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A freebie once granted can hardly be discontinued. All that can happen is to substitute it with a bigger freebie, notes A K Bhattacharya.
There is now near unanimity among those who have analysed the results of assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand that women power in electoral politics has witnessed a new dimension.
It is no longer a question of promising welfare schemes or cash transfers to voters.
Targeting such benefits at women voters in particular seems to have begun yielding better electoral outcomes for those political parties that announce them in good time.
Just a few months before the assembly elections in Maharashtra, the Eknath Shinde government launched the Laadki Bahin scheme in August 2024, providing Rs 1,500 each month to over 10 million women in the state.
In Jharkhand, the Hemant Soren government decided in October 2024 to raise the assistance amount promised to women under the Maiya Samman Yojana from Rs 1,000 every month to Rs 2,500. The Yojana was launched in August 2024.
Not to be outdone, the Opposition political parties in the electoral fray had also promised similar cash transfer schemes for women, if they were voted to power.
It was no surprise that the voting percentage among women saw a significant increase in these assembly elections.
And going by the verdict, it seems clear that women voters had greater faith in the promises made by the ruling parties in both the states. A promise, after all, was only a promise.
In contrast, the ruling parties in Maharashtra and Jharkhand had rolled out these schemes well before the elections, and women voters had already benefitted from them as they saw the promised money in their bank accounts.
To be sure, wooing women voters is not new in India's electoral politics. Many other states have framed welfare schemes specifically for women.
Not all of these states may have rolled out these schemes just before the elections.
But that women could play a decisive role in electoral battles had been recognised long ago.
Remember that the states of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar had introduced schemes to stop the sale of potable alcohol.
One of the main reasons for such a decision was to prevent domestic violence by drunken men against women and to stop men from using up their earnings to buy alcoholic beverages, driving their families to financial ruin.
Andhra Pradesh rolled back its prohibition policy on alcohol but Bihar continues to espouse that cause.
Bihar's decision to provide free cycles to girls who joined school and West Bengal's provision of monetary benefits to girls who would study before getting married were also aimed at wooing these electoral constituencies in their states.
In recent years, the Delhi government made travel on buses owned and operated by it free for women.
Madhya Pradesh had also launched the Ladli Behna Yojana, which was the model for Eknath Shinde's welfare scheme for women in Maharashtra launched earlier this year.
This list can be longer. But the point is that state governments have moved on from just framing schemes to benefit women during their rule to announcing specific cash transfer schemes or freebies, meant only for women, just before the elections.
The assembly election results in Maharashtra and Jharkhand have shown that such an approach works.
So, expect two possible outcomes in the days to come. One, the states that will go into elections in the next couple of years will unfailingly try to craft similar cash transfer schemes for women and roll them out before the assembly elections.
And the Opposition political parties will also make similar promises if they were to be voted to power.
None of them will make the mistake of even allowing an impression to be created that they would discontinue the cash transfer scheme started before the elections.
In a country where the per capita income is just about Rs 2.1 lakh a year or $2,500 (compare that with $12,000 in China), such welfare schemes will always carry a big attraction for voters.
Yes, states that have poor revenue-raising capacity and borrow more to fund such schemes will face major governance challenges and fiscal problems.
This challenge has now become even more complex with women-centric schemes making fresh claims on the governments welfare budget.
The concept of a moratorium on welfare schemes is an alien idea in India's political economy.
A freebie once granted can hardly be discontinued. All that can happen is to substitute it with a bigger freebie.
State budgets will, therefore, be even more constrained in the days to come.
The second impact could be on the Union government. Surprisingly, women-centric welfare schemes have not yet made a big impact on the Centre's finances.
There are many central schemes meant for women the Sakhi centres that help women affected by violence, the Swadhar Griha scheme to help women in distress with financial assistance, the Beti Padhao Beti Bachao scheme aimed at addressing the declining child-sex ratio and Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana that facilitates conditional cash transfer to provide maternity benefits, among others.
There may be many more such schemes to help India's women, but the financial allocation for these schemes amounts to very little.
Take a look at the total outlay of the Union ministry of women and child development, which includes schemes for children as well.
Only Rs 23,165 crore (Rs 231.65 billion) was spent by this ministry in 2019-2020, or about 0.9 per cent of the total expenditure of the entire Union government.
Five years later, in 2024-2025, the outlay of the same ministry will go up to only Rs 26,092 crore (Rs 260.92 billion), and its share in total government expenditure will fall to 0.5 per cent.
There is another way of judging how the Centre has spent on schemes for women.
A statement on the Gender Budget provides details on the different schemes that the government implements for the benefit of women and girls.
That statement shows a better picture. For schemes that are entirely for women and girls, the government spent about Rs 26,731 crore (Rs 267.31 billion) in 2019-2020 and this amount will more than treble to Rs 1.12 trillion in 2024-2025.
But there is a classification problem in the calculations under Gender Budget.
Allocations for rural and urban housing have also been included here, which are not really women-centric schemes.
Without the housing allocation, the money spent by the government on women and girls went up from Rs 8,615 crore (Rs 86.15 billion) in 2019-2020 to Rs 31,725 crore (Rs 317.25 billion). This was not that big an increase.
With the power of women in reaping electoral dividends now being recognised in these assembly elections, it is likely that the Union government's budgetary outlays will also reflect a bigger increase in the allocation for programmes that benefit women.
But as recent elections have shown, electoral benefits are secured only when there is cash transfer to the intended beneficiaries.
The forthcoming Budget may, therefore, give a big push to cash transfers for women.
Of the four groups of Indians that the Modi government nurtures, the youth, the poor, and the farmers have already benefitted from cash transfer schemes in recent years.
It is now the turn of women to get bigger cash transfer schemes from the Centre.
For those in the government committed to the idea of fiscal prudence, the challenges have got a little more difficult.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
