After Karnataka, Congress and BJP to fight again for women votes

Congress proposes 2 'guarantees' for women in MP; BJP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan to transfer first installment of monthly allowance for women

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s loss in Karnataka, where according to one post-poll study, 11 per cent more women voted for the Congress, has galvanised the BJP to enroll 200 women 'Kamal Mitras' in each of the 543 Lok Sabha seats. The lakh-such 'friends of the lotus', the BJP's election symbol, will across the country spread the message of Modi government's "15 flagship women centric schemes".

The Karnataka results and the Congress party's plan to replicate its electoral template in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh with women-centric schemes has the BJP worried. Of the 'five guarantees' Congress promised in Karnataka, at least three--free travel for women in public transport buses, Rs 2,000 monthly assistance to the women head of every household and 10 kilos of rice free--were targeted on the state's women.

In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress has proposed another 'five guarantees', of which two are specifically for women: Rs 500 cooking gas cylinder and Rs 1,500 monthly allowance to all women. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will lead the party's charge in MP, starting with addressing a public meeting in Jabalpur on June 12. On June 10, MP Chief Minister and BJP leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan will transfer the first installment to the estimated 1.25 crore beneficiaries of his government's 'ladli behna' scheme, which has promised Rs 1000 monthly allowance to all women above 23.

   

On Friday, BJP president J P Nadda launched the 'Kamal Mitra' project within a week of the party's Karnataka loss and spoke about the change in the lives of women because of the Modi government's schemes, including Mudra, in which 66 per cent of beneficiaries are women. BJP's women cell chief, Vanathi Srinivasan, told Reuters last month that a third of the party's candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls will be women. Unless Prime Minister Narendra Modi intervenes, Srinivasan's claim looks unrealistic, given that only 42 of the BJP's 303 MPs in 2019 were women. The Trinamool Congress and Biju Janata Dal had led the way in 2019, fielding women in over a third of Lok Sabha seats in Bengal and Odisha, respectively.

Pradeep Gupta, Founder and CMD Axis My India, said nearly 30-40 per cent of women, especially among rural and urban poor, do not depend on the earnings of their fathers or husbands. "But India is a patriarchal society; whatever they earn goes to the male member of their family, which is where politicians realised that the most deprived member of a family is its women and tailored the schemes so that the beneficiaries are women," Gupta told 'Business Standard'. He said the "chief wage earner" of a woman is no longer her father or husband, but the government of the day. "That is where women are meticulous in making their electoral choices," he said, attributing the post-2014 support of women for the BJP to the Modi government's intent, sensitivity and swiftness in implementing women-centric schemes.

At the launch of 'Kamal Mitra', BJP's Srinivasan said the BJP's women's cell has uploaded details of 6.7 lakh women beneficiaries of central government schemes on the NaMo app under its selfie with labharthi (beneficiary) and invited 78,500 Dalit women to their homes and shared meals. "We strongly believe change should start from our kitchen," she said. For the BJP, other parties, especially the Trinamool in Bengal, BJD in Odisha and Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi and Punjab, not to speak of DMK and others in southern Indian states, have caught up reaching out to women as a distinct voter group.

The BJP, under Modi, seeks to surprise the opposition yet again by regaining its women support base.