by JAWED NAQVI
Ever thought of an all-women cabinet, not 10 per cent among predominantly male ministers, but all of them women? Imagine one. A compelling reason for this obviously ambitious exercise is that the men have messed it all up. And, women leading their teams of men have not fared much better either.
A TV ad that repeatedly distracted one from the sports fixture in progress could be credited for this unusual recourse to sublimation. “Select your team and win a prize,” it urged myriad eyeballs and ears with monotonous regularity to promote an app. Assembling cricket or football teams is, of course, old hat. Why not stitch up team, Indian or any other, with an acutely political purpose.
Despite its essential backwardness, South Asia has produced Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, her daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga, together with the two strong-willed ladies from Bangladesh who have had their shy at power. But they were mostly circumscribed by male colleagues in a heavily patriarchal format. How could it be any other way in our regressive milieus, not that the more advanced countries of the West have fared greatly better?
The current Indian prime minister is a robust man who doesn’t shy away from flexing his maleness — projecting a 56-inch chest, for instance. He reshuffled his cabinet recently and added seven more women to make a team of 11 women in a team of 77. As far as one knows this is the highest number of female ministers in an Indian cabinet, the previous high being 10 in each of Manmohan Singh’s two innings.
The Lok Sabha starts its monsoon session next week, and a reworked team should help move the focus from an unapologetic government in need of masking its massive failures. The health minister was dropped and a new information minister inducted. A strong hunch suggests a purpose — to deal with as yet critical sections of the media to refurbish the prime minister’s sagging image.
A cursory glance around the world offers encouragement and hope for women leaders particularly when men like Donald Trump have mostly messed things up. The one person preparing to leave gracefully after a long tenure of applause and charisma is a woman, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Unsurprisingly, the rare person in the saddle who draws unqualified respect and affection around the world is New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
Staunchly humanist, brilliant and caring women are also fighting at the barricades for justice and equality in several parts of the world, even as they bring dignity and brilliance to academia and parliament. Anahita Ratebzad had put Afghan women’s education at the top of the agenda before two reactionary men, Ziaul Haq and Ronald Reagan, jointly put the country back into the mediaeval age. Joe Biden’s heart supposedly bleeds for Afghanistan, but he is determined to desert its women.
Interestingly, there are more women in the lower house of parliament in Pakistan than in Lok Sabha in percentage terms, which reveals a less spoken narrative about the aloof neighbours.
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