Begums, Madame and Dizzu: How women in South Asian politics have such low standards

I have been involved in many many many discussions where the participants have argued the world would have been a much better place than it is now if women were as involved in politics as men historically( were they allowed to). It's a nice dream to dream about, but unfortunately, women are just as bad as men, and a world ruled by women would probably be just as bad.

To be fair, there have been some fabulous Prime Ministers and Presidents and the rest. Hillary Clinton is one of my idols, Britain today would be in a real bad shape without Maggie's contribution, Merkel's doing fantastic, and female prime ministerships an presidencies worked out quite well for Sri Lanka. And then there's Miss Suki, of course, also the writer of the book Let's Visit Nepal.

And then there are the failure stories. India's Madame may, ironically, have been the ballsiest post-independence PM, but India deserved better. Yes, trains were not late even by the second, but remember that Madame's suputra, with her blessings experimented with Eugenics. Stop the poor from having babies, and you soon become a rich nation. Madame imprisoned her opponents, freedom of press was a joke even before the emergency (the joke that goes: I told them[the indian press] to bow, and instead they knelt before is one of my favorites), she was partly( or entirely) responsible for the Khalistan movement getting out of hand, and she tried to single-handedly tried to rewrite India's foreign policy on her whims. She would have been a good leader for benevolent dictatorship, not the fledgling Indian democracy. Ultimately, she was not only a failure, but a complete disaster. And yet, she kept on getting elected, and elected.

Then there are the begums. Ah, the begums. Where do I even start. Rushdie really, really should write a book about the Begums. They consider BD their pewa, and act accordingly. Our Nepali leaders are outstandingly and embarrassingly incompetent, corrupt, and politically immoral, but the Begums take the game to an entirely new level. Then there's the unfortunate duopoly. You are either with THIS begum, or THAT begum, both of whom are probably just as equally bad. You don't get a third option: you cannot even think about it without considering the Begums. I asked my BD friend why BDs didn't look beyond the Begums. He looked at me as if I was crazy. "There's no one else. They are the only people experienced and knowledgeable enough," he replied. The Begums have invaded and colonized the Bangladeshi psyche.

The there's own own Dizzu. She's the Begum type: at least Mrs Gandhi, as misguided as she may have been, was competent and good at things. Our Dizzu's here because her dad did some stuff. Her qualifications are limited, yet enough for us: she married a German guy, so she's qualified to become the foreign minister and so on. She likes her gangs of bhais, with both Nepali AND hindi meanings. The 'bhais' threaten opponents, collect 'chandas' and when support for Dizzu flags even inside the party itself, make enough noise to be heard around the world. In return, Dizzu protects them and helps them in need. Come to think about it, she's qualified to become the defense minister too.

And if we are particularly unfortunate, we may have our own Begums. Dizzu might have to share her constituency with Dr Deuba (an MP with both her mother and hubby as MPs too) who has old aristocratic backgrounds, and would be a perfect competitor to Dizzu in a Salman Rushdie novel: a conservative opponent to the ultra-populist dizzu.

I know there are so many other women politicians at the national level in Nepal, some of them who are actually marginally competent and uncorrupt, but I am not going talk about them because none of them are 'star' materials like Dr 'saab and Dizzu.

So, my point is, for a woman ambitious (and hopefully, educated) enough, there are great potentials in South Asian politics. The bar is set really low at the highest level, so if someone's daring and brave enough, she can probably hit it big. I know a few women whom I really respect who've said they'll take up politics in a few years. I really hope they do, because for once we have a pretty good chance of being a good example to the region and to the world. So YOU GO GURLZ! Just don't pay attention to those nasbandi guys; trust me here, it's definitely not as good an idea as it sounds!