POLITICS-INDIA: Diverse Women Prove Female Winnability in Polls

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Dec 9 2003 (IPS) - The poll victories of a princess and a saffron clad celibate, who join a growing band of female chief ministers in India, appear to dispel the myth that women lack ‘winnability’ in the rough and tumble world of electoral politics.

On Monday, Vasundhara Raje Scindia from the royal family of the Scindias was sworn in as chief minister of western Rajasthan state. Uma Bharti, a beads-and-saffron robe wearing ‘sanyasin’ (celibate) took the oath of office as chief minister of sprawling central Madhya Pradesh state.

The social difference between the two women could not be starker.

The Scindias still live in palaces, one of them boasting the world’s biggest dining hall and lit up by the world’s biggest cut-glass chandeliers. Bharti, for her part, is a primary school dropout and a member of one of Hinduism’s socially deprived castes.

They join in victory Sheila Dikshit, one of India’s more popular politicians, who was re-elected chief minister of Delhi, a state of 14 million people and host to the national capital, in provincial assembly elections in four northern Indian states held Dec. 1.

Women chief ministers, including the once-glamorous, former actress Jayarman Jayalalithaa in southern Tamil Nadu and the staid home-maker Rabri Devi in eastern Bihar state, now directly rule over the destinies of a combined 300 million people in five Indian states.

These five women have made a practical demonstration of what researchers and women’s organisations have been saying all along – that given the opportunities and the tickets female candidates can win elections, with or without seats being reserved for them in the provincial assemblies and national parliament.

Pressure has been mounting on India’s major political parties to field more women in elections after repeated attempts over almost a decade to reserve 33 percent of seats in legislatures.

Among these efforts is a constitutional amendment bill, whose passage has been systematically thwarted by vested interests – not all of it having to do with male chauvinism.

The results of the December polls, particularly in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, two of India’s most backward states, show that women candidates can draw out larger numbers of women voters and win elections for political parties – and this is bound to change the calculations of campaign managers.

Especially impressive was the victory of Uma Bharti, who comes from an impoverished, peasant background but was fielded by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), best-known for its pro-Hindu, patriarchal and right-wing ideology.

Bharti’s emphasis during the election campaign on development-related issues uncharacteristically steered clear of causes dear to the BJP and her own fiery participation in the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque at Ayodhya, which first shot her party into national prominence 10 years ago.

Dikshit, a stalwart of the Congress party, the BJP’s main rival, was re-elected because of demonstrable improvements to Delhi’s power supply and other civic amenities, which are nowadays seen as more important than ideology or religion especially by women voters.

Explains Congress party leader, lawyer and campaigner for women’s rights Jayanti Natarajan: ”Development is not merely a women’s issue but everyday issues such as availability of water do impact greatly on the lives of women.”

The Congress party is run by Sonia Gandhi, a woman on whose shoulders falls the responsibility of leading her party into next year’s general elections and has so far counted on the loyalty of voters and the fealty of party rank and file to the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, into which she married.

But the results of the provincial elections have jolted the Congress party into considering the construction of voter appeal based on development issues, rather than for the reason of keeping power in the family that has projected women into powerful political roles not only in India but also in other countries in South Asia.

Two countries in the region, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, currently have women heads of state. But both Khaleda Zia and Chandrika Kumaratunge inherited their positions, at least initially, as the family legacies of powerful political leaders who once dominated their countries.

Indeed, politics in Bangladesh has for long been reduced to the ”War of the Begums’ because of Zia’s long-standing rivalry with Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the daughter and political legatee of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, who founded the nation in 1971 but was assassinated four years later.

The same could be said for Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and opposition leaders like Pakistan’s exiled Benazir Bhutto and the Nobel-prize winning but incarcerated Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi. All three continue to bear the names of their fathers as a symbol of extralegitimacy.

But in India, to go by the results of the recent elections, women politicians are coming into their own and taking on powerful male rivals over important political issues, rather than depending on the legacies of dead fathers or husbands to help move up the slippery slope to power.

It was only in August that Mayawati, leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which champions the cause of people at the lower rungs of the Hindu caste hierarchy, resigned amid corruption charges as chief minister of northern Uttar Pradesh state.

But corruption need not be a handicap as proven by Jalalithaa, who won a landslide victory in Tamil Nadu last year despite several serious cases pending against her.

Jayalalithaa’s record tested the notion that women leaders, once in power, can rise above narrow considerations and deliver on real issues of development.

Madhu Kishwar, women’s rights activist and editor of ‘Manushi’ (female), a well-known magazine brought out from in the capital devoted to gender issues, says that getting women elected to power will not necessarily solve development issues.

It also does not automatically lead to prioritisation of gender issues, although they are able to project an image of being caring and interested in the problems of the people and women.

”Indira Gandhi (who ruled India between 1966 and 1977 and from 1980 till her assassination by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984) pushed down the women around her once she reached the top,” said Kishwar.

Gandhi took on the political mantle of her father Jawaharlal Nehru, a statesman and champion of democracy, but began a process of nationalisation of banks and major state institutions that led to corruption and a crippling of the economy. When challenged politically, she responded by declaring an internal emergency and suspending democratic rights.

Many see in Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s allegedly autocratic ways a reflection of Gandhi, whose assassination was linked to her propping up Sikh religious militancy and then ordering the Indian army to crush it

”We have to see whether the new generation of elected women leaders that are coming up in India deliver on development issues and the empowerment of women – or also act like queen bees,” said Kishwar.