| Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the week’s gender developments. The Supreme Court had some pretty harsh words for the Nagaland government. Why? Read on... THE BIG STORY: Why Nagaland continues to shut women out of politics To understand how sticky attitudes to women in public life can be, you have only to look at Nagaland. In many aspects, the north-eastern state does very well for women: lowest crimes against women; child marriage is virtually unknown (this is true not just for Nagaland but pretty much all of the northeast); and, at 76.11%, female literacy is leagues ahead of the national average of 64.6%. But when it comes to political representation, Nagaland remains stubbornly and determinedly an outlier. In the 2018 assembly elections, five women, the most ever, out of a total of 196 candidates contested. All of them lost with three failing to get even the minimum vote to secure their deposit. Since the history of the state which was formed in 1963, this is the number of women who’ve been elected to the assembly: 0. It’s the same dismal story with Parliamentary elections. In 59 years, Nagaland has elected just one woman to the Lok Sabha, the late Rano Mese Shaiza who won back in 1977. Its second woman member of Parliament, S Phangon Konyak, a BJP nominee was elected to the Rajya Sabha in March this year. This miserliness extends to urban local bodies. On Thursday, an exasperated two-judge Supreme Court bench hauled up the state’s advocate general, KN Balagopal for Nagaland’s failure to hold urban body polls with 33% of seats earmarked for women, despite a 2011 go-ahead from the Gauhati high court. The judges noted that nearly 12 years have passed since that order and they now “have no trust in the state government.” The judges continued: “It is shameful to defeat the rights of women like this. Will they wait for a lifetime for you to do something? We are shocked at how you can do this.” The back story In 1992, the 73rd and 74th amendment to the Constitution set aside 33% of seats to women to contest polls at the grassroots level, in village panchayats and urban local bodies. In the nearly three decades since, women have done well enough for 20 states, including Assam and Sikkim, to increase their representation to 50%. Reservation for women was not extended to Nagaland which enjoys special status that allows it to retain its customary laws. Traditionally, women have been excluded from Naga village councils and do not take any part in politics, Monalisa Changkija, founder editor of Nagaland Page explained to me on the phone. “This is embedded in the psyche of the Naga male who has not gotten out of the cave.” The opposition to the urban body polls comes from this ingrained attitude, she added. The state’s male-dominated tribal bodies have opposed the entry of women in the public sphere claiming that it goes against their customary laws to do so. As a concession, some conceded that if at all women were going to contest elections then it would be the men who would decide which women could contest. And, so, the 33% reservation in place elsewhere in the country has never been implemented in the state. Keeping women out at all costs In 2011, the Kohima bench of the Gauhati high court held that 33% reservations for women in the state was valid. Determined to keep women out from sharing power, the Nagaland assembly passed a resolution in September 2012 that exempted the state from providing reservation. That resolution was finally withdrawn after a Supreme Court verdict in 2016 that basically upheld the 2011 Gauhati high court judgment. Polls were finally announced for the state’s 32 municipal and town councils in February 2017. Of the 535 candidates who filed their nominations for the polls, 188 were women. By the middle of January, 140 candidates had withdrawn from the fray; Nagaland officials did not say how many of these were women. Days before polling, a joint coordination committee for several tribal organisations called for a strike. Government work came to a halt, central paramilitary forces had to be called in and violence spilled out on to the street with two people killed in police firing. The elections were called off and the then chief minister TR Zeliang resigned. Will we see a historic election in Nagaland? The Supreme Court has given Nagaland two weeks to notify the urban body polls. It has also asked the state election commission to provide it with a timeline for the polls by July 29. “The struggle of Nagaland’s women to get 33% reservation in municipal and town councils in accordance with the Constitutional amendment has taken upward of 15 years,” senior advocate Colin Gonsalves who appeared for the women in the Supreme Court said. Certain male-dominated groups have spearheaded the “most horrendous opposition to the emancipation of women in the state, carrying out vociferous attacks on those who have advocated for reservation,” he added. Gonsalves believes that we will see a historic election in Nagaland by the end of the year. But Monalisa Changkija was more circumspect and said she is only ‘cautiously optimistic’. “I don’t think the government of Nagaland has the political will to hold the elections,” she said. “They will come up with all sorts of excuses to delay it.” P.S. In case you’re wondering, other northeast states do pretty well for women. Mizoram has the highest 70.9% ratio of female-to-male workers including legislators, senior officials and managers. Sikkim’s ratio is 48.2%, Manipur’s 45.1%, according to the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey numbers for 2020 to 2021. | 
