New Delhi: Like the sudden whim of demonetisation ten years ago, devaluing currency notes and living to regret it later, the Narendra Modi government has suddenly dropped a set of three bills – no consultation, no full information – bang in the middle of a busy election season. These bills link women’s reservation with an expanded Lok Sabha and fresh delimitation. Passing these three bills will have serious implications on the nature of India, in every which way.The Wire busts some common myths floating about in the last few days.This is a developing story – as the BS never seems to stop.BS1: Those opposing this set of three bills are against women’s reservationNot true.A constitutional amendment to implement women’s reservation was passed in 2023. Unanimously. This bill is a sudden whim.BS2: If these bills fall, we are failing women’s reservationNope.If these bills fall or are withdrawn, nothing happens.Women’s reservation will still go through, it is the law.It will kick in once the census 2026 numbers are in. The census has started, by the way.BS3: Delimitation (by a crude population rise measure) does not hurt any stateWrong. It does.It is clear that if the 2011 census is the base for calculations for drawing new constituencies, then states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, North east, virtually all states – except Hindi speaking ones of UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Delhi, will lose, proportionately. This means, even if their number of seats rise nominally, they lose the share of their voice in the Lok Sabha.Data Projection and image: The HinduUP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Delhi have 207 of 543 seats. They would see a 77% increase to 336 seats. Their share of seats would go from 38.1% to 43.1%. South Indian states – Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Puducherry – with 132 seats currently, will get only 176, a 33% increase. Eastern states will slip from 14.4 to 13.7% and the North-East from 4.4% to 3.8%. The west and northern non-Hindi belt would stay more or less the same, The Hindu reckons.Others too predict similar trends.Data Projection: Yogendra YadavBS4: Relax. Government sources are telling godi media: “50% increase across states”This is a red herring.It is NOT in the bills. So cannot go by a “trust me, bro” assurance by ‘sources’.It appears fair, 50% to all – but it is not. Even if seats were increased for each state by 50%, when the numbers are added up, it weighs against the South.Even if every state gets 50% more states, the gerrymandering of 850 new constituencies by a pliant Delimitation Commission to suit the BJP – as was done for the assemblies of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir – will be easier to camouflage in this exercise than if confined to the existing 543 constituencies.BS5: What is wrong with bills delinking delimitation from the census?Everything is wrong with that.Linking delimitation to the census and then a delimitation commission, which follows a certain public dataset, drew public trust. That is how things have been done so far. That is the process in the Constitution. The constitutional definition of “population” was 1971 Census for seat allocation and 2001 Census for boundary demarcation. Now, population shall mean whichever Census “as Parliament may by law determine”.Saying that parliament will decide which population set will be the base is a way of making it subject to executive or majoritarian whim and losing public trust or acceptance across the board for this critical process.BS6: What is the problem with ensuring that each constituency is of the same size?India has a federal structure, and the balance between states is also the promise of India’s democracy.This would amount to rewarding those states that have not been able to stabilise their populations. More seats to certain regions (coincidentally less developed, little social or economic progress and more inclined towards the BJP) gives them a passkey for deciding who will be in government. For perpetuity.India has a process in place to make these decisions, in a way to not disturb federal equity and also to not punish those who have been able to stabilise populations. See how the Finance Commission decides on taxes given to states, where population is a component, but there are parts of the formula, which reward trying to stabilise population and achieving economic progress.BS7: Huge Lok Sabha – good only, right?No, bigger is not always better.Such a large Lok Sabha, at the calculation of 850 seats, will have 3.3 times the strength of the Rajya Sabha. It is currently 2.2 times.Rajya Sabha, which is also the council of states, loses heavily. That is a double hit to federal equity. Rajya Sabha was built in to be the voice of deliberation, to ensure another level of checks and balances in a diverse and large country.In a joint session too, the party running Lok Sabha will always be able to ram its bills through.The council of ministers will increase too. The constitution by a 2003 amendment limited the ministry to 15% of Lok Sabha. Cabinet will go up from 81 ministers to 122!Finally, as Siddharth Varadarajan notes, “Shehenshah and Shah” may be working to dilute the revolutionary impact of 33% of seats to women. Instead, with this king-sized bloat, “Giving 1/3 seats to women in a 543 seat house where men today have 86% of the seats means forcing parties to redistribute power away from powerful men towards women. Instead, Modi wants to ensure that the bahubalis with enviable assets and unenviable criminal records not only get to stay in the house, but worse, that more of their brethren will get to join them. This is not what ceding space to women is supposed to look like. This is managing the discomfort of powerful men at the entry of women in unprecedented numbers, something akin to attempts by caste Hindus to ensure control of ‘their’ temples even after they were forced to allow Dalits in.”BS8: Modi ji has been raging about ‘population explosion’ from the Red Fort, and has spoken about fears of population growth. So why reward only population high growth states?Yes, very hard to understand.Modi has termed “population explosion a worry”, said India “needed schemes to control it”, on Independence Day, 2019.Then next year, in 2020, he said, “population control is a form of patriotism”, and commended small families for observing a form of patriotism.Remember the subsequent election speeches in 2024, in Banswada, when Modi said (wrongly) that his predecessor government wanted to give more resources to “those who have more children.” Maybe the population explosion slogans were dog whistles for certain communities alone.Clearly with this formulation, the government is only rewarding high population regions; UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and Gujarat benefit disproportionately.