Women must be put in a position to solve their own problems in their own way. No one can or ought to do this for them. And our Indian women are as capable of doing it as any in the world.
— Swami Vivekananda, On Indian Women, Their Past, Present And Future, Prabuddha Bharata, December, 1898
The elections in Bharat are largely celebrated as festival of democracy and whether one likes it or not they are analysed in terms of caste, community and regional voting patterns. From mid-term mandate to referendum on demonetisation, many nomenclatures were used to describe the recently held Assembly elections. After the results, some would interpret it as the crumbling of caste ridden politics in states like Uttar Pradesh while some would like to see it as a Hindu consolidation in reaction to discriminatory and communal minority appeasement in the name of secularism, blatantly practised by all non-BJP political parties. The caste groups such as Dalits, OBCs, Upper Castes etc, are also being treated as commodities and fiefdom of political parties in political analysis. In this whole discussion, the ‘gender’ dimension of voting pattern is grossly neglected or undermined.
Conventionally, it is believed that in Bharat voting is a family affair and by and large the political affiliation of head of the family influences the voting pattern of other members. From 2014 General Elections itself, there is a visible trend of autonomous voting in these invisible category of voters and the recently held elections is certainly a case to argue that women voters in Bharat are showing a distinct and autonomous voting behaviour on the basis of their issues of preference and Prime Minister Shri Modi and his policies are instrumental to this.
If we start with the largest and politically most important State of UP, percentage of women voting was 4 percent higher (female – 63 % against male – 59%) than that of men, which is historically unprecedented. The State of Punjab, known for its unfair sex ratio, the voting percentage of women was 2 per cent higher (female – 78 % against male – 76 %) while in the hill State of Uttarakhand the difference between women voters who exercised their franchise is almost 7 per cent higher (female – 69 % to male – 62 %) than men voters. One would argue that this pattern is emerging due to mass migration of men-folk from these regions to metropolitan cities. But this migration is not new to these states and in the absence of their male counterparts what is that mobilises women to vote is also critically important.
In these elections, there were definite issues that shaped the women participation and mobilisation not only for voting but even in campaigning. The forced migration due to lack of employment opportunities generally impact the male youth the most as they are expected to be earning members but their relocation to the metro cities have a wider impact on womenfolk who have to stay back in villages. In both Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand this was a big issue that shaped the political behaviour of women. Deteriorating law and order situation was the biggest issue in the UP which Delhi media tried to underplay. The onslaught of goondaism and insensitivity of police force hamper the gender security the most. For the ‘secular’ parties, the Triple Talaq issue maybe a communal one but for the
victims of this male dominated practice, it is an issue of gender justice. Prime Minister Shri Modi and BJP categorically focussed on this issue and took a decisive stand which certainly tilted women voting in the BJP’s favour.
Besides this, Ujjwala Yojana, which provides Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) connections to poor women without upfront charges, of which 5.31 million women beneficiaries are in UP alone. Similarly, the opening of Jan Dhan accounts provided with a new avenue of reliable savings and sense of dignity for women with a debit card. The demonetisation exercise only enhanced the credibility of Prime Minister as a sincere crusader against black money. All these were positive factors that must have mobilised the women voters.
After the results, even the ardent critics of the Prime Minister also accepted that the new era of performance based politics epitomised by Shri Modi has arrived in our national politics and other parties are not able to keep pace with him. His statesman like victory speech and a
padyatra before that further underscored this fact. While accepting this reality of competitive electoral politics, we should not forget the fact that Shri Modi has also fuelled new enthusiasm among women voters and given them the space to prioritise their issues.
@PrafullaKetkar
