Rajya Sabha nominations: When will women finally get their due?
Source: Daily Good Morning
As Jammu and Kashmir gears up for another round of Rajya Sabha nominations, a familiar question returns, and once again, it risks being ignored: will a woman finally find a place at the table? For more than seventy years, the answer has been an unbroken no. Not a single woman from Jammu and Kashmir has ever been nominated to the Rajya Sabha. It is a silence that stretches across decades and governments, across promises and slogans and it reveals something far deeper than administrative neglect. It reflects how power in J&K, despite moments of progress, continues to exclude women from its highest echelons.
The story of women’s political participation in Jammu and Kashmir is one of paradoxes. At the grassroots, women have been the backbone of community resilience, leading self-help groups, panchayats, and local welfare initiatives, often in the most trying conditions. They have mediated between conflict and community, kept families and neighbourhoods together when institutions faltered, and quietly shouldered the work of peacebuilding.
Yet, when it comes to formal political representation to the spaces where laws are written and policies debated, their presence vanishes.
Even at the national level, the record is bleak. The only woman from Jammu and Kashmir to enter Parliament was Krishna Mehta, nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1962 for her humanitarian work. Her selection symbolised hope, a gesture that recognised women’s role in rebuilding society. But in the six decades since, not one woman from the region has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha. The silence speaks for itself.
Full article here.
As Jammu and Kashmir gears up for another round of Rajya Sabha nominations, a familiar question returns, and once again, it risks being ignored: will a woman finally find a place at the table? For more than seventy years, the answer has been an unbroken no. Not a single woman from Jammu and Kashmir has ever been nominated to the Rajya Sabha. It is a silence that stretches across decades and governments, across promises and slogans and it reveals something far deeper than administrative neglect. It reflects how power in J&K, despite moments of progress, continues to exclude women from its highest echelons.
The story of women’s political participation in Jammu and Kashmir is one of paradoxes. At the grassroots, women have been the backbone of community resilience, leading self-help groups, panchayats, and local welfare initiatives, often in the most trying conditions. They have mediated between conflict and community, kept families and neighbourhoods together when institutions faltered, and quietly shouldered the work of peacebuilding.
Yet, when it comes to formal political representation to the spaces where laws are written and policies debated, their presence vanishes.
Even at the national level, the record is bleak. The only woman from Jammu and Kashmir to enter Parliament was Krishna Mehta, nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1962 for her humanitarian work. Her selection symbolised hope, a gesture that recognised women’s role in rebuilding society. But in the six decades since, not one woman from the region has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha. The silence speaks for itself.
Full article here.