The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, and the fresh legislative moves now associated with it, ask India to confront a long-postponed question: Who gets to sit in the rooms where the country makes its most consequential decisions? The proposal is simple in principle, even if complex in execution: Reserve one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women. This is a structural intervention in a political order that has treated male dominance as natural, inevitable, and often indistinguishable from merit. India’s Parliament has long remained overwhelmingly male. Women form nearly half the population, yet they have hovered around 14 per cent in the Lok Sabha, with even weaker representation in many states. For years, women’s reservation moved in and out of national debate. Governments introduced bills, praised the idea, but delayed execution.…