Wolves in feminist clothing, that is the metaphor the latest shenanigans of the ruling party brought to mind. Suddenly people who have not had a passing thought on women’s rights or gender justice all their lives were mouthing endless pieties about “Nari Vandan” and “She-Shakti”.Tejasvi Surya, BJP leader from Karnataka, stood up in parliament terming the amendment to the 2023 women’s reservation law (the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam) a “genius solution”. We can forgive him his grammar, but has this man, best known for attempting to open an emergency door of an aircraft while it was on the tarmac, had one thought to spare on gender justice before this moment?Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla castigated opposition leaders for opposing the Bill saying, “Are you against women’s reservation?”, and R.P. Singh, the BJP spokesperson whom no one suspected of harbouring deep thoughts about gender “empowerment”, berates the opposition for letting down India’s women.Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju, who did not even bother to convene an all-party meeting to seek a consensus before this special two-day parliamentary session, huffed righteously: “It is the responsibility of everyone to ensure that women get 33% reservation in parliament.”As for the prime minister, wearing the crown of chief patron of women’s welfare in the country, he warned the opposition during his speech in the Lok Sabha that the women of the country are ‘watching our intent’. He reiterated that thought in a tweet he sent out the next day:“On behalf of our Nari Shakti, I also request all members not to do anything that may hurt the sentiments of women across India. Crores of women are watching us … our intent and our decisions. I once again request that everyone support the amendments to the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam.”Television channels took this narrative to heart. If Times Now had wasted any television minutes on women, it was on what it termed as “power women”. Its summit of 2026, for instance, had space only for “Influential Indian Women”. But when the Modi government suddenly re-engineered the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, which presumably includes ordinary women, there was a miraculous change in its narrative. Headlines now screamed: ‘Nari Shakti … When Women Lead, Nations Rise’; ‘She-Shakti for Bharat’; ‘Historic Women’s Quota Bill’.In fact, every television channel in the country competed with each other to amplify BJPfeminism. They reeled out the evidence of the ruling party’s undying concern for women, naming government programmes like ‘Lakhpati Didi’ and ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ to drive home their point.They forgot however to mention that ‘Lakhpati Didi’ was just the old self-help programme dressed up in new clothes; that the Drone Didi programme did not take off; that the Mudra Yojana was aimed solely at benefitting ambitious, well-networked “female entrepreneurs”; and as for ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ it has been reduced to a slogan painted on the backs of passing trucks and autorickshaws.The fact is that crimes against girls have touched exponential levels, especially in the Hindi heartland. Horror stories involving young female lives have kept surfacing, whether it was the gang rape of an eight-year-old in Kathua in 2018 or the 19-year-old Dalit woman set upon by the Thakur men in her village in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, in 2020.So are our betis really getting saved? Not really. Meanwhile the Uttar Pradesh government recently allegedly moved to abolish 27,000 basic schools in the name of ‘improving educational efficiency’, which also means that the beti padhao part of the slogan is in danger of being rendered meaningless.If the media were to do their job, they would have called out this elaborate charade of gender concern just for purposes of passing three Bills, by reminding its readers and viewers of the innumerable anti-women jibes made by the prime minister himself, from early ones like calling Sonia Gandhi a Jersey cow and Sunanda Pushkar as Shashi Tharoor’s ’50-crore girlfriend’, to more recent slurs like mocking Mamata Banerjee repeatedly by calling out “Didi O Didi”.If criticising the prime minister is a bridge too far for these media houses, they could have at the very least checked out how women have fared in India during the Modi years. The grave reality is that the overall number of crimes against women per 1,00,000 increased from 56.3 in 2014 to 66.4 in 2022.The sheer audacity of a government with such a legacy now claiming to be champions of women’s empowerment should have been laughed out of court by the media. Instead they rushed to promote the government’s chief spokespersons in every way they could.When Amit Shah was speaking, the kicker line claimed (without evidence) that his words had stumped the ‘Kill Bill Group’ (CNN News18). They clung like barnacles to the hull of the Mother Ship, hoping much like barnacles did to get a stable surface to live out the duration of their adult lives even if the price for doing so was being obliged to parrot the government line on every issue including the present one.The Constitution (131st Amendment Bill) was finally defeated after two days of non-stop histrionics in parliament, not because the opposition was against it, but because the Bill was being used so cynically to smuggle in two other Bills – the Delimitation Bill, 2026, and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, which were naked attempts to rejig the borders of electoral constituencies across the country on outdated data and without serious discussion.And it was not just opposition members that held this view. Sixty women’s groups and several civil society organisations stated, even as the three Bills were being discussed in parliament, that while they categorically reject women’s reservation being joined at the hip with delimitation based on the 2011 census, they were committed to strengthening the women’s reservation process, including the need for a new Constitution Bill reserving 33% of seats for women in the Rajya Sabha as well.§Media silence over workers’ welfare creates conditions of unrestAbout a month ago, this column had carried information sent in by a trade unionist, Santosh, on the steady rise of “spontaneous workers’ movements that have emerged in India during Feb-March 2026, on wage demands and on an eight-hour workday”. What was conspicuous about that list was the steady rise of discontent among India’s working class across the country.Two factors have only exacerbated this anger: one, the rolling out of the four labour codes that are designed to dismantle any progress in the welfare of workers achieved through a century and more of trade unionism; two, and more immediate, is the Iran war which has raised the cost of living exponentially.It follows that those who are the most vulnerable amongst us, the working classes, would be the hardest hit by these twin phenomena. The media, which has discarded its labour beat, and disdained coverage of trade union activity for the longest time, was clueless about the rising temperatures on the shop floor.When protests broke out, first in the industrial heartland of Haryana, followed by Uttar Pradesh’s Noida – both double-engine states it may be noted – it came as a huge surprise because major labour protests were presumed to have been relegated to the dustbin of history.The initial coverage by this hugely corporatised media was all about predictable aspects like the traffic jams and damage to property that the protests were causing. Accusations followed that the unrest was being fueled using the tool kit of Left-wing “anti-nationals”.It was only later that more granular reporting ensued, including the fact that while workers in Uttar Pradesh earned on an average Rs 12,000 per month, they had to shell out Rs 4,000 and more as just rent, that the political dispensation was working shoulder-to-shoulder with big corporates to keep wages at sub-par levels, even as working hours mocked at the gains made by the labour movement over a century and a half – like the eight-hour working day.Domestic workers in Noida, taking a cue from industrial workers, began to question why their employers who made lakhs in monthly income should dish out measly amounts of Rs 2,500 to 3,000 per month for the hard, two-hour grind of doing dishing and swabbing floors.Data crunchers Abhishek Jha and Roshan Kishore showed through graphs the stagnation in the wages and living conditions of factory workers vis-a-vis the salaried classes. As they observed: “Protests by factory workers in Noida have laid bare the economic precarity of India’s manufacturing workforce”. Well said, sirs. The only question is, why wait until serious labour protests break out?§Readers write in…Why doesn’t The Wire call out the Western media?The Wire reader Sunil N.M. has a serious problem with this news portal’s coverage of the war in West Asia…“I have been a constant supporter of the Wire. I have contributed Rs. 66,000/- over the last 6 & 1/2 years in addition to subscribing to its YouTube channel. These humble contributions were made in appreciation and admiration for the independent journalism it, I believe, is pursuing; speaking truth to power.But the reportage of ongoing war in West Asia has exposed a serious flaw in Wire’s outlook. While you can see through the fake image created by mainstream Indian media in domestic politics, I’m appalled to see that it was accepting, with little reflection, the fake image created by the mainstream western media on international issues. You are mainly acting as echo chambers to Western narratives. All the mainstream Western media are controlled by big businesses who also control the Western governments. They may criticise the ruling individuals severely but never expose the underlying Imperial assumptions. Karan Thapar appears to be the chief culprit. His questions in the interviews reveal more about himself. There are many alternate Western media available which questions the Western fake narratives. But Indian alternate media like the Wire appears oblivious to their existence.I think I may have to review my future contributions to the Wire.”§Questions to a builderVijay, who terms himself a whistleblower, sent in this mail. We have redacted the name of the construction firm referred to, but are carrying excerpts from his letter, in the interests of greater reader awareness…“I am writing to you as a whistleblower and concerned citizen to request independent media scrutiny into a set of serious issues affecting homebuyers in certain residential projects developed by —– Limited. The issues being raised are not merely individual grievances but raise larger questions relating to citizen safety, rule of law, regulatory accountability, and protection of homebuyer rights.The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India has repeatedly observed in real estate and urban governance matters that homebuyers cannot be left at the mercy of powerful developers and that statutory authorities must act strictly to protect citizen rights. The Court has also emphasized that where safety norms or statutory obligations are diluted, it directly affects the fundamental Right to Life under Article 21 of the Constitution.In this background, residents have been raising documented concerns relating to:Fire safety readiness and availability of permanent firefighting water infrastructure as required under National Building Code normsGrant of Occupancy or compliance approvals in circumstances where residents believe all safety conditions required independent verificationDelay in execution of land conveyance to apartment associations despite sale of flatsTransparency concerns relating to property registration and buyer legal protectionWhether regulatory approvals were subject to adequate independent scrutinyNeed to examine if systemic influence or regulatory gaps may be affecting enforcement of buyer protection laws…This is not a request to presume wrongdoing, but a request to examine whether a pattern of compliance concerns affecting homebuyers deserves wider public discussion and regulatory attention…The disclosure is being made in good faith and purely in public interest.”§Ballad of Kanpur JailA reader alerted us to a poignant piece that appeared in Countercurrents of April 12, ‘Meeting with an octogenarian political prisoner in Lucknow jail’ by Manish Azad:“Last month, 83-year-old Shivraj Singh Bagadwal from Almora [Uttarakhand] was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Lucknow ATS/NIA court. The accusation was the usual generic one—that he incited people against the government. The evidence presented was so-called Maoist literature.Shivraj Singh worked as a journalist. He regularly wrote in local newspapers and magazines about the Uttarakhand movement and issues related to water, forests, and land. He has also been actively involved in social movements. In February 2010, he was arrested in Kanpur and charged under various sections of UAPA, after which he was sent to jail. Before getting bail from Kanpur jail, he had already spent 7 years in prison. After 16 years, the final judgment in this case came on March 18 (last month) and he was sentenced to 10 years.When I used to visit him in court to show solidarity, I noticed that while walking to get food, he would hold his stomach near his waist and walk unsteadily. When I asked him about it, he said he suffers from hernia. Apart from this, he also has serious health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. He can hardly hear and uses a magnifying lens to read newspapers.Despite these conditions, he kept traveling from Almora to Kanpur and later to Lucknow court (his case was shifted to Lucknow in 2021), waiting for the judgment….After a while, jail police came and started moving us away. Meeting time was over. Shivraj ji raised his fist and walked back unsteadily. While returning, I was filled with grief and anger. How can anyone be so cruel to an elderly person—even if he is in jail?If the jail administration reads this, or if someone influential can convey this to them, I request with folded hands that better arrangements should be made for elderly prisoners like Shivraj ji to meet their families and friends. A society that does not respect its elders is destined to grow ‘old’ before its time.”§End note: The Delhi Union of Journalists issued an important press release on the ways in which media houses were deliberately covering up, instead of covering, the workers’ protests in Noida. This police lathi charge even led to a Dainik Bhaskar reporter, Saket Anand, getting hit. The Uttar Pradesh government has made several arrests but in such an opaque manner that it was impossible to have access to the prisoners.The workers were only demanding better working conditions, including better wages and an eight-hour day. The DUJ demanded“action against the policemen who attacked the Dainik Bhaskar reporter. We also expect the government of Uttar Pradesh to oversee implementation of the higher wages announced. Most NOIDA factories have no unions and unionisation is discouraged by both the factory owners and government. In the absence of recognized unions both the employers and the administration are finding it difficult to conduct negotiations with striking employees.”Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in.