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 polls due by May, citing the party’s focus on women’s welfare, including handing out cash and domestic benefits such as piped water, 24/7 electricity and a gas connection for cooking in her cramped house.
“He changed a lot of things for us,” Gupta said in Madhya Pradesh’s capital, Bhopal, one of 51 women interviewed by Reuters in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, both in India’s heartland, about the upcoming elections.
Gupta is not alone. Like her, more and more women have started voting for the BJP as a result of the Modi government’s campaign to install piped water, electricity and sewage in every home in the world’s most populous country.
Indian women have traditionally been more inclined to vote for the Congress, the main opposition party, in part because a country with a dearth of female role models produced its first prime minister, Indira Gandhi.
The BJP, meanwhile, was born out of a male-only Hindu nationalist organization and sought to attract women with a patriarchal image. Modi’s change, 10 years in power and increased support from women, is further reassurance for a party widely expected to dominate the polls but facing disillusionment from rural economic distress, farmer protests, high unemployment and inflation.
Polling agency C-voter told Reuters its polls predicted 46 percent of India’s 472 million female voters would opt for the BJP-led alliance in the election against 43 percent of men, helping it win a healthy majority in India’s first past . postal voting system. The Electoral Commission says a higher percentage of women than men are likely to take part in this year’s elections for the second time since the 2019 survey.
The C-voter forecast suggests a big jump in women’s support for the BJP, extending the trend. In the last election five years ago, 36 percent of women voted for the BJP, up from 29 percent in 2014, according to a Lokniti-CSDS poll for the Hindu daily.
After Modi inaugurated a grand temple of the Hindu god Rama last month on the site of a demolished 16th-century mosque, opinion polls said euphoria in the majority community would lead to an easy victory for the BJP in the next election. Meanwhile, the Congress-led opposition alliance is trying to stay together.
