India’s Modi woos women voters

— Living in a slum in central India with her widowed mother and two young daughters, Nayantara Gupta says she owes her relative prosperity in recent years to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Gupta, a 28-year-old single mother, said she voted for the BJP in the last two general elections and plans to do the same in the next vote due by May, citing the party’s focus on women’s welfare, including cash handouts and domestic benefits such as piped water, 24/7 electricity and a cooking gas connection in her cramped home.

“He’s changed many things for us,” Gupta said in the Madhya Pradesh state capital, Bhopal, one of 51 women Reuters spoke to in Madhya Pradesh and Haryana states, both in India’s heartland, about the upcoming election.

Gupta is not alone. Like her, more and more women have started to vote for the BJP as a result of a campaign of the Modi government to install piped water, power and sanitation in every home in the world’s most populous nation.

Traditionally Indian women were more inclined to vote for Congress, the main opposition party, in part because it gave a country short of female role models its first woman prime minister, Indira Gandhi.

The BJP, meanwhile, was born out of a men-only Hindu nationalist organisation and, with a patriarchal image, struggled to attract women. Modi has changed that in his 10 years in power and the increased support from women is an added assurance for a party that is widely expected to dominate the ballot box but faces disenchantment over rural economic distress, farmers’ protests, high unemployment and inflation.