Winds of Change in Bihar: Women Power

Something shifted in Bihar in 2010, and the Election Commission's own numbers told the story. Across the six-phase assembly election, overall turnout climbed to about 52 percent — up from under 46 percent five years earlier. But the real headline was buried in the gender split: women turned out in greater numbers than men, by a margin nobody had predicted.

For a state long described as India's most dangerous democracy — booth capturing, muscle power, the "fear factor" — this was a genuine turn. Women standing in long queues, in village after village, changed what an election looked like. It changed, in the end, what an election could decide: the old arithmetic of caste strongmen started looking shaky when half the electorate voted with its own priorities.

The Times of India captured the mood in its reporting on the changing winds: the fear factor was blowing away. (Read the TOI piece.)

Bihar's women didn't just vote more. They voted as if the state belonged to them too — because, in a democracy, it does. The politicians who learned that lesson in 2010 kept winning. The ones who didn't, didn't.