With start-ups and schemes, Mahila Morcha woos women voters with financial sops

The Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to woo women voters in Gujarat with the prospect of the success of the party’s financial schemes. By promising to show women voters what the party can do to aid them with entrepreneurial ventures as well as jobs, the party’s women’s wing, the Mahila Morcha, is working out a plan across various age groups engaged in different pursuits.

Leaders of the BJP’s women’s wing have a two-pronged strategy to reach out to women voters across two diverse age groups – those above and those below 35 years. For women above 35, the party is relying on its beneficiaries approach, where it highlights the success of its schemes to existing beneficiaries to consolidate them as voters, and also reach out to eligible beneficiaries around them to convert them as voters.

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Both the schemes of the BJP at the Centre as well as the state are part of this outreach. Among Central schemes, the party is highlighting the success with the Mudra and Stree Shakti scheme, which have helped women financially across the country. In March this year, the government had said that 68 per cent of the beneficiaries under the Mudra scheme are women.

Among the state government’s schemes is the Mukhyamantri Mahila Utkarsh scheme, under which groups of 10 women are given interest-free loans of up to Rs 1 lakh. “There are as many as 35 lakh women beneficiaries of this scheme, and this has immensely helped women in the dairy sector, which is the backbone of the state’s cooperative structure,” said Deepti Rawat Bharadwaj, national general secretary of the Mahila Morcha, in-charge of Gujarat.

For women under the age of 35, the Morcha is planning to bring forward the success stories of the StartUp India scheme and unicorn enterprises led by women. “We plan to hold talks and interactions by women across all districts to inspire young women to take up such initiatives and vote for the party,” said Bharadwaj.

With these moves, Mahila Morcha plans to reach out to younger voters. “Younger voters generally do not want to take up traditional jobs or enterprises like the dairy sector, and we hope to convince first-time voters, too,” she added.

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Of the state’s 4.9 crore voters, 2.37 crore are women voters, making them a key electorate. This year, with a departure from norm, the Election Commission prospective voters above 17 years to apply before they turn 18 so that they could register as a voter once they turn 18. As many as 1.93 lakh voters of the 18-19 age group are women, and among the 4.03 lakh new voters in the age group of 20-29 years, there are as many as 2.57 lakh women voters.

The party is banking on Modi’s appeal among women voters, said Bharadwaj. “Be it the women in Kutch, or tribal women Sabarkantha and Banaskantha, or for that matter fisherwomen in Porbander, PM Modi had designed schemes to empower them during his tenure, and his legacy endures among them,” she added.