Indian elections 2024: Did Modi’s outreach to women voters work? | India Election 2024 News

EXPLAINER

The tone was clear – the results were mixed for Modi’s BJP. And India will see a drop in the number of women MPs in its next parliament.

Ahead of International Women’s Day, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an unusual campaign event ahead of the country’s massive national elections: he addressed a rally with only women in the audience in the eastern state of West Bengal.

Women voters, Modi said, were his shield against criticism of his government’s decade-long rule. His comments were in line with Modi’s – and his government’s – approach to women, who make up 49 percent of the country’s population.

From distributing cooking gas connections to demands for improved safety for women, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Modi has presented itself as a defender of the interests of Indian women, although some of its policies have drawn criticism such as being rooted more in bombast than facts.

And several polls ahead of India’s elections suggested that the BJP’s support among women was higher than among men, in contrast to the opposition.

But a week after India’s election results became clear, with the BJP falling short of a majority and relying on coalition allies to form the government that took office on Sunday, a complex picture emerges about how women actually voted in India. 2024. The results also show a break with the trend of increasing the number of women elected to parliament in recent years.

Al Jazeera dissects how the BJP courted voters, how its female candidates performed, how women voted and the state of representation in India’s new parliament.

What are some of the BJP’s biggest proposals for women?

• Access to the LPG cylinder: In May 2016, Modi launched the Ujjwala project – the word means “bright” in Sanskrit – aimed at providing cooking gas cylinders to every family. In multiple advertising campaigns since then, the BJP has portrayed Modi as a leader who saved millions of women from dependence on coal and firewood for cooking. Government data shows that gas cylinder coverage increased from 55 percent in 2016 to 97 percent in 2020, although other data suggests that many cylinder recipients were able to pay for refills – raising questions about the scheme.

• Maternity leave: In 2017, the BJP government introduced legal changes that gave women workers in the formal sector six months of paid maternity leave – double what they had previously. Critics point out that the semi-formal and informal sectors dominate when it comes to India’s workforce – offering far less protection to workers, especially women. Overall, the female labor participation ratio in India has declined in recent years – meaning fewer women are looking for work.
• Women’s safety: In a country where around 90 rapes are reported every day, women’s safety is a fundamental concern. Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, has long had a reputation for being particularly unsafe. Under the current BJP government in the state under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh now records the country’s highest conviction rate in cases involving crimes against women. Critics, however, point out that the total number of crimes against women has also increased, year after year, in the state.

• Women Reservation Bill: Passed by Parliament in September 2023 after six failed attempts since its introduction in 1996, this law aims to ensure that women occupy at least one-third, or 33 percent, of seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies. However, the bill will not be implemented before 2029 and will only be implemented after a census exercise followed by delimitation. This delay and the procedural hurdles that need to be overcome “make its implementation uncertain,” Jagdeep Chhokar, co-founder of the Association for Democratic Reforms, which works on electoral and political reforms, told Al Jazeera.
• Triple talaq ban: The Modi government claims to have liberated Indian Muslim women by banning the practice of triple talaq, which allowed men the option of an almost instantaneous divorce by chanting the word “talaq” three times. Critics point out that the ban plays into anti-Muslim stereotypes by portraying Muslim men as particularly regressive, despite the Modi government taking steps that appear to go against the interests of Muslim women. In 2022, the Modi government authorized the early release of convicted rapists of Bilkis Bano, a Muslim woman, during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat, where Modi was chief minister at the time. The Supreme Court rejected this decision in January 2024.

Did female voters flock to the BJP?

The data suggests that the disclosure did not particularly resonate with female voters, according to a post-vote survey conducted by Lokniti, a research program of the New Delhi-based Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).

The party won by far the largest number of seats and votes in Parliament – ​​240 seats and 37 percent of the vote.

But within these numbers, a higher fraction of male voters – 37 percent – ​​chose the BJP than female voters (36 percent). These numbers are similar to the support the party received in 2019.

This contrasts with numbers from the main opposition party, Congress. This year, 22 percent of women voted for Congress, a 2 percent increase from 2019. By comparison, 21 percent of men voted for Congress this year.

Chhokar said most women “see through” politically motivated programs like the ones the BJP promotes.

“They see that these programs are not real and are just for voting. They’ve seen the implementation over the years,” he said.

How many BJP women won the 2024 elections?

The BJP has also not surpassed its rivals when it comes to sending women MPs to parliament.

Admittedly, its overall seat count means that the BJP has more women MPs – as well as more male MPs – than any other party. Of the 74 women elected to the Lok Sabha this year, 30 are from the BJP.

But these 30 represent 12.5% ​​of the BJP’s total 240 seats.

In contrast, women won 13.1% of seats in the Congress and 38% of seats in the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). The Trinamool Congress is part of INDIA’s opposition alliance with the Congress.

In 2019, 41 of the BJP’s 303 seats were held by women, making women MPs 13.5 percent of the BJP’s MPs in the last elections. For the Congress, this percentage was 11.5% and for the Trinamool it was 40.9% in 2019.

How have women performed in Indian elections over the years?

However, the low number of women deputies is not a party-specific phenomenon.

“All political parties want women only as voters and not as elected representatives,” Chhokar said. “Men in political parties do not want to share power with women.”

In 1951, 22 women were elected MPs, forming about 5% of the Lok Sabha. This value has constantly increased, especially in the last three decades, reaching 14.3% in 2019.

However, 2024 saw a slight drop in the number of women deputies in parliament, with 74 women deputies, compared to the 2019 elections, in which 78 women were elected.