Will the women’s world
get better ?

Humra Quraishi

T he 17th Lok Sabha has the highest number of women MPs elected in the 2019 polls. There are 78 women Members of Parliament, the highest since independence.
Are you expecting any changes to take place in your daily survival, just because more women can be seen in the Parliament? In fact, I have been asking myself: Does this high percentage of women in the Parliament ensure that women on the road and in work-places and homes will feel safer? Will women be able to walk fearlessly to the nearest police station to lodge complaints and FIRs against their political tormentors? Will women carry the grit to take on the political mafia unleashed on them? Will women manage to oust the land mafia from their ancestral lands and fields? Will women get confident enough to pinpoint their rapists and molesters whilst rioting is made to peak? Will women manage to cry halt to the hounding taking place almost on a daily basis? Will women be ‘azaad’ enough to decide what to cook or buy or sell or bargain for? Will jailed women get better facilities in the prisons and jails of the country? Will those imprisoned women together with their minor children be allowed to breathe fresh air…will they see less of those inhuman conditions hitting them day and night? Will they get to talk more openly about their ‘jailed’ life?

Need to focus on real issues

In a democracy it doesn’t really matter if you have women or men ruling; after all, all that matters is that the rulers ought to be just and secular. And also contactable! And that’s about it. Look around and see and sense the decay spreading around, yet none of the politicians are seemingly doing a thing to try and cry halt to the d e t e r i o r a t i o n spreading out.
I do wish our w o m e n p a r l i a m e n t a r i a n s focus on hundreds of some very serious issues – what, with thousands dying and perishing in the floods hitting several regions and states of the country... Its is a very grim situation, with entire villages either lying submerged or washed away in these floods; killing hundreds and leaving imprints of severe devastation. What happens to the lives and livelihoods of those who have survived these floods but don’t know how to survive the aftermath, in terms of the everyday living without a roof over their heads and the connected disasters- Little to no- food , danger of disease and infections spreading out, lack of medical care and much more along the strain.

Another haunting reality hitting us is this - what happens to those under-trials who are declared innocent after they have spent several years or decades sitting jailed? What happens to their lives and livelihoods and families when they are finally set free?

I’m somewhat provoked into writing this, with this recent news report : The Rajasthan High Court has acquitted six lifers while upholding the death sentence to one and the life term to another in the 23- year-old case of bomb blast in a bus at Samleti in Dauisa district, in which 14 persons were killed(The blast had taken place in a state roadways bus, going to Bikaner from Agra on May 22, 1996) …The six lifers who were freed on Monday by a Jaipur bench of the high court include five Jammu and Kashmir natives- Javed Khan, Latif Ahmed, Mohammad Ali Bhatt, Mirza Nissar Hussain and Abdul Ghani. The sixth acquitted, Rais Beg, is from Agra in Uttar Pradesh….The court acquitted the six lifers ruling that the prosecution has failed to prove their links with the conspiracy of the blast.

So what happens to the lives of these innocent men, whom the system had caged for so many years? Mind you, this isn’t one of those rare cases where the ‘accused’ sat languishing in the prison hell holes before being found innocent and with that finally released.

Several such cases before, where the State did set them free but without compensation or apologies. What happens to them, to their survival in every sense of the term! How do we reach out to them and to their families! After all, ruined are their lives and that of their children, parents, spouses.

A must read !

Journalist- film maker , Minnie Vaid’s latest book – ‘- ‘THOSE MAGNIFICENT WOMEN AND THEIR FLYING MACHINES - ISRO’s MISSION TO MARS’ ( Speaking Tiger) is a must read because it focuses on the extraordinary women scientists in the Indian Space Research Organization ( ISRO ) . “ How they overcame the naysayers and gender barriers in a field dominated by men to achieve the impossible. Now India is ready to launch Gaganyaan, its first space mission with humans on board., at least one of whom will be a woman. Women in science are set to reach for the stars – and beyond.”