Fascinating stuff, what a grand step taken by India.

Yes, and I suppose this makes them much more progressive than us the issue of female representation.

An illiberal, anti-democratic measure. The article mentions the discrimination that women face in areas like healthcare: why not tackle that rather than sacrifice democratic principles?

I wondered how long it would take for that line of attack to some up here, it took longer than I thought, so well done on that.

It is frustrating when people criticize policies on the basis of trivial and unimportant concepts like democracy, isn’t it?

I know one person in India, luckily, she has a blog:

It is bad politics and I will be very shocked if it manages to do any good. Unfortunately, it does look likely to get all the required votes at the central and state level.

I am trying not to rant but really which idiot thought it was actually worth sponsoring? What is it supposed to achieve? How is it supposed to help anything? First, you are increasing the malaise of reservation. Then you are taking away all incentives to nurse constituencies. Then you are reinforcing the notion of women as decorative accessories [grrrrrrrr! graaawh! off with their heads!] who need protection, molly coddling and special treatment [more growling noises]. You have no system in place to screen out bahu-beti puppets. Really! What on earth are you trying to do?

Quotas to ensure Parliament has X amount of people by exclusing people is bad politics that foments resentment and creates tokenism.

Countries that have multi-member seats with a more proportional voting system show much faster progress, and given that this will also solve a lot of other problems, is a much better solution all around.

Well, I knew this angle would come up and it is a valid one but countries are not moving forward as the required speed so that their parliaments are reflective of the country it is supposed to represent.

It is a tough balance but I think this is a good step.

@3

The article mentions the discrimination that women face in areas like healthcare: why not tackle that rather than sacrifice democratic principles?

I’m gonna presume that with more women in the house the discrimination that you (rightly) mention will be focussed on more than at present and hopefully with better results.
Emphasis on “hopefully”.