ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Tokenistic 'Vikas' for Women in Gujarat VARSHA BHAGAT-GANGULY Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly (
[email protected]) teaches at the Centre for Rural Studies, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie. The author would like to thank Dhimant Purohit, Pankti Jog, Sushila Prajapati, Lata Sachade and Bakula Ghaswala-Desai for sharing their views and information pertaining to the results of this election and Ketan Trivedi for compiling the tables. Vol. 52, Issue No. 52, 30 Dec, 2017 In the Gujarat assembly elections 2017, political parties indulged in tokenism vis-à-vis selection of women candidates and foregrounding a mandate for women’s development. The BJP’s rhetoric of “vikas” and Congress party’s experiment of bringing together three dissenting groups for inclusive development will unravel in time. Usually, comments on the results of state legislative assembly elections focus on different factors, formula, strategies, campaign content, and political actions of the winning political party, and limitations of the losing political party(s) and independent candidates. The usual units of analyses, in this process, are: caste calculations, performance in rural and urban areas and different regions of the state, electoral statistics regarding poll percentage, voting shares, patterns of voting, etc. This commentary seeks to examine the results of Gujarat elections 2017 in lieu of women’s participation and development, and also to highlight the role and relevance of little understood protesting groups and social movements in Gujarati society. ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Highlights of Election Results The Gujarat assembly election 2017 turned out to be a close contest for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and especially so, for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.