India Dairy: Rise of the women!

One week hence, as I am coming to terms with the unpleasant summer climate in much of India, an interesting phenomenon came to my observation yesterday, which I shall refer to as 'The husband identity'. My hometown is up for elections to the local corporation and the post of Mayor next Tuesday, and as they say, any election in India is vigorously contested, if nothing else than to distract the masses from the real issues. Sample the presidential election, where a clear victor has already emerged, and yet the media is boomeranging about the possibilities in the 2014 General elections.

Based on our system of caste-based reservation of electoral constituencies, Jhansi has been reserved as a 'Women-backward' seat, implying that only female candidates belonging to a classified backward caste can contest for the post of Mayor. And the same is true for our local ward. As campaign fliers piled up, some of the stuff mentioned therein caught my attention due to a multitude of reasons:

• Every candidate's picture is placed alongside an equally large picture of her husband. Just so that the masses do not get confused, the billing goes as 'Candidate name-wife of so-and-so'. Reservation for women is a sensitive issue in India, still hanging on the margins after umpteen attempts to get it passed, and a shameful one at that, considering the head of India's ruling political establishment, the leader of opposition in the Lower House, and the outgoing President of India, are all women!
• Newspaper interviews and advertisements begin with an appeal to voters to reward the 'good work' done by the candidate's husband, or in some cases, father-in-law. The only plausible way to construe this is to believe that the candidate has no identity of her own in the public sphere, and her candidature has materialized due to the chance falling of the contested seat in the reserved category.
• A rather interesting note is that some candidates have listed their caste in parenthesis, and yet appeal to the voters to ignore their caste or religion as a criteria for casting their vote. Paradoxical some would say!

With voting to be held on July 4, and this being my first official vote of any kind in India, I am looking forward to it. 

PS: Fantastic movie, if you haven't seen it already.