By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI – The last decade since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party government was elected to power at the Centre, has witnessed a “nightmarish regime” of violence, fear, hunger and unemployment unleashed by the Sangh Parivar and the implementation of deliberate policies of destruction of the democratic, secular and federal fabric of the Constitution. The women are at the receiving end, as the BJP government has failed to protect their interests on all fronts.
With these observations, a booklet on “Status of Women in India: Experience of the Last Decade (2014-2024)”, brought out by the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), the largest women’s organisation in the country, has highlighted the impact of the last 10 years of the BJP government’s rule on women’s lives and livelihoods and the long-term consequences of its policies which will destroy the nation’s constitutional framework, economy and social structure.
The AIDWA functions as the women’s wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The 32-page booklet has been brought out ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which the women of the country should treat as a challenge before all secular and democratic forces and at the same time an opportunity to dislodge the BJP regime. AIDWA president P.K. Sreemathi and general secretary Mariam Dhawale have signed the booklet, while calling to elect a democratic and secular government in the country to strengthen women’s struggle for equality and emancipation.
The impact of the BJP government’s policies on women has been seen in the ever-increasing threat to
food security, the spectre of hunger and malnutrition, rising unemployment, back-breaking price rise, escalating communal and casteist attacks, and an alarming increase in violence and brutality against women, especially girl children. “The BJP government has failed India’s women,” the two women leaders of AIDWA remarked.
The BJP government has not only failed to deliver on the promises made before the 2014 and 2019 general elections, but it has also worsened the conditions for women across the country, according to the booklet. The BJP had projected itself as pro-women in its manifestos for the 2014 and 2019 elections, but the government failed to live up to its promises. It is now making fresh promises for the 2024 elections.
The past decade has been significant in the economic distress faced by Indian women. Despite claims on improvement in the situation of Indian women, data from the World Economic Forum shows that India has one of the worst Gender Gap Indexes in the world. The neoliberal policies followed by the Narendra Modi government have been solely for the benefit of a few large corporate houses and at the cost of the vast majority of the country’s population.
Just 15 corporate houses control 90% of the profits in India today. The profits of corporate monopolies like Adani and Ambani have sky-rocketed by over 15 billion U.S. dollars per year, especially during and after the pandemic.
Corporates reported a 70% increase in profits in 2021-22 compared to the previous year while 84% of households saw a decline in their incomes.
Disastrous policies like demonetisation and GST have worsened the conditions of poor and marginalised sections, and the women particularly have faced the brunt of the crisis. The Modi government’s promise of having a women’s workforce plan has also failed, stated the booklet. While India is facing one of the highest unemployment rates in the last 40 years, the women were being pushed out of the workforce, especially in the rural areas. During the period of demonetisation, almost 1 crore jobs were lost and it is estimated that 88 lakhs of these were women’s jobs.
The BJP’s promise of 10% of contracts to MSMEs with 50% women workers has not seen the light of day.
Instead of providing some relief through the creation of jobs, the government passed the four labour codes which have reduced job security. More than 90% of the women in paid employment in India work as informal labour and will not get the recognition or social security benefits for which they have been struggling for a long time.
The basic demands of contractual scheme workers in Anganwadi programmes, midday meal programmes, health, banking and education sectors – regularisation and a minimum salary of Rs. 26,000 – remain unaddressed. Though the E Shram portal claims to have registered many women domestic, MGNREGS and home-based workers, it does not provide them any social security support. Women can only register for existing pension schemes which will give them benefits, if at all, after they are 60 years old.
Women lack access to many agricultural support systems as they are not recognised as farmers and do not have land rights and control. Women play an important role in collecting firewood and other products from forest and common lands which sustain the livelihoods of the most marginalised sections, particularly in distress periods. However, the BJP government’s policies have led to a new wave of land grabs due to the privatisation of common lands, non-implementation of the Forest Rights Act and rising cost of production in agriculture.
In many cases, small and marginal women farmers are forced to lease lands for contract farming from rich farmers and landlords, which perhaps, their families had once owned, said the AIDWA booklet.
The loss of employment and income has been accompanied by spiraling prices because of imposition of GST on food items by the Modi government. Instead of taxing the rich, it is taxing the poor, by imposing more indirect taxes. In addition, it has diluted and changed many parts of the Essential Commodities Act that allow hoarding and price rise.
Rising prices and unemployment, reinforced by job loss during the COVID 19 lockdowns, has driven many households into debt for managing their basic needs. Many surveys, including that by AIDWA, show how indebtedness amongst poor households is growing. Most of these debts are taken from private microfinance institutions and banking companies.
The Modi government opened over 3 crore Jan Dhan accounts and claimed that the percentage of women owning accounts had gone up from 43% to above 70% between 2014-2022. This has not translated into increased access to banking services for most of the population. As the Global Finex Index 2021 shows, many of these accounts had no deposits; at least 43%of women’s accounts were inactive.
Expenditure on expansion of infrastructure for women’s safety, like one stop crisis centres for rape victims, shelter homes for women, etc., has been largely left to the state governments. Central expenditure on these schemes has been less than 0.05 percent of the total budget throughout the two terms of this government. The BJP-RSS led government had promised that it would spend money to operationalize the One Stop Crisis Centres for rape victims. Allocations for the National Assistance Programme giving pensions to widows and the elderly have also seen drastic cuts. Despite significant inflation the amount of widow pension has not been increased.
The National Food Security Act mandates a maternity benefit of Rs. 6,000 to pregnant women for their nutrition. But the government has restricted this to the first child. There are deliberate delays in implementing this provision. The number of ration shops has decreased and even those that continue do not open regularly or there is black marketeering of food grains. Amidst growing hunger, the Food Corporation of India is being forced to sell grains to corporates for making ethanol for biofuels.
MGNREGA plays an important role in ensuring food security by providing minimum wages in the off-season and its importance was seen in the COVID period when there was a sudden crisis of no work during lockdown periods. Women workers are more than half the beneficiaries of MGNREGA work; in some states about two thirds of the applicants are women, and in the wake of a severe employment crisis, more and more work continues being demanded under the scheme. However, under the Modi government, even as per official figures, the average number of days of MGNREGA work have been reducing.
In 2013, the average number of days which one household engaged in was a little above 60. Between 2014-2021, it has come down to less than 40 days of work. Between August 2022 and March 2023, the average person’s days of work was just about 30 days. This is largely because the Central government has decided to kill the scheme and the budgetary allocation for the scheme has seen a drastic cut in actual terms. By August 2023, most states had exhausted 91 percent of the funds for the scheme. Their expenditure is more than the allocations by the Central government.
The implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has led to privatisation and communalisation of education. In many states, thousands of schools have been merged in the name of rationalisation under the NEP. Approximately 2 lakh government schools have been closed all over the country. It has been reported that as many as one third of girls are not enrolling into school. Promotion of online learning has led to further dropouts.
In higher education, the fees for board exams and the BA courses have been increased and girls from economically and socially backward classes are not able to access public education. Scholarships for girls
and women from minorities, Dalit, Adivasis and other vulnerable sections have been stopped. Under the BJP-RSS regime, education for girl children and women has been under attack. Targeting of students from minority communities was especially evident in the case of the ban on Hijab in Karnataka schools.
The booklet pointed out that the textbooks have been changed to remove references to anti-caste
movements and movements of women for right to dignity, equality, freedom of choice and right to their bodies. BJP-ruled states like Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh led the way to give Manuwadi orientation to textbooks. Projects and research are being promoted on Manusmruti to propagate the idea of a patriarchal Hindutva Rashtra. There is a direct attack on scientific methods and values and increasing attempts to spread superstition in the name of education.
The women’s movement has been struggling to get the Women’s Reservation Bill passed for the past 27 years through regular protests and memoranda and building a larger consensus in support of the bill.
The government has finally passed the ‘Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam’ (new name for the Women’s Reservation Bill) on September 19, 2023. Yet, this remains a farce and will not be implemented during the 2024 general elections as the government has linked the bill to the census and delimitation process which may easily take another 10 years to complete.
The insincerity of the BJP government in ensuring Women’s Rights is crystal clear. In the last 10 years in power, the government did not pass this Bill. In a cynical attempt to exploit women voters for electoral gains, it chose to bring it just months away from the general elections in 2024, and that too, in a way that it cannot be implemented.
The introduction of amendments to the Citizenship Act and the push for making a National Register of Citizens poses danger to the minority communities, particularly the vulnerable sections within them.
Widespread anti CAA protests where women stood in the forefront was met with the arrests of several activists.
Already, the creation of the NRC in Assam resulted in the exclusion of many women who did not have the required documents. Despite resistance across the board, in these last weeks before the 2024 general elections, the government has pushed on implementing this Act clearly revealing its priorities.
The abrogation of Article 370 and Article 35-A has led to the violation of rights of Kashmiri women. The impunity of security forces through indiscriminate application of AFSPA in North-East was evident in killings in Manipur, Nagaland, etc. The promise of removing and repealing AFSPA remains a pipe dream. On the other hand, the governments move rapidly on the laws they want to pass. The Uttarakhand BJP government has successfully passed the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) this year bypassing all objections that have been raised against it.
It directly attacks women’s autonomy and denies equal rights to them. The BJP has reasserted that if re-elected to power, it will impose the UCC across the country, which is a threat to minorities and women, stated the booklet.
The BJP-RSS’s Hindutva politics has led to an atrocious rise in violence against women, particularly in the last five years. Furthermore, the violence has become even more gruesome and powerful people connected with the Hindutva brigade are getting away with murder and rape. The BJP-ruled states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh lead the list of states with extraordinary increases of crime rates against women.
Since 2014, violence against women has seen a tremendous rise under the BJP regime. According to NCRB in 2014, the rate of crimes against women was 52.5 per lakh and this rose to 62.4 in 2019. By 2021, the rate of atrocities against women had gone up to 64.5 per lakh.
Communal polarisation is one of the key strategies for the expansion of the BJP-RSS’s political base, and this has had a devastating impact on the life of women from the minority communities, particularly Muslim women. Ever since it came into power, the BJP government has pushed for the Gujarat model of Hindutva; it is well known that women suffered horrendous crimes during the Gujarat riots of 2002, when Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of the state.
The BJP while in power at the Centre is promoting the same strategy across the country by creating religious divides through targeted riots, as seen in the violence in Delhi (2020), Manipur (2023) and Nuh (2023). Women have felt humiliation, been robbed of dignity, and suffered loss of family members as consequences of this violence. While some of them have been pushed into relief camps, others have become destitute without any relief due to lack of documents. Sexual assaults have become common during communal targeting: a disturbing case is of the viral video of the parading of naked Kuki women in Manipur.
The culprits of the Bilkis Bano rape case were released by the Gujarat government and had to be sent back to jail through a Supreme Court order. Most of the culprits in the Naroda Patiya case, where gory sexual assaults took place, were linked to the Gujarat government or the Bajrang Dal and have been released from jail, even if on bail.
Hindutva terror has been given a free hand with the sponsored killings of Narendra Dabholkar, Gauri Lankesh and Govind Pansare, who questioned the actions and ideology of Hindu organisations. Their killers are still absconding. Muslim women have been left bereft and seeking justice in cases of mob lynching like cases of Junaid, Akhlaq and Umar Khalid and many others, very often in the name of cow
vigilantism. Targeting of minority women through evictions is taking place in BJP ruled states, especially Assam, where land evictions of Muslim families is underway.
It is clear that the record of this government has been dismal on all economic fronts and perilous for women, particularly the minorities and marginalised sections. The Hindutva Rashtra they want to build has no space for economic development, equal rights, or self-determination for women. Instead, they manufacture the identity of a ‘Hindu woman’ vis-a-vis the others.
In this sense, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti and its affiliates become the harbingers of the Manu Code and create deep polarisation within women, who are emerging as one of the target audiences for right wing groups. Countering this remains one of the biggest emerging challenges for the democratic women’s organisations.
For the upcoming 2024 elections, the BJP-RSS has evolved a new slogan to mislead the people. Now the Prime Minister talks of “Modi ki Guarantee” as a promise for everything to improve. Indian women have faced the worst assaults under his regime. Looting the people and enriching their corporate friends has been BJP’s agenda. Repression and attacks on democratic right to protest is the order of the day.
Use of religion and caste for polarisation and political gains has damaged the social fabric of the nation. The propagation of the regressive Manuwadi ideology threatens to undo the gains of the women’s movement. The AIDWA has given a call to the women to be united to protect their rights for equality and emancipation from poverty, unemployment, hunger, and violence.
Appealing to people to “Defeat the BJP! Elect secular, democratic forces! Defend India, defend the Constitution!” the booklet declared on the conclusion of its strong observations and findings. The AIDWA called upon all women to unitedly defeat the BJP government for its misrule during the last 10 years.
