The only woman minister in the Puducherry NDA government resigned on Tuesday alleging gender and caste discrimination. Chandira Priyanga, a Dalit, is also the only woman legislator in the 30-member Puducherry legislative assembly. In her resignation letter, she wrote, “I entered the political arena with a positive mind and willingness to work hard. But I have had to face gender and caste discrimination and could not fight money power and conspiracies.” Priyanga’s story could well be the story of many women politicians, who have to fight multiple odds to discover their space and voice in a profession crowded by men, and where misogyny is more the norm than the exception. Her protest is a reality check for a nation that recently passed a law to reserve up to 33% seats for women in Parliament and state assemblies.
One way to look at this contradiction between the journey of progressive legislations and the regressive tendencies prevalent among the very same people who have legislated them is that better representation will force a change in mindsets. Women legislators are a minority in almost all legislative assemblies. This nurtures a toxic culture that is blind to its prejudices. The law alone is insufficient to cure this illness. Political parties will have to recognise the deficit in representation — gender, caste, and religion — as evidence of a flaw in our democracy and course-correct. Otherwise, even the most progressive law will be subverted in the interest of patriarchal values. The experience of reservations in local bodies, wherein women representatives in many places are proxies for male relatives, suggests that many politicians are reluctant democrats.
