India’s Congress party president Sonia Gandhi is unobtrusively and steadfastly blazing a trail in the international politics of South Asia and the Indian Rajya Sabha’s recent overwhelming endorsement of the Women’s Reservation Bill is fresh proof of this. The Bill is of region-wide significance on account of its implications for the political empowerment of the South Asian woman. The latter is likely to hope that the rest of South Asia would take a leaf from India and make concrete progress on the path of women’s liberation, rather than merely play lip service to it.

By virtue of the fact that Sonia Gandhi is the driving force behind the Bill, the position would need to be taken that she is making a positive contribution towards qualitatively changing the political culture of this region, which has been male-dominated and, generally speaking, not as sensitive as it should be towards the political empowerment of women. Just a few months back, India adopted a Right to Information Bill and the prime influence behind its passage into law was Sonia Gandhi.

On account of these significant contributions, the efforts by Sonia Gandhi to improve the quality of India’s democracy need to be appreciated. One measure of such improvement is the steady empowerment of vulnerable sections of society, such as women and ethnic and religious minorities, and it is clear that some improvements could be made to the lot of Indian women, now that the necessary legislation to bring about these changes, is being put in place.

It is little recognized, perhaps, that some women political leaders of South Asia have been selflessly in the forefront of improving the quality of this region’s democracies. When it comes to identifying them, the names of Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Shiekh Hasina Wajed of Bangladesh take prime position, although it needs to be mentioned that Indira Gandhi of India was almost unbeatable from the viewpoint of political skill and resourcefulness. It now behoves us to add the name of Sonia Gandhi to this small band of women political notables of South Asia.

It was just the other day that an academic ‘celebrity’ of Sri Lanka, making an address at a Colombo forum on Sri Lanka’s current political situation, mentioned appreciatively that Sri Lanka’s democracy has been, generally speaking, serving it well, some lapses notwithstanding, and that Sri Lanka was one of the first states in this region to confer franchise rights on women. In fact, this was done in Britain, only a few years before Sri Lanka did, and this is a good measure of how well Sri Lanka is faring as a democracy, it was said.

None could dispute that Sri Lankan women have been going through the motions of voting over the decades, and that this country has even had women at the helm of governance, but the lot of local women leaves very much to be desired. To begin with, although women constitute more than half of this country’s population, only a handful of women figure among law makers, and the latter too are members of what are called political families. Whether they are shouldering the cause of the empowerment of women by choice and conviction is very much open to question. We certainly cannot take comfort in the fact that we have had a couple of women political leaders and that women diligently exercise their vote. The benchmark is empowerment and if women are no more empowered than they were in the early nineteen thirties, then it needs to be conceded that democratic development, in the real sense, has evaded us thus far and that the women’s vote has not served any worthwhile purpose.

The poser may arise as to how such empowerment could be gauged. One such gauge is the physical security women and female children enjoy in this country. On this score, Sri Lanka leaves very much to be desired, if one were to be guided by the violent deaths these population sections suffer almost on a daily basis. Besides, there is the issue of rape. The barbarous violation of the dignity of women continues apace in this country and it is open to question whether the murderers and rapists, for example, are being effectively brought to justice. This columnist would be overjoyed to have some input on these issues from the minister charged with overlooking the well being of the women and children of this country.

Sri Lanka’s case serves to highlight the fact that mere pro-women legislation would be of little avail if such laws are not implemented in earnest. This returns us to the significance of the Indian legislation. With one third of the seats in the principal law-making bodies going to women, the Indian woman will be in a considerable position to influence the framing and implementation of legislation. They could translate their numbers into real power and this is the crunch point as regards the Indian success.

However, it is up to the women themselves to ensure that all their sections are represented in the legislatures of the land. They would need to guarantee that no section is left out of law-making fora on caste and ethnic considerations, for instance. Therefore, minorities within the larger ‘minority’ would need to be empowered too.

‘A historic step towards the emancipation of Indian womanhood’ – these are the words with which Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh greeted the passing of the Women’s Reservation Bill by the Indian Upper House of Parliament. It is up to the Indian polity to ensure that this first step does not turn out to be a faltering and wobbly initiative which would prove vulnerable to abortion.

We need to see in the Indian success much more than the initial steps towards the liberation of women. While welcoming the law for the positive impact it could have on the lot of women, we should also perceive in it the further liberalization of India’s democracy. Empowerment of the vulnerable is the yardstick for gauging how developed a democracy is and it is hoped that the rest of South Asia would see the Indian law in this light.