If you understood what the real purpose of last week’s special session of Parliament was, you did better than me. Was it called because of a genuine desire on the part of the Modi government to give women a voice they have not so far had? Or was it a cunning but cynical plot to link women’s reserved seats in Parliament to gerrymandering (delimitation is their euphemism) that seeks to make more seats available to the BJP in states where it dominates the electoral playing field? And why was a special session needed anyway?

When you have written a political column for four decades as your columnist has, you develop a healthy suspicion of politicians and the chicanery they use to try and fool all the people all the time. I have no hesitation in admitting that I began to sniff a rat before the session began when I heard the Prime Minister address a large gathering of very elite women in Delhi. It was an adoring female audience that giggled at Modi’s jokes and cheered when he listed the many things his government has done to ‘empower’ women. He told them that he had designed policies that would take care of their needs from the time that they ‘took their first breath to their last.’

Among the things he listed were the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao slogan which he claimed had changed the general attitude to women. He then reminded them that the Mudra Yojana had enabled women, who had never stepped into........

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