The Uniform Civil Code had languished in the Indian political discourses for decades as a promise yet to be delivered. So it has come to the one state that most people thought it would never reach, on Monday. Suvendu Adhikari's government has presented a Uniform Civil Code Bill in the West Bengal Assembly within two months of the Bharatiya Janata Party ending a 15-year Trinamool Congress rule there and made a point of faith in the party's manifesto a live bill in the most demographically sensitive State of the nation.

The symbolism is not lost. West Bengal has the highest Muslim population among all the States that have opted for a civil code, which is around thirty per cent, and a politics based on plural coexistence. The fact that BJP had to pick this terrain this early is an indicator of confidence. In the campaign, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had promised a uniform code will come in the next six months of his government. The time has barely passed.

At its core, what the bill proposes is old hat. It explicitly takes inspiration from the templates already adopted in Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Assam with the draft law in Bengal being largely modeled after the Assam law approved in May. They may also have one set of rules on marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption, guardianship and succession that would govern all, rather than the current "patchwork" of personal laws governing marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption, guardianship and succession of Hindus, Muslims and others. Among the stipulations reported are: Up to seven years in jail for polygyny, registration of marriages, common divorce process, equal inheritance for daughters and sons, and compulsory registration of live-in relationships, with penalties for those who do not register. Children born of such relationships are to be regarded as legitimate and a deserted live-in partner can be entitled to maintenance. The state BJP chief emphasised the days before the bill that customary tribal law would not be impacted by the code, as members of the Scheduled Tribes were outside the ambit of the code under protection of the constitutional safeguards.

The floor arithmetic is sufficient to see the result. The BJP holds 207 of 294 seats. Today with only around eighty members left as a result of its electoral debacle, the Trinamool has since split into two groups: a rebel group comprising of around sixty-five legislators that is loyal to Leader of the Opposition Ritabrata Banerjee, and a small group of about 15 members which remains loyal to the former chief minister Mamata Banerjee. The most telling aspect of this debate is thus not government versus opposition, but opposition against opposition. Two camps are battling for the perception that they're the true opponents, with each side using their own speakers and their own arguments. The Mamata camp will be playing its game of opposition on constitutional principle, federalism and the country's pluralistic fabric, accusing the government of polarisation in the garb of reform. The rebel camp is applying process: that family law should not be amended quickly or without consultation. A rift in the house of critics is of course precisely how passage is comfortable.

Equality is the basis for the case that the government presents. The Uniform Civil Code goes back to the directive principle of the Constitution (Article 44) which says that the State should strive to establish a uniform civil code. State BJP leaders say it is a gender-justice issue first and religious issue later: one law will end the differential treatment so far accorded to women in accordance with different personal laws, especially in matters of inheritance, property and dissolution of marriage. Proponents of the live-in registration clause argue that it brings accountability and establishes a paper trail in cases involving maintenance, custody and abandonment issues. The state president presented this in the party discourse which he used since the 1980s that one country, one law and that in the minorities' case, it is not a minority issue. Further, a Union minister linked the drive with concerns about demographic change and broached a future demographic commission, which critics interpreted as a subtext to the equality discourse.

But amidst the political din there is a quieter argument that is often overlooked, and it is an economic one. West Bengal has been an anomaly with respect to women's employment. The women's labour force participation rate is on paper lower than the national average, and in the mid eighteen to low thirties (according to estimates by the state or previous World Bank estimates, respectively) still uneven, with participation higher in rural areas but largely informal in nature. Here, too, women marry at a younger age than in most other states. Economists who have examined Bengal in detail have demonstrated that the question of property and inheritance rights is not a “soft social” matter but rather a hard fact that influences how (and whether) women work and invest in assets. A pioneering research project on land reform in the state revealed that women's empowerment in land rights actually did have a tangible impact on decreasing gender bias. In this context, the civil code establishing equal inheritance for daughters and the proposal of a unified transparent registry of marriages and separation are no longer only moral, but also economic instruments at least in theory. The records of marriage, succession and guardianship are important, as they are predictable and uniform, which helps to lessen litigation, to clarify title, and to help women own, borrow and pass on assets which is important in a state still struggling to promote investment and formal employment.

The best case scenario is that's the case. The more depressing reality is that nothing is automatic. A law on paper does not change a labour market that is defined by care work, transport and safety, and social norms: field experiments in Bengal indicate that women enter the labour market when work can be done at home or when commuting is paid for, not simply when a statute is amended. There's also the real compliance cost, with live-in registration potentially proving intrusive and difficult to implement, along with the political cost in districts like Murshidabad and Malda, where the demographic stakes are highest and where a misjudged rollout could more inflame than reform.

The objections are not frivolous and it is there that the legitimacy of this bill will ultimately be determined. These are the worst, the constitutional. Personal law is on the Concurrent List, where both Parliament and State legislatures can legislate, which is why it is extremely likely that a forest of separate state codes will result in inconsistent law and rule on the one side and on the other of the State lines, and in eventual clashes with the central law. The opponents say that a state-imposed code can be challenged under Article 25, which guarantees freedom to practise religion, and Article 29, which guarantees the right of communities to maintain their distinct culture. The Congress has not directly opposed the concept of a code; rather, it has been its style of doing it that has left the veteran voice of its Bengal presence bitter, and has insisted that any such code should be "in consultation with states and civil-society organisations so that it does not polarise". Other tribal groups have expressed concern that a common law would level customary law, and the government has attempted to assuage that worry by making an exception which could be tightened subsequently.

It is useful to be able to get outside the Indian frame. This is an old conflict in democratic countries: universal civil law and legal pluralism. France and Turkey enacted comprehensive civil codes that supersede family law, and that they regard the uniformity of civil law as the fundamental element of equality of citizenship. Other plural societies have maintained religious/customary family law, in particular, to account for difference. Historically, India has been sandwiched between, having a common criminal code while having community-based civil codes. The real novelty today is not a Delhi-based national code but a patchwork of individual state codes pieced together by one party in the states under its rule, Madhya Pradesh indicating it is next up. It may generate momentum from the bottom-up, but it also ensures the very problem of "uniform" code, and gives courts a mess to clean up.

So the only question which should not be lost as the speeches keep piling up in Kolkata is not whether the bill passes. It will. But what about the nature of the law itself that is created in the process of drafting and whether it is designed to do what the defenders of the law say it does? A civil code which actually makes inheritance rights equal, which protects women in marriage and separation, which renders the machinery of family law less complicated, is a defensible, even overdue, reform and the economic rationale for it is more cogent than the shouting. But a code sprung through a broken house, light in counsel and loaded with the rhetoric of demographic threat will be remembered for an instrument of division, not equality. The slogan is not as important as the text. It's the implementation that will count more than the text. But it may be the courts and not the Assembly that have the final say.

The challenge of a reform purporting to be a law for all is whether it's a law for all or just a point.