Despite Nirmala Sitharaman's appointment, BJP yet to crack gender equation

Sitharaman's new job is not quite the result of a bottom-up process

Women’s empowerment is passe. In the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the new catchline is ‘gender equality’. Intoned like a mantra, it gained currency with party members after Nirmala Sitharaman’s elevation as defence minister and her entry into the government’s elite cabinet committee on security. 

The BJP’s bandying of the phrase is because it wants to dispel a perception that its women leaders reach the top with male patronage and such appointments are about ‘tokenism’. Its Mumbai MP, Poonam Mahajan, who helms the party’s youth wing, a nursery for developing leaders, said, “I don’t like people saying we have the first