What a convenient position to adopt,really! Look how the patriarch patronises his ``sisters''. Notice the avuncular unctuousness in his statements, its sweet-tongued hypocrisy. Since Indian politics will always have its share of criminals and since the Women's Bill is unlikely to ever see the light of day, you now have enough justification to keep women out of mainstream politics -- for their own good, of course. There is no great desire expressed here to fight the mafia, or take measures to ensure that women candidates can campaign in relative safety. The criminals, in fact, provide a wonderful opportunity to postpone addressing the issue at hand, postpone it until the whole, inconvenient question of sharing power with women will somehow disappear from the political arena.

But if Thakre and his counterparts in other political parties believe that the issue will disappear of its own volition they had better think again. Women everywhere are watching -- and totting up the seats that they have been given. In Gujarat earlier this week, womenactivists pointed out that for the 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state, the BJP has given tickets to only three women and the Congress has fielded only two, although both parties are anxious to claim the honour for having promoted the Women's Bill in Parliament. They pointed out that the poor representation accorded to women reflected the general apathy of the political class to social issues in general and women's issues in particular. One leader of an Ahmedabad-based group even stated that women may be forced to boycott the electoral process if women continued to be given short shrift. In the 1998 elections, the Congress fielded 35 women, the BJP 29, the JD, RJD and the CPM 6 each, with the other parties doing even worse. This time, it's unlikely that things will be much better with every party expressing its inability to field more women. But there is a world of a difference between frankly acknowledging the difficulties in fielding more women and offering elaborate justifications for not doing so as Thakrehas done. The first approach offers at least the possibility of change some time in the future, the second does not.