Ever since the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha on March 9 this year, women have been asked rather patronisingly whether they are ready to jump into the turbulent world of electoral politics. Those who raise such questions presume that women and politics are strange bedfellows. But this is a completely wrong diagnosis. Women have been part of the Independence movement. They are an integral part of electoral politics because they have always played significant roles in mobilising voters for this or that candidate. In most of the northeastern states, women are reliable polling agents. So electoral politics is not the exclusive domain of men where women can only come in with their permission.

Of course, the way political parties in this country are organised, it would seem that women have to use extraordinary prowess to get a party ticket. We saw how the young party acolyte in the movie Rajneeti had to use her sexual dexterity for a party ticket. Cinema mirrors life, so that scene is indeed a slice of reality.

None of the political parties, including the Congress party, which spearheaded the Women’s Reservation Bill this time, has a special quota for women. The Congress party’s Mahila Congress is a sort of hencoop where women workers are confined to do their little thing. Few women make it to the highest decision-making body of the Congress — the All India Congress Committee (AICC), popularly known as the High Command. This despite the fact that the Congress is headed by one of the world’s most powerful women!

To say that women are not capable of taking the pressures of politics is a fallacy. So is the notion that after the reservation bill is passed, women would be entering a brand new domain they are not mentally and psychologically attuned to. Women have always been in the forefront of movements in Assam and the Northeast. The Naga Mothers’ Association, for instance, is instrumental in halting the blood-spill in Nagaland. This, to my mind is the highest form of political mobilisation. The meira paibis of Manipur have always led the fight against all forms of state oppression and non-state violence. So women know politics. What they need to do now is create political parties of their own, because the existing ones are not ready to make space for them.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the same flight as the Assam PCC chief, Bhubaneshwar Kalita. I asked him whether the party would be fielding more women candidates to the state Assembly, considering that the Congress party is the avant-garde of the Women’s Reservation Bill, pending in the Lok Sabha. Kalita’s reply was a predictable staccato. “Let’s see. We will have to identify capable women,” he said.

Considering we were seated poles apart, there was no time to ask him the next question, which is, “What do you mean by capable?” Implied in Kalita’s answer is the clichéd argument that it would not be possible to get women contestants from many constituencies. And even if they did contest, they might not win the elections.

In today’s political parlance, “capable” might imply many things. But primarily it means the great “oomph” factor of Indian politics, which is “winnability”. And how does one define winnability? The way politics is played today, you cannot win an election if you have no money. So, winnability actually means that a candidate has enough money to pay for the party ticket, and having got it, to spend lavishly to win votes. In Meghalaya, the moment the Bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha, many sitting MLAs said if they could not stand for elections on a reserved seat, they would set up their wives instead. That way, it would all be within the family. I suppose the case is similar with all other states.

Today, candidates invest several crores of rupees to win elections. They intend to recover the money with interest once they are in the seat of power. The question is whether women should join this murky game of money for votes or votes for money? Many would say, “Money makes politics go round, so, we cannot be naïve to believe we can fight elections without money. If men can do it, so can we.” What they mean is, “If you cannot fight them, join them.” But this is hardly a good argument, for women would then only be replicating the politics of patriarchy, which is all about money, muscle and mafia.

Should women bring into politics the abrasive nature of the beast? If they do so, they would only be men in a woman’s body. The idea behind the Bill is to bring a sanitising effect in Parliament and state Assemblies. Politics must be rescued from the decadence that besets it today. This is a challenge that women ought to take up. But men would point to the likes of Mayavati and say, “Is she a paragon of virtuous politics or its antithesis?” Here I would say, Mayavati is not a simple case of black and white. She represents a complex bind of caste striving to claim the hallowed space occupied by an elite social class — a space denied to her kind for centuries.

Mayavati is claiming retributive justice with a vengeance. People might hate her but they cannot ignore her because in today’s coalition politics she makes eminent political sense. This is not to condone her vulgarly displayed wealth acquisition project but merely to give us a sense of what happens when a hungry person gets to sit in the granary.

For decades, men have defined the rules of politics. Even the Election Commission, with all its bravado, has failed to check election extravaganza. Today, electoral politics has no rules. Every rule in the book is broken. With the mafia taking control of the election processes in several parts of this country, women might feel the heat if they decide to give a fight. That is, if they are willing to throw their hat in the ring even before the Bill becomes a reality. Women should now become defiant and get into electoral politics with or without the Bill. Can they do it? Why can’t they when they have spent all their childhood and adult life fighting to claim their rightful space within the family and society. Politics is just another level in this hierarchy of rights.

There are critics who say that women cannot be too different from men when they get into politics. They point to the fact that 68 per cent of women in Parliament today are crorepatis. And when the same critics ponder if illiterate women can handle politics, the counter question is why are such arguments not advanced when it comes to men? Don’t we have male parliamentarians who are aangutha chhaps (thumb impressionists)? So why should an illiterate woman MP be an embarrassment? Why should there be a different set of rules for men and women in politics?

Coming back to Assam, which is soon heading for the polls, the present strength of the Assembly is 126 MLAs. Thirty-three per cent reservation would mean 42 seats for women. At present, women constitute only four per cent of the Assembly strength. The Assam Congress has been labouring with the argument that there is shortage of suitable women candidates. This argument no longer washes with the large constituency of women. So should women wait for reservation? Have women not always been ready for freedom, for liberation?