.. Reservations have a strong element of artificial, unmerited concessions. This will become more accentuated when put in practice. As it is, a very large majority of women in positions of power today found their way into politics through parents, husbands and fathers-in-law and boyfriends. Sonia Gandhi, Jayalalitha, Rabri Devi and Meera Kumar are names that come to mind at once. This is not the way to alleviate the status of women. It will benefit a minuscule minority of women belonging to privileged classes. Women better qualified will not get a berth because they were not born in the right family or married the wrong husband. The vast majority (over 90%) of women will continue to remain domestic drudges. Incidence of female foeticides, discrimination against girls in nutrition, health care, education and employment will continue! Besides women will continue to be maltreated; husbands will go on bashing up their wives who stand up to them and widows continue to be regarded outcastes. In short, having more women in Parliament and State legislatures will be no more than an eyewash.

 In any event if the general consensus is that there should be more women in decision-making bodies, let us go about it in a methodical way. Let us examine how women members of panchayats, zilla parishads and municipalities are faring Are they still carrying our orders of their husbands, as is the general impression? Or have they learnt to make independent decisions? It is from the grass-root levels we will be able to build up a corpus of women acquainted with legislative and administrative work. After a few years we should make provisions for higher representation of women in State Assemblies. And last of all in Parliament ... The obligation to field the required quota of women candidates in elections should be on political parties ... There must be an outside time limit after which neither caste nor gender should be considered, only merit should count. (Source: The Hindustan Times, 18 July, 1998)