Are women deciding Assembly elections?

Women are increasingly being targeted as a separate vote bank in India. Do you think this is a cause for celebration?

Rajeshwari Deshpande: There is some cause for celebration because women who were — and even now are — deprived of money within the domestic and public sphere have some income for their own disposal. But at the same time, we need to be apprehensive about the way in which women are projected as labharthis (beneficiaries). There is a constant attempt to build a ‘non-political’ political constituency of women, which keeps women as marginal players rather than as active citizens. The schemes also still talk about women as beloved sisters, which typically depicts the idea of keeping women on the sidelines, while the main contestants and decision-makers are their brothers or the men.

Ruhi Tewari: The evolution of women voters as participants in the voting process, in the minds of India’s political leaders, is positive. We now have entire manifestos dedicated to women voters. These measures have helped women have a say, have greater agency, which they did not have before. And it isn’t just about the cash schemes. In the early 2000s, Mr. Kumar gave free cycles to school girls. The agency derived from such a measure had ripple effects over the years. Attempts to build more toilets for women was never even a conversation earlier; now it is. These are measures in the right direction. However, there is a danger of assuming that all women want are freebies. What women voters are essentially looking for is agency, and measures which will give them dignity. Political parties need to internalise this and not just throw schemes at women to gain votes.

Tamil Nadu’s Urimai Thogai scheme, Madhya Pradesh’s Ladli Behna Yojana, and Maharashtra’s Ladki Bahin Yojana provide direct cash transfers to low- and middle-income women. How successful have these schemes been among women voters? And have they helped the parties?

Ruhi Tewari: There has been a lot of enthusiasm among women voters regarding these schemes. The scheme in M.P. certainly helped Shivraj Singh Chouhan and the one in Maharashtra helped the BJP coalition. However, these schemes need to be implemented well. Just announcing them a month before elections comes across as a bribe for votes. There has to be a better approach. For example, if we look at the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme in West Bengal, or even the Ladli Behna in M.P., they come with certain conditional clauses: the woman needs at least a 10th or 12th grade certificate, for instance. These are incentives for parents to educate the girl child.

Rajeshwari Deshpande: Women are definitely happy about these schemes, but it will take us some time to understand the actual effects of these schemes and how women respond to them. Some surveys conducted as part of the National Election Studies suggest that, as of now, there is no distinctive women’s vote that is emerging as a decisive factor for any party, particularly for the BJP. In fact, in both M.P. and Maharashtra, when we did empirical investigations, we found that women had not voted for the winning coalition on a greater scale than men. While there has historically been a gender gap among the voters of the BJP, when compared to the Congress, this gap is almost non-existent now. And yet, if we see at the regional level the segregation of this gap, women have voted differently.

The way these schemes are implemented also plays a role [in their success]. In Maharashtra, right after the elections, the implementation of the scheme was chaotic. There was increased scrutiny of the beneficiaries, and women wondered whether they should opt for this scheme or the pension scheme.

One also needs to know whether women are able to use the money independently. All this can be gauged only gradually.

Women have become a focus group in electoral politics, just like caste groups and religious minorities. How do these identities play out when women are considered as one monolithic category?

Rajeshwari Deshpande: In Indian society, women’s gendered identities will always remain enmeshed in their caste, class, and other social identities. It is very difficult to imagine women’s vote as a monolith. The long-term effect of this kind of an imagination is that it converts women into a marginal political entity, because we are essentialising women. And by doing so, a clientelist kind of relationship between political parties and women voters as labharthis would become generalised. So, we have to be very cautious about monolithic imaginations.

Ruhi Tewari: No voter category in India is homogeneous. The only thing that distinguishes women from men is that men in society or as voters have never had to confront ‘gender’ as an identity that causes lack of privilege or disadvantage. What has caused them disadvantage, if at all, has perhaps been their other identities such as caste or religion. Women have always been marginalised socially across tribes, religion, castes etc. and that in some ways gives them a bonding factor to become a voting bloc.

During the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar, more women voters were left out of the electoral rolls than men. How do you see this against the fact that political parties are trying to woo women voters?

Ruhi Tewari: Women are always going to be at a disadvantage when it comes to such exercises because their documentation is the weakest. We saw the same thing happening during the NRC (National Register of Citizens) exercise in Assam. There were women struggling because some of them had got married and come to Assam and couldn’t prove where they had come from. This really flies in the face of political campaigns meant to bring women to the forefront. The biggest strength of women today is being able to go and vote in the same way as men do. If that right is taken away, the biggest instrument of empowerment that women have is taken away. The SIR exercise has thus been callous in its approach. If they wanted to empower women voters, they should have made sure that there was enough time and support for women to come up with proper documents.

Rajeshwari Deshpande: I’d like to make two points. First, after the 2015 elections in Bihar, the closing of the gender gap among voters was discussed at the national level as well as in Bihar. During the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, women voters outnumbered men in many constituencies. There were various explanations offered for this: some people talked about the empowerment of women, some gave credit to the Election Commission’s efforts to actively register women voters, and many academics suggested that one of the main factors, particularly in Bihar, was the large-scale out-migration of men from the State. These questions — of the number of women voters and the closing of the gender gap — must be revisited in the context of the results of the SIR exercise.

Second, women are going to be adversely affected during rigorous exercises which require documentation. And this brings us to a paradox: women, during routine practices of citizenship such as proving eligibility as a voter, lag behind men but at the same time are celebrated as voters and labharthis. This is yet another way in which you celebrate and include women, but also effectively exclude them.

Given the closing of the gender gap, the greater participation of women in elections, and their wooing by parties, would you say women are deciding Assembly elections?

Ruhi Tewari: The real importance of women voters today is not that they are deciding elections; it is that they are at par with other voting blocs.

Rajeshwari Deshpande: The women’s vote remains largely enmeshed in other kinds of identities. But particularly after 2019, we see that women have started voting independently and not essentially in favour of the parties that extend populist welfare schemes. So, we see the arrival of women’s agency. But I don’t think women will be able to play a decisive role, particularly given that they are deliberately kept on the margins.

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