To ensure that the parliamentarians are not deprived of their constituencies, a suggestion was made to increase the number of Lok Sabha seats from the present 545 to 900. But this proposal too hasn't found favour presumably because the house will become far too unwieldy.

It will be the same problem with the state assemblies. Yet another suggestion was to make it mandatory for parties to nominate a certain percentage of women to contest elections. But no headway has been made in this respect either.

There is, of course, another proposal, that is, to desist from arbitrarily reserving seats for women since the parties may not be able to find suitable candidates. Instead, the women contestants should gradually come up from the panchayat level, where the percentages are already in force.

But the parties are apparently not interested in such a time-consuming process since they want to demonstrate how eager they are to empower women when, in actual fact, it is all a pretence since they are actually acting as road blocks.

It also has to be mentioned that there is a section, including women, who are against the very concept of gender-based reservations if only because it will create the impression that only women can look after their own interests.

Arguably, it is this mindset which has made the caste-based parties like the RJD and the Samajwadi Party call for quotas for OBCs since the urban 'parkati' women may not empathize with their less privileged sisters. It is a safe bet that it will take years, if at all, before a decision is taken.