Indian women seek to be guaranteed a third of legislature seats

A person "gently coerced" by a political party into taking a political seat she really doesn't want just to satisfy a legal compliance rule or a person getting into a modern political office who is functionally illiterate?

Aside entirely from the sexism and fundamental injustice such a law would represent, think of the ramifications for a representative democracy. A rep who relies on what her aides tell her is written on a piece of paper, whom she has to be able to trust at all times? I know busy reps often do not read the bills they vote on (not entirely anyway: witness some recent large bills passed here in the US, *cough*, *ahem*, that most of the voting reps admitted they either hadn't read or only had read parts thereof), but at least they ought to be literate, don't you think? I rather think if there is an illiteracy problem in India for girls, Job One is getting them reading. The next big priority ought to be further education, then let things go from there. But asking or insisting that people assume roles or offices by force of law, or coercing others to find ways to get them to do the same, is a serious overstepping of the rights of a legislature in any modern country that assumes to have limits to what a government can do vis-a-vis excessive involvement in the lives of others. I dunno what the Indian Con'n/high court would say about such things, but we already know what our Supreme Court has said over here in the US about very similar matters: "Sure, it's fine, go ahead."

Frankly I see a day coming when what India is getting set to do will happen here as well, and then there'll be nothing left of the government's ability to determine exactly how people ought to be represented and who they will be allowed to vote for. In short, any pretense left of an open non-predetermined set of outcomes can be dispensed with and we will have little claim of superiority over other countries (past and present) whose legislative seats were all but dictated months before elections that had no competition in them to speak of.

The idea that the men in political power are actually representing men is ridiculous. Just comes down to democracy plain and simple.

How else should the government determine our choices. We must need a certain number of politicians for each race, however they define that, we also need a certian number of each religion, we need a certain number of middle class and poor politicians in order to represent us, certain number of uneducated, certain number of disabled (of both mental and physical), certain number of unmarried, and so on...

...as long as men are guaranteed 1/3rd of the seats as well. Otherwise, it's just another step forward for the "female supremacists".

but as digitalhermit implied, it must be applied equitably. To set a 1/3 floor on female reps without a similar floor on male reps makes it legally possible to have an all-female legislature (dictated to by male-haters). Sure, male reps ignore the concerns of men, but at least they usually don't actively attack them.