How India's women are becoming a powerful political force ahead of polls

A record 65.3 per cent of India's 260 million women voters cast a ballot in the 2014 polls that swept Modi to the biggest parliamentary majority in three decades.

Lok Sabha Elections 2019 : To see how India’s women are becoming a powerful political force ahead of next month’s election, look no further than Neelam Kumari and her bright yellow van.

The 35-year-old living in one of India’s poorest states bought the vehicle with a Rs 600,000 ($8,400) loan from a government program, allowing her to earn Rs 14,000 a month ferrying children to a nearby school. She gives the credit—and plans to give her vote—to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“My son and the other kids in our village wouldn’t have gone to an English school if not for this loan,” Kumari said from her dusty village in Bihar, a state that is crucial to Modi’s bid to win another five-year term. Five other women in nearby villages now own vans like hers, and they also back Modi.

Kumari is among 56.3 million rural women—equivalent to the population of Italy—who have received small loans worth about $27 billion since Modi took office in 2014. They could help swing the next election in May: Female voters are becoming an increasingly potent constituency in a nation where crimes against them regularly stir global outrage.

A record 65.3 per cent of India’s 260 million women voters cast a ballot in the 2014 polls that swept Modi to the biggest parliamentary majority in three decades. In most states, female turnout has surpassed males in recent ballots. And that is now starting to produce real change: Modi’s government has raised expenditure on sanitation and education for girls, provided safer cooking fuels and instituted the death penalty for rapists.

“In 2019, Modi sees women as an important demographic that can help power the party’s reelection,” said Milan Vaishnav, South Asia director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The BJP believes that women will reward the party for their welfare delivery schemes.”

The loan program is called Aajeevika (it translates to livelihood), and it was started in the 1990s as a local poverty alleviation program for women’s groups in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. It was adopted country-wide in 2011 under the Congress-led government that Modi ousted three years later.

Once in power, Modi expanded Aajeevika to 622 of India’s 640 districts and increased annual outlays by about three times. The federal government makes funds available and local governments oversee implementation—a task made relatively easier with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and allies ruling 16 of India’s 28 states.

Article Source BS