Vishal Sharma
A few weeks back an important decision was taken by the Government. It was about abolishing the stamp duty on the registration of property in the name of women. The rates were also brought down a few percentage points in case the property was registered in the name of men.
Strangely enough, the action of the Government did not receive much press.
There could be apparently two reasons for the poor reportage in the matter: one, the action sought to decisively redistribute the power calculus in favour of the women.
Second: the step reflected the desire of the establishment that the issues of women would take precedence even if it punched a large fiscal hole in the budget.
Not that there is a bias against men. It is just that there is too much to be done for women.
The less press in the matter is a product of a mindset. The mindset that is throwback to the era of dyed- in-the- wool patriarchs. It is hard to imagine for these proponents of patriarchy that a woman can step out of the forced or self imposed confines and mark out a territory for herself and then dictate terms.
Or demand rightfully her share of entitlements or power. Which is what this step would likely lead to.
So far man has forced woman to make do with the crumbs thrown at her. And she has meekly acquiesced and chosen not to stand up and be counted. Man on his part has happily steered clear of rejigging this covenant for it favours him disproportionately.
Thus, the unequal relationship has continued. It is only when there is an attempt to make it more equal that there is either silence or backlash.
For all it’s worth, this step opens the doors to the hitherto unimagined world. For it is almost a given fact that there would be a mad rush towards registering the property in the name of women of the house. Simply because the stamp duty payments are considerable these days owing to inherent exorbitant costs of the properties. An average saving would be somewhere around Rs 5-10 lakh for a plot of one kanal or even more in some cases. Who wouldn’t want to save when there is a legal option on offer?
What would that mean for the women folk though? Well! They will come to be the legal owners of the properties. With the asset ownership would also come some measure of autonomy of thoughts and action. How will that square up with the intimidating men folk?
It is early days yet. But the behavioural changes are inevitable! May be more run ins or broken homes!. One doesn’t know there could be behavioural changes in men too! They could be more accommodating. If this were to happen, this would have transformed familial landscape like never before in the past.
And women would have come into her own. At long last!
At some level, the debate is more seminal. There are comparisons being made with the epochal land to tiller legislation. It is said that the land to tiller legislation socialised the economic milieu, restored balance in the glaring inequities in the society and eventually lessened both deprivation and opulence.
The waiver off stamp duty, if and when fully functional, will equalise genders or still better, for once, make gender inequality adversarial for men. This time, men will be at the receiving end.
While comparison across eras are odious, they tend to be indicative. For instance, two policy prescriptions can be equally revolutionary, yet have entirely different impacts on the ground.
On pure impact value, this step promises to affect close to half of the population in the State, as the women make up almost one half of the population. Thus, it is going to be more impactful.
This apart, there is more to this intervention. And it is indeed messaging. In the times when women are being raped and killed, this action is sure to resonate with most of the women and the perpetrators of violence against them in its own different ways. While women are going to be encouraged and feel confident, the compulsive women haters will have to back off. And this is no mean achievement.
There is yet more message in it. If law enforcement fails the women, we will empower them more than those who target them, so that they could stand up, and give it back. Once that happens, everything else will fall in place including those mandarins of law enforcement who have always chosen to look the other way.
This action has come at a cost though; for it will cause the Government to lose considerable revenues. At a time, when there is more and more accent on mopping up money through more and more taxes or by ramping up tax rates, this is a pleasant departure. For the tax establishment, it is equivalent of regressing. But the Government has not bothered about it. It has chosen this trade off; because it can undo the damage emanating from the historical bias. It has striven to correct our bad legacy. It, therefore, deserves our cheers.
Need this be mentioned again as to why it didn’t get enough traction in our mind space. Perhaps, there is no need for that. For the quarter that matters the most, that is, the UNO’s Women Cell, did pick it up and tweeted on it. It hailed the measure as the one pregnant with the lasting change in the society and beyond.
May be it will study it; document it and then circulate it as a best practice in the realm of women empowerment for others to emulate. And maybe it will give us a chance to feel happy and proud of ourselves.
If that were to be the consequence, it would have made us the people we need to be and can truly become.
( The writer is a novelist)
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