BehanVox: A Marginal Rise In Bihar’s Women MLAs
This week in BehanVox: the strange world of technocapitalism, our Laadli wins, and more
Hello and welcome to BehanVox! We are overjoyed this week to share with our readers that three of our painstakingly researched and uniquely framed stories have been awarded Laadli Awards for 2025: Aishwarya Mohanty’s report pieced together the stories of women of Koraput villages who banded together to respond to the biodiversity crisis in an unusual way – by mapping their commons using government records and historical data. Anuj Behal’s deeply investigated work looked at how evictions carried out in the name of urban ‘beautification’ and ‘development’ pushed working class women from settlements across Delhi into remote resettlements, destroying their livelihood options, dignity and access to basic facilities. Medical practitioner Christianez Ratna Kiruba’s essay argued that the horrific crime at Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital needed to also draw attention to the vulnerability of all women healthcare workers.
This recognition reinforces our belief that a good story that respects a reader’s intelligence and is told with conviction and journalistic rigour will always work even in these noise-filled, attention-deficit times.
This week we bring you an interview in the BehanBox Talkies series that takes us into the strange new world of technocapitalism and how women are making their way ahead in it.
Story So Far
Hemangini Gupta, the author of Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Experimental Futures in India, traces the caste and gender privileges that go into the making of a tech bro, women’s innovation and belonging in masculine spaces, and the obscure promises of ethical AI solutions. Saumya Kalia, who has been investigating this space, interviews her about the place of women in the world of technocapitalism where the bro culture is all pervasive.
Hemangini points out how her book contrasts two kinds of experimentation: “One by the male entrepreneur who heads the company, who enjoys the profits of the company, and the other by women who experimented for survival. Most of the women were young, middle-aged employees; none of their parents, certainly not their mothers, had professional office jobs. For them, the experimentation was not just in being with each other and trying to figure out how to move in these spaces of leisure – it also became about experimenting with their personal lives. They took a lot of risks in terms of who they made friends with, how they fell in love or how they got divorced. The workers in the company came together to form these infrastructures of care and socialising, and it’s through that that they survive this everyday expectation of experimentation in the office.”
Do women entrepreneurs enable or upend the model of startup capitalism? Who are ‘cyber coolies’ and how does caste work in these entrepreneurial spaces? How do they celebrate “flexibility” and “independence” even as they leave room for precarity? Do read the interview for answers.
Read our story here.
Talking Point
Women In Bihar Cabinet: On Thursday, Nitish Kumar took oath as Bihar chief minister for the 10th time along with 26 others. The new National Democratic Alliance (NDA)-led cabinet of Bihar includes eight ministers from the Janata Dal (United), 14 from the BJP, two from the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and one each from the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) and Rashtriya Lok Morcha. Three women made it to the cabinet – former minister Leshi Singh of the JD(U) and two new entrants, Shreyashi Singh (BJP) and Rama Nishad (BJP).
Public Transport Skew: A report by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) in India titled “Gender Inclusivity in India’s Public Transport” showed that safety, overcrowding, and poor service reliability are critical concerns for women using public transport. The survey included both women commuters and women workers in the State Transport Undertaking workforce. Upto 30% of women reported harassment or theft and 41% complained of overcrowding. Long waiting and journey times, the women said, were reasons for anxiety. It also showed that women make up less than 1% of the workforce in public transport systems.
Menopause Music: “Half of the population are going through this at some point in their lives, people need to know about it.” That is Jo Dale, vocalist and bassist of York trio Knitting Circle, on why she wrote Eggs, a song about menopause. Just like the characters in Sally Wainwright’s hit BBC One show Riot Women, Jo wants society to know “we’re still here”.
Data Drop
We hope you have been following our reporting and analysis of the just-concluded Bihar state elections. We reported last Sunday on the disappointingly low number of Muslim women candidates in these elections.
This time, women have emerged as a decisive voting bloc but there was only a marginal increase in women MLAs and women from marginalised communities–SC Muslim and ST communities saw a decline and even drew a nil.
Behanvox Recommends
No, Women Aren’t the Problem: The NYT opinion piece that drew on the works of conservative Leah Libresco Sargeant and Helen Andrews to establish that liberal feminism is wrecking the modern workplace continues to draw flak for its problematic assumptions. In an essay for The Atlantic, Sophie Gilbert argues against Andrews’ fundamental essay, ‘The Great Feminization’ which claims that “wokeness is inherently feminine” and that this prioritises empathy over rationality.
Pity and Fear: Hisham Matar turns to Venetian painter Titian’s imagery of cruelty to reflect on the contemporary stockpile of visual images, like those in Gaza, and what they tell us about torturers and their victims.
Sticker Campaign and Israel’s War Machine: From lampposts to café windows, portraits of fallen soldiers have saturated public space, binding personal loss to a drive for ‘total victory’ in Gaza.
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