The emergence of these two groups marks a curious divergence between India and other democracies. It grew out of Modi’s unique appeal, which blends Hindu nationalism, personal charisma, costly infrastructure spending and generous social programs into a powerful narrative that overshadows his failure to deliver enough jobs to precisely these voters.
But it also speaks to broader social changes underway in India, where women in particular are increasingly voting independently of their husbands and becoming a highly sought-after electorate themselves.
If Modi is re-elected on June 4, as is widely expected, he will have women like Prachi Kanherkar to thank.
Around their table in Gwalior, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, Kanherkar’s husband regularly complains about how Modi has injected religion into politics. But Kanherkar, a 37-year-old engineering professor, counters that Modi’s record fills her with pride.
Modi, she said, in January unveiled a large Hindu Ram temple on the site of a razed mosque. He landed a rover on the moon last year. He encouraged Indians to speak Hindi rather than English, the language of India’s foreign colonizers.
“It can turn into a big fight, especially when we’re sitting with guests and our opinions are clearly different,” said Kanherkar, who is part of a local women’s prayer group formed two years ago by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist organization. affiliated with the BJP. “But my vote is my right, and it’s for my country,” she said. “I’ll use it.”
Courting female voters has long been a tactic used by Indian parties, but political experts say Modi’s party has gone further than any previous government. Over the past decade, the Prime Minister has announced programs to distribute free cooking gas cylinders, hand out grain bags emblazoned with his bearded face, provide loans specifically to women entrepreneurs and even train women to become drone pilots. The BJP also took Modi’s strongman image and gave it a spin to appeal to women by portraying him as tough on rape and domestic violence, respectful of traditional Indian values and committed to in seva, or selfless service.
Moreover, political scientists say, Indian women, like In many other countries, women display higher levels of religiosity than men, which has benefited the ruling Hindu nationalist party. Blood drives organized by the BJP, temple cleansings and prayer events like those that attracted Kanherkar have all been a key “bridge” in attracting women into politics in recent years, said Anirvan Chowdhury, a specialist political science. postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University.
“When the BJP talks about culture, when the BJP talks about the temple, it is natural that women turn to the BJP,” said Vanathi Srinivasan, head of the BJP’s women’s wing. She said the BJP has found that women are more likely to attend prayer chanting meetings than typical political rallies dominated by men, and the party has relied on that as a strategy.
Today, the BJP is reaping the fruits of its recruitment drive.
In 2019, the gender gap in voter turnout narrowed significantly for the first time in decades, and in several recent national elections, the number of female voters exceeded that of men, according to Sanjay Kumar, co-director of Lokniti comparative democracy program at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, a leading polling organization in New Delhi.
And in six parliamentary elections over the past two years in India’s Hindi heartland, where the BJP is strongest, four have seen women vote more for that party than men, according to Lokniti polls . For example, in India’s largest state of Uttar Pradesh, home to more than 230 million people, women favored the BJP by two percentage points more than men.
This emerging gap in preferences, cited by five consultants from across the political spectrum, has fascinated political observers. They argue that such differences did not exist a generation ago in a patriarchal society where men had greater control over where women went, how they lived and how they voted. Today, this is considered “outdated medieval thinking” by Arjun Dutta, a strategist at political consultancy Indian Political Action Committee, who advises his clients, mainly regional political parties, to target women voters.
In Kanherkar’s household, she and her husband, Anmol, differ not only in their politics but also in how they get their news, a divergence made possible by the explosion of social media in India over the past decade which gave rise to a proliferation of political opinions. content – and misinformation.
She says she gets news from Hindi-language newspapers, WhatsApp, Facebook and DailyHunt, a news aggregator app. Her husband, a supporter of the opposition Congress party, says he mainly watches liberal commentators on YouTube because TV channels only offer pro-Modi fare.
“Fifteen years ago, the sources of information in a household were the same, whether it was the same television channel, the same newspaper or an interaction with the same group of people,” said said Rahul Verma, policy researcher at the Center for Policy Research. Today, he added, “individual mobile devices in our hands” have led to “differentiated decision-making.”
Modi’s strong support from women has disconcerted his critics, who point out that in some ways women are worse off, not better, since he took office in 2014.
Although some health indicators for Indian women have improved, their labor force participation rate has fallen steadily, from 39 percent in 2000 to a low of 24.5 percent in 2019, before climbing in 2022 to 33 percent, according to the International Labor Organization. Ten years into Modi’s rule, India is still among the bottom 25 countries in terms of female labor force participation.
“All the women ask us, they want money in their hands, they want work. They really want to work to fight poverty, unemployment and inflation,” said Alka Lamba of the opposition Congress party, which has spearheaded a “Justice for Women” campaign to draw attention to what it sees as persistently high levels of domestic violence. poverty and rising prices in India under the BJP regime.
Modi’s ability to avoid being blamed for high unemployment has also preserved his position among another key group: the 18.5 million young Indians who are registered to vote for the first time. For many of these young Indians, pollsters say, the sense that India under Modi is becoming a geopolitical and economic power makes it attractive.
Although India’s economic trajectory has remained largely unchanged for decades under successive governments, averaging 7% per year since 2004, Indian headlines frequently compare India’s growth to China’s slowdown and highlight the new highways, railways and airports inaugurated by Modi. All this fuels the popular perception that, under Modi, India’s moment has finally arrived, political analysts say. Indians aged 18 to 24 prefer Modi by about five to six percentage points more than other age groups, according to Lokniti data.
In a recent survey conducted in New Delhi, Lokniti researcher Vibha Attri found that young Indians felt their most pressing concern was a lack of employment: 42% of university graduates under the age of 25 are unemployed, according to a 2023 study by Azim Premji University. Still, 70 percent of respondents said the BJP was best placed to lead India, with two opposition parties trailing by single digits, Attri found.
“Even among those who say unemployment is a major problem, a large portion of them are voting for Modi because that connection doesn’t exist,” Attri said. “It’s because there is no alternative. Modi is the only leader they have known.
In Madhya Pradesh’s capital Bhopal, one of the early voters will be Saloni Parashar, a 21-year-old law student who said India’s jobs crisis could not be blamed solely on Modi. She remained confident in Modi’s election promise that India would become a developed country by 2047, and said the BJP simply needed more time to show results.
“Ten years is not enough for a government,” she said. “They are doing their best.”
For now, Parashar said she is pleased with the thousands of kilometers of roads Modi has paved at home and the respect he has earned abroad. He was courted by the United States and proved strong enough to resist American pressure to side with Ukraine against Russia, she noted.
“The United States tried to sanction all the countries that import Russian oil, but you see, they did not sanction India,” she said. “India is now an important player.”
Emily Guskin in Washington contributed to this report.
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