One-third tickets for women: Naveen Patnaik’s salvo against BJP

It was a conclave attended by more than a lakh women drawn from among the poorest sections of Kendrapara and Cuttack districts of Odisha. The speaker read out from an Odia text written in English. His accent, though foreign, was familiar to the crowd and did not hamper his ability to connect with them. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik told the women belonging to self-help groups that he would be giving 33% of his Biju Janatal Dal (BJD)’s tickets to women. And the crowd roared in approval.

The move is only the latest in Naveen Patnaik’s longstanding strategy of wooing women voters. It is a strategy handed down by his father, Biju Patnaik, who reserved 33% of seats for women in Panchayati Raj in the state.

Patnaik has already taken his first steps. The BJD recently nominated three women on its first candidates list for Lok Sabha elections. In Koraput, the party has replaced BJD MP Jhina Hikaka, who faces anti-incumbency, with his wife Kaushalya Hikaka, a high school teacher. The Sundergarh Lok Sabha ticket has been given to new entrant Sunita Biswal, daughter of veteran Congress leader and former Lok Sabha member from Sundergarh Hemananda Biswal. Of the 21 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state, Sundergarh is the only one held by the BJP.

Patnaik has given a ticket for the coveted Aska seat – from where he made his political debut – to social worker Pramila Bisoyi. Hailing from a farming family in Ganjam, Bisoyi has been working as a social worker for 18 years now. Associated with the Sata Sankha SHG of Nalabanta in Ganjam district, she has been a leading figure in the formation of several SHGs in the district and in the emancipation of women. Patnaik in a tweet had attributed Bisoyi’s candidature as a tribute to millions of women working under his flagship Mission Shakti programme for women.

Patnaik’s support base among women may bail him out yet again at a time when the BJP is seeking to make headway in the state. The saffron party had done well in the recent local body polls. Recently, two former BJD luminaries – Baijayant Panda and Damodar Rout – joined the party. While the BJP has given a Lok Sabha ticket for Kendrapara constituency to Panda, Rout has been appointed as convener of the party’s campaign committee in Odisha. Panda and Rout may punch a hole in the BJD’s pocket boroughs – the coastal districts.

BJD leaders, however, pooh-pooh the suggestion that the BJP is a threat. “Panchayat poll performance doesn’t decide Lok Sabha results,” state finance minister Sashi Bhusan Behera told The Federal. “The BJP in 2017 won seats mostly in the bordering areas of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where BJP was in power. But it didn’t win any bypolls after that,” he adds.

What may go against the BJP is that it generally draws a more male voter base, as pollsters have found. Rejeshwari Deshpande, a professor of politics at the University of Pune, quoting National Election Studies data, says the BJP faces nearly a three percentage point gender disadvantage among women voters at the all-India level after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. With a mere 29% of women having voted for the BJP, as a per a Lokniti survey, in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the party lacks support among women voters in UP, West Bengal, Odisha and Karnataka, making it easier for regional parties like BJD and Trinamool Congress to tap into the women voter base.

A consistent strategy

Be it reserving 50% seats for women in panchayat and urban local body elections (in 2011), launching the Mission Shakti programme that through SHGs is believed to have provided employment to over 70 lakh, giving away free bicycles and sanitary pads to school-going girls and smartphones to women farmers, or providing monetary support to pregnant and lactating mothers, Patnaik, in his political career of 19 years, has projected women empowerment as one of his government’s chief visions.

In 2018, Patnaik urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to initiate steps to pass the Women’s Reservation Bill that would reserve one-third of seats in Parliament and state Assemblies for women. He also wrote to all national and regional parties and Chief Ministers of states to extend their support to the bill. His efforts didn’t go unnoticed. If his gesture won him accolades from the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women, the TMC in West Bengal recently announced to reserve 41 per cent of its seats to women.

Bigneswar Sahu, executive editor of Samadrushti, a fortnightly magazine based in Odisha calls BJD’s decision on party tickets a carefully choreographed strategy ahead of polls to woo voters, including women. “The government in December last year decided to provide loans upto ₹3 lakh to women SHGs at zero percent interest, and its recent and ambitious Kalia scheme, strategically launched before the Central budget, promises to provide financial aid of ₹25,000 per farm family over five seasons among other benefits,” he says.

BJD’s Balikuda block president Ratnakar Nayak says women in rural areas of Odisha are the primary beneficiaries of state schemes routed through self-help groups. “A majority of the beneficiaries of the Kalia scheme are women. Most of them are either engaged in pisciculture or horticulture. Besides that women are the primary beneficiaries in the schemes for daily wagers and those for school-going girls and pregnant women,” he added.

Not all hunky dory

All is not positive for the BJD, however. From issues such as the Kundali rape to the mass protest over felling of trees to make way for a beer factory in Balrampur village in Dhenkanal district – a byproduct of the state government’s promotion of liquor – the BJD government has been on the receiving end too. And the BJP has sought to turn the tables on Patnaik using these issues. “The liquor flow has increased in the state ever since the BJD government came to power. Women in Adivasi families earn money and the men drink it away. Discontentment is brewing, even among those who voted for Patnaik in 2014 and are beneficiaries of state government schemes” says senior journalist and political analyst Rabi Das.

At this juncture, many predict the BJP’s relentless campaigns in the state could earn the party more votes in Lok Sabha polls, if not in the Assembly. “The BJP believes in ‘matrushakti,’ but the party doesn’t play gender politics like the BJD,” says Satyabadi Chaini, the state youth president of the BJP. “The BJP will give priority to able candidates, irrespective of their gender. How can the CM who hasn’t bothered to learn the language of the state think about the betterment of its women?”

Chaini says, ahead of the polls, BJP workers have fanned out across the state to reach people at the grassroots. “We don’t reveal our identity to people or talk ill about the government. We survey the ground reality and see if people have really benefited from the state government’s plans and also sensitise them on the Centre’s several schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwal Yojana, Garib Kalyan Yojana and Swacch Bharat Yojana among others. Over the past two months, I have reached out to people in over seven districts,” he adds.