Providing horizontal quota the Bihar way

Context: A case for reservations for women and transgender persons in State jobs and higher education, based on the horizontal quota implemented by the state of Bihar.

Case for women reservation policy

• Low Female Labour Force Participation (FLFP) rate: World Bank data show that the FLFP came down to 21% in 2019 from 31.79% in 2005.
  • One of the important factors for the low FLFP rate is the lack of employment opportunities for women after matriculation and graduation.
  • The India Human Development Survey-II found that women with low levels of education and from rural areas are relatively more active in the labour market compared to women with middle or high school education.
• Social barriers in economic participation of women: Patriarchal control of women and systemic gender discrimination is a continuing practice.
  • Majority of women perform unpaid work, and social evils like caste block employment opportunities for women like owning a shop.

• Bihar government recently announced 33% horizontal reservation for women in State engineering and medical colleges.
• This will be distributed across all the vertical reservation categories (SCs, STs, OBCs, EWS etc.) and open category seats.
• Menstrual leave policy: In 1992, Bihar announced two consecutive days of menstrual leave for women in government services
• Expanding reservation in local governments: In 2006, Bihar became the first State to reserve 50% seats for women in Panchayati Raj institutions.
• Reservation in public jobs: 
  • In 2013, the Bihar government made a provision for 50% reservation for women in cooperative societies and reserved 35% seats for them in police recruitment.
  • This led to a swift jump in the number of women officers in the police department to 25.3% in 2020, more than double the national average of 10.3%, from 3.3% in 2015.
  • In 2016, the government extended the 35% reservation for women to all government jobs in Bihar for which direct recruitment is made.
• Conditional cash transfer schemes for women empowerment:
  • Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojana in 2006: India’s first scaled-up conditional cash transfer programme for secondary education of girls.
  • Mukhyamantri Kanya Utthan Yojana: Bihar government provides Rs.50,000 in instalments to girl students to support their studies and other needs till graduation.
  • According to the National Family Health Survey-5, the State’s literacy rate among girl children rose to 61.1% in 2019-20 from 56.9% in 2015-16.

Way forward

• Focus on education of women: As cultural disabilities cannot be resolved by welfare schemes alone.
• Stringent implementation: Filling up pending vacancies in the health sector, police force, teaching and other government departments and doing away with hiring workers on contract and making all current contractual workers permanent should be implemented on a priority basis.
• Expanding horizontal reservation: Other State governments and the Union government should follow the Bihar government’s lead and introduce a horizontal quota for women and transgender persons.
  • Quota allotted to women can be increased to 40-45%, if not 50%, and the category can be renamed as ‘women and transgender persons’.