MINORITY REPRESENTATION OF A POLITICAL MAJORITY GROUP: WOMEN IN INDIAN DEMOCRATIC PROCESS.

While women constitute neatly half of the electorate in India, their representation in elected bodies including the two houses of parliament has always been negligible. Woman candidates have to struggle against great odds, no matter to which party they belong. The old political norms of the Gandhian era have been totally discarded by now, and women find themselves at a great disadvantage in this cut-throat political atmosphere. The low representation given to them by the various political parties on their lists of candidates for the elections to the parliament and state assemblies is not merely an indicator of their inferior political status but reveals their subordinate position in a society and refusal to recognize their right and ability to participate in the nation's development activities. The recent trends in electoral processes in the country reflects the poor status of Indian women in terms of their political participation. Data indicates that the elected women to the parliament in India form barely 10 percept of the total seats, although women form 50 percent of the total population. A sole women n a legislative body or only a few have difficulty being heard. If this percentage could rise to 25 to 30 percent or above, they could intervene and benefit from support of women colleagues in what has been up till this time, a male-dominated body. The object of this paper is to highlight the fact that the numerical strength of women in decision making bodies poses serious problems. Women are strictly a very small minority group in elected bodies and consequently, in course of time they become the silent minority. This is a universal phenomenon, as mostly women all over the world feel "loneliness", "normalness" and "isolation" in political life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]