Lok Sabha elections: Why some parties are fielding more women this time

While the overall sex ratio has marginally worsened from the 1960s to the 2000s, the voter sex ratio has improved in India

To understand how some political parties seem to have woken up to the need for greater women’s political representation ahead of the general elections scheduled for April and May 2019, you have only to look at the millennial female voter.

Anju Baa, a 20-year-old tribal girl from Rajgampur village in Sundergarh district in northwestern Odisha, has completed her graduation. She is enrolled in a computer class and says she will apply for a job once her course is over. Marriage? She shrugs, first comes the job.

When Anju was just a baby, her mother, Rani Secundra Baa, class