When a member of the Odisha state commission said they had no vehicles to commute, Gandhi retorted: ‘It’s not my job to get you a Mercedes’.
New Delhi: The 25th anniversary celebration of the National Commission for Women (NCW) held in the national capital Wednesday ended up becoming a showcase for everything that is wrong with it.
There have been many accusations and murmurs about the inefficiency of the commission, but they had remained just below the surface so far. But at the event, in the presence of a defensive and visibly furious Women and Child Development (WCD) minister Maneka Gandhi, the NCW’s dirty laundry came flying out into the open.
Gandhi’s address to the NCW and state women’s commissions started predictably enough. She congratulated the commission for the strides it had made so far, and urged members to come forward and do a lot more. The inception of the commission, she said, was a culmination of the long and arduous journey of the Indian women’s movement, and thus, it was incumbent upon each member of the various commissions to “make the bricks on which other sisters can stand”.
NCW members, Gandhi added, must evoke fear and trepidation in the minds of ordinary citizens. “I have personally been trying to increase the powers of the commission, but that hasn’t come through yet. Until then, you all need to enhance your moral power,” she said.
Her impromptu speech – she said she would not be reading out from the written speech – garnered scattered applause, after which the floor was opened to pointed, incisive questions from current and former members of the NCW.
A powerless commission
“Why has the commission continued to decay over the two decades?” asked Mohini Giri, who served as the second chairperson of the NCW from 1994-98. “We keep producing recommendations which are gathering dust to this day,” she said, pointing to the alleged powerlessness of the commission, which is a statutory body under the WCD ministry.
Giri later told ThePrint that the commission ought to be an autonomous body, and that there was no point to having it under the ministry.
Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research, pointed to the fact that a group of ministers had approved amendments to the NCW Act, granting it powers of a civil court in 2015, but the draft bill has been lying in cold storage since.
Political patronage
Another criticism against the commission is that its heads are chosen solely through political patronage. “Why are the heads appointed to the commission through political patronage?” Giri, daughter-in-law of former President of India V.V. Giri and a former Congress Lok Sabha candidate, asked Gandhi at the event.
The chairperson of the NCW is appointed by the government. Rekha Sharma, the current chairperson, is a BJP functionary from Chandigarh, who activists claim has limited experience in women’s movements.
“It is unfortunate that a body like the NCW is reduced to this disempowered body because of poor funding and political patronage,” said Kumari. “The commission has no authority, no money, no judicial power.”
Last year, the Delhi High Court ruled that the NCW did not have any adjudicatory or advisory powers.
‘Members appointed through lobbying’
A visibly miffed Gandhi inadvertently validated the claims of members to the commission being appointed through patronage and lobbying.
When a member of the Odisha State Commission for Women said they had no vehicles to commute, Gandhi replied: “Many of you hold these positions through lobbying; you can get the vehicles if you want… It’s not my job to get you a Mercedes. If you’re weak, it’s because you make yourself weak,” an incensed minister said.
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The Hon’ble Union Minister for WCD Smt. Maneka Gandhi deserves encomia for her bold,brave and forthright comments on performance of NCW and she is absolutely neutral and unbiased and never women centric. She is free,frank and fearless by her intrinsic nature to call spade as a spade. The NCW for its part should emulate her ideals to render justice to womanhood free from bias but not to pamper and unduly support purely with a gender bias. NCW should accept parental child abductions from India and to India are nothing but child abuse and cruelty.