Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam —
“Nari Shakti” Ya “Neta Shakti”? — The Greatest Political Heist Dressed as Women’s Empowerment An Opposition Party’s Sarcastic Salute to the BJP’s Master Stroke The Bill That Took 27 Years to “Care” About Women Let us begin with a standing ovation. Truly. A slow, deliberate, sarcastic clap — the kind reserved for a magician who pulls a rabbit out of a hat and expects us to forget that they hid the rabbit there themselves. The Women’s Reservation Bill was first introduced in Parliament all the way back in 1996, by the H.D. Deve Gowda government. It lapsed. It was reintroduced. It lapsed again. The bill lapsed not once but five times between 1998 and 2003 alone. In total, six previous attempts at a Women’s Reservation Bill were unsuccessfully waged between 1996 and 2008. And then — on a perfectly timed morning, in a brand-new Parliament building, with cameras rolling and saffron flags flying — the BJP discovered, after 27 years, that women exist and de...