The Real Crisis in Bihar Politics: Women Mobilise Votes, Men Keep the Power 

When Divya Gautam, an academic and the CPI candidate from Digha, talks about women’s place in Bihar politics, she begins not with the present day but with a reminder from the 1990s. Rabri Devi, Bihar’s first woman Chief Minister, introduced a two-day sick leave policy for women, essentially menstrual leave, without requiring any justification from women applying for it. “Women didn’t have to give any reason to claim this leave. They could simply ask for the leave,” Gautam says.

The policy remains unique to Bihar even today, decades before the rest of India began discussing menstrual leave. Yet Rabri Devi’s achievements have been consistently erased. “Why isn’t the good work done when Rabri Devi was the chief minister remembered?” Gautam asks. She believes the answer is simple. “There is no visibility of any good work she did because she continued to be seen as Lalu’s shadow. And every time a woman does any work, it is questioned. Even more so if the woman isn’t considered educated enough,” she says.

For Gautam, this erasure reflects a deeper truth about Bihar’s patriarchal political culture. Women may enter power, but their authority is doubted. Their achievements are diminished. Their leadership is scrutinised through the lens of male legitimacy. And that’s before they even step out to campaign. She questions: “When will women do politics or sit on a chai ki tapri when they have house cleaning, elderly care, cooking, and child care to do?”.

The unpaid labour that women shoulder is not a side issue. It is the foundation of political exclusion. Politics requires being out in public, building networks, holding meetings, and navigating public spaces that remain overwhelmingly male. “Women’s mobility is restricted and political parties know that. Sometimes, for this reason, they aren’t even included in meetings as they know she’ll be busy with domestic chores,” she says. During her campaign, Gautam deliberately held events at nukkads and chai tapris as a way of “claiming public spaces” for women.

Still, many women who attended such meetings came only because their husbands sent them. “Political parties see them only as women, not as leaders,” she says.

It’s against this backdrop that the numbers from the recent 2025 Bihar elections become much stark since women voters turned out at 71.6 per cent, compared to 62.8 per cent for men. Over 2.5 crore women shaped the mandate. Still, political parties fielded only 258 women out of over 2,600 candidates.

This is the lowest in fifteen years. Only 29 women won, which keeps their representation under ten per cent. Even the political parties that otherwise claim to champion women’s welfare, seem to offer little more than token gestures -- BSP fielded 26 women, Jan Suraaj Party 25, RJD 23, BJP and JD(U) 13 each, and Congress only five.

These aren’t signs of progress. Are these the symptoms of a system that wants women’s votes but not their leadership?

Independent candidate Ritu Jaiswal, a former mukhiya who contested from Parihar, has seen the structural barriers up close.“ Despite all the schemes for women, Bihar continues to be a patriarchal society and neither political parties nor the voters have any faith in women,” she says. She points to candidates like Shivani Shukla from the RJD, Anita Mahto also from the RJD, and Lovely Anand from JD(U), women allegedly fielded because their male relatives could not contest due to criminal cases or legal trouble. This, she argues, is simply the updated version of the old “Pradhan Pati” phenomenon, where women were elected as sarpanch but their husbands took all the decisions.

“This is still the land where the shameful concept of Pradhan Pati is alive,” she says. “It will take decades to change the mindset that men are the real leaders.” Journalist and political commentator Arti Jerath agrees, calling it a “paradox” where parties make big promises to women but deny them political power.

She notes that Nitish Kumar’s reservation for women in panchayats laid an important foundation. But she stresses that systemic change will require the Women’s Reservation Bill to be implemented. That, however, depends on delimitation, a politically explosive process, stalled by competing demands for proportional representation.

Until then, Jerath says, parties will hide behind the “winnability” argument, even as they field candidates with serious criminal records. “Women’s hesitation to enter politics is not personal reluctance but a rational reaction to a sphere ‘dominated by money, muscle, and male networks’ that demands compromises falling disproportionately on women,” she says.

It’s only after considering all these structural issues that the dramatic break of Rohini Acharya with the RJD may hint at another context. Her accusations that brother, Tejashwi Yadav’s aides pushed her out, and her declaration that she was “disowning” her family, may look like personal conflict. But her fallout is telling because it occurs despite her political pedigree, her visibility, and her privilege. And if someone like Lalu’s daughter feels squeezed out, by her political family, what does that say about women with no political backing?

Jaiswal believes Acharya’s challenge to her own family might even resonate with voters, showing a woman refusing to play a symbolic role. “She could win even as an independent,” Jaiswal says, “riding a wave of frustration with how women are treated in party hierarchies.”

Ultimately, the real story is not Acharya’s exit but what it represents. Women form the backbone of electoral success in Bihar. They turn out. They vote. They shift mandates. But when it comes to leadership, they are offered crumbs, says Jaiswal. For Bihar allowing women into leadership is no longer optional. It is essential.