By Hepzi Anthony
The Mahayuti alliance won on the back of women who voted in large numbers to show their appreciation for women-focussed schemes—but the number of women in the state assembly has dropped.
The Mahayuti alliance’s landslide victory in the recent 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections has been attributed to women voters who stepped out to vote in large numbers, to show their appreciation for a slew of welfare measures targeted at them. In particular, the chief minister’s beloved ‘sister scheme’, or the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana (MMLBY), brought women voters to the booths.
Voter turnout numbers for women increased by 3.6% from 61.6% in 2019 to 65.2% in 2024. The special measures for women included a monthly stipend of Rs 1,500 to residents of Maharastra with an annual family income under Rs.2.5 lakh, three free gas cylinders a year, and a scholarship scheme for higher education. The government spent Rs 3700 crores on MMLBY, or 11% of its revenue receipt, and covered 24.3 million women across the 30 million households in the state. While this blitzkrieg may have given the impression that women have the upper hand in the state’s political scene, the ground reality continues to be different.
While the post-victory analyses made glowing references to “how wooing women worked” in a big way, there was barely any attention to genuine issues relating to women—like representation of women in the assembly.
Despite the public posturing of women being the “beloved sister” or “ladki” of the government, the number of women legislators in the house has actually reduced. The 2019 assembly had 24 women representatives. After the 2024 results were declared, it transpired that only 22 women legislators had been elected—just 7.6% of the assembly.
This isn’t just a matter of voter choices. It also related to the number of the candidates in the contest. Of the total 4,136 candidates across all parties who contested the state assembly election in 2024, only 363 were women, or 8.8%, to be precise. This meant that even if the electorate wanted to vote for more women, the political parties failed to offer them a choice. It was as if the chances of women entering politics or getting elected was cut short within their own parties.
Mumbai had only 11 women contestants fielded by major polo parties across 36 seats, of which four won—Manisha Choudhary (BJP), Vidya Thakur (BJP), Jyoti Gaikwad (Cong) and Sana Malik (NCP). While two of them are established politicians, the latter two are greenhorns but owe their victory to being from political families.
Hindustan Times highlighted this gap between rhetoric and action when it comes to gender in an editorial on 12 November, titled “Where have all the women gone?”. It observed: “Clearly, the parties are refusing to walk the talk. They wish to see women as consumers of politics, who need to be wooed with sops, but not as active players.”
This is a view shared by Mumbai University researcher Sanjay Patil working on Maharashtra’s politics and urban informality. He describes all the talk of women in politics as “patronizing and glib hype” that conveniently ignored the core issues and challenges facing women be it safety, education or jobs. “All the hype about their affection for women in the last six months is merely symbolic with an eye on the elections. These populist schemes were replicated here based on its success in other states, following studies that revealed that women voters were developing their own sense of agency in voting. The fact is that even during the last six months when the women were wooed with Ladki Bahin Yojana, violence, attacks and atrocities continued against women and no stringent action was taken by the state during this.”
So, if political parties understand the importance of women voters, why the hesitation in granting them better representation? “The entire political space is patriarchal, be it the politicians, political offices, political functions or the campaigning… it’s all male, and even the decisions on candidatures are based on questions like ‘Will she be able to attend to emergency situations during late night hours?’ Reservation of seats for women is restricted to the local body elections level (50%) even today. It has not yet been expanded to legislatures and Parliament despite the provision for 33% seats reservation for women being unanimously passed in Parliament,” explains Sanjay Patil.
There is a silver lining, though as the HT editorial noted: “The trend confirms at least two developments: one, parties now see women as a substantial and influential vote; two, they recognise the agency of women as voters, that their political choices are not necessarily determined by the men in the family.”
Feminist academic and activist Vibhuti Patel observes that though this election has reflected the emergence of women as a voting constituency, women in politics continue to be bogged down by “the five Ms—money power, muscle power, macho culture, misogyny and mafia”, which has impacted the emergence of women in public life across South Asia. “Chivalry has now been replaced by hostility towards women as they are now perceived as competitors,” she feels. She also notes that women in political space are further inhibited as technology has been weaponized against them for surveillance, character assassination and sexual assault.
Patel strongly feels that monthly stipends for marginalised women need to continue due to the precarious state of women, which has been accentuated in the post-pandemic downward spiral in the economy. “Monthly stipends for women should not be considered freebies or revadis rather they need to be viewed as income-support schemes or survival kits for women. This is because over 54% of women are anaemic, wage disparity continues to be high, over 40% of women who held jobs have been out of work since the pandemic,” she says. Women also fare poorly on the hunger index with many subsisting on one or two meals a day. “Poor Indian women eat last, least and leftovers. In such conditions, monthly stipends help them move from a state of semi-starvation to subsistence for survival, support their children’s education and health care of the family members,” she says.
Hepzi Anthony is an independent journalist based in Mumbai, who writes about issues of public policy, urban development, planning and environment.
Edited by Shalini Umachandran
