Why Former Sportsperson Jagmati Sangwan Is Contesting Mayoral Polls

Former volleyball player and social activist Jagmati Sangwan has been nominated by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Rohtak to contest Haryana's mayoral elections. This is the first time that people will vote for the mayor and not a committee of councillors. SheThePeople.TV spoke to Sangwan about her work and political motivations.

Talking about entering the political arena, Sangwan said since she is working for over 30 years in the space of civic amenities like safe drinking water, cleanliness, electricity issue, pension for widows and senior citizens etc, she realized that it was time to raise the issues through a political voice as well.

Talking about what works in her favour in this election, Sangwan said that since she has been involved in welfare work right from when she was a student and worked with people at the ground level for so long, it adds to her credibility and now she wants to add value to her work by joining politics.

“The women here are especially supportive because I worked with a women’s organization through which we built many platforms against the injustices towards women,” she said, adding that she has also been a national volleyball player, so the sports fraternity also supports her.

Jagmati Sangwan

Sangwan has consistently fought prejudices and discrimination in a state notorious for honour killings, skewed sex ratio and violence against women. She has been a key figure in the physical education department in the MDU Rohtak University and is the founding director of women’s studies in the university. She also did her PhD in physical education from the same university.

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Apart from Sangwan, others in the fray for the mayor's post are the Bharatiya Janata Party's Manmohan Goyal, Indian National Lok Dal's Sanchit Nandal and Indian National Congress's Sita Ram Sachdeva. Of all the candidates, Goyal stands out as the richest with assets worth Rs 50 crore in the declaration form submitted till Thursday. Sangwan is the poorest among the candidates, having declared an income of Rs 5 lakh.

On why she started working for social development, Sangwan said, “When I and the girls I studied with in school passed out, while I could go on to become a national-level player, others did not get the opportunity. When I went to play in international matches, I saw that comparatively, girls in other countries had a freer environment to grow as players and that’s why they also performed better. Secondly, all the expenditure on my education and my sports came through the public exchequer, so I wanted to give back to society too through activism.”

"When I and the girls I studied with in school passed out, while I could go on to become a national-level player, others did not get the opportunity. When I went to play in international matches, I saw that comparatively, girls in other countries had a freer environment to grow as players and that’s why they also performed better"

Even today, not many women contest elections or even get tickets in the political parties to fight in elections. Sangwan’s view on the lack of women in politics is that the leadership in political parties’ is gender-blind. “Particularly in Haryana, where the societal set is patriarchal, political parties don’t show any sensitivity towards the development of women and their issues so they don’t even encourage women to contest in elections. In fact, parties try to target and encash on the state of women in the patriarchal setup. This is why women feel demotivated to show interest in politics and even their families discourage them from entering politics,” explained Sangwan.

After becoming the mayor, she wants to transform the meaning of development by involving the public into what and how they want their mayor to be like. “Additionally, clean drinking water is a big issue for the citizens here. I also want to work on people’s commute in the city and make better decisions for public transport. So we will try to bring cheap public transport facility which will help curb traffic and pollution. Then regular and non-corrupt handling of senior citizens and widow pension in government offices and better processing of mid-day meal initiatives, anganwadi yojana etc. in the city are some of the things that I will look at.”

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