Basanti Sabar, 30, is a third-time voter. But this time round, as the eastern Indian state of Odisha goes to the polls in simultaneous general and assembly elections, the former migrant worker will make a crucial shift in the way she votes.
In patriarchal rural India, who the family vote for is usually decided by the men. On 13 May, however, Sabar and other women in Padampur village will for the first time vote for a candidate of their choice – a shift that is influencing the way state and national politicians speak to women in their manifestos.
Padampur, in the drought-stricken Kalahandi district of western Odisha, is one of India’s most impoverished villages, whose people have for decades been compelled to migrate to make a living. Today, the men still leave, but the women, who have discovered financial independence in Odisha’s successful self-help group (SHG) movement, which offers them loans and benefits from state schemes, now stay put.
This newfound independence is changing what men and women want from politicians. Padampur’s men have their hopes pinned on broad-based changes such as more jobs and better incomes, which they believe only a national party can deliver. However the women, bolstered by the income available to them through loans and self-help schemes, support the state government, run by a regional party.
The government’s Economic Survey 2022-23 mentions that India’s female-led SHGs were emerging as the world’s biggest microfinance project. According to the survey, the SHG-Bank Linkage Programme, which helps poorer Indians access microfinance through self-help groups and banks, covers 142 million families with saving deposits of Rs 470bn (£4.5bn).
SHGs were introduced nationally in 1984, but the establishment of a department for the scheme in Odisha in 2020 has resulted in more womenaccessing benefits.
The money has emboldened women. “Earlier, voting was a family decision but now I want to decide for myself. I am not just tending to my family but also contributing financially,” says Sabar, as she moulds bricks in the small kiln in her back yard.
The bricks will go into building the family a new home to replace their present thatch-and-bamboo one. “For how long are we expected to wait for a pucca (‘solid’) house?” demands Sabar, referring to a project of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) to build brick-and-concrete houses for poor rural households.
“We waited for a long time but no more. Now we will start constructing our own homes with the interest-free loan of Rs 10,000 that I took through the state government’s SHG scheme.”
Padampur has a long history of migration, with whole families leaving to work at brick kilns and becoming entrapped as bonded labourers. Sabar and her husband were rescued from bondage in 2017 from a brick kiln in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
Back home, the couple were unsure of their future. “We have a small plot of land where we grow paddy [rice],” says Sabar. “Most of it is consumed at home, with little left to sell.”
While her husband continued to travel in search of work, Sabar joined a women’s SHG in 2020, a turning point in her life. “Through the group, I could take small loans for emergencies,” she says.
“During my pregnancy, I availed of benefits under the state government’s Mamata scheme. I had no such security while working elsewhere.” Sabar says she will vote for a party that has already delivered such benefits, not one that merely promises them.
Hemandri Gahir, who lives with her four children and parents-in-law in Kalahandi’s Funda village, echoes Sabar’s sentiments. While her husband’s job at a solar plant in Gujarat is their main income, Gahir, a farm worker, secured a loan last year through an SHG and has invested in goats and ducks.
“In the face of our hardship, I will only vote for a party that ensures something for me,” she says. “The state party has made sure that I can do something on my own, independently.”
Experts say this gender split in voting is becoming apparent across the state’s remote villages and is shaping political agendas.
Tara Krishnaswamy, coordinator of the non-partisan collective Political Shakti, says: “Many regional parties, including those in Odisha, have progressed from thinking about women’s needs only in terms of cooking gas and maternity to focusing on their higher education, entrepreneurship and microloans through SHGs.
“Women tend to vote based on what is already delivered, not just the promises in the manifesto.”
Migrant workers are a large part of the electoral base in the state; Odisha has at least 850,000 workers who leave for jobs from 10 districts. Traditional migration from Ganjam and other southern Odisha districts is considered aspirational, but in western Odisha, including Kalahandi, people migrate because of poverty or a degraded environment.
Most of these migrants work at brick kilns for 10 months of the year. Despite government initiatives to regulate migration and ensure workers’ welfare, there continues to be a big discrepancy between registered and non registered migrants.
But while the manifestos of the three parties in Odisha – the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the BJP and the Congress – address female voters, promising to strengthen SHGs, boost social security for widows and destitute women, and create female squads to improve rural women’s safety, they are silent on the subject of migration.
Migrant workers also say that politicians have made little effort to encourage them to vote. Across the villages in the migration-prone areas of Kalahandi and Balangir, people who were back for the annual Chaitra Parva, or harvest festival in April asserted that no political party had asked them to remain or return to vote. Many are unlikely to stay home to cast their vote.
“I am a second-generation migrant from my family,” says Sashi Gamang from Kalahandi’s Sindhipadar village. “Will whichever party I vote for ensure that I get a job here? I cannot put a month’s pay at stake. I haven’t decided yet, but I will most probably return to work.”
Dilip Das, chairman of Antodaya, a Kalahandi organisation working on labour issues, says it is unlikely that workers from western Odisha, often in debt bondage, would come back to vote. “Although migration has only increased over the years, politically, it is not an issue,” he says. “Had it been one, there would have been policies in place to help these families.”
Meanwhile, Parakhit Sabar, Basanti’s husband, says he will continue to travel to find work. “No one likes leaving their family behind and travelling to distant places for work but what option do I have?” he asks.
“This is the second election since we were rescued [from debt bondage]. Repeated promises have been made but nothing happens. I want to vote for a bigger national party in the hope that it will do something for us.”
His wife is voting for a regional party, he says: “I would never want to influence her. It is entirely her choice.”
• This article was first published by the Migration Story, India’s first newsroom to focus on the country’s vast internal migrant population
