As Bengal emerges from its battle for the mighty throne, what ironically remains suppressed amidst the campaigns of these perennially nonchalant leaders are their election manifestos for the 2021 state assembly. Subsequently, an even less discussed aspect of these manifestos is the education policies, especially for women.
Notwithstanding the heightened episodic importance of women as components of vote bank politics, there is often a familiar reluctance for the ‘talk’ about women’s education policy in the middle of the election enigma.
Hence taking a minute to dabble into the state of women’s education under the current government, Mamta Banerjee, who aimed to ‘detoxify’ Bengal’s education system, has shown consistent visible improvement in the same.
The CM deserves her fair share of appreciation when it comes to boosting the girl child’s education with the implementation of the 2013 flagship scheme of Kanyashree Prakalpa, thus confirming the resultant spike in the female ratio in higher educational institutions from 42% to 47.3%, as of 2020.
This heavy cash-incentive scheme has helped women escape systematic patriarchy by completing the primary education alongside being identified as an adult, qualified for independent decision-making, thus expanding on the seed capital and finishing secondary as well as tertiary levels of education. Having fared high on initiatives of women empowerment during their entire reign, there are multiplying expectations too this time, and on a surficial level, TMC doesn’t disappoint in the realm of female education.
TMC’s Ideals
The Wire brands Banerjee’s campaign to be “aggressive” with women at the core of them all, thus capitalizing on this gendered paradigm of the vote bank. They promise to continue their zealous implementation of the Kanyashree Prakalpa – only bigger and better this time, by expanding the schemes to education based on age-appropriate Social and Behaviour Change Communication activities such that it mitigates the women’s inhibited ability to make life choices, inadequate access to health care services and battle gender discrimination. Revamped as Kanyashree Plus, it seeks to equip the female students with livelihood opportunities for their simultaneous economic empowerment.
Alongside, the TMC has also devised a revolutionary policy of a Student’s Credit Card with an expenditure limit of 10 lakhs and a return interest of only 4%, thus wooing its women voters with pledges that seems to assure both their intellectual and functional autonomy however it is to be seen if they grow insipid in their practicality over time.
BJP’s Promises
Confronted with a reckoning competition from the rival saffron party, a voter whose political innocence is untouched by biases is likely to find herself confused over what appears to be quite an attractive set of education policies for women. With the unabashed agenda of consolidating Bengal into his homogenizing rule, Modi well conceals his electoral intentions through a poetic discourse of the manifesto – Sonar Bangla Prakalpa 2021.
Under the ‘Ebar Mohila Ebar BJP’ banner, they promise to deliver free education to women from ‘KG to PG’, with a corpus of 500 crores to financially assist meritorious females pursuing higher education in private institutions and scholarships for all levels of education and across the SC/ST/OBCs. Alongside schemes like Balika Alo Yojana and Shohoj Path Programme are curated to aid women students in this pandemic.
Thus, in the opinion of this article, the prosperity of education policies for women can be assessed by realizing the degree of enabler a state decides to be through both monetary facilitation and institutional security instead of hanging onto one of the two threads like BJP and TMC respectively.
Nevertheless, one could say that while BJP has theoretically managed to promise a holistic approach for all the girls of Bengal, TMC appears risking stakes only for those qualifying as a minority, hence being dismissed as a mere tactic of appeasement. As TMC has a supporting history of credible groundwork instead of only pompous speeches of BJP, one is still hopeful of some actual actions if the former is re-elected to power.
Thus, in attempts of rejuvenating hope from the tired phrase of ‘light shining at the end of the tunnel’, well case-specific ballot machines, for now, one can only wait and watch how the incoming government manipulates their commitments. Because a mere prediction of execution of politics would only be too naïve an expectation, perhaps a disappointment in the realm of Indian polity!
However, having discarded the electoral cynicism, the article would still appreciate these competitors to have at least formulated policies, purposive of promoting women education in the state as opposed to the precarious alliance of the CPI(M), Congress, and ISF or AIMIM, who doesn’t even spare a few lines in concern of women.
The author is a Kaksha Correspondent as a part of writers’ training program under Kaksha Crisis.