However, this piece is not about Bharti. It is about the role of women in Indian politics, Bharti being one of the important members. Many women politicians have been at the helm of affairs though the fair sex still forms an abysmal percentage of the overall elected representatives in the country. But, to make a generalization that these important ladies have risen to the top of their field dominated by men, through the dint of feminine touch defined as an element of gentleness in an otherwise crass profession, will be wrong. If at all these women have been more men than men themselves and continually disproved that when it comes to politics women are of a kinder and gentler persuasion, an argument that is often used to favor reservations for women in legislatures.

It is either that these lady leaders do not possess such fine qualities proving one of Dilbert’s principles that although more women will join public life, nothing will change since women are as dumb as men. Or they have realized that such niceties do not work in the hurly burly of Indian politics and a nation where the sex ratio has taken an alarming dip.

In the current lot of women leaders is Sonia Gandhi, President of the Congress party, who owes her lineage to her illustrious mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India. Defying odds, her party defeated the BJP last year and she has emerged from the shadows of Indira to command unquestioned power. She has also shown remarkable guile in blunting the BJP tirade against her foreign origins by refusing the post of Prime Minister and handing it to Manmohan Singh. Her latest handling of the Natwar Singh episode, steering the Congress party away from the tainted minister, demonstrates keen political acumen, keeping in mind the damage that Bofors did earlier.

Others include the mercurial Jayalalitha, the incumbent chief minister of Tamil Nadu and Mayawati, who has been the chief minister of the largest state in India, Uttar Pradesh and the undisputed queen of the dalits (considered of the lower-caste) in the state. Then there is Mamata Banerjee, the rabble rousing former union minister without portfolio, who has repeatedly failed to make her mark in West Bengal, but was constantly a pain in the neck for former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, due to the urgencies of coalition politics.

Last year, the state elections in India threw up three new women chief ministers, Shiela Dikshit in Delhi, leading the sole Congress charge, Vansundhara Raje Scindia in Rajasthan and Bharti in Madhya Pradesh, heading the new GenEx women BJP leaders taking over the reins in two of the biggest states (with a combined population of over 70 million).

In one sweep the northern heartland of India headed for a feminine touch. Dikshit, Raje and Bharti have been around for a while, but never pitch forked into the center of public consciousness like their sisters in the field.

However, in the eyes of many, leading the pack of women in pants are Jayalalitha and Maywati going purely by the yardstick of misdemeanors such as corruption, arrogance, rudeness, sheer preference for sycophants and opportunism for which their male counterparts are known.

There have been instances when both have shown a disdain for the law and attempted to subvert the course of justice. The charge of manipulating witnesses has been leveled against Jayalalitha, with the result that the Supreme Court has transferred corruption cases against her from Tamil Nadu to the neighboring state of Karnataka.

Mayawati, too, like Jayalalitha, is suspected of possessing assets disproportionate to her sources of income. While in power, she slapped more than a hundred cases against current chief minister and bete noir Mulayam Singh Yadav as well as let the police loose to round up her political opponents. Jayalalitha went a step further and had previous chief minister and her bete noir M Karunanidhi physically lifted, assaulted and thrown into jail, by the police.

Mamata Banerjee has shown plenty of guts in taking on the hoodlums of the CPI(M) in West Bengal, but she has never fallen short of taking a shot at every myopic opportunism that has come her way. As a former union Railway minister of India, her only focus was on strengthening the rail system of her constituency in West Bengal. She has been in and out of arrangements with the BJP or the Congress as it has suited her interests, though it has also been the cause of her downfall.

To talk of Dikshit, Bharti and Raje in the same breath as Mayawati and Jayalalitha would not be right, but these ladies too have had their share of tough battles and taken on and defeated men using a heavy dose of guile and political instinct.

Bharati, known by the sobriquet ``sexy sanyasin’’ is no plain Jane and is known for her rabble rousing skills and equally for the ease with which she flirts with the media, slithers in and out of controversy and keeps her, well, sexy smile in place. Ousting Digvijay Singh, well entrenched as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh for over a decade, was no mean feat. Till the end, few believed she could pull off such a spectacular victory. At the helm, Bharati was expected to be a loose cannon and that’s how matters have turned out. Her demeanor is scarcely the most mature and she is known to be impetuous.

Indeed, one of the criticisms that was hurled at Sonia Gandhi at one time was her party’s lack of opportunistic pre-poll alliances with regional political outfits that have cut-into votes thus benefiting the BJP. She seems to have learnt her lessons well (viz the support to the likes of Laloo Yadav) and is not short of the guile and guts that Indira demonstrated. After all it was Indira who imposed emergency on this country to protect herself from a court order challenging her election. She went to jail but bounced back to win the elections again. And it is Sonia, by appointing Manmohan, has ensured that the BJP has been reduced to a party racked by infighting and without issues to raise, with the current Bharti expulsion one glaring example. The Left is effectively the opposition today.