In Bihar, Nitish and Tejaswhi are talking about women. Who’s listening to them?

Women’s agency, termed so often as “empowerment”, has become an issue for debate in Indian elections once again. In Bihar , the incumbent chief minister, Nitish Kumar, and his challenger, Tejaswi Yadav, have engaged in heated exchanges on the matter. Kumar has reportedly queried in public what the Rashtriya Janata Dal has done for women when it was in power. Yadav has responded by announcing ambitious schemes for women, to be implemented if his party returns to power. By this, he appears to be suggesting that his opponent has not done enough for women despite positioning himself as a champion of their wellbeing.

Over the past two decades, Kumar’s coalition has introduced welfare transfers, including bicycles for schoolgirls and passed legislation such as prohibition, ostensibly to benef