Telangana Assembly Elections: Political parties are going all out to attract female voters who outnumber men
Maheshwaram, Siddipet, Dubbak, Secunderabad
Sitting cross-legged in the porch of her modest home on the outskirts of Dubbak town in Telangana’s Siddipet district, MD Habeeda is rolling bidi after bidi with the deftness of years of experience, arranging them in a pile in a winnow she balances on her lap.
Despite doing it for about three decades, the remuneration remains meagre. “If I roll 1,000 bidis, I get Rs 200.
Some months, I don’t even make Rs 2,000,” she says. The 50-year-old initially says nothing much has changed for her family in the last 10 years, though many an MLA has come and gone. But then she recalls: “My husband gets Rs 2,000 a month as pension.
And now we have power and water. Earlier, we didn’t have enough water to bathe, wash, or even drink.” If K Chandrashekar Rao, or KCR as he is known, comes back as chief minister for a third term, “it will be good”, she says.
Dubbak, over 100 km north of Hyderabad, is one of the constituencies in Telangana where female electorate outnumber men, a statewide trend in this assembly poll. In the Election Commission’s final electoral rolls, there are 1.63 crore women, compared with 1.62 crore men.
