. She filed a police complaint. Eight years later it remains pending. She continues as sarpanch—in name only.
Violence serves a purpose: to discipline assertive women back into subordination. The Indian state's response has been tepid. Conviction rates under the Prevention of Atrocities Act hover around 32%, far below conviction rates for ordinary crimes. Police often refuse to register cases. When they do, investigations drag on for years.
The invisible category
If SC/ST women struggle for visibility, OBC women are nearly invisible. This is partly a data problem—India does not track OBC representation in legislatures. But it also reflects power dynamics within OBC politics itself.
Political parties built on OBC identity often exclude OBC women from power. During Akhilesh Yadav's government in Uttar Pradesh (2012-17), his Samajwadi Party cabinet included few women ministers, and fewer still from OBC backgrounds. Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) in Bihar projects an image of women's empowerment—Bihar has 50% panchayat reservation for women—yet Mr Kumar's cabinet tells a different story.
Within OBCs, hierarchy matters. Yadav, Kurmi and Jat women have better access to education and politics. Women from Most Backward Classes—weavers, potters, small farmers—remain marginalised even within the marginalised. In Tamil Nadu, despite Dravidian parties' social-justice rhetoric, women from Backward Classes who participate in politics mostly belong to a few dominant castes. In Maharashtra, Maratha women are visible; others are not.
The Women's Reservation Act offers no remedy. Without OBC sub-quotas, dominant OBC women may win some seats, but women from lower OBC sub-castes will remain excluded. The Rohini Commission, set up in 2017 to examine sub-categorisation of OBCs, submitted its report in 2021. The government has yet to act on its recommendations.
Triple marginalisation
Muslim women face the steepest barriers: religious minority status in an increasingly polarised polity, gender in patriarchal communities, and often poverty. The numbers reflect this. Muslim women MPs in the Lok Sabha since independence can be counted on two hands. In state assemblies the tally rarely exceeds 20-30 at any time. Even in panchayats, Muslim women are elected only in Muslim-concentrated areas, and even there face proxy rule.
Exclusion operates at multiple levels. Political parties want Muslim votes but avoid Muslim candidates, seeing them as polarising. The calculation is cynical: "Muslim vote, not Muslim face." When parties do field Muslim candidates—already rare—preference goes to men. Patriarchy within Muslim communities reinforces this. Conservative sections oppose women's political participation on religious grounds. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board, entirely male-dominated, has consistently opposed women's empowerment measures.
Islamophobia compounds the problem. A Muslim woman, especially one who wears hijab, faces dual stereotyping—seen as either oppressed or threatening. Opposition parties use Muslim women in attack advertisements, suggesting their election would bring sharia law. Last year a woman activist in Uttar Pradesh was told by a regional party that her hijab made her "unelectable."
The few Muslim women who have won elections come mostly from elite backgrounds or states with Left or regional parties willing to field them. Kerala's Communist parties have elected several Muslim women. West Bengal's Trinamool Congress has given some tickets. But these remain exceptions. Consider Shabana Azmi, the actress and activist. Despite her stature and decades of social work, when the Samajwadi Party fielded her for a Lok Sabha seat in 2004, she lost badly. If someone of her profile cannot win, what chance do ordinary Muslim women have?
The Women's Reservation Act offers Muslim women nothing. With no provision for minority representation, and parties already avoiding Muslim candidates, the 33% quota may worsen their situation. The calculation becomes: "We must field a woman, so definitely not a Muslim woman."
The way forward
Empowering marginalised women requires action on multiple fronts. In the short term, political parties must reform candidate selection. Currently, ticket distribution committees are dominated by upper-caste men who select candidates in their own image. Mandating women's representation in these committees, with specific seats for SC/ST/OBC/minority women, would help. Transparent primaries, rather than backroom deals, would level the playing field.
Campaign finance reform is crucial. Elections are expensive—even panchayat contests now require ₹50,000-500,000 ($600-6,000). Marginalised women have least access to capital. State funding for women candidates, with higher allocations for SC/ST/OBC/minority women, would reduce dependence on parties and enable independent candidacies. Several European democracies provide such funding; India should follow suit.
Capacity-building matters. Organisations like the National Institute of Rural Development and the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development run training programmes for elected representatives, but these reach only a fraction of women panchayat members. Scaling up such programmes, with specific modules on rights, laws, budgets and public speaking, would help women move from proxy rule to actual authority.
Safety mechanisms need strengthening. Fast-track courts for violence against women politicians, stricter enforcement of the Prevention of Atrocities Act, and security for threatened women leaders would signal that the state takes their safety seriously. Currently, it does not.
Medium-term reforms require legislative action. Parliament should amend the Women's Reservation Act to include sub-quotas for OBC women (at least 15%) and minority women (4-5%). This is constitutionally permissible—the act already provides sub-quotas for SC/ST women—and democratically necessary.
Electoral reforms could help. Proportional representation systems, used in much of Europe, tend to elect more women and minorities than first-past-the-post systems like India's. India could experiment with proportional representation in metropolitan local bodies or state legislative councils before considering broader adoption.
Strengthening panchayati raj (local self-government) with genuine financial devolution would make local elections meaningful. Currently, gram panchayats depend on state governments for funds, with untied grants often delayed. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment envisioned local bodies as institutions of self-government; in practice they remain implementing agencies for state schemes.
In the long term, empowerment requires economic transformation. Land rights for women, access to credit and capital, skill development and entrepreneurship support would reduce economic dependence that keeps women in subordinate positions. Social transformation matters too: challenging patriarchy within marginalised communities, promoting inter-caste marriages, ensuring media representation of diverse women leaders.
Revolution deferred
Dr B.R. Ambedkar, architect of India's constitution and champion of Dalit rights, once said: "I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved." By this standard, India's marginalised communities have far to go.
The Women's Reservation Act is a milestone—the culmination of 27 years of activism. When implemented, it will bring hundreds of women into legislatures who would otherwise be excluded. But without sub-categorisation, it risks becoming another form of exclusion: upper-caste women replacing upper-caste men, while Dalit, Adivasi, Bahujan and Muslim women remain on the margins.
India's democracy is rightly celebrated as the world's largest. But democracy is not just about elections; it is about who gets to participate meaningfully in governance. Currently, women from marginalised communities—70% of India's female population—are largely shut out. They face violence for asserting authority, proxy rule when they win elections, and indifference from parties and the state.
Yet there are signs of change. Lakhs of women in panchayats are learning to speak, lead and fight. A new generation of Dalit, Adivasi and Bahujan women refuse to be proxy rulers. Muslim women are challenging both Islamophobia and patriarchy within their communities. Every woman sarpanch who stands up to her husband, every Dalit woman MLA who challenges her party, every Muslim woman activist who refuses to be silenced—they are building a different future.
That future will arrive when a Dalit woman, a tribal woman, a Muslim woman can become prime minister not despite the barriers her identity creates, but because of her vision, competence and leadership. That day is not here. But it is these women, fighting for scraps of power in village councils and state assemblies, who are bringing it closer. India's marginalised majority deserves nothing less
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