Consumed By Political Motivations
Listen to excerpts from Outlook's Women of the World, Unite issue by Rakhi Bose.
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00:00 I am Rakhi Bose, Assistant Editor with Outlook, and I bring to you excerpts from our latest
00:05 issue, Women of the World Unite.
00:08 Consumed by political motivations, political researcher and columnist Omkar Pujari writes
00:14 that the Modi government had no time to get into the more demanding fundamentals concerning
00:18 the implementation of the women's reservation legislation.
00:22 The essential ingredient of politics is timing.
00:25 It may not be the best time to quote a Trudeau in India, but these words of former Canadian
00:30 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau aptly sum up the Modi government's sudden and unexpected
00:35 move of tabling and getting the Women's Reservation Bill or Nadi Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam 2023
00:42 passed, a legislation which was in cold storage for close to three decades.
00:47 Passage of the bill, reserving one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state
00:51 assemblies, once again reaffirms that the Modi-led BJP knows the importance of the essential
00:57 ingredient of politics, that is, timing.
01:00 It is serving the right dish at the right time to the right audience, that is, the women
01:05 voters.
01:06 Women vote differently and independently.
01:09 Many observers have pointed out that one of the biggest stories of India's democracy in
01:14 recent times has been the steadily rising participation of women voters.
01:18 Over the last six decades, the turnout of women voters has increased by about 20 percentage
01:24 points.
01:25 In fact, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the women's voter turnout was marginally higher
01:30 than the men's turnout.
01:32 But to be clear, this does not mean that more women are voting than men.
01:37 The impact of India's highly skewed population sex ratio can be clearly seen in the sex ratio
01:42 of voters or SRV in India.
01:45 Number of women voters per thousand male voters who actually vote.
01:49 However, impressive strides have been made on that front too.
01:53 As demonstrated by Mudit Kapoor and Shamika Ravi, India's SRV has improved considerably
01:59 from 793 in the 1970s to 928 in the 2000s.
02:07 But the bigger story is that women are not just voting in large numbers, but they are
02:11 voting independently.
02:13 A 2014 survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies or CSDS in New Delhi
02:19 found that 70% of Indian women are making voting decisions independently, debunking
02:26 the long-held myth of women voters surrendering to the whims and fancies of their male family
02:32 members while casting their ballot.
02:35 Women voters have also shown different levels of voting intentions and motivations than
02:40 their male counterparts.
02:42 Considering how differently and independently women vote than men, they can shape the political
02:48 fortunes of parties.
02:49 For instance, a given political party can witness significantly different levels of
02:54 support among men and women voters.
02:57 This difference in the levels of support among men and women for a given candidate, party
03:02 or alliance is known as the gender differential or gender gap in vote share.
03:07 Traditionally, the BJP has had a higher support among male voters and a comparatively lower
03:12 support among female voters.
03:14 The reverse has been the case for its rival Congress, which has enjoyed a general advantage
03:19 among women voters.
03:21 A Hansa Research Group post-poll survey for the 2014 elections found that while the BJP
03:27 and its allies led the Congress among male voters by 18 percentage points, their lead
03:33 shrunk to 9 percentage points among women voters.
03:37 According to the CSTS-NES 2014 data, while 40% of men preferred to see Modi as the Prime
03:44 Minister, Modi's support was lower among women at 30%.
03:48 However, the BJP has made significant improvements in its gender differential by garnering greater
03:54 support among women voters.
03:56 In 2019, the percentage of women voters supporting Modi as the Prime Minister increased to 45%,
04:03 a sharp rise of 15% points over 2014.
04:08 Since coming to power in 2014, the BJP and the Prime Minister have invested heavily in
04:13 improving their support among women voters.
04:16 The investments paid off as seen by the BJP's performance in the 2019 polls and a series
04:22 of state assembly polls where women powered the BJP's victory.
04:26 The reversal of the Saffron Party's gender disadvantage among women has been so dramatic
04:32 that women voters have now become an integral ingredient in the BJP's formula for electoral
04:37 success.