Shakti – Political Power to Women is a non-partisan, citizens’ collective with a singular agenda to campaign for more women MLAs and MPs in state and national legislatures.
In the run up to the Bihar state elections, Shakti has been indefatigable from the ground up. The movement has recently launched a powerful short film, Aadha Hum, Aadha Humara, in Bhojpuri and Maithili, in a bid to highlight the necessity of adequate women’s representation in the Bihar Vidhan Sabha.
Directed by Swati Bhattacharya, India’s most awarded short film writer and creator known for her take on women’s issues, the film is a clarion call for more rounded representation. It is the template for a future in which women have a voice in the governing of the nation, and not just local assemblies or states, and so we delve in deeper.
Excerpts from an interview with Tara Krishnaswamy, Co-Founder of Shakti:
The Movement
We do not engage in popular issues and their subsequent fallout. Just look at Bihar where people are debating over the death of Sushant Singh Rajput, instead of real pressing issues. We are just fighting for women, and those who identify as women (womxn), to have an equal voice in the way the country is run. The vast majority of elected officials are men over 60, who are not the best judges of what women – be they college girls from cities or farm labourers from villages or fisherwomen along the coast – want.
The Campaign
Despite the percentile lack of female representation in the Lok and Rajya Sabha, women leaders make up a significant amount of representatives on the grassroots. This is where our selfless selfies campaign took its inspiration from: women leaders, regardless of their political affiliations, highlighting issues that most affect their village, town, or districts.
The Criticism
It is time to move beyond Rabri Devi as a poster child of how things could go wrong. That’s the easiest way to detract from the conversation and the actual need for women and their views on community development and nation building. Even before Bihar, women have been used too often as pawns and place-holders in positions of power for men, whose history and legal issues may preclude them from the electorate. Women make up at least half of the nation and that would ideally mean that they deserve at least half a say in how the country is run. That’s not asking for much.
The Hope
We want to promote women candidates for their agenda, as opposed to what they wear, do in their personal lives, and other non-issues. We also hope to address the long-standing issue of the women’s reservation bill; given the popular mandate of his party, Prime Minister Modi could easily get it passed in both houses and ratified.
That is the hope.