Babhru Wadekar

Babhru Wadekar is the current First Minister of the Danaan Principality of Farinor. She is a leader of the Progressive Democratic Party.

Wadekar was raised a member of the Hindu sect of Arya Samaj in Naagesh Parish, where the majority of people subscribe to the rival doctrine of Vaishnavism. Wadekar earned both her degree in women's studies and her law degree from the University of Civic Duty. After several years as a private practicioner of family law, she was elected to the Parliament of Farinor in 2001 and became First Minister in late 2005.

First Ministership

Wadekar began her First Ministership as a member of the Emancipation Party. She was selected as the leader of the Progressive Coalition primarily because the Liberal and Labor Parties could not work out between them which of them should head the Government. As the leader of a smaller progressive party, Wadekar was choosen as a neutral politician capable of holding the coalition together in the Government. When the Progressive Coalition became the Progressive Democratic Party, Wadekar found herself the head of an absolute majority in the legislature and correspondingly in a much stronger position politically.

After the emergence of the Progressive Democrats, Wadekar began to pursue an ambitious agenda. Her top priority has been creating a system of universally available, publically funded preschool. Wadekar and her supporters claim that this program is vital to produce real equality of opportunity for children whose parents have different levels of education, to ease what many feminists refer to as the double-burden of career and family responsibilities often placed on working mothers, and to provide for healthy socialization of children at an earlier age to prevent juvenile delinquincy. Leaders of the Conservative Democratic Party oppose the initiative on the grounds that it erodes the family as the basic unit of society, encourages pregnancy out of wedlock, and creates an unnecessary public intrusion into a business already established in the private sector.

Wadekar is also known for opposing what she disparagingly refers to as "theocratic laws" in the Resurgent Dream's only predominantly Hindu principality. Her Government abolished discriminatory taxes on the growing of beef. Her Government also amended a law regulating the consumption of alcohol to insure it couldn't be used to place restrictions on Christian Churches after several officials attempted to enforce the law against Christians. Wadekar stated that, had the law not been amended, she did not believe any such law could survice constitutional scrutiny in the courts. On the other hand, a single-issue rebellion by backbenchers in her own party prevented Wadekar from repealing public slaughter laws banning the slaughter of cattle in public view.