“Women have never got their due, not just in India but across the world. In contrast to the constant claims made by the political class on uplift of the fairer sex, the status of women has been reduced to mere vote bank,” says Kavuri Lavanya, an NRI, who launched a political party Nari Shakthi here on Sunday.
Ms. Lavanya said, “To translate the slogan of ‘women empowerment’ into reality, we must enter politics as that’s the only way to break the economic, social and political barriers.”
A native of West Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh, she left the State 20 years back and worked for various multi-national companies in Europe before settling as a management consultant in London.
During this span, she realised that justice, equality and empowerment of women are a far cry and decided to return home and launch a political party to achieve the same.
“Our immediate task is to visit villages to reach out to women at the grass-root level and make them aware of this new party and its objectives. We need to spread awareness on women’s rights and motivate them to become active part of our movement to achieve them,” she said later on the sidelines of a meeting.
Talking of issues like reservation for women in legislative bodies and other key areas like health and education, she says the idea is to elevate the fairer sex on a par with their male counterparts in the political system. Ms. Lavanya started out thinking that for now, she would focus on penetrating into people and create a base for 2024 elections, “but the response is overwhelming and we have found some very potential candidates to contest in the forthcoming elections”.
“More than winning, my focus will be on building the party image among people and selection of candidates will be done with utmost care,” she adds.
Nari Shakthi will implement 30% reservation of seats for male candidates, she says and adds, “We will not ask for a Bill for it. We are very generous.”