Sop Talk: Gogoi offers govt jobs and cows to women

Guwahati: It’s raining free mosquito nets, blankets and funds in poll-bound Assam. Also doing the rounds are promises of 50% job reservation for women and proposals for cross-bred heifers (high milk producing cattle breed) if the Tarun Gogoi government returns to office for a fourth term.
But neither the minority community nor tea workers — the two traditional Congress vote blocks — feature on top of the CM’s beneficiary list.That spot’s reserved for Assam’s over 95lakh strong women voter constituency
Gogoi implemented 30% quota for women in government jobs months before the 2011 assembly election. In this year’s budget speech, he promised 50% government job quota for women if he returns to office. Such a move, if it sees the light of day, will make Assam the country’s first state to practice gender equality in the government.

The interim budget was marked by several pledges to empower women. Providing two cross-bred heifers to 200 women beneficiaries of the women dairy cooperative societies in Nagaon, Kamrup and Darrang districts at a cost of Rs 100 lakh was a notable one, doubling the Rs 1,000-nutritional support to pregnant women another. Distribution of cycles to 197,000 girl students, making six girls’ hostels functional and setting up a women’s development council some other noteworthy proposals.
The CM also promised to set up a market for women entrepreneurs and self-help groups and crèches at the state secretariat, district and sub-divisional headquarters. Gogoi’s ‘CM’s Special Schemes’ of sops and freebies worth Rs 862 crore targeted 76.5 lakh people in November last year. Over 90% of it had reached beneficiaries by the time the opposition moved the high court and Supreme Court seeking orders to stop Gogoi. The SC has ordered the HC will have to approve the distribution.
“Every government should be committed to development of women and children,” Gogoi has said. “Should I deprive the poor of government benefits just because political rivals see this as politically intended? If giving benefits to poor is politics, I’m happy doing it.”