Women's Empowerment in India: Looking Beyond Electoral Politics

This paper tries to explore the possibilities of looking into the future of participative democracy from a substantial political output process rather than merely a normative process.  Though there is considerable space for action-oriented programmes for enhancing women’s political participation & representation in our country, it is not being reflected in action, rather than only in rhetoric. Though the increasing demand for reservations and the subsequent constitutional provision might provide some impact on the larger space provided to our women folk, beyond the household, which might be political as well as apolitical and it will have an impact on reservation for seats for them. However, the existing scenario of political participation of women is not encouraging. Compared to the situation at the global level, it is giving a very sad picture. Though in terms of human development indicators, the situation is not encouraging, the simultaneous political picture is also equally bad. In this context, the author tries to explore the possible reasons for those conditions as well as look forward to a possible future course of action to overcome this. Statistics were obtained from international databases, in particular those of the InterParliamentary Union (IPU) and the United Nations Development Programme.