Political empowerment and Tribal Women Of Manipur
- Part 12 -

Dr. Benjamin Gangmei *

This state of affairs and tendency coupled with lack of information among the majority of women have resulted into low level of socio-political awareness in patriachal value-bound tribal society of Manipur. And then what does this society do to women is that it gives heavy domestic obligation to women.

While many of the present day tribal women are not subject to domestic pressures or obligations, they are not fully free from their tendency of dependency on men for the exercise of their political rights. This is one of the important factors which is responsible for lack of women leadership in active politics and in pursuit of women political rights in tribal society.

It may, therefore, be stated that Manipur tribal women have not been clamouring for their political rights and opportunities as to the extent they have been for socio-economic rights like rights of inheritance, claim for women priesthood, etc. In other words, there has been no spate in their struggle for women political empowerment.

So, it is yet to take a proper shape of initiative for the purpose particularly at the grass-root level institutions of both statutory and other traditional institutions such as Village Authorities, traditional intermediary or clan councils, etc. These institutions are appropriate for initial women's participation in political decision-making process.

Change in these traditional political institutions is important for the process of political empowerment. For process of change in statutory bodies may not automatically affect them and thereby empowerment process may remain incomplete in tribal society.

The Upper House of Indian Parliament has passed Women's reservation Bill on the 9th March 2010. It is a turning point in the quest for gender equality. If the Lower House passes Bill, women are entitled to 33% reservation in the Lower House of Indian Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies.

The reservation will politically benefit even the matrilineal tribal societies like the Garos, the Khasis, etc., in North-East India. There is matriliny but no matriachy in their societies. So, women enjoy no "unfettered" decision-making power within the family, much less in society and politics."

In these matrilineal societies like the Khasis women are "doubly discriminated : she has to fend herself and also bring up her children." And being no matriachal societies women, are excluded from the participation in traditional political institutions and thereby discriminated them in political matter. Menfolk considers the traditional institutions the "last male bastions." But certainly the women's reservation policy will affect discriminative societies.

According to Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, "achieving equality for women is not only a laudable goal and a human right. It is also good economics, helps deeper democracy and enables genuine long-term stability."

This comment is significant in view of women political empowerment progressing in India and findings of research conducted on women political engagement. While the comment seems to hold good for economic and human right considerations, politically, it is not in line with the findings of the research.

Even though the socio-economic backgrounds are not same, the findings gained from the research conducted on 10,000 women of ten Latin American countries which women quota system and non-quota-based seven countries, are significant in the study of prospects of women's reservation system in India and elsewhere.

From Uppsala University, Par Zetterberg conducted research on the impact of quota system found that there was no positive impact on women's political engagement, knowledge, activities or on their political contacts and activities. This is the different picture from the findings of social science researchers who conducted study on the implementation of quotas in Panchayats across India.

For the researchers contended that "quotas increase self-esteem, confidence and motivation of women and strengthen women's contacts with their political representatives, increasing their political empowerment." But Zetterberg's findings contradict theirs and he opined that perhaps some scholars are "too quick in drawing conclusions about attitudinal and behavioural effects of gender quotas."

The probable reasons, to cite some of them, may be that like in India quota movement was engineered by elite women from different political parties in countries like Argentina in 1991.

In the process, according to Zetterberg, sections of women may have questioned Government's "commitment to gender equality" but not perceived quotas "as genuinely empowering." And "gender quotas have not interfered with the centralised and informal nomination procedures in Latin America in which party leaders often handpick candidate" and the likeliness is that women who are close to party leaders are selected rather than "women with strong popular support."

As a result, little change occurred "in an unfair system." Similar impact of quotas may fall on some weaker section of women particularly OBC, Muslim, Dalit, Adivasi women, etc. There is likeliness that these sections of women may not put up their candidates.

The "positive" of gender quotas are then effective responses to socio-economics problems. Such prospects of quotas are included in the findings of US research conducted on women political representatives. So, in the United States of America quotas made "big impact on the extent to which women's interests are represented in legislature" and legislatures "are sympathetic to concerns of disadvantaged groups."

Female legislator are "more likely than male legislators to heed concerns of constituents." They also plan more for their successors than male representatives. So the findings of the two researches gave different pictures as the impacts of women's reservation system in different societies.

The success of political initiative (women empowerment) is not only possible with efficacious system, but it also depends upon effective environment. Yet the latter ultimately determines the initiative for its success or failure.

Concluded....