Call it realpolitik or an idea whose time has come, "seven promises" has a whole new meaning in India.
Traditionally, the "saat vachan" (seven vows) is part of the wedding vows Hindu couples in the northern parts of India go through as they circle a holy fire announcing their matrimony. But last month, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra flagged off her party's "Pratigya Yatra" (journey of vows) ahead of the Assembly election in Uttar Pradesh (UP) next year with a new set of "seven promises", at the centre of which lie women as a potential vote bank.
Congress is desperate to win back support from people in the state that has housed the so-called pocket boroughs of the Nehru-Gandhi family. It is now upping the ante in electoral politics in the state by challenging caste-based parties, such as the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party on the one hand, and the Hindutva-based appeal of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the other. The Congress now needs all the luck and efforts to change the caste or religion-based appeal, and gender may be just what the doctor ordered – at least as a pilot project ahead of general elections due in 2024.
A Two-Way Street
Ms Gandhi's promises include a compulsory provision of 40% of party tickets for the Assembly election to women, a separate manifesto for the gender, smartphones for all girls who graduate from 12th Standard in high schools, and e-scooters for graduates if voted to power. These and measures to pacify agitating farmers seeking safer laws and better prices are among Congress's gamble to claw back in Uttar Pradesh.
So you could say women have arrived as a vote bank in India, or are getting there sooner than we think.
Let us look back. Reporting on Congress Finance Minister P. Chidambaram's 2013 budget, I had mentioned women as an emerging vote bank. His speech used the word women in the plural as many as 24 times in the budget and four times in the singular, besides references to "girl" and "female" as he presented budgetary measures to woo the gender once called the 'weaker sex'.
Chidambaram had put the annual amount of money being spent on women then at ₹97,000 crore – a sum that did not help Congress in the 2014 election that saw the decisive surge of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party.
Last week, as I ambled on a walk in a stadium in Noida, Uttar Pradesh’s fanciest enclave, I saw girls playing football with professional dedication in the proper kit – and I knew that like in cricket, hockey and badminton, it is only a matter of time before Indian women excel in arguably the world’s most popular sport. As a corollary, you could say the more you promote women, the more they are likely to vote.
But India Isn't New Zealand, Yet
While "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao" (Save the girl child, educate the girl child) is a catchy slogan used by Prime Minister Modi of the BJP, Congress has been trying for long (somewhat carefully) to promote 33% of seats for women in Parliament. Caste-related issues prompted by male-dominated northern parties have come in the way. Gender-based budgeting is one of the tools used to measure the political clout as well as the policy imperative for women that Congress has been using.
Priyanka Gandhi is actually expanding an idea championed successfully by Tamil Nadu leader Jayalalithaa in 2016, who led her AIADMK to a thumping victory. The AIADMK had that year promised a 50% subsidy for women to buy two-wheelers, training and financial aid to women to purchase auto-rickshaws, and increased maternity benefits for woman workers.
Other parties, including Tamil Nadu's ruling DMK and regional parties, particularly in the more literate southern states, have steadily embraced women as a social cause and a political target group.
Writing for the Feminism in India website, Pratyusha Pramanik recently noted how women are a global motif in politics, best exemplified by New Zealand premier Jacinda Ardern. Ms Ardern has been focusing on issues such as the safety of women from violence, reduced gender pay gap, and the rights of women to have a choice in careers and home-making.
From 'Ek Chutki Sindoor' to Politics
"As we witness in the ongoing Assembly elections 2021, the not-so-homogenous category of women is an emerging vote bank; one that has to be appeased and to whom policies have to be sold," she wrote with a decisive edge.
India has got miles to go before reaching the kind of women-oriented politics seen in countries such as New Zealand and Finland. But it is clear that things are changing quite fast.
Last month, the BJP government told the Supreme Court in a hard-fought legal battle won by female army officers that women can join military colleges and be eligible for permanent commissions. The court ordered the Modi government to ensure that 39 out of 71 women Army officers get their permanent commission within seven working days. The 71 officers had challenged the government demanding a permanent commission.
The signs are clear.
As caste politics gets shaky in India, women are emerging as a vote bank every party is trying to woo. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying to change the rules of the game in the Hindi heartland, where women have been more famous for mouthing filmy dialogues like: "Ek chutki sindoor ki keemat tum kya jano Ramesh Babu?"(What do you know about the value of a marriage for a woman?).
The marital vermillion on the forehead may now be replaced by goodies from the seven vows of a different kind, it seems.
At the football field last month, I figured things have changed. If women fight over football and army posts, they certainly seem to be arriving as a vote bank.
(The author is a senior journalist and commentator. He tweets as @madversity. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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