Bihar polls: Women cannot be dismissed as a political demographic; outvoted men in 2010

NEW DELHI: Women as a political demographic have often been dismissed as an appendage of their men, with commonly held wisdom saying that where their men vote, women do too. In Bihar at least, this has not been found to be true, and several moves by both the JD(U)-RJD combine and the BJP points in this direction.

At a strategy meeting of the BJP last Sunday, party president Amit Shah made it clear that two programmes of the government were to be targeted especially at women in Bihar before the model code of conduct kicked in and as part of the Raksha Bandhan celebrations planned by the Centre and helmed by Human Resource Development minister Smriti Irani.

"Party workers at all levels, from MPs to ward workers should gift their sisters the Pradhan Mantri Bima Suraksha Yojana, and adopt as many women as sisters and give them insurance cover," Shah reportedly said at the meeting.

Another scheme, the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana is also to be pushed aggressively in Bihar. According to those close in the know of things with regard to Bihar, the BJP-JD(U) victory in the 2010 Assembly polls has been credited to a large extent to girl child friendly schemes such as the Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojana which was launched in 2007 and was instrumental in arresting the school drop out rates among females. The voting percentage of women in that election was a historic high of 54.5 per cent, while the men lagged at 51.1 per cent.