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Speaker Meira Kumar has urged political parties to arrive at a consensus on the women’s reservation bill.  The 2008 Bill has the following main features.  1. It reserves one-third of all seats in Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies within each state for women.  2. There is quota-within-quota for SCs, STs and Anglo-Indians.  3. The reserved seats will be rotated after each general elections – thus after a cycle of three elections, all constituencies would have been reserved once.  This reservation will be operational for 15 years.  This Bill has had a chequered history.  A similar Bill was introduced in 1996, 1998 and 1999 – all of which lapsed after the dissolution of the respective Lok Sabhas.  A Joint Parliamentary Committee chaired by Geeta Mukherjee examined the 1996 Bill and made seven recommendations.  Five of these have been included in the latest 2008 Bill.  These are (i) reservation for a period of 15 years; (ii) including sub-reservation for Anglo Indians; (iii) including reservation in cases where the state has less than three seats in Lok Sabha (or less than three seats for SCs/STs); (iv) including reservation for the Delhi assembly; and (v) changing “not less than one-third” to “as nearly as may be, one-third”.  Two of the recommendations are not incorporated in the 2008 Bill.  The first is for reserving seats in Rajya Sabha and Legislative Councils.  The second is for sub-reservation for OBC women after the Constitution extends reservation to OBCs. The 2008 Bill was referred to the Standing Committee on Law and Justice.  This Committee failed to reach a consensus in its final report.  The Committee has recommendedthat the Bill “be passed in Parliament and put in action without further delay.  Two members of the Committee, Virender Bhatia and Shailendra Kumar (both belonging to the Samajwadi Party) dissented stating that they were not against providing reservation to women but disagreed with the way this Bill was drafted.  They had three recommendations:  (i) every political party must distribute 20% of its tickets to women; (ii) even in the current form, reservation should not exceed 20% of seats; and (iii) there should be a quota for women belonging to OBCs and minorities. The Standing committee considered two other methods of increasing representation.  One suggestion (part of election commission recommendations) was to requite political parties to nominate women for a minimum percentage of seats.  The committee felt that parties could bypass the spirit of the law by nominating women to losing seats.  The second recommendation was to create dual member constituencies, with women filling one of the two seats from those constituencies.  The Committee believed that this move could “result in women being reduced to a subservient status, which will defeat the very purpose of the Bill”. It is interesting to note that the Committee did not reject the two recommendations of the Geeta Mukherjee Committee that are not reflected in the Bill.  The Committee concluded that the issue of reservations to Rajya Sabha and Legislative Councils needs to be examined thoroughly as the upper Houses play an equally important role under the Constitution.  Incidentally, it is not possible to reserve seats in Rajya Sabha given the current system of elections to that house (see Appendix below). On the issue of  reservations to OBC women, the Committee said that “all other issues may be considered at an appropriate time by Government without any further delay at the present time in the passage of the Bill”. Though the Bill does not have a consensus – it has been opposed by SP, RJD and JD(U) – most parties have publicly expressed their support for it.  The government will likely not find it difficult to muster two-third support in each House of Parliament were the Bill be taken up for consideration and passing.  It would be interesting to see whether the Bill is brought before Parliament in the upcoming Budget Session. Appendix: Impossibility of Reservation in Rajya Sabha Article 80of the Constitution specifies that members of state assemblies will elect Rajya Sabha MPs through single transferable vote.  This implies that the votes are first allocated to the most preferred candidate, and then to the next preferred candidate, and so on.  This system cannot accommodate the principle of reserving a certain number of seats for a particular group.  Currently, Rajya Sabha does not have reservation for SCs and STs. Therefore, any system that provides reservation in Rajya Sabha implies that the Constitution must be amended to jettison the Single Transferable Vote system.

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!

Mr. Vaghul and I at his residence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our past and present Chairpersons,
Mr. Vaghul and Mr. Ramadorai

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