To Help or Empower? Women in Indian Politics

In 2023, India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), promised to extend the reservation of electoral constituencies to women. This means that during elections, there would be a number of constituencies from which only women candidates could contest (while both women and men would be able to cast votes for them). The promise, however, will only be fulfilled as part of a much larger reform – after the new census of the country’s population – that is to enhance the number of lawmakers in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the federal Parliament. The census is to commence in 2025, and won’t be completed until 2026, after which a debate on enlarging the number of assembly members would begin. Therefore, the promise made by the party to India’s women could take years to be implemented, if it happens at all.

Many people have reservations about the reservation system in India. The system has been in place since the 1950s for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. As these groups were, and mostly still are, at the lowest social and economic rung, affirmative action in the form of the reservation system was introduced. A percentage of jobs in public companies, slots for students at public universities, and political constituencies are reserved for these groups.

Now, this solution is being promised for women.

The reservation system is criticized by many as being against meritocracy and not really solving the problems it seeks to solve. But it is also defended by many who note that before one speaks of meritocracy and equality, the communities which have been exploited for millennia, and who thus are still far behind others, must be assisted by the state to achieve an equitable starting point. Now, the same debate will be held in the case of women.

One can also approach this debate in a different way – by asking whether Indian women would be best helped by being offered various things, or instead by being allowed to have more agency. Arguably, Indian politicians do notice the problems that their country’s women face. Yet, very often they attempt to solve these issues for women, rather than allowing women to solve these problems by themselves.

India is, without doubt, a country with a rampant violence against women problem, a fact confirmed by such notorious statistics as rape cases (which recently have reached over 30,000 registered cases per year  – to say nothing of unreported cases). Following certain particularly cruel instances of rape and abuse in recent decades, punishments for these crimes have been made more stringent in certain aspects. Moreover, more thought is being given to the circumstances in which physical assault of women takes place.

In 2016, the government of the state of Bihar introduced prohibition. As alcohol consumption leads to more domestic violence, and women are more often victims of domestic violence, prohibition was assumed to be a policy particularly supported by women. The introduction of the ban on alcohol sales is thus believed to have increased the popularity of the party that introduced it, the Janata Dal (United), among the female electorate. Yet, the coalition government led by the party in this period (2015-2017), consisted of only two women ministers, of the total of 28 (and neither of the two belonged to the JD[U]). Moreover, while the 2015 state elections led to the JD(U)’s triumph in Bihar, the party, which later introduced prohibition, had only fielded nine women candidates (of a total of 278 women fielded by all parties). Thus, while prohibition was thought to particularly benefit women, its introduction was still mostly a decision made by men.

Another of India’s common problems is that not only do wide economic and social discrepancies persist, these discrepancies are much wider when comparing men and women. For instance, 2011 data showed that over 26 percent of people in India were illiterate, but after splitting the population by gender, it turns out that the male illiteracy is lower than the national average (15.3 percent men were illiterate), while the percentage was higher, i.e. worse, than that average (approximately 30 percent) among women. Many Indian families, though obviously not all, apparently assume that it makes more sense to support longer education for boys, which leads to many girls dropping out of school at earlier stages. The problem is particularly acute in rural areas, where female literacy is lower – or where, in certain cases, girls are not being sent to school at all. The worst statistics come from the state of Rajasthan where in some villages women illiteracy reaches 50 percent.

Thus, for many reasons, it was understood that not only do poorer communities need more assistance but also women in these communities need it the most. Recently, certain states in India began to pay monthly financial assistance to the poorest women. If the disposable income of a certain family is lower than a certain level, they receive benefits from the state, such as ration cards. Such cards allow them to buy subsidized grain in government shops. While such help is to benefit the whole family, now the women in these poor families are being offered additional assistance: monthly payments. Such projects are called the Ladli Behin Yojana in Madhya Pradesh and Majhi Behin Yojana in Maharashtra. In Maharashtra, the project was commenced in March 2024, not long before the November 2024 elections in the state.

Again, it is assumed that the popularity of the scheme might have been one of the factors contributing to the subsequent victory of the incumbent coalition. The alliance is termed the Mahayuti and it includes the BJP – the party which rules the whole country and which also promised the above-mentioned reservation for women. However, the number of women fielded by the Mahayuti in the November 2024 elections in Maharashtra was not astonishing – about 10 percent (the opposition fielded a similar number). After the political battle was won, the Mahayuti nominated just three women, out of a total of 42 nominees, to ministerial posts. Both in Maharashtra, as in Bihar, none of the women ministers were offered key positions, such as that of a chief minister.

There are undoubtedly problems and challenges that only women face, or which women face in particular – and hence there is a need for solutions which are designed to solve those women-specific problems. However, the question remains if women should not be given more power and freedom to solve these problems themselves, or at least enough agency to solve them in partnership with men. In neither the Bihar prohibition nor the Maharashtra project was this the case.

Reservation of constituencies, in turn, could be a step in the right direction. The national BJP government committed to the policy with a long timeline and a hazy future: only after the census, and together with a wider reform that will enhance the number of lawmakers, which is bound to be controversial for other reasons. The reservation, as it already exists in India, is controversial, and enhancing it to create women-only electoral constituencies is bound to amplify the controversy. However, reservation may at least offer women a greater degree agency in Indian politics and the space to help solve their own problems.