Licence to print money cancelled

The 'Hurt' Locker

How the Women's Reservation Bill up-ends the business model of male politicians

If you are wondering what the ruckus was about in the women's quota bill passed by the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, here's the answer: men have their vulnerable spots, and the quota bill gives them a kick in the you-know-where. And you-know-where is not a word beginning with 'b', but 'w'. It's 'w' as in wallet and wealth (ill-begotten), money that's stashed away in private vaults and bank safety lockers — the "hurt" locker, so to speak. Sure, male politicians have the usual fears about female empowerment, but their underlying worry is not about lost opportunities if the bill becomes law — which is some time away. The real, and stronger, reason for their opposition to the bill is that it disrupts their business. For most of our MPs and MLAs, politics is a business, a private business in which you invest money in buying votes and then recover your costs (and more) by ripping off the public and taxpayers in every possible way. The bill, by reserving 33 per cent of parliamentary and assembly seats for women, reduces the number of "businesses" open to men dramatically — and even these businesses are at constant risk since the bill says the women-only seats will rotate. By making all seats uncertain for male politicians, effective power shifts to party bosses since they get to decide who they want in a particular constituency every five years. All the efforts you put in by buttering up the voters will go waste when the seat changes gender. Consider your predicament if you, as a businessman MP (or minister), have managed to get yourself elected from, say, Gulbarga in Karnataka. You make tonnes of money in the five years you get — assuming there is no mid-term poll. You may even do some good for your voters, but at the end of your term, if the election commission decides that your seat will go to women, your investment is at risk. You can try to get your wife or daughter a party ticket, but this puts power in the hands of your party bosses. Your licence to print money is effectively cancelled every five years and you have to bid again, possibly under benami names. Not quite an efficient way to run any business. So, the first step to understanding the sharp opposition to the women's bill is that it ruins an existing business model for politicians. If you don't believe Indian politics is about business from the ground up, ask yourself: what was the money-for-questions scandal all about? Parliament worked up a lather over that Cobrapost expose, which showed that MPs, largely from the opposition benches, were collecting money for raising questions in Parliament. That's a job they are supposed to do free, but when you are in the Opposition, it's lean season in the slush business. So you take what you get. The poor chaps lost their seats just for trying to eke out a living on spartan opposition benches. Another MP went to jail for using his passport to traffic in women and migrants. A third option for backbench MPs is to illegally lease out a portion of their official residences in Delhi to earn rent. Anything to earn a living. Now, let's move up the scale, and look at ministers. This is where politicians scale up a cottage industry into a national enterprise. You make money on every deal cleared by the ministry, every policy flip-flop. You use public sector companies as private property — stuff them with your relatives, use their guest houses for personal purposes. And it need not all be done only for private profit. The UPA used taxpayers' money to get itself re-elected. P Chidambaram used oil bonds to protect his reputation as a responsible spender. The big question: if politicians are protesting the women's bill more for economic reasons than gender ones, why is it that only the Yadavs — the Mulayams and Lalus — are raising a shindig about it? The answer: these are one-man parties, and thus least vulnerable in terms of image among women. It is easier for them to pretend that opposing the bill is about empowering OBCs. The Mayas and Mamatas are miffed purely because it's the Congress that will walk away with the glory. The lineup in favour of the women's bill largely comprised national parties. The Congress, BJP and the Left like it precisely because the bill will shift power from the party's base to the top. It is no longer possible for a strong MP to tell the party leadership to go take a walk if he doesn't get a ticket because there is a strong possibility that his seat may go to a woman. Thus, though the underlying reason is loss of business opportunity for all male MPs, it's the Yadavs who find it easy to raise the banner of revolt. The bill "hurts" every MP's cash "locker" and Swiss bank balance, but the Yadavs are carrying the can.