How Stupid Do They Think We Are?

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government would have known, before the special session of Parliament convened this month even began, that its attempt to pass the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, with the Opposition ranged against it, was all but doomed. On 17 April 2026, the bill was endorsed in the Lok Sabha, by 298 votes to 230, but this was well short of the two-thirds majority required for a constitutional amendment. Why, then, did the government proceed with a special session that ended in the first major legislative defeat of Narendra Modi’s tenure as prime minister? Because defeat appears to have been the very point.

The political script was not written after the defeat, it was written before it. The same day as the legislative package, the government also introduced a notification that operationalised the Women’s Reservation Act, 2023, two and a half years after it had received Presidential assent. The long wait till this very point told its own story: now the government could claim it had brought the act into force, but without having to clarify that, under the law, it will have to wait for the next census and that actual implementation would be delayed at least until 2029, or more likely, 2034.

The women of India could now be told that their reservation was blocked by the Opposition. What was left unsaid was that the government itself chose to make women’s reservation hostage to a far larger package involving delimitation, census timing and Lok Sabha expansion. Had it wanted a clean political test on women’s reservation alone, it would have structured the legislation differently. Instead, it chose the route that practically guaranteed both controversy and defeat.

The next day, the Indian Express, just under its Journalism of Courage logo, headlined the event in terms much of the media would echo: “Opposition stands, women’s Bill falls.” In the evening, Modi addressed the nation and said: “Despite our utmost efforts, we could not succeed, the amendment to the Nari Shakti Vandan Act could not be passed! And for this, I seek forgiveness from all the mothers and sisters.”