It’s no less a big shocker when the International Women’s Day is to be celebrated on Tuesday! In an indicator of women participation in State legislatures, Odisha figured the 7th poorest in the country among 31 States. Only 7 per cent legislators are women in the Odisha Assembly.
This revelation in ‘Women and Men in India-2015’ is certainly a cause for unease. But Odisha has some cheering news on this gloomy backdrop since it has a better record than States like Kerala and Karnataka, where the women participation in legislatures is around 5 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively. However, in the BIMARU States (Bihar, Jharkhand, MP, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and UP) the rate is higher ranging from 9 per cent to 14 per cent.
When around 44 per cent of the Odisha Assembly constituencies have no women contestants at all, the irony is owing to a 50-per cent reservation for women in panchayats, a whopping 53,396 elected representatives of the total 1,00,352 members are women.
Odisha echoes a precarious scenario because even women electors in the State root for men candidates and vote out women contestants quite comprehensively despite a record turnout of women voters in the last Assembly elections. An analysis shows even strong women candidates across the political spectrum have bitten the dust. Senior BJP leader Surama Padhy and the BJD’s Hema Gamang failed to carry through as they lost to men contestants.
Significantly, when a whopping 75 per cent women electors voted in the 2014 Odisha elections vis-a-vis a total turnout of 74 per cent, shockingly 80 per cent of the women contestants had lost even their deposits -- means four of every five women candidates lost quite comprehensively. The reason: The State’s major political parties do more of a lip service on women empowerment as they failed to groom up women winners.
Sample this. While the BJD, which was riding on the Naveen Patnaik popularity, fielded a mere 14 women, Mayawati’s BSP, a letter pad party in Odisha, emerged the dark horse with 12 women contestants. And major national parties like the BJP and the Congress fielded only 11 and eight women contestants, respectively. However, none of the women BJD candidates forfeited deposits whereas all of the BSP did.
Significantly, when in 2014-15 the State saw the fourth-most registration of cases under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Test (PCPNDT) Act in the country, grave women issues like increased women trafficking, rising cases of child rape and POSCO Act, sanitation and maternal mortality were hardly debated full-fledged in the Assembly in recent times.
Not only politics, the Women-Men in India-2015 report reveals the Orissa High Court has only one woman judge compared to 21 men justices.