Pramila Dandavate
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A brief biography
Ketaki Desai, Oct 1, 2023: The Times of India
Dandavate suggested the Women’s Reservation Bill in 1996
➤ Had she been alive, Pramila Dandavate would have seen a Bill she tabled in the mid-’90s being passed in her mid-nineties.
➤ There were more men with criminal cases against them (39) in the Lok Sabha than the total number of women (36) in the lower house in 1996 when the former MP had put forth a Bill seeking 33% reservation in parliament and legislature.
➤ “Most of today’s women parliamentarians are treated by their respective political parties as either flower pots or pickles,” she had said to TOI that year when the United Front cabinet boasted one woman.
➤ Born in 1928 in Achara in Konkan’s Malvan taluka, Pramila had grown up singing and dancing as part of the cultural wing in Rashtra Seva Dal.
➤ An MA in psychology and a diploma in painting later, she helped set up the Mahila Dakshata Samiti, an all-women consumer forum that was known for raising not only its voice but also the rolling pin against price rise and food scarcity in 1970s Bombay.
➤ The socialist movement introduced her to Madhu Dandavate, a former physicist whom she fell for and married before being elected to the Bombay municipality in 1968 as a candidate of the Praja Socialist Party, which then had an alliance with the Shiv Sena.
➤ In 1980, when a survey reportedly showed a fall in women’s share over a decade in total employment in six public sector industries and a circular from a government firm purportedly stated that women retiring from service could only nominate male relatives in their place, Pramila was among the women activists who alleged a strong prejudice against hiring women.
➤ ‘Feminism is a struggle for humanism’ was the title of one of her talks in 1983. “Besides economic dependence on the husband for survival, poverty and ignorance of law, basic defects in laws of maintenance and marriage contribute to the actors responsible for the perpetration of injustice to women and children,” she said.
➤ Driven by the belief that the way to women’s emancipation from male dominion lies in their obtaining political power and exercising their voting rights cautiously, she called upon women to vote for whichever party accepted the Samiti’s fresh charter demanding at least 30% reservations in nominations for women in administrative bodies at all levels, from panchayat to parliament.
➤ Citing Sweden, which had benefited from women making up 40% of the parliament and 50% of the cabinet, she defended the 33% reservation Bill in 1996 saying not only that women needed “to have a decisive say in the country’s politics as it is politics that determines everything” but also that “the country will have greater developmental work and deceleration of the momentum towards a culture of militarism and consumerism.”
➤When the Bill came up for discussion, there were many opponents including a Shiv Sena MP who said parties were free to field as many candidates as they liked without the need for a special Bill and a member of the Muslim League who felt that reservations for minorities were more important. Since its passing would raise the number of women in the Lok Sabha from 36 to 181, men felt ‘threatened’ as 145 male MPs would have to give up their constituencies, stated Pramila alleging efforts to sabotage the Bill. “Why is it that all political parties are not giving more tickets to women unless they are some celebrities,” asked Pramila at the time when family duties and lack of money power required to contest elections were among the reasons that kept women out of the race.
➤ Over two decades before the Bill would be passed, she died of a massive heart attack at age 73.
Curated by Ketaki Desai, with inputs from Sharmila Ganesan Ram
