Rajasthan elections: Why Vasundhara Raje needs to amplify her message for women voters to make a comeback
As a chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje is bracing up for what is likely to be a tough fight for her to win. While electoral fights are never easy, the difference this time is that she will have to work harder to woo women voters.
Raje is known for her wit, charm, repartee, confidence and effortless connect with women voters. As someone who has risen to the very top in a state with deep-rooted patriarchy is a story that has found resonance far and wide in Rajasthan. In 2013, her rallies were massively attended by women. Even towards the end of September, just two months before elections in 2018, when I spoke to several young girls in villages who are opting for higher education over working in the fields, they expressed their admiration for the chief minister. But not one of the 10 girls I spoke with knew of the many schemes that the government had launched for the betis of Rajasthan. I spoke to women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, they hadn't heard of the schemes either. And this was just about 45-50kms away from the city of Jaipur, in a village called Chomu.
According to the reported state election department data on women participation in the electoral process, the number of women casting votes has been on a steady rise. While 723 women cast their vote per 1,000 men in 1972, in 2013, 899 women exercised their right per 1,000 men.
The state has launched a host of schemes from the Mukhyamantri Rajshree Yojana with benefits from birth to adulthood; a scheme which gave out bicycles for schoolgirls; the Bhamashah scheme under which e-transactions for 54 schemes are made to beneficiaries whose real-time data is available online.
Cash and non-cash benefits of the public distribution system (PDS), student scholarships, payments under MGNREGA and social security pensions, Indira Awaas Yojana, CM BPL Housing Scheme, Janani Suraksha Yojana and others are routed through this scheme. And very recently, the Raje government went ahead and announced free mobile phones for women of below poverty line families.
However, when I spoke to the women gathered in Chomu about it, they told me that carrying a phone around was too cumbersome for them. One of them, who clarified that it wasn't free but that she had paid Rs 1,100 for it and was promised a rebate of Rs 500 which would go into her account directly, added that she was charging the phone through an electricity connection she had stolen from an electric poll and didn't like carrying the phone because it was bulky and that she saw no use for it. Again, Chomu is not the interiors of Rajasthan but about an hour's drive from the capital of the state, Jaipur.
Most women said they would vote but their decision of whom to vote for would be taken by the men in their families — husband, brother or son. None of them knew anything about the schemes that had been announced. The older women complained about not being able to find enough work and low prices for milk that the state was giving them.
So while they were happy to have a woman as a leader of the state, Raje will have to amplify her message if she wants to be heard and voted back to power by the women of Rajasthan.