The Cult of the Sex Goddess....God only knows why am I writing this now......

In its 60th year as an independent nation, India has just elected its first woman president. Yet the ascent of the demure Pratibha Patil - with her covered head and long career in "women's issues" - may not necessarily be a victory for Indian women. Today, in India, "women's empowerment" is a government slogan; it is a feature of every party manifesto. There is a ministry for women and child development. There are laws against female foeticide, domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace. The number of working women is exploding: businesswomen such as Kiran Majumdar Shaw and sportswomen such as Sania Mirza show that talented, determined women are making it in every corner of this traditional society - a society that was entirely male-dominated in 1947. Yet, in the first decade of the 21st century, Indian women - seemingly protected by law, celebrated by the media and nursed by activists - remain second-class citizens, most obviously in rural areas, but in some senses everywhere.

Crimes against women continue to escalate; female foeticide remains common even among educated women; stray incidents of sati still take place, with women either jumping or being thrown on to their husbands' funeral pyres. Arranged marriages are commonplace. The father is still the head of the family. And in the same year that Patil became head of state, Kiran Bedi, India's first female police officer, has been denied promotion to the post of Delhi's police chief. It seems as though only a certain type of Indian woman is approved of these days.

Meanwhile, for millions of Indian women, it is not women such as Bedi or Patil who are role models. Instead it is the heavily made-up and bejewelled women of the soap operas, with their hair full of sindoor and their minds full of domestic politics. Today, these are the women to be emulated.

In urban India, across income groups, there is another role model, closely related to the soap-opera ideal: the brainless sex goddess, whose freedom is expressed purely in her ability to show as much breast, leg and midriff as she can. This sex goddess won't question tradition - because she can't be bothered, because it will affect her marriage chances, or because she simply does not possess the power to think. In a popular advertisement, a half-naked beauty quivers helplessly next to her car's flat tyre because she's so sexy that she's forgotten how to be independent.

"Freedom" is increasingly defined as the ability to show skin or smoke and drink in public. When women here talk about individual freedom - as opposed to the collective freedom of equal opportunities in education and at work - the freedom they tend to be thinking of is the freedom to be constantly sexy.

So what went wrong? In the 1940s, India's freedom movement brought women into political activism and spawned a generation of female politicians. Sarojini Naidu, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and Aruna Asaf Ali were some of the educated, elite women who joined the Gandhian movement in large numbers. At that time, the social reforms of the 19th century had had only limited impact in places such as Bengal and Maharashtra. The colonial government had made sati illegal, but it was still practised in many areas. The male child remained the preferred first-born. In this context, the new Indian constitution, born with independence, was a radical document, promising equality before the law and handing voting rights to women. Legal reforms in the 1950s allowed women to inherit property.

However, the Muslim woman remained, and remains to this day, burdened by oppressive personal laws. The scandalous practice of "triple talaq" (where a man can divorce his wife simply by uttering the words "talaq talaq talaq" - divorce, divorce, divorce) still endures.

Feminist campaigners had many successes in the decades after independence. When a 16-year-old girl, Mathura, was raped in 1972, years of protests led to changes in rape laws. When 18-year-old Roop Kanwar jumped on to her husband's funeral pyre in 1987 - an act still defended by many politicians as a symbol of true "Indian culture" - it sparked a strong campaign against sati. In recent years, many cases of women being burned for failing to meet dowry demands have been investigated. The women's movement also campaigned against the widespread practice of sex-selective abortion, and even protested against male alcoholism.

But within this lay a problem: Indian feminism was and is largely unconcerned with western, feminist ideas of birth control, sexual freedom or opposing the patriarchal family. As yet, the movement has failed to develop an Indian definition of women's freedom, or create meaningful debates on sexuality, family or professional choices. No wonder, then, that many women are happy to accept role models who are beautiful, thoughtless beings.

The failure of the women's movement is partly down to the speed of its early successes, and the speed with which its activists were absorbed into the establishment - which led to a backlash. Among India's middle-class and lower-middle-class women, feminists are perceived to be unpopular conference-hoppers or political climbers. There is a reluctance to take "women's issues", when they are described as such, seriously. India's official feminists talk about dowries, not sexual revolution, and feminism has ceased to be a living force among women.

Meanwhile, the "westernisation" of India has led in some quarters to a more conservative mindset, and this has had an impact on women. Economic liberalisation from 1991 onwards brought the mall, the fashion show, the glossy magazine and the beauty pageant to India in new and dazzling Technicolor. But the west was to be imitated at one level, yet resisted on others. It became the norm to wear tight jeans, but not to question the wisdom of the arranged marriage, as this was a mark of "Indian culture" - a culture now perceived to be in danger from the advancing tentacles of the west. In a recent survey by Outlook magazine, 61% of young Indian people said they disapproved strongly of losing their virginity before marriage and 40% said they would prefer to marry someone from their own caste and state, leading a sociologist to comment that just as the economy was opening, the minds of India's youth were closing down.

With the threat of westernisation looming large, the traditional Indian marriage made an appearance in Bollywood. Films such as Hum Aapke Hain Koun or Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge popularised the designer traditional marriage. It became hip to be traditional.

The heroines of these "new India" films were presented not as individuals attempting to create their own lives in a new economy, as millions of women across India were doing. Instead, the films showed young brides following religious ritual down to the last detail - viewing the moon through a sieve, praying before their in-laws' photographs, and spending their girlhoods working towards getting a husband. When I met students at a prestigious women's college at Delhi University last month, the majority told me that they wanted to get married to a rich man and have week-long weddings, with all the rituals, because that was part of "Indian tradition". They didn't want to be the "feminist type".

That doesn't mean that all Indian women are happy with the status quo. Thousands of young women today are searching for their own identities: what is the right choice between Indian culture and western freedom, they ask. But there is no one to provide any answers. Between the soap-opera beauties and the establishment figures of "women's empowerment", the Indian woman is floundering for new ideas about herself and her destiny, unclear about what freedom means, at a time when east and west are clashing at every shopping mall. And most Indian men are quite happy to let her flounder.

The Mythical Bridge to voters in INDIAAHH!!!!

In the Valmiki Ramayan, the character Ahalya, was transformed from a stone into a beautiful woman because Lord Rama merely stepped on her. In a similar way Lord Ram has once again breathed new life into our normally stony politicians, who though immovable as rocks on issues such as floods and and poverty reports have been galvanized into new life by the mere touch of Lord Rama.

The sangh parivar is looking far busier than it has in months. A saffron fatwa has been issued by Ram Vilas Vedanti calling for Karunanidhi to be killed. Pravin Togadia of the VHP has materialised from oblivion, yelling furiously that Hindus will be avenged if the Ramar Sethu is damaged by the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project. Another sangh stalwart, Murli Manohar Joshi, until recently grumbling on the sidelines about the perils of sex education, is blazing forth again, his tilak redder and more defiant than ever, even spearheading a resolution at the BJP national executive held last weekend in Bhopal. Narendra Modi has found new strength to his anti-Sonia campaign. Rama was not born in Italy, he shouts at his rallies nowadays.

Karunanidhi normally silent on the graver issue of the day such as the manner in which the DMK is able to destroy the constitutional integrity of the union cabinet by reserving ministerial berths, is roaring like a bloodthirsty lion. He too has been transformed from stone to life by the touch of Lord Rama. His atheism and Dravida war cry was never more ostentatious, his anti-Ram pro Ravana ideology was never louder. Rama has transformed Karunandhi into the god of Indian atheism. The Congress, heading into assembly polls in `hindutva' Gujarat is also in a shashtang pranam at the feet of Lord Rama. Ambika Soni, by all accounts a fine minister of tourism who has traveled the world trying to bring tourists, finds herself confronted by asuras in her own cabinet who want to slay her for not being devout enough.

What explains all this hectic political positioning over Rama? The answers lie in the 1991 Ayodhya movement that transformed the Hindus into a "votebank". The Ram Janmabhoomi movement took the BJP from being a marginal force in Indian politics in the 1980s to the status of a dominant national party by the mid 90s. For the first time, the Congress received an ideological as well as a political challenge and the BJP was successful as Advani has often claimed, in at last creating "the second pole" in Indian politics. The NDA victory of 1999 was the triumph of this new political idea. Jai Sri Ram was the new emotive slogan seen to yield rich political dividends.

Undoubtedly, the Ramayan remain fundamental to the Indian cultural identity. In times of globalization, the dominant feeling is one of loss. The loss of our culture, the loss of our values, our languages, our family systems, our festivals, all of it being steamrolled by the seeming juggernaut of the shopping mall, the naked ladies, and the glossy mass media, robbing us of everything we hold dear. The fears are perhaps not exaggerated. Large numbers of 21st century urban youth are not just semi-literate but growing up focused mostly on the nearest ATM machine and the candyfloss Bollywood film with little knowledge of their own traditions. The thousands of smses, emails and blogs that are being sent and written on the need to defend the Ramar setu shows that Ram, when posited as a symbol of an endangered identity, has found a ready echo in many many hearts. The point is however a little different: we all love and respect Rama, but will we necessarily vote for him? There lies a reality check. Ram as a political project is now subject to the law of diminishing returns.

Economic reforms are creating their own kind of politics. India's voting preferences and the issues that drive people to actually cast their vote are radically different from what they were in the last century. The politics of emotion has given way to the politics of expectation and the politics of aspiration. The NDA defeat of 2004 showed that a Hindutva government was not able to retain cultural passion. By the end of its term, it was the Vajpayee persona, standing for moderation and development that had become the NDA's trump card, not the Advani persona of ideological purity. Lets glance at the elections that have taken place this year. What explains Mayawati's victory in UP? Mayawati was able to convey that the BSP is no longer just the party of ideology, but also the party of opportunity. A party where the sarvajan samaj-all castes--can find patronage, jobs, social mobility and a better life. A pure attachment to ideology may have thrilled the BSP cadres, but the public at large was attracted to Mayawati not because of ambedkarite slogans but promise of a better life for all. Why did Captain Amrinder Singh, chief minister of Punjab lose the election? Whatever promises he held out the raja was seen as far too remote, far too arrogant, far too distant from the people. "if he can't even come for my daughter's wedding, why should I vote for him?' was the question. Today the Indian voter demands a political manifesto that holds out opportunity and inclusion. Appeals to pure emotion or pure ideology may be interesting to talk about, but are not considered worth voting on.

Inspite of the DMK agitations and the BJP's protests, the streets of Tamil nadu are quiet. The VHP bandh in north India got a lukewarm response and was called off in a couple of hours. Why did the "national integration" rath yatras of Advani and Rajnath Singh of 2006 fail, when the idea was galvanise "Hindu rage against the UPA's "minorityism." Simply because there are no takers for rath yatras anymore, there are no takers for "hindu rage" anymore. Advani's 1990 Somnath to Ayodhya rath yatra occurred at a time when India was not as global as it is now, the Indian was not as aspirational and still liable to be swayed by provincial passions. It could also be argued that for many thousands of kar sevaks at that time Rama was about finding a job or getting a business opportunity, not necessarily about ideology. Importantly, Advani's rath yatra took place before 24 hour television news. Today the coming of the new economy, the new media, the smses, the bloggers, the mmses and the citizen journalists, have created a voting public far more interested in immediate issues that directly impact them and directly affect their future. Today, even Narendra Modi is shedding his hindutva tag and relying more on his development record. Narendra Modi's preferred identity is of "vikas purush" , someone who harps on his road construction, rural development and his women and child welfare schemes.

It is time perhaps to recognise that, as the forces of the new economy sweep in, the notions of the big ideas that work and those which do not are rapidly changing. Ram as an idea and as a political project has run out of shelf life. The Ram issue is similar to the Left's attempt to whip up anti-imperialism ideology on the Indo-US nuclear deal to galvanise its cadres and hang onto survival. Ideology and the cultural war may be very sexy. But they will yield limited political returns at a time when Indians are more worried about their life on earth rather than their place in heaven or in the socialist utopia.