Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 5 (IANS): The Kerala State Planning Board has two new women members, but state Labour Minister Bindu Krishna is still not happy. Her argument is that the Board needs women experts, not women ministers. The irony was evident on Thursday when Bindu Krishna, shortly before attending her first meeting of the reconstituted Board, openly expressed her dissatisfaction at the lack of representation of women. Speaking to the media, she said women experts in their respective fields should have been included. “We never asked for ministers to be made members.
We wanted women experts,” she said. She added that she would take up the matter with Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan. The episode has put the government in an unusual spot. For nearly a week, Bindu Krishna had been publicly raising the absence of women in the new Planning Board. She had also written to the Chief Minister, pointing out that none of the four non-official expert members appointed by the government was a woman. The new Board is headed by the Chief Minister, with former Union Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar as its Vice-Chairman.
It also has Cabinet members and experts from different fields. The four non-official experts initially appointed by the Satheesan government were all men. This had drawn attention as previous Left governments had included women among both full-time and part time members of the Board. On Wednesday, the government appeared to have addressed the criticism by inducting Bindu Krishna and her party colleague and fellow minister K.A. Thulasi as members. Dr S.S. Lal and C.H. Abdul Raheem were also brought into the Board as expert members. But both the newly inducted experts are men.
Thus, while the Board now has two women ministers, it still has no woman among its newly appointed experts. And Bindu Krishna has made it clear that the distinction matters. Her public expression of dissatisfaction just before the first meeting suggests that the issue is unlikely to end with the two ministerial appointments. The question now is whether the government will go beyond adding women ministers and find a place for women with expertise in the fields the Planning Board is expected to deal with.
