Modi’s BJP offers handouts, water, and gas to woo women voters

BHOPAL: Living in a slum in central India with her widowed mother and two young daughters, Nayantara Gupta says she owes her relative prosperity in recent years to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Gupta, a 28-year-old single mother, said she voted for the BJP in the last two general elections and plans to do the same in the next vote due by May, citing the party’s focus on women’s welfare, including cash handouts and domestic benefits such as piped water, 24/7 electricity and a cooking gas connection in her cramped home.

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“He’s changed many things for us,” Gupta said in the Madhya Pradesh state capital, Bhopal, one of 51 women Reuters spoke to in Madhya Pradesh and Haryana states, both in India’s heartland, about the upcoming election.

Gupta is not alone. Like her, more and more women have started to vote for the BJP as a result of a campaign of the Modi government to install piped water, power and sanitation in every home in the world’s most populous nation.

Traditionally Indian women were more inclined to vote for Congress, the main opposition party, in part because it gave a country short of female role models its first woman prime minister, Indira Gandhi.

The BJP, meanwhile, was born out of a men-only Hindu nationalist organisation and, with a patriarchal image, struggled to attract women. Modi has changed that in his 10 years in power and the increased support from women is an added assurance for a party that is widely expected to dominate the ballot box but faces disenchantment over rural economic distress, farmers’ protests, high unemployment and inflation.

Polling agency C-voter told Reuters its surveys predict 46 per cent of India’s 472 million women voters would opt for the BJP-led alliance in the election against 43 per cent men, which would help it get a healthy majority in India’s first-past-the-post polling system. The Election Commission says a higher percentage of women, as opposed to men, are likely to vote in this year’s election for the second time after the 2019 poll.

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C-voter’s forecast suggests a big jump in female support for the BJP, extending a trend. In the last election five years ago, 36 per cent of women voted for the BJP, up from 29 per cent in 2014, according to a survey by pollsters Lokniti-CSDS for the Hindu daily.

After Modi inaugurated a grand temple to the Hindu god-king Ram on the site of a razed 16th-century mosque last month, opinion polls said the euphoria in the majority community would lead to an easy win for the BJP in the next election. Meanwhile, the Congress-led opposition alliance has struggled to stay together.