Populism, parliament, and performance

SHIRIN M. RAI and CAROLE SPARY

IN our book, Performing Representation,1 we set out to answer some theoretical and empirical questions about gender and representation through examining the role of women MPs in the Indian parliament. By locating the institution in its history, we also sought to answer the question about its representativeness. To do so, we reviewed and analysed the routes – sociological as well as electoral – women take to get to parliament and what they can do once they get to parliament. We examined their performances in parliamentary debates, in the committee system and as development agents for their constituencies. We also analysed how institutional norms need to shift if women MPs participation in parliamentary politics is to be sustainable. In this article, we reflect on our findings and on the current political landscape and how it affects gendered representation in Indian parliamentary politics.

In our book we found that women’s exclusion or marginalization in parliamentary politics is both formal and informal – it starts within the home with expectations of gendered behaviour norms and disciplining of women through the threat of or infliction of violence against women in public spaces – violence which is both physical and discursive. We also noted that the role of family becomes important in ways that are not often analysed – not only promoting women’s careers but also providing everyday support to enable women to pursue their careers in politics and ensuring some protection against media trolling and violence (Chapter 2).2 Structural violence then generates particular modes of political performance which are visible not just outside parliament but inside too.

We noticed that women are overlooked in the allocation of winnable seats for elections (Chapter 3), in speaking in parliamentary debates (Chapter 5), and in membership of important parliamentary committees (Chapter 6). Our research also showed that, despite the rigours of political life, most women we interviewed (we interviewed over 50 MPs, some multiple times) enjoyed being MPs; they wanted to continue to serve their constituencies and to participate in policy debates in parliament. Of course, we also found that the political ideologies that they ascribed to matter greatly, which means that the formulations of women’s interests and their relationship to the state and nation are differentially mobilized by individual political actors (women MPs) and by political parties. Our research also revealed that their habitus – class, caste, education, and family connections – mitigate or militate against their performative labour in parliament and their constituency work (Chapter 4).3

Our institutional analysis suggested that political parties are one of the most important actors in addressing women’s representation in political institutions and that they are failing women. Further, we argued that institutional constraints do not always allow women MPs to pursue a woman-friendly politics; parliament itself is a gendered institution that needs reform for women to be able to participate fully and equally in its functioning.4

In our interviews we heard stories of how women seek to collaborate over specific gender issues such as the Women’s Reservation Bill, and the challenges faced in doing so. While Barnes, in her study of Argentinian women MPs, is optimistic that collaboration will become institutionalized over time,5 we are less sanguine about this. Unless women assume and perform leadership role in many political parties and unless political parties in India, especially in the context of its first past the post system, open up to cross-party work more generally, we fear that cross-party collaboration will not be institutionalized.

Women MPs’ subjectivation also matters; our interviewees were largely confident, educated, and articulate and they tried to generate a role for themselves as ‘good MPs’. However, we also found that women MPs, contrary to received wisdom, are not less corrupt or more sensitive to the needs of their constituents, although reputational damage related to money is greater for women than male MPs. The media and the effectiveness of women MPs is then linked in complex ways.

Finally, although we showed how the parliament is a deeply gendered institution which does not support women MPs equal participation in parliamentary work, we argued that the ‘decline of parliament’ thesis, so prevalent in public discourse, was dangerous, as the parliament is a critically important mitigation to the increasing executive power and indeed the personalization of power of the Prime Minister. This also means that the parliament needs to be put at the centre of our political analysis to reimagine its role as a gender-sensitive institution that plays its part in holding the executive accountable; not writing it off is critical for the health of Indian democracy.

If these were the key themes of our book, do they hold up in the changed circumstances of Indian politics since the massive majority of the Modi government’s second term? We reflect on this question below after reviewing two significant developments since our book was published in 2019. The first is the 2019 elections and the large majority of the BJP, its authoritarian approach to institutional functioning, which has weakened the role of parliament in holding the government to account. We have also seen, on the one hand, an assertion of the states’ political clout, and on the other, a systematic interference in state politics by the centre.

And the second is, of course, the pandemic and its human and economic consequences and how these have been mobilized by the government and the party in government to reshape the narrative about the nation, nationhood and citizenship to marginalized sections of Indian society and polity. In both instances, this muscular nationalism affects the working of all political institutions including the parliament, which is indeed being reshaped materially through new spaces and buildings.

Large majorities and populist politics tend to undermine the place of parliaments in political systems. When compounded by crises such as Covid-19, the urgency of remedial measures is often used to further strengthen the executive. This makes the need for a strong parliament even more important. Sadly, since 2019, the status of parliament under Modi’s second term has resulted in bulldozing legislation, which has led to poor quality of debates in parliament and undermined the committees’ scrutiny of legislation and, as in the revocation of Article 370, one party’s ideological agenda has driven sensitive national legislation with impunity.

The pandemic and its painful human and economic consequences have been mobilized by the government and the party in government to reshape the narrative about the nation, nationhood and citizenship to marginalize sections of Indian society and polity. Such muscular nationalism has adversely affected the workings of parliament. Commenting on this undermining of parliament’s deliberative and accountability role, MPs such as Mahua Moitra, have called this tendency a growing trend of fascism in the country.6 This has also reignited the ‘decline of parliament’ debate. In the following sections, we reflect on how this executive concentration of power is affecting gendered practices in parliament.

Performing Representation argued that numbers of women in parliament still matter, even if multiple other institutional dimensions and dynamics covered in the book affect the meaningful participation of larger numbers of women once elected to parliament. Our institutional focus sought to show how women’s minority presence is even further stretched when considering intersecting identities, as well as party and partisan loyalties and party discipline, in and outside of the House. In focusing on how women reach parliament, we pointed to the role of party gatekeepers, among others, in limiting the opportunities for women’s access to parliament by limiting their nomination as candidates in elections.

Not much appears to have changed in this regard. India marks 75 years of Independence in 2022. 2021 marked the 25th anniversary of the Women’s Reservation Bill, first attempted in 1996. As has been well documented, the 2010 attempt at passing the Women’s Reservation Bill took place at a time of fraught coalition politics. Since 2014, and with two successive single-party majorities, the BJP-led government has had multiple opportunities to pass the bill but has often cited the desire to achieve consensus on the bill. This appeal to consensus is somewhat disingenuous, given its disregard of any such consensus on other major legislation such as the farm laws of 2020 or the revocation of Article 370 of the Constitution, which resulted in major constitutional ramifications, and provoked widespread protests around the country.

In other words, the BJP government has shown willingness to pass highly unpopular and controversial legislation with the potential to impact both the formal constitution as well as the ‘idea of India’, without consensus but not when it comes to the Reservation Bill. We are of course, not recommending that the Reservation Bill is forced through parliament, but that consensus building has not been the strong suit of this government and should be seen for what it is – a delaying tactic for passing this bill, which could fundamentally change the gendered profile of parliament.

In a recent interview with a national newspaper, former MP Brinda Karat remarked ‘there are cultural reasons also within the BJP’s ideology which baulks at bringing legislation as a right for women to be at least one-third. So, I say today, it’s good you have 78 women, it’s the highest Indian Lok Sabha has ever had, but it’s still just 14.4 per cent. If you would have the bill, there would be 180 women in the Lok Sabha. So where are the missing women? And why are they missing?’7

Prime Minister Modi’s second successive general election victory in May 2019 did not radically increase the proportion of women in parliament, and reduced the presence of women in ministerial positions, though India did see its first woman Finance Minister with the appointment of Nirmala Sitharaman. Impatient with the lack of progress in legislated gender quotas, political parties such as the Trinamool Congress, the Biju Janata Dal, and the Congress party have brought forth their own voluntary party quotas to nominate a certain percentage of women candidates, keen as parties are to perform representative claims to an increasingly powerful and recognized group of voters, women. The latter have demonstrated an increasing tendency to turn out in greater proportion than before, and to vote differently to men, especially in some states, and within some social categories.

The more recent party gender quotas have been predominantly attempted by the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal in multiple elections, the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha in the Lok Sabha 2019 election, and most recently the Congress party in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections of 2022.

One of the arguments we make in Performing Representation relates to the skewed distribution of women MPs allocated to parliamentary committees. While there was a tendency to assign very few to no women MPs to some of the relatively more powerful committees, they were found to be in a majority in the parliament’s joint Committee for the Empowerment of Women. We reflected on whether parties had assumed that women had ‘situated knowledge’ to aid them in this role, or because it was seen as ‘women’s work’. We also observed that many of the major bills that held women’s empowerment as an objective, tended to be assigned to the committees associated with their ministerial jurisdiction rather than to the Committee for the Empowerment of Women. While this ensured that both men and women MPs were involved in scrutinizing those bills, it left the CEW with limited influence on legislation.

There is also the risk that committees with very few women as members might be tasked with scrutinizing draft legislation that would significantly impact women. A case in point is that the Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth, and Sports was recently tasked to review draft legislation to raise the marriageable age of girls, but only one woman MP was part of the committee (Sushmita Dev). Several women MPs commented that more women should be included in the committee reviewing the bill and asked the Rajya Sabha chairperson to include more women in the deliberations.8

Committee deliberation can improve the representativeness of the legislation, and citizens may feel more represented because of both the process and the outcome. This points to the inextricable links between democratic functioning and gender inclusivity. Parliamentary initiatives that seek to improve gender-inclusivity in committees, whether in terms of presence or interests, risk becoming window-dressing if the broader democratic functioning of institutional mechanisms and bodies like parliamentary committees is undermined. In turn, efforts to restore democratic functioning could more systematically integrate demands for gender-inclusivity which are an integral part of democratic functioning, rather than merely restoring the status quo ante.

Increasingly, the power and influence of committees in the Indian parliament has come under scrutiny because of the reluctance of the two successive Modi governments to refer bills to committees for review. It was estimated that only a quarter of bills were referred in Modi’s first term, 2014-2019, compared to much higher proportions during the previous two successive UPA governments.9 Granted, committee referral can be used as an obfuscatory tactic to delay the passage of what might be already very well worked out legislation, especially if the legislation in question has been reviewed before, and the circumstances have largely not changed in the intervening period.10 But committee deliberation is a way to work through the implications of complex legislation for different groups affected, and to develop broader consensus and trust in that legislation and the process.11

Opposition women MPs have been vocal in opposing the government in parliament. We have already referred to Moitra’s speech. Disruptions to chamber debates are also a frequently used method to vocalize opposition in the Indian parliament. When the executive dominates the legislative agenda, MPs often turn to disruption particularly if the executive makes little space for deliberation and scrutiny of draft legislation or to make their voice heard and confront the government on major political issues. For many years, the Indian parliament has taken a reasonably accommodative approach to such disruptions12, but has in some notable cases suspended members from the sitting of the House, and even forcibly removed them (recall the recalcitrant opposition to the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha
in March 2010, despite bipartisan consensus).

In recent years, suspension has become more common. But controversially, at the start of the Winter 2021 session, the government successfully moved a motion to suspend 12 Members of the Rajya Sabha for disruptive behaviour in the chamber during an incident towards the end of the previous, Monsoon 2021 session which included physical altercations. As does much legislative disruption, the incident split public and political opinion, with one narrative blaming the government for bulldozing legislation through parliament and stifling opposition voice, and another criticizing the lack of decorum in the chamber and waste of public money in running the parliament.

Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi was one of the 12 Rajya Sabha MPs suspended. She responded to the suspension order by resigning from her recent appointment as host of a parliamentary channel show where she was due to interview other women MPs about their journey to becoming parliamentarians.13 In her resignation letter, she claimed responsibility for speaking for, and showing solidarity with, the interests of the other women parliamentarians who had been suspended. She joined other suspended MPs in a dharna within the parliamentary precinct in the traditional spot – in front of the Gandhi statue.

Trinamool Congress MP Dola Sen was also among those suspended for the rest of the Winter 2021 session and had been earlier suspended for a day during the Monsoon 2021 session for disrupting parliament over allegations the Indian government had used Pegasus software to monitor opposition politicians. In an interview about her earlier suspension, she argued: ‘The parliament and the assembly is the place to hear the opposition. If the democracy of opposition is curtailed to an extreme extent, the opposition has the right to shout slogan protesting this undemocratic attitude’.14 Sen’s interviewer, senior journalist Sunetra Choudhury, remarked to Sen that after covering parliament for many years, she was struck by hearing a woman’s, rather than a man’s, voice loudly protesting in the chamber.

Sen commented on the performative labour involved in disruption, attributing her loud voice to her parents and her spirit to her party leader, but also acknowledging her background as a trade unionist, which has equipped her with the skills and experience to make her voice heard. Thus, even though Indian women MPs have historically been criticized as not speaking up in parliament, we see three opposition women MPs – Moitra in the Lok Sabha, and Chaturvedi and Sen in the Rajya Sabha, bringing their respective positions, clout, skills, and experience to the chamber to perform democratic opposition in various ways.

Since the publication of Performing Representation, India experienced (together with countries around the globe) the Covid-19 pandemic, which, as noted above, produced a sense of crisis and urgency in the country, with thousands dying and the economy suffering. It is important to understand how the crisis has been mobilized for political purposes, and how was parliament affected by the pandemic in its everyday functioning?

The Inter-Parliamentary Union’s guide on Covid-19 and gender in parliaments, for example, points to questions of whether women parliamentarians are enabled to participate and lead, and whether gender is mainstreamed, in parliamentary decision-making on the pandemic; whether policy and legislation to deal with Covid-19, and its oversight, is gender-responsive; whether adaptations to parliamentary working, for both MPs and parliamentary staff, during the pandemic are gender-sensitive; and how MPs and parliaments can raise awareness about the gendered impact of the pandemic and initiatives to address this impact.15

It is well documented that the pandemic disproportionately affected women, who work in the health care, domestic work and tourism sectors.

‘In India, 17 million women lost their jobs in April 2020, raising unemployment among women by 15% from a pre-lockdown level of 18%. These women are also 23.5% less likely to be re-employed compared to men in the post-lockdown phase (Dutta 2021). The Institute of Social Studies Trust (2021) found that among those who could retain their jobs, around 83% of women workers faced a severe drop in income, 66% experienced an increase in unpaid care work, even though middle-class women were better able to cope by buying in labour of other women.’16

We also know that the pandemic was weaponized against the Shaheen Bagh activists. Research at the global level has also sought to answer whether women leaders were somehow more effective at responding to the pandemic, particularly the public health emergency, including subnational women leaders in India.17 Some stories about panchayat women members emerged to suggest that they coped well during the pandemic18 but none that we could find about women MPs. We also found no research on whether women MPs were disproportionately affected by the pandemic because of their care responsibilities and lack of domestic help during the pandemic.

As we outlined in our book, family is a great source of support for women MPs. How did the lockdowns affect family networks and were women MPs left to cope with domestic work and their parliamentary responsibilities such that their constituency and parliamentary work was adversely affected? Further, was the gendered impact of the pandemic reported upon in parliament during the pandemic? Early in the pandemic, outside of parliament, women active in multiple levels of government, public service and community work in Maharashtra had raised concerns of rising domestic violence in the context of lockdown, creating a ‘shadow pandemic’ according to one senior woman MP.19

Within parliament, the Committee on Empowerment of Women observed that the ‘Covid crisis has disproportionately affected girls, especially their education…[and recommended]…concerted and urgent efforts to mobilize the return of girls students to schools and sustain their regular attendance’.20 In the Ministry of Education’s submission to the committee they had expressed concern that the pandemic would ‘reverse the gains’ made in girls’ education and that girls’ often had less digital access to remote learning and less physical access as a result of closure of hostels.21 But more research needs to be done on these questions, specifically how the gendered impact of the pandemic has played out in and through parliament.

The Indian parliament is an important institution at the centre of the representative claims of Indian democracy. Despite many attacks on its position within the political system, it has survived and even thrived. However, the parliament is also a gendered institution that does not allow women to participate in its functioning equally with men. As our work showed, this marginalization does not mean that women do not participate in the everyday work of parliament, but perhaps they cannot find the space to do so to the best of their abilities. The parliament is at a crossroads – the power of the executive, its muscular nationalism and right wing ideology have pushed many debates about gender equality to the sidelines. We need to be alert to this dangerous reshaping of the political landscape and its consequences for democratic functioning of India’s political institutions.

Footnotes:

1. S.M. Rai, C. Spary, Performing Representation: Women Members in the Indian Parliament. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2019.

2. See also A. Basu, ‘Women, Dynasties and Democracy in India’, in K. Chandra (ed.), Democratic Dynasties: State, Party and Family in Contemporary Indian Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016; S.M. Rai, ‘The Politics of Access: Narratives of Women MPs in the Indian Parliament’, Political Studies 60 (1), 2012, pp. 195-212.

3. P. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990.

4. S. Palmieri, Gender-Sensitive Parliaments: A Global Review of Good Practice. Inter-Parliamentary Union, Geneva, 2011; S. Childs, The Good Parliament. University of Bristol, Bristol, 2016.

5. T.D. Barnes, Gendering Legislative Behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016.

6. G. Pandey, ‘Indian MP Mahua Moitra’s “Rising Fascism” Speech Wins Plaudits’, BBC News, 26 June 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-48755554

7. S. Choudhury, ‘CPM’s Brinda Karat Underscores Significance of Women’s Reservation Bill in Conversation With HT’, 11 September 2021. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/cpms-brinda-karat-underscores-significance-of-women-s-reservation-bill-in-convers
ation-with-ht-101631350987112.html

8. M. Sharma, ‘Parliamentary Panel of 1 woman, 30 Male MPs to Review Bill to Raise Legal Marriage Age for Women’, 2 January 2022. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/parliamentary-panel-1-woman-30-men-review-bill-raise-marriage-age-women-1895131-2022-01-02; India Today, ‘Priyanka Chaturvedi Demands More Inclusive Panel to Review Legal Marriage Age for Women’, 3 January 2022. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/priyanka-chaturvedi-parliament-committee-legal-age-of-marriage-women-1895371-2022-01-03

9. C. Roy, ‘An Expert Explains: Roles and Limitations of Select Committees, Parliamentary Panels’, Indian Express, 22 September 2020, https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/an-expert-explains-roles-limitations-of-select-committees-and-other-parliamentary-panels-6604092/

10. A former Lok Sabha Secretary-General also recently noted that reform to parliamentary committees was ‘long overdue’. (PDT Achary, The Wire, 6 September 2016. https://thewire.in/government/parliamentary-standing-committees).

11. P.B. Mehta, Indian Express, 22 September 2020. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/parliament-monsoon-session-farm-bills-modi-govt-railroading-the-bill-6605281/

12. C. Spary & R. Garimella, ‘Managing Disruptions in the Indian Parliament: Interview With Mr Ravindra Garimella, Lok Sabha Secretariat, Parliament of India’, Democratization 20(3), 2013, pp. 539-552. DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2013.786549

13. Indian Express, ‘Suspended Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi Steps Down as Sansad TV Show Host’, 6 December 2021. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/suspended-shiv-sena-rajya-sabha-mp-priyanka-chaturvedi-sansad-tv-7657180/

14. S. Choudhury, ‘The Parliament Protester’, On the Record, 6 August 2021. https://on-the-record.simplecast.com/episodes/the-parliament-protester-8shdV0_C

15. IPU, ‘Gender and COVID-19: A Guide for Parliaments’, Inter-Parliamentary Union, Geneva, (n.d.). https://www.ipu.org/gender-and-covid-19-guidance-note-parliaments

16. R. Kaur and S.M. Rai, ‘Covid-19, Care, and Carelessness’, Countercurrents, 17 June 2021. https://countercurrents.org/2021/06/covid-19-care-and-carelessness/

17. J. Piscopo and M. Och, ‘Protecting Public Health in Adverse Circumstances: Subnational Women Leaders and Feminist policymaking During Covid-19’, Gender & Development 29(2-3), 2021, pp. 547-568.

18. D. Goswami, ‘Elected Women Leaders of Gram Panchayats: Critical Roles in Covid-19 Response’, India Water Portal, 17 June 2020. https://www.indiawaterportal.org/articles/elected-women-leaders-gram-panchayats-critical-roles-covid-19-response

19. K. Iyer, ‘Maharashtra Lockdown: Women Politicians Begin to Discuss the “Shadow Pandemic”.’ 2020. https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/women-politicians-begin-to-discuss-the-shadow-pandemic-6414187/

20. Committee on Empowerment of Women, Empowerment of Women Through Education with Special Reference to ‘Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao Scheme’. 17th Lok Sabha, Fifth Report, December 2021, Lok Sabha Secretariat, New Delhi, 2021, p 61.

21. Ibid., p 39.