Freebie frenzy vs women's empowerment

On the face of it, India’s women, specifically those in and around the poverty line, have never had it so good. For the past several years, a growing number of political parties appear to have discovered them as a potentially lucrative element of the electoral process. In North India, Nitish Kumar, as Bihar’s chief minister, leveraged this understanding to useful effect with the imposition in the state of prohibition in 2016. But in electoral contests that have come to be increasingly defined by giveaways in general, it was the five Assembly elections in early 2026 that saw parties compete in right earnest for women-targeted welfare schemes. No doubt, women beneficiaries of cash handouts —with promises of more munificence were they to vote the benefactors concerned —have enjoyed the unexpected bonanzas. 

But a direct correlation between women welfare schemes and poll results is unclear. Apart from Bihar, where there appears to be a strong link between women-focused policies and electoral outcomes, most notably in the 2015 polls, results elsewhere have been patchy. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, for instance, lavished money and freebies on the state’s women voters, but that could not help it against the star-power of a party started by an actor and political novice. The message, then, is clear: Women enjoy handouts as much as the next person but their votes depend on meaningful political programmes. 

This, in fact, should be the real test of the freebie frenzy. Can these handouts sustainably and realistically transform the lives of women for the better or do they amount to a cynical temporary exploitation of a vulnerable section of the electorate? Overall, it is difficult to establish a pattern. In West Bengal, for instance, Mamata Banerjee’s Lakshmir Bhandar scheme for women from economically weaker sections was considered a reason for her party’s strong showing in rural areas. But this stands in stark contrast to her startling indifference to violence against women and outright hostility to victims of sexual assault. That, as much as her erratic governance in almost every sphere, played a major part in precipitating her defeat to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The fact is that, though targeted freebies have emerged as the primary engine for women’s empowerment, they have little impact in terms of altering the status of women. In Tamil Nadu, women are better educated, more financially independent and enjoy stronger rights relative to their sisters, say, in Uttar Pradesh or pretty much anywhere in northern India. But that is less the result of targeted freebies than of the universal social justice delivery model followed by the two major political parties that ruled the state till recently. It is no surprise that Tamil Nadu can boast the highest proportion of women factory workers among Indian states. 

In Bihar, studies suggest that prohibition has resulted in a sharp reduction in domestic violence and crimes against women. Women have also appreciated the savings on liquor and consequent expansion of household budgets available to finance their children’s education and so on. Interestingly, this decrease is not reflected in dowry deaths — quite the reverse, with dowry deaths actually rising in the period after 2016. This suggests that women remain trapped in the paradigm where society views them as units of opportunistic economic exploitation rather than human beings in their own right. 

Alternatively, women are still expected to fulfil social roles prescribed by society. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, for instance, may be well-versed in the benefits of IT and technology. But his alarm over his state’s falling birth rate and its ramifications for fiscal transfers has produced a policy that must surely rank among the most retrograde in recent years. In May this year, he announced one-time cash incentives of ₹30,000 for a third child and ₹40,000 for a fourth child. The policy is by no means coercive, but incentives typically add an element of compulsion. Put simply, where a falling birth rate should be seen as a progressive sign of women’s empowerment, Mr Naidu’s announcement has the effect — perhaps unintended — of narrowing a woman’s gender role to childbearing. 

That perhaps explains why in the current political milieu the female labour force participation rate hovers at 35 per cent — though, ironically, this statistic is celebrated as progress over the low of 23 per cent in 2017-18. But even this number is problematic, mostly because the bulk of this employment is unpaid family work or small self-employed roles rather than regular salaried jobs that create a modicum of financial independence. Women who work, especially at the lower end of the economic scale, mostly do so out of financial compulsion. As yet, only a minuscule proportion of India’s women has the luxury (or sufficient education) to think in terms of career choices. 

So freebies, whether in the form of cash, gold, laptops and bicycles, may offer the same sort of temporary relief as, say, an aspirin does for a headache. But they can never be a replacement for an unremitting focus on the things that really matter for women to progress — education, health, safety, access to opportunity and so on. Achieving this demands unglamorous hard work below the radar rather than grand gestures — from offering cash subsidies to reserving seats for women in Parliament. India’s women deserve better from the political class.