PM’s Modi’s Raksha Bandhan Gift Reeks of Gender Stereotypes and Lacks Rights Based Approach to Women’s Empowerment

On the occasion of Raksha Bandhan Prime Minister Modi reduced the LPG Gas cylinder prices by Rs. 200 as his “gift” to women of the country. “On the occasion of Raksha Bandhan and Onam, the government has decided to reduce the price of domestic cylinders by ₹200,” the Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said in a press statement. “This is a gift from PM Narendra Modi to the women of the country,” he added.

The announcement of Rs. 200 cut in LPG Gas cylinder caused a great celebration among BJP supporters and ardent Modi fans. In a coordinated promotional campaign several BJP leaders and Union Ministers hailed the news of the “great gift” on their social media accounts. Pro-BJP media houses went to great length to find middle class women who hailed the “gift” as a great relief to their financial situations.

Several other State governments, mostly BJP led, also announced a number of token gestures for women on Raksha Bandhan. After criticizing the Karnataka Congress government’s move to offer free bus rides to women, BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, UP, Haryana, Uttarakhand all offered free bus rides to women on Raksha Bandhan. The Telegu Desam party also joined the list by offering free bus rides to women. In addition, the party also announced three free gas cylinders, and a slew of direct cash benefits to women and children in view of the forthcoming elections.

Feminist perspectives on Modi Government’s Women Empowerment Schemes

Narendra Modi’s continued strategy of associating women with kitchen and LPG gas cylinder, and pushing the Ujjwala Scheme as a women empowerment measure, is perhaps the most direct and unabashed gender stereotyping found in India’s public-political discourse. While such schemes often have mass appeal, and Mr. Modi is a populist leader, so he tactfully and effectively rouses the popular sentiments in his favour, but when seen from a critical feminist perspective, the Ujjwala scheme and other schemes like ‘Beti Bachao’ reeks of gender-stereotyping and lacks Rights Based Approach.

What is Rights Based Approach

A Rights Based Approach (RBA) in different from a welfare approach or a benevolence approach. Rights based approach is to question the power structures and inequal distribution of resources, the cultural and social norms, taboos and stereotypes which are the key reasons behind a problem. Instead of giving top down quick fix temporary solution to a problem RBA is to go to the root cause and bring change within.

In simple terms, it urges policy makers to formulate schemes and policies keeping in mind women’s (or any target group) ‘rights’ rather than what society thinks is women’s ‘welfare’. Welfare is something we do if we feel like. It is an act of kindness or charity or benevolence out of our own motivation but not something the target group can demand. Rights are things that people deserve and can demand the government to guarantee. For example, amongst our friends and family, we often hear statements like, “Her husband and in-laws are very progressive, they have given her permission to do a late night job at the call center” or “they have allowed her to continue her job or study after marriage.”

In these statements the presumption is that women need husband or in-law’s permission to do a job or late night shifts. But rights based approach understand that she does not need the permission, it is her right to pursue whatever job she likes and at whatever time of the day. Patriarchal societies often curtail women’s public participation, right to work, right to access the public sphere in the name of culture, tradition, and above all, protection and welfare. Women are controlled in the name of their welfare. But public policies should focus on the rights of the women rather than welfare.

Free gas connection under the Ujjwala Yojna lacks rights based approach and not women empowerment

In the case of LPG Gas cylinders, cooking is not a matter of women’s right. It is a gender role imposed on women by patriarchy. Govt should encourage men to take up cooking, cleaning and other domestic chores and ensure that women have the right to not do domestic chores if they don’t want to. While announcing the scheme in 2016, PM Modi said that he had seen his mother going through lots of hardship spending all day in kitchen cooking clay oven. He wanted to liberate women of India from that drudgery in the kitchen. This is admirable but he never once raised the point that cooking is not a women’s job alone and that men should also enter the kitchen.

As a result, even though some women may have LPG Gas they are still toiling in the kitchen unable to break out of their gender roles and pursue other dreams. Many women are also still toiling with the same clay oven and wood fire because the LPG cylinder is way to costly and they have not been able to get a refill. Even Rs. 200 cut may not make any difference to many households. If Modi would have raised the point that men should share the work load in kitchen, that would have been a true empowerment for such women.

Women’s fate tied to the Kitchen and LPG cylinders being her saviours is not exactly a great gift. A real gift would have been if the Prime Minister, the highest seat of power, would have given a call to the men in each household to enter the kitchen and share the domestic chores. If the PM would have deconstructed the gender-stereotype, that would have been a real gift, and a rights based approach to the problem of women’s inequality.