Next woman Prime Minister of India ?

By Vinod Varshney

The election results have finally put the stamp of reality of woman power in India. Mamata Banerjee and J. Jayalalithaa have just joined the elite ranks of chief ministers, demonstrating the might of women in our politics. Mayawati already rules U.P. unchallenged for the fourth term and Sheila Dixit in Delhi. These four deviyan are not the only paradigms of female power in Indian politics: Sushma Swaraj is a woman of rare political calibre, probably the best female candidate for the PM’s post. Sonia Gandhi is another powerful woman who, as Chairperson of the UPA wields more power than the PM in the current dispensation.

Sucheta Kriplani and Nandini Satpathy were Chief Ministers decades ago; more recently   Vasundhara Raje, Mehbooba Mufti and Uma Bharti occupied the top elected post in their respective states. Indisputably they became chief ministers on their own steam, though like Indira Gandhi who had the Nehruvian legacy to push her initially, Jayalalithaa and Mehbooba Mufti too had inherited some political seed capital to start with. 

Others earned it through sheer hard work among the people.  Mayawati’s ascent to power is singularly anecdotal: she had to transcend the traditional biases of the caste  Hindus  towards her. Even today many of her achievements are ignored by the media and conservative politicians.

One notable aspect is that most of these women leaders made it to the top without any reservation props indicating that Indian voters had no gender bias as in many Western countries.  Women here can rise in politics to any heights if they try real hard.

With the woman power on the ascendant, one is tempted to ask if any woman stands the chance of becoming the Prime Minister of India when the next opportunity comes around in 2014. My dream is that it is about to happen.  I can still feel the reverberations during the last LS elections when the media speculated that Maya-Mamata-Jayalalithaa trio would decide who would  be the next PM. But the Indian voter turned as unpredictable as the south-west monsoon. So the woman who got the king-making opportunity once again was Sonia Gandhi.

Mayawati effervesced in 2009 at the discomfiture of Manmohan Singh, who somehow saved his government amidst fierce opposition from all quarters on the issue of Indo-US nuclear deal and declared that only she would be the candidate for the PM in case the proposed opposition alliance wins. Voters, however, decided that it was too early for her to be India’s PM.

             
But 2014 is not too far off. If she repeats her electoral feat in UP in 2012 and wins the CM’s mantle for the fifth time, surely she would be a potential candidate for PM, not to be out-shadowed by Sushma Swaraj. Unluckily, Sonia is ruled out as PM and there is no other woman of similar stature in the Congress who could claim this top political office.  Mamata and Jayalalithaa might also entertain prime ministerial ambitions, but they may not be ready yet in 2014.   
(The article was published in the June, 2011 issue of 'Lokayat')