E-Paper
For the women vote, go beyond tokenism
Their mandate will remain unfulfilled if women – from all communities, including marginalised castes, genders and minority faiths – are missing from the forums that govern India
A welcome trend in Indian politics in recent years is the steady rise in the participation of women in elections, reflected in their turnout figures outpacing men in both national and state polls – the latest being the recently concluded five state elections. This phenomenon has been marked by intensifying discussions around the women vote, political parties targeting women as a separate category in their manifestoes and nurturing women as a separate vote bank – think of Nitish Kumar, J Jayalalithaa or Mamata Banerjee. Greater focus on welfare delivery has also pushed women into the centre of electoral calculations; gone are the days where reporters or politicians would only focus on the men of the family of neighbourhood, and assume that their decisions would bind the votes of the women.
Yet, gaps remain. Women are courted as prospective voters but not given adequate space as candidates. Questions of winnability continue to dog women candidates, and many are saddled with constituencies where the party nominating them has no real chance of winning – think of the Congress giving 40% tickets in Uttar Pradesh, where it has no realistic chance of winning but only 9% in Punjab, where it is defending its government. That most political parties suffer from this bias is the reason the number of women lawmakers, in assemblies and Parliament, remains far below their 50% share of the population.
