Women's reservation and Lok Sabha expansion: Balanced development could free us of a zero-sum game

That Act of 2023 amended the Constitution to reserve 33% of seats in Parliament and state assemblies for women. It was to be done after delimitation, a process by which electoral constituencies would be redrawn based on population.

Now the Centre has made two big legislative moves—one to enlarge the Lok Sabha’s numeric strength and another to set up a commission that would carve up India’s electoral map afresh and could use population data from an earlier census than envisaged. As expected, this has stoked latent but ever-present fears among southern states.

A third of all lawmakers being women is not a bone of contention. What has evoked anxiety is the proposed amendment to Article 81 of the Constitution that would raise the cap on Lok Sabha seats to 850.

Though the final number would be determined by the delimitation commission (under a separate bill), what is at stake is how an increase from the current 550-seat cap will be apportioned among states. The bill does not specify an exact seat count or a fixed percentage change. And that is the nub of the controversy.

Admittedly, an electoral map frozen since 1976 goes against a basic tenet of representative democracy. Given the vast population divergences since then, a Member of Parliament from Bihar, for instance, represents many more citizens than one from, say, Kerala.

This needs to change. All citizens should be equally represented, regardless of where they reside. But why the women’s quota must be linked to this politically fraught process is unclear.

In any case, India’s southern states fear that a carve-up on the basis of 2011 census data would penalize them, reducing their share of voice in Parliament while raising that of more populous states, for having implemented the Centre’s policy over decades aimed at curbing population growth.

A power skew between the relatively prosperous south and less developed north could well worsen. The Centre has sought to assure all concerned that each state’s seats would rise equally, thus keeping the same ratio.

Still, a north-south divide seems inescapable, as the final outcome may leave neither satisfied. If the Lok Sabha seat ratio shifts, southern states may be left chafing at losing influence for development models that kept population growth in control. If it is held constant, northern states might feel deprived of their rightful say in national affairs. One way or another, this looks like a zero-sum game.

Tax revenue sharing has already been contentious, with richer states bearing a disproportionate burden for poorer ones. Part of the angst of southern states is a perceived disconnect between their economic and political clout; given the former, they wield too little of the latter.

For decades now, the south has broadly outpaced the north on both economic and social indicators. Now that this has happened, the north needs to catch up. In general, we need better balanced development across all regions. Prosperity should be evenly spread for gaps in political influence not to stoke regional dissent.

How the delimitation issue plays out in the political arena has the country’s attention. Perhaps it will push us to think about how our democracy works. But we should also apply our minds to the problem of the Indian economy’s uneven emergence.