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Hello, I'm Tina Dehealey and this is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4,

a space to ask one big question about one big story.

Today, can India become a better place for women?

The biggest democratic event in the history of the world is underway. Hundreds of

millions of people in India are voting on seven separate days across the span of a month.

We'll find out on May the 23rd where the Prime Minister Naryndramodi has been re-elected.

His B.J.P. parties up against the main opposition Congress and a bunch of regional

parties. Now, Norendon-Mody is a polarizing figure, loved and loathed in equal measure and for that reason he's

often compared to Donald Trump although he has been empowered two years longer

since 2014 but like Trump Modi presents himself as a macho man and part of his polarizing power is about gender.

Women have had the vote since India gained independence and it was one of the first

countries to have a female Prime Minister in Drogandy back in 1966 but in India

women are not equal.

In a controversial poll last year by the Thompson Reuters Foundation,

the country was rated the most dangerous place for women in the world

when looking at sexual violence trafficking and

traditional culture but women could hold the key to this election for the

first time it's expected that more women will vote than men.

So political parties have begun treating women as a constituency in themselves

and offering them things like education loans, bicycles for girls, even free cooking gas.

To begin looking at what's at stake for women in these elections I spoke to Punam Joshi.

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