Konta: Voters queue up outside a polling booth in Chhattisgarh on Nov 12, 2018.

Of 8,249 contestants across five states, 696 (8.4%) were women. Of these, 62 (9.1%) were elected as members of legislative assembly (MLA) in their respective state legislatures.

Chhattisgarh: was called a ‘backward’ state by Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant in an address at Jamia Millia Islamia University in April 2018. However, the state ranks the highest in the country on women’s employment indicators such as the worker-population ratio (WPR), which shows the number of persons employed per 1,000 persons. It is the first state where the Election Commission of India set up five all-women ‘sangwari‘ polling booths.
 

Note: Data for 2015-16. *Per capita income data are for 2016-17. The lowest score on an indicator is marked in red.
Source: National Family Health Survey 2015-16, Fifth Annual Employment Unemployment Survey

Mizoram: It lies at the other end of the spectrum. A state with a literacy rate of 89.27%, much higher than the national average (74.4%), and ranking second among the five states in women’s employment (WPR 52.2%) and per capita income (Rs 1,28,998) has not elected any woman to the state Assembly in 2018.

A state with 19,399 more women than men has only ever had two women ministers in the last 31 years–Lalhlimpui Hmar in 1987 and Lalawmpuii Chawngthu in 2014 (by-elections).

Mizoram also scores the highest (96%) of the five states on women empowerment indicators such as autonomy in domestic decisions.

There is no easy correlation between women’s empowerment indicators and female representation in the assembly.

Madhya Pradesh: The number of women legislators in Madhya Pradesh decreased from 29 in 2013 to 21 in 2018. The state presented the lowest numbers in women’s employment (WPR 15.9%) and women’s empowerment indicators such as say in decision-making, ownership of assets and individual agency. The state also recorded the lowest per capita income (Rs 74,590) among the five states.

The incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party had released a separate manifesto for women in Madhya Pradesh. Entitled ‘Nari Shakti Sankalp Patra‘, it promised auto-gear bikes to meritorious girl students, among other things.

Rajasthan: Ruled by a female chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, in the last term, Rajasthan saw a drop in number of female MLAs from 27 in 2013 to 23 in 2018. Although female voter-turnout (74.7%) was higher the male voter-turnout (73.8%) in the state, there was an overall drop in the female voter-turnout from 2013 (75.23%), according to State Election Commision data.

The state records the lowest female literacy rate (56.5%) and ranks last in the list of women who have completed 10-11 years of education, as IndiaSpend reported on December 5, 2018. Its  numbers for women’s employment are considerably low (WPR 18.8%).

Telangana: The young state which has only been to the polls twice elected six women MLAs (5%) to its 119 seat assembly, lower than the 2014 elections in which nine women MLAs were elected.

Legacy proved influential
Legacy played a key role in these assembly elections. Legacy seats are those that are for long occupied by members of the same political family or those with political connections, or legacy candidates.

In Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, there were 67 legacy candidates, according to an analysis published by Indian Express on December 7,2018.

Of these, 35 (52%) won, according to an IndiaSpend analysis.

In Madhya Pradesh, there were 36 legacy seats and nine were contested by women legacy candidates. Of the 21 MLAs elected in 2018, seven elected women were legacy candidates.

Rajasthan had six women candidates contest 23 legacy seats. All six who won came from strong political backgrounds.

Of the 13 women MLAs elected in Chhattisgarh, five women were legacy candidates.

“There is a shared belief in parties that women will not be able to contest as strongly as men and hence parties refuse to give independent women candidates a ticket,” Praveen Rai, a political analyst at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, told IndiaSpend. Women who have served in the party for a long time and/or have their own support base are given a ticket.

Quotas would help
Since there is no mandate for political parties to set aside seats for women contestants–as is the case at the panchayat level, where at least 33% of the seats are reserved for women–parties are partial to male candidates.

A study of the results from panchayat elections showed that quotas at that level enable more women to contest for higher-level positions in state legislatures and national parliament. Constituencies that are exposed to an average of 3.4 years of gender quotas at the local level had an additional 38.75 female candidates running for parliament–an increase of 35% between 1991 and 2009, the study published in January 2018 by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics said.

For state assemblies, an additional 67.8 female candidates ran for office in constituencies with an average exposure of 2.8 years of quotas, IndiaSpend reported on June 30, 2018, based on the article.

“One should make it mandatory [or] legislate for political parties to nominate/give tickets to a fixed number of female candidates,” Sanjay Kumar, director at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, said.

(Abhivyakti Banerjee, a Master’s student of Political Science at M.S.U., Vadodara, is an intern at IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves to BJP supporters, in Lunglei, Mizoram.

With about half as many voters as south Mumbai, Mizoram is one of India’s fastest-growing, healthiest (second) and most-literate states (third).

However, our pre-election analysis of a state with 1.1 million people–as many as in Chandigarh– reveals it is challenged by poverty, high dropout rates, racial tensions and inter-district inequalities, worries that the new government will have to address.

These issues threaten to slow the growth of a state that has been administered by either the Congress or the Mizo National Front (MNF), ever since a peace accord ended a long-running insurgency in 1986. That agreement officially ended a long-running Mizo uprising, marked by air raids on capital Aizawl 52 years ago in March 1966, the only time the Indian Air Force bombed its own people.

Mizoram’s 768,000 voters will vote in 40 constituencies to determine if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will make its first inroads and complete the party’s surge into India’s northeast.

After the victory of the BJP-led Northeast Democratic Alliance (NEDA) in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura in March earlier in 2018, seven of eight states in the region —Sikkim, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur–are governed by the alliance.

Better than the rest, mostly
Led by Lal Thanhawla, former insurgent turned mainstream politician, the Congress has administered Mizoram for the last 10 years. Previously in the 2013 elections in Mizoram, the party won 34 of 40 seats. But since 2014, the Congress’ vote share declined 13.4 percentage points across the northeast, IndiaSpend reported on March 10, 2018.

Mizoram has been positioned as the epicentre of the union government’s Act East Policy, which aims to harness shared cultural and border ties shared between the India’s northeast and south-east Asian countries, such as Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand and other ASEAN nations, some of which are the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Filtered through various indicators, Mizoram boasts a raft of high-performing statistics.

The state is one of the fastest growing states in the country, according to the Economic survey, 2017-2018, with its economy growing by 12% between 2013-2016. It has India’s second-best health indicators and third best literacy.

However, our analysis revealed that the state’s achievements are challenged by increasing poverty, racial tensions, high school-dropout rates and inter-district inequalities, which hinder growth.

Big ferment in a small state
Mizoram also grapples with illegal migrants, inter-tribal differences,  an inability to create jobs for its educated youth and tensions sparked by allegations of corruption against the current government. These tensions have led to the rise of sub-regional alliances, such as the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM)–comprising of regional parties such as Zoram Nationalist Party, Mizoram People’s Conference and Zoram Exodus Movement–and this may disrupt the traditional exchange of governments between the INC and MNF.

More than  94% of Mizoram is tribal, 80% is Christian, and minorities, such as the Chakmas and Brus, claim racial discrimination at the hands of majority communities, such as the Lusei, Ralte, Hmar, Khiangte and Lai.

Last year, Buddha Dhan Chakma, the sole Chakma minister in the government, resigned alleging racial discrimination, after four Chakma medical students were denied admission even though they cleared the national exams.

What’s holding Mizoram back?
Mizoram has one of the lowest rates of anaemia among women in the northeastern (24.8%), child wasting (8.4%), stunting (28.1%) and underweight children (12%), according to data from the National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4).

It ranked first among smaller states and second nationally in NITI Aayog’s overall 2018 health performance index. The state’s health-related successes can be attributed to its per capita expenditure on health, which as IndiaSpend previously reported, was five times the national average:  4.5% of gross domestic product (GDP)in 2015, compared to India’s  1.02%.

However, Mizoram’s progress has lagged other states. Manipur, which ranked second among smaller states in NITI Aayog’s Health index, improved by 7.18% compared to Mizoram’s  2.43%.

What is slowing Mizoram?
Even as northeast India experiences a surge of growth, with more educated citizens and dwindling reliance on agriculture, not enough jobs are being created, IndiaSpend reported on February 1, 2016.

The region is simultaneously experiencing an increase in poverty–a trend opposed to the national experience, with the proportion of the northeastern population rising from 21.9% to 29.8% over two years to 2011, according to the latest available government  data.

Source :  Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy, Reserve Bank of India, 2016.
Note: Population below poverty line is as per the “Tendulkar method” on mixed reference period (MRP).

The proportion of Mizoram’s people living below the poverty line rose from 15.4% to 20.4% over seven years to 2011, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy, 2016, which uses an index called the mixed reference period (MRP) The MRP measures consumption of five items over 365 days. These include clothing, footwear, durables, education and health spending.

Our analysis also found that Mizoram’s high literacy rates are marred by high school-dropout rates and inter-district disparities. The dropout rates in primary and secondary schools are 15.36% and 30.67%, respectively, more than the comparable national averages of 6.35% and 19.89%; Mizoram’s dropout rates are also the northeast’s highest, according to 2017 government data.

There is a 38.76 percentage point gap in literacy between the most literate district (Serchhip,98.76%) and the least literate (Mamit,60%), according to Census 2011. The districts of Lawngtlai (66%) and Mamit (60%) suffer literacy rates lower than not just the state average but the national average of 70.04%.

Mamit (82.51%) and Lawngtlai (85.06%) also had Mizoram’s highest proportion of rural households and were the state’s  poorest districts with 90% of Lawngtlai living in poverty in 2009, followed by Mamit (83.2%),according to 2013 state government data, the latest available.  The capital, Aizawl, Mizoram’s most-urban district, also had the lowest poverty rates.

Source : Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011, Mizoram Human Development Report 2013

Farm protests, decline in agriculture
Hills cover over 80% of Mizoram, and with 60% of the population dependent of agriculture, according to 2014-15 government data,  the state is challenged by difficult-to-farm areas and declining soil quality, affected by the tradition of jhum–or slash and burn–cultivation.

A National Land Use Policy, 2009 (NLUP), which aims to revitalise the primary sector by introducing alternatives to jhum cultivation, such as reforestation and market infrastructure, has been a prominent promised intervention by the state government and the Congress’ previous election campaigns.

But NLUP funding has been roiled by allegations of corruption. In 2015, a government audit found funds for bamboo plantations filched. Farmers took to the streets of Aizawl to protest the NLUP’s failure in providing a market to farmers, who were made to choose  broom grass and ginger cultivation, the Morung Express, reported on September 29, 2018. The farmers also protested the lack of roads.

As on March 2016, Mizoram had 8,108 km of roads, 17.6% less than the 9,831 reported the previous year. While the length of national highways (1,381km) has remained unchanged, state highways declined from 214 km in 2015 to 170 km in 2016. Mizoram is a multi-hazard prone area and is annually affected by torrential rainfall, flash floods and landslides. The deteriorating condition of roads are further exacerbated by poor maintenance.

Women are educated, working, but none in the assembly
Mizoram reports 976 females per 1000 males, as per Census 2011–the national statistic is 943 females per 1000 males–and it records the second highest rate of female labour force participation (54%) after Chhattisgarh, according to data from the Employment-Unemployment Survey, 2015-2016.

Yet, as the state goes to vote, another contradiction emerges: Mizoram had 2.62% more women voters than men in 2013. But all 40 legislators are men. Of the six women who contested the 2013 elections, only one was from the Congress.
In 2018, 4.8% more women electors are set to vote. Whether any of the men will be displaced will be clear on 11 December 2018.

(Chhetri is a graduate of Lady Shri Ram College for women. Singh is an intern with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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Aizawl: The 40-member Mizoram Assembly was supposed to go to the polls on November 28. The results of that election were to be announced on December 11. It now seems that the state might postpone the elections to Dec 7 after a controversy regarding the appointment of Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) in Mizoram.
 
Govt sources in this Indian Express report said that the final decision will be taken by the Election Commission (EC), in consultation with the state government.
 
“The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is also learnt to have decided to contest the EC’s order on the attachment of Mizoram Principal Secretary (Home Department) L Chuaungo with the MHA. As first reported by The Indian Express on November 1, the EC ordered the removal of Chuaungo after State CEO S B Shashank, in a letter dated October 29, complained to the poll panel of “direct interference” by the state in the preparation for polls,” the report said.
 
The report said that Chuaungo’s removal snowballed into a major controversy ahead of elections, as political parties and civil society groups protested against CEO Shashank. Last week, Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding Shashank’s removal.
 
Thanhawla is said to be contesting from two constituencies which are reserved for the Schedule Tribe category. The last date to file nomination papers was Nov 9.
 
The EC has the intention to replace Shashank and asked the government for suggestions. With less than two weeks left for the polls, and the replacement for CEO still undecided, the Home Affairs Ministry said that there are discussions to postpone the poll to Dec 7.
 
“Since the term of the Mizoram Assembly ends on December 15, 2018, the new CEO will get time to prepare after he is appointed. However, a change in date of elections in the state is a long-drawn process and will have to be done by bringing a notification. The final decision in this regard will be taken by the EC, in consultation with the state government,” said sources.
 
“In his complaint, Shashank had alleged insensitivity on the part of the state regarding voting rights of the displaced Bru community living in relief camps in Tripura and referred to the “active role” played by Chuaungo in the revision of electoral rolls and deployment of central security forces for the Assembly elections. Stating that Chuaungo’s continuance would have an “adverse impact on conduct of smooth, free and fair election process”, the EC had directed that he should be attached with the MHA,” the report said.
 
The EC has defended Shashank and its decision to replace Chuaungo but said that had to take the decision after seeing how things turned out in the last two months. 

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