THE SILENT REVOLUTION

A GROWING FORCE, THE WOMAN ELECTOR IN INDIA IS REALISING THE POWER OF HER VOTE AND USING IT TO DIRECT HER OWN AND THE NATION'S DESTINY

- MANISHA SAROOP and JUMANA SHAH

IT WAS A TINY SLIVER-AMERE 0.16 PERCENTAGE POINTSBUT IT BECAME THE BIGGEST STORY OF THE 2019 general election. That year, for the first time in India's parliamentary history, the turnout of women voters (67.18 per cent) exceeded that for men (67.02), reversing the gender gap. It was a small step, but it made Indian women equal arbiters of the nation's political destiny. And the tide is only rising. This election, there has been a 7.5 per cent increase in the number of registered women voters, to 471 million from 438 million in 2019, higher than the five per cent for men. It will include 8.5 million first-time women voters, or those who have attained voting age. The gender elector ratio, or the number of women per 1,000 men, too, has gone up, to 948 from 926 in the previous election. There are 12 states, in fact, where this ratio is in favour of women this year compared to eight in 2019.

Across the length and breadth of the country, this silent revolution has already begun to have a significant impact. The power of the woman vote was one of the major factors that propelled Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to total dominance in both the 2014 and 2019 general elections. According to an analysis by Axis My India, a reputed polling agency, as many as 46 per cent of the women voted for the BJP in 2019 compared to 44 per cent of the men. Women voters, in fact, have become the backbone of the ruling party.