Is Arvind Kejriwal's AAP mainly a boy's club?
Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas, the AAP's internal lokpal and former chief of Navy staff has blasted the Aam Aadmi Party. In a detailed note, he raises concerns about the internal bickering, growing mistrust and existence of two camps, highlighting the deep rift within. Among the several concerns raised by him is the growing perception that AAP has a gender bias.
He wrote: "We need to make much efforts in the direction of becoming a genuinely gender sensitive party which will do far more than pay lip service to women empowerment and ensure that we work to improve women's visibility and participation at all levels. I personally find it difficult to defend the AAP against accusations of being mainly a boy's club, especially when we were not able to have even one woman in our team of ministers!"
Is AAP mainly a boy's club as Admiral Ramdas say? Let us examine it:
1. Name of the Party: Aam Aadmi Party
It is called Aam Aadmi Party. The party workers may assume that the word "aadmi" automatically includes every human being, that also includes women. But is it gender neutral?
In 2007, when Pratibha Patil was elected as India's first woman president, few women's rights activists launched a campaign for a new nomenclature for the top constitutional post, given the masculine gender of the Hindi term "Rashtrapati". They said, "How can you address a woman president as Rashtrapati? They wanted to make it gender neutral and suggested to call it either "Rashtradhyaksha" or "Rashtrapramukh". Though they failed to bring a change, and Pratibha Patial was always called Rashtrapati, they succeeded in at least pointing out the masculine nature of nomenclature.
Similarly, the critics of the Aam Aadmi party say, why not call it "Aam Aurat Party" or "Aam Insaan Party". Such people may be a minority, and they may fail. But they too have successfully pointed out that name of the party is not gender neutral.
2. Ministers in Delhi
For the first time since 1998, the Delhi government will be without a woman minister. Though six women were elected on AAP's ticket. None of them were found suitable to be a minister by Arvind Kejriwal.
Since Purnima Sethi, who was part of the Sahib Singh Verma-led cabinet in the late 1990s, there has been at least one woman minister in every Delhi government. Sahib Singh Verma was succeeded by Sushma Swaraj, who then passed on the baton to Sheila Dikshit in 1998.
Arvind Kejriwal's government joined the ranks of seven other states with no women ministers. These states are Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Punjab, Nagaland, Mizoram and Puducherry. While the saving grace for Nagaland, Mizoram and Puducherry is that they have no women MLAs, there is no such excuse for the other five states.
Delhi Cabinet consists of following:
1. Arvind Kejriwal
2. Manish Sisodia
3. Gopal Rai
4. Satyendar Jain
5. Jitender Singh Tomar
6. Asim Ahmed Khan
7. Sandeep Kumar
Scorecard
Total - 7
Number of women - 0
Percentage of women - 0
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's present council of ministers have 66 ministers, which consists of eight women. So, it has 12.12 per cent representation of women. 12.67 per cent members of the Manmohan Singh's council of ministers were women. It had nine women out of total 71.
3. Aam Aadmi Party's women candidates:
1. Rakhi Birla
2. Bandna Kumari
3. Saritha Singh
4. Alka Lambha
5. Pramila Tokas
6. Bhavna Gaur.
Scorecard
Total - 70
Number of women - 6
Percentage of women - 8.57 per cent
In the Delhi Assembly elections, a total of 19 women candidates have been fielded by three major political parties - the BJP, the Congress and the AAP - in the election for the 70-member House. The BJP had given tickets to seven women candidates ie ten per cent. AAP has given tickets to six ie 8.57 per cent, and the Congress to five women candidates ie 7.14 per cent.
4. National executive members
The party executive comprises the following members.
1. Arvind Kejriwal
2. Manish Sisodia
3. Gopal Rai
4. Prashant Bhushan
5. Sanjay Singh
6. Pankaj Gupta
7. Dr Kumar Vishwas
8. Naveen Jaihind
9. Dinesh Waghela
10. Yogendra Yadav
11. Professor Ajit Jha
12. Christina Samy
13. Professor Anand Kumar
14. Habung Payeng
15. Yogesh Dhahiya
16. Illias Azmi
17. Subhash Ware
18. Krishnakant Sevada
19. Mayank Gandhi
20. Professor Rakesh Sinha
21. Prem Singh Pahari
22. Pritivi Reddy
Scorecard
Total - 22
Number of women - 1 (Christina Samy)
Percentage of women - 4.5 per cent
At present, the Congress Working Committee, the highest decision making body of the party, has 38 members, which has five women members ie 13.15 per cent. The BJP's national executive has 19 women out of its total strength of 70 members ie 27.14 per cent.
5. Political affairs committee
1. Arvind Kejriwal
2. Gopal Rai
3. Ilias Azmi
4. Kumar Vishwas
5. Manish Sisodia
6. Pankaj Gupta
7. Prashant Bhushan
8. Sanjay Singh
9. Yogendra Yadav
Scorecard
Total - 0
Number of women - 0
Percentage of women representation - 0
The BJP's parliamentary board has 12 members and Sushma Swaraj is the sole woman representative. So the representation of women in the ruling party's highest decision making body is just 8.33 per cent. The India Congress has 13 general secretaries. Ambika Soni is the only woman among them. Their representation in percentage term is 7.69.
6. Official spokespersons
1. Yogendra Yadav
2. Manish Sisodia
3. Kumar Vishwas
4. Sanjay Singh
5. Prashant Bhushan
6. Gopal Rai
7. Anand Kumar
8. Pankaj Gupta
9. Ashutosh
10. Dilip Kumar Pandey
11. Atishi Marlena
12. Rahul Mehra
13. Nagendar Sharma
Scorecard
Total - 13
Number of women - 1
Percentage of women representation - 7.69 per cent
The Congress party has a long list of 23 spokesperson, which has three women. Their representation is 13.04 per cent. The BJP has ten national spokespersons and the only woman on that list is Meenakshi Lekhi. It makes their representation ten per cent.
Conclusion
Traditional parties give several excuses for the exclusion of women candidates. They say their focus is winability of their candidates rather than giving adequate representation to women. Isn't the AAP too doing exactly what the conventional Indian political parties do? If the AAP follows the same argument, then how can it claim to be offering an alternate politics? In fact our study shows that on almost all parameters, the BJP and the Congress are better placed then the AAP, as far as giving representation to women.
The AAP's vision document talks of "an equal and just society" in which it want to give "every man, woman and child" equal rights and privileges". Then in another segment titled, "How are we different?", it says, AAP is "fully committed to the principles of gender equality and will represent women and students amply at all levels of party organisation". But is it successful in doing so? The answer is no.
Isn't it surprising that the AAP had fielded several high-profile women like Meera Sanyal, Soni Sori, Medha Patkar and Gul Panag in the last Lok Sabha elections but none of them were found suitable for any significant post in the party? Is this the alternate politics that they are talking about? Isn't Admiral Ramdas spot on when he says that AAP is mainly a boy's club?