Women Reservation Bill

Indian parliament starts the process of reserving 33% seats to women in parliament today. I think its a fair step though I do think the bill could have been structured better.

My main grouse which I share with many others is against the bill is the concept of rotating seats. As columnists have pointed out it shortchanges the electorate. With the seats being rotated there is not much incentive for the MP to work as hard for the constituency and this holds for both men and women. A better idea might have been to have some sort of a time frame - say reservation of the seat for 20 years.
Another and I think a better idea would have been to create additional seats for women. So maybe parliament could have increased its capacity to say 700 and have additional 200 seats for women. These seats could have covered 2 existing seats, so each person votes for 2 seats during parliament election, 1 the regular seat and 1 the women seat. A bit complicated to explain to electorates but managing that is what the political parties are there for.
The 2nd major argument against this reservation is that it will promote family rule since parties will now give these tickets to spouses, siblings of existing leaders, there not being enough women leaders on their own about. The argument in my view is misleading. We already have family rule - women or no women. Most regional parties are family owned. Of the national parties Congress is Gandhi-Nehru owned and while BJP doesn't have a single family, plenty of its leaders give tickets to family. Only communists seem a bit fair here to give credit where its due.
What this reservation will do its to create a class of women parliamentarians. The same way as Panchaytiraj system saw plenty of proxy male rule, the fact remain some women will find their own feet and become leaders on their own right in due course. Further urbanization will see mega cities becoming electorally important. Look at Bengaluru's importance to Karnataka election now. Soon Mumbai, Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad etc will also become like that. And young urban voters might just about allow genuine women candidates to flourish - provided of course that rotation of seat doesn't prevent them from building bonds with constituents.
The 3rd argument being made is for quota within quota. I think that is a dangerous idea. What I propose is that if there is a rotation let the existing quota system remain. So if a reserved seat comes under women quota, well women from reserved communities can contest. Why is say this is becomes if there is genuine caste based oppression - there is in significant parts of the nation- that means its very hard for a person from those castes to come up as a leader due to social discrimination and/or denial of opportunities. This means that a far significant proportions of these quota within quota candidates will actually be women from households of caste based political party leaders. No wonder that almost all the opponents of bill based on quota within quota demand are caste based politicians.
I think its an idea whose time has come. We need more women to occupy positions of power. Somewhere though I hope this measure will not be needed after about 50 years and then we will go back to a reservation less society because non will be needed.