The disbursal of ₹10,000 as the first instalment of a ₹2-lakh bonanza announced for women by the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government has raised eyebrows. Though the timing of the announcement brought up rightful questions about vote-bank politics, Bihar is not the first state to announce direct money transfers for women before an election. All major parties have resorted to similar schemes in the name of facilitating self-employment. In neighbouring Jharkhand, the JMM-Congress alliance introduced a similar unconditional scheme to transfer ₹2,500 a month just before the assembly election last year. Ditto for Maharashtra, where the BJP-led alliance timed the announcement of the ₹1,500-a-month Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana with the 2024 state polls.
Such schemes have indeed caught a political tailwind in recent years. A new report by PRS Legislative Research shows that as many as 12 states will collectively spend a whopping ₹1.68 lakh crore on unconditional cash transfers to women in 2025-26—up from just two states implementing such programmes three years ago. The Supreme Court has expressed concerns over the timing of such schemes.
It’s also true that these schemes put enormous pressure on the state coffers. The PRS report points out that of the dozen states with such transfer schemes, six have projected revenue deficits this financial year. There is no doubt these schemes must be run prudently and be delinked from elections. However, in the long run, unconditional cash transfers have a huge liberating impact on women, who continue to face patriarchy and oppression. The International Labour Organization has highlighted that women worldwide continue to earn a fifth less than men on average for the same jobs—all while performing three-quarters of unpaid care work, too. Many studies have shown cash transfers improve households’ nutritional security, enhance empowerment, increase voter turnouts, and reduce dependence on usurious moneylenders. Thus the schemes must be supported one way or another. One way to take off the political edge that devolves on parties announcing such schemes could be for them to morph into a universal basic income aimed at half the population in all states. For that, new fiscal calculations will surely have to be drawn up.