As women voters become increasingly important in national and state-level elections in India, wooing them with cash gifts seems to have become a common strategy for political parties of all hues. Pragya Tiwari discusses this ubiquitous phenomenon and the long-term questions it raises for the welfare of women voters, politics and society.
[Editor’s Note: This post summarises a discussion on ‘Cash Transfer for Women: The New Trend Shaping Indian Electoral Politics‘ in ‘The India Briefing‘ podcast, hosted by Mukulika Banerjee (LSE Anthropology) and Pragya Tiwari (LSE alumnus, and journalist).]
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This year was big for elections, with several countries going to polls. India had a general election spread over 2 months, and several State elections.
Elections in India are marked by a diversity of political parties, electoral issues and a massive electorate but in 2024 one factor seemed common across the board — the promise of direct cash transfers by political parties to women.
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At the inception of the Republic, the makers of India’s Constitution introduced universal adult franchise; women have thus voted from the very first election in independent India though for the most part they were seen as an extension of their family, caste and community. In the last decade and some, this has begun to change. Women voters are being wooed as a bloc — outside of the religion, caste or community to which they belong.
An early example comes from Bihar. Ahead of the 2015 Legislative Assembly polls, Nitish Kumar, one of Bihar’s tallest leaders and the current Chief Minister of the state, promised prohibition on alcohol if he was elected. This was in response to a demand raised by women from across the state due to increasing addiction among men. Women voted in large numbers, and his Alliance (of political parties) won.
This was not the first time a pro-Women policy had been put in place by a State or Central government. States, and the Centre, have implemented any number of policies for the welfare of women and girls in the past but this was one of the first times that women were being targeted as a vote bloc with a populist policy.
Subsequently, other regional and national parties in State elections began to introduce grand schemes aimed at mobilising women’s votes. It was also in recognition of the fact that the historic gap between the turnout of women (versus men) voters has, on average, been declining in both Centre and State elections and, in some instances, the percentage of women voters has overtaken men.
Take another example — in the Karnataka Assembly elections in 2023, the Congress Party had a historic win. Electoral data shows that women voters favoured the party because of promises made for women during election campaigns, including cash transfers and free bus rides. This came close on the heels of the Congress Party’s win in Himachal Pradesh in 2022 where again, in response to their promises, women voters gave the party an edge in the final result. Similarly, in the 2021 elections in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, battling anti-incumbency sentiments, promised cash transfers for women, and it is believed to have strengthened her relationship with women voters.
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By 2023 the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had caught onto this phenomenon. In October last year, the Central Government passed the Women’s Reservation Bill that guarantees one-third reservation for women in the Central and State legislatures. The Bill is yet to be implemented but (is widely believed) was passed in a rush to target women voters in the general elections held earlier this year. The BJP-led Central Government had previously targeted women through other policies, most notably with free cooking gas, but nothing at this scale.
Although the BJP did not do as well as expected in the general election and data suggests they polled better with men than women, this did not deter the push for women’s votes. In fact, in the State elections that followed, they doubled down, leading to a fiercely competitive outreach to women in manifestos. The focus, however, was one policy now — direct cash transfers to women. In last year’s elections in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, poll promises for cash transfers to women played a big role in the BJP’s win and the party had taken note.
In the Haryana elections held in October this year, the Congress promised ₹2,000 (US$24) to women and the BJP ₹2,100 (US$25). Direct Bank Transfer (DBT) promises were also said to have played a huge role in getting the BJP elected in Maharashtra, and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha–Congress alliance in Jharkhand.
There are now ten States that have either announced or implemented such schemes.
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On its face this is a step in the right direction even if for cynical reasons; cash transfers have helped women make financial decisions.
However there are some caveats.
The perceived electoral success of these schemes has led to ‘competitive welfare’ and is raising concerns — can States and the Centre afford the cost to the exchequer imposed by these cash transfer schemes? While they all have some criteria, they very nearly amount to universal basic income for women.
Delhi is going to polls early in 2025, and the incumbent Aam Aadmi Party has announced a cash transfer scheme for women in their manifesto that might risk pushing the budget into a revenue deficit. Similar concerns have been raised elsewhere, including in West Bengal and Maharashtra where these schemes are already underway. According to a study by Goldman Sachs, States in India are currently committed to upwards of US$18bn for cash transfers for women.
In a country with limited resources, such cash transfers are bound to be at the expense of investment in human capital as well as infrastructure that can lead to sustained economic and income growth. This is problematic because India has been under-spending on health and education, numbers that are now in further decline. India’s education allocation has fallen further from 3.4 per cent of its total budget expenditures in 2019–20 to 2.6 per cent in the interim budget of 2024–25; likewise, Health allocation fell from 2.3 per cent in 2019–20 to 1.9 per cent in 2024–25 interim budget.
Meanwhile, States and the Centre are drastically behind their capital expenditure targets.
The welfare state that is evolving is a substitute for its failure to build an economy that can actually provide jobs and basic wages. Cash transfers can at best be a short term fix. Serious investment in infrastructure and human capital is needed to address underlying issues in the longer term but the opportunity cost of the short term fix might be too high to allow for this.
This is especially crucial because there is no saying how the money transferred is being spent. Cultural and social factors and poor financial literacy could lead to ill-judged or inefficient expenditure. There are studies, for example, that show that cash transfers are more likely to be used for calorie-rich food than nutritional food that is needed to address deficiencies. Transfers to women directly does not always mean they will have a say on how the money is spent. In large parts of India, these decisions are taken by elders, especially male members of the family.
Proponents of cash transfers argue that they are more efficient because they cut out intermediaries. While that is a valid argument, it is not the whole picture. Access to the benefits are often impeded by inefficient financial infrastructure, leakage and targeting errors. Cash transfers are also vulnerable to inflation and price volatility that erode their real value, making them unreliable mechanisms for protection of the poor.
A further point to note is that the proliferation of cash transfer schemes for women seems to be premised on these schemes yielding votes. Former Election Commissioner S. Y. Qureshi went so far as to say that he sees these schemes as bribery for votes. A key assumption here is that women are likely to vote as a bloc defying the usual imperatives of voting along class, caste and religious lines though this has not been tested and there is evidence to suggest that women prioritise different factors in different parts of the country. This is also liable to shift over time as needs and circumstances change.
Are these policies sustainable if the link between votes and cash transfer weakens?
What we know for certain is that women are voting more enthusiastically on average and cash transfers are incentivising them. On the other hand, women’s participation in the work force and women’s wider participation in politics remains at an unsatisfactory level. Perhaps the implementation of the Women’s Reservation Bill will change the latter for the better but a lot more needs to be done to address gender disparity in India. Cash transfers may or may not be a step in the right direction for the long term, but they are certainly not enough.
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