India's 15th Lok Sabha election is just around the corner, with Indian voters set to cast their ballots between 16 April and 13 May in polling spread over five phases. In the midst of myriad timely issues – the post-Bombay attacks rhetoric has yet to die down, the full fallout of the economic crisis has yet to become clear, the strength of the recently composed left-led Third Front is yet to be understood – this period is historic in that four women are now in position to decide the country's future. Two of these are strong candidates to take over as prime minister; one rising from the ashes of corruption in the south, the other from Uttar Pradesh and having risen with the backing of Dalits and 'backward' castes. The third declined the prime-ministership the last time around, and the fourth is a Bengal banshee who has gone into collaboration with the Congress.
The first, of course, is Sonia Gandhi, the chairperson of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which rules today. Her significant competition has come up from Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Her already highly anticipated showing has recently been given a fillip by the decision by the Third Front, being led by the left parties, to accept her as its leader, though without actually making a public declaration to this effect. Like a mantra, observers are repeating the traditional logic that, in India, the path to Delhi runs through UP, which holds 80 out of 545 Lok Sabha seats. Indeed, pundits enamoured with Mayawati's chances have even taken to comparing her with that other from-the-underclass political phenomenon of the decade, Barack Obama.
The third woman is Jayalalitha, the head of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu. Although in 1999, the AIDMK won 18 seats in Parliament, in the last election Jayalalitha could not drum up even a single berth – likely because she was facing more than two dozen charges of corruption, which had caused a wave of public resentment against her. Nonetheless, this year many are suggesting that 'Amma' could hold the key to the prime-ministership, on the assumption that any winner in the national parliamentary elections will be forced to woo her to join a coalition. There are, after all, only two major parties in Tamil Nadu, and a significant part of Jayalalitha's current strength lies in the fact that Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) supremo and current Chief Minister Karunanidhi is now seen as quite weak, with Karunanidhi's son Stalin having become embroiled in multiple disputes that have had the effect of defaming the DMK. According to some, Jayalalitha's fortunes would benefit if Mayawati's BSP does not do particularly well in UP, and in which case she would become the favoured candidate for the top job. This time, the Third Front is seeking a statesman who has the acceptance of all as prime minister. In UP, if Mayawati bags 30 or fewer seats out of 80, and Jayalalitha gets up to 25 out of 39 seats in Tamil Nadu, the parties may flock together to Jayalalitha.
Finally, Mamata Banerjee, whose Trinamool Congress has established a remarkable base in West Bengal, has shaken hands with the Congress party, sharing seats in contesting elections in the state. The Nandigram and Singur protests against land acquisition for Special Economic Zones created widespread distaste with the Left Front, which has ruled for three decades, and this could certainly have an impact on national politics as well. It was the Trinamool Congress and another regional party, the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI), that were the main voices of this anti-incumbency movement, and it is in this context that the pre-poll alliance of Congress, Trinamool and SUCI must be seen.