India’s Modi wooed women voters. Did the strategy work in the election? | India

EXPLAINER

The pitch was clear — the results mixed for Modi’s BJP. And India will see a dip in women MPs in its incoming parliament.

Ahead of International Women’s Day, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an unusual campaign event leading up to the country’s giant national election: 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 keeping with Modi’s – and his government’s – targeted outreach to women, who constitute 49 percent of the country’s population.

From the distribution of cooking gas connections to claims of improved safety for women, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has, under Modi, pithed itself as a defender of the interests of Indian women, even though some of its policies have drawn criticism as being rooted more in bombast than fact.

And multiple surveys ahead of India’s election suggested that the BJP’s support among women was higher than among men, in contrast with the opposition.

But a week after the results of India’s elections became clear, with the BJP falling short of a majority, and relying on coalition allies to form the government that was sworn in on Sunday, a complex picture is emerging of how women actually voted in 2024. The results also show a break from a trend of rising numbers of elected women parliamentarians in recent years.

Al Jazeera dissects how the BJP wooed voters, how its women candidates performed, how women voted and the state of representation in the incoming Indian parliament.

What are some of the BJP’s biggest pitches to women?

• LPG cylinder access: In May 2016, Modi launched the Ujjwala scheme — the word means “bright” in Sanskrit — aimed at supplying cooking gas cylinders to every household. In multiple advertising campaigns since then, the BJP has shown Modi as a leader who rescued millions of women from having to rely on coal and wood for cooking. Government data shows that gas cylinder coverage rose from 55 percent in 2016 to 97 percent by 2020, though other data suggests that many cylinder recipients have been able to afford refills – raising questions about the scheme.

• Maternity leave: In 2017, the BJP government pushed through legal amendments that gave women workers in the formal sector six months of paid maternity leave – double what they had previously. Critics point out that semiformal and informal sectors dominate when it comes to India’s labour force – offering far fewer protections to workers, especially women. Overall, India’s female labour participation ratio has fallen in recent years – meaning that fewer women are even seeking employment.
• Women’s safety: In a country where nearly 90 rapes are reported every day, women’s safety is a key concern. Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, has long bee hobbled with a reputation for 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 for cases involving crimes against women. Critics, though, point out that the total number of crimes against women has also been rising, year on year, in the state.

• Women’s 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 in state legislative assemblies. However, the bill will not be implemented before 2029, and will only be implemented after a census exercise followed by delimitation. That delay, and the procedural hurdles that need to be crossed, “makes its implementation uncertain,” Jagdeep Chhokar, a 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 a near-instant divorce by chanting the word “talaq” thrice. Critics point out that the ban plays into anti-Muslim stereotypes in its portrayal of Muslim men as particularly regressive, even as the Modi government has taken steps that appear to go against the…