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Well, that is the number of seats to be reserved for women in Lok Sabha in the first round if the women’s reservation bill is passed. The rules for determining number of seats to be reserved are as follows.
Example 1: Puducherry has one general seat. This will be reserved for women in the first election and open in second and third elections. Example 2: Manipur has two seats, of which one is reserved for STs. Thus, both seats will be reserved in the first election and open in the second and third elections. Example 3: Delhi has seven seats: six general and one SC. In the each election 2 seats (seven divided by three, rounded to nearest integer) will be reserved. In the first election, one general and one SC seat will be reserved, and in the next two elections, two general seats will be reserved. We compute that this results in 192, 179 and 175 seats (out of 545) being reserved for women in the first three elections. A similar computation shows that 1367, 1365 and 1364 (out of 4090 seats of the legislative assemblies of 28 states and Delhi) will be reserved for women in the first three elections. Excel file with detailed computation is available here.
Mr. Vaghul, our first Chairperson, passed away on Saturday. I write this note to express my deep gratitude to him, and to celebrate his life. And what a life he lived!
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Mr. Vaghul and I at his residence |
Our past and present Chairpersons, |
Industry stalwarts have spoken about his contributions to the financial sector, his mentorship of people and institutions across finance, industry and non-profits. I don’t want to repeat that (though I was a beneficiary as a young professional starting my career at ICICI Securities). I want to note here some of the ways he helped shape PRS.
Mr Vaghul was our first chairman, from 2012 to 2018. When he joined the board, we were in deep financial crisis. Our FCRA application had been turned down (I still don’t know the reason), and we were trying to survive on monthly fund raise. Mr Vaghul advised us to raise funds from domestic philanthropists. “PRS works to make Indian democracy more effective. We should not rely on foreigners to do this.”. He was sure that Indian philanthropists would fund us. “We’ll try our best. But if it doesn’t work, we may shut down. Are you okay with that?” Of course, with him calling up people, we survived the crisis.
He also suggested that we should have an independent board without any representation from funders. The output should be completely independent of funders’ interest given that we were working in the policy space. We have stuck to this advice.
Even when he was 80, he could read faster than anyone and remember everything. I once said something in a board meeting which had been written in the note sent earlier. “We have all read the note. Let us discuss the implications.” And he could think three steps ahead of everyone else.
He had a light touch as a chairman. When I asked for management advice, he would ask me to solve the problem on my own. He saw his role as guiding the larger strategy, help raise funds and ensure that the organisation had a strong value system. Indeed, he was the original Karmayogi – I have an email from him which says, “Continue with the good work. We should neither be euphoric with appreciation or distracted by criticism.” And another, "Those who adhere to the truth need not be afraid of the consequences".
The best part about board meetings was the chat afterwards. He would have us in splits with stories from his experience. Some of these are in his memoirs, but we heard a few juicier ones too!
Even after he retired from our Board, he was always available to meet. I just needed to message him whenever I was in Madras, and he would ask me to come home. And Mrs. Vaghul was a welcoming host. Filter coffee, great advice, juicy stories, what more could one ask for?
Goodbye Mr. Vaghul. Your life lives on through the institutions you nurtured. And hope that we live up to your standards.
Madhavan
