We do a deep dive into the debate around direct cash transfers to women: Do they empower women or are they nothing more than bribes doled out during elections that burden states with unmanageable deficits?
Was Bihar’s election win for the NDA aided by a Rs 10,000 cash transfer announcement directed toward women voters? There’s no doubt it created quite a flutter when it was announced, and then one tranche of it was disbursed even as the state was in the middle of the election process. What’s equally true is that Bihar isn’t the only state to do this.
This tactic follows earlier patterns seen in Maharashtra’s Mukhya Mantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana programme, Jharkhand’s Mukhyamantri Maiya Samman Yojana and West Bengal’s Lakshmir Bhandar programme, each demonstrating the immense electoral appeal of direct cash transfers.
But behind the headlines lies a grimmer fiscal reality. Freebies are deepening financial stress across States. Bihar, with lowest per capita income among Indian states, has repeatedly missed its fiscal deficit targets. FY24 ended at 4.2% against the planned 3% (deficit as a percentage of Bihar’s GDP). FY25 reportedly surged beyond 9%. Yet, fresh promises continue, some costing as much as the State’s entire annual capital outlay (money spent on asset creation) of Rs.40,000 crore.
An Emkay Global analysis presents a disturbing picture.
Twenty-one of India’s 29 States have breached the 3% fiscal deficit ceiling. Heavy subsidies and pre-poll handouts are increasingly “crowding out” spending on core sectors — infrastructure, policing, education, and healthcare — the very foundations of long-term development, as the RBI has warned. Even fiscally strong States are now buckling under what analysts call “freebie economics”.
According to the NITI Aayog Fiscal Health Index (FHI) 2025, States such as Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Jharkhand and Gujarat are considered fiscally strong due to better revenue mobilisation and expenditure discipline. Yet even these States are seeing a tilt towards consumption-driven spending over long-term capital formation. The trend is unmistakable: more money for handouts, less for lasting assets.
Some States that once embraced large cash schemes are now quietly retreating. Maharashtra trimmed its Ladki Bahin beneficiary list after the programme alone added 0.4% to its fiscal deficit. Madhya Pradesh has similarly reduced allocations to its Ladli Behna scheme. The political appetite for giveaways remains strong, but fiscal capacity is clearly eroding.
This raises the central question: Are freebies replacing real welfare?
Economist Jean Drèze, quoted by journalist Shobha Warrier in her article “The sooner we junk the rhetoric of freebies, the better”, has long argued that real welfare is built through sustained public investment in education, healthcare and social security — assets that uplift entire communities across generations, not just individuals for a single voting cycle. But these systems demand long-term political commitment, institutional capacity and steady funding — all far harder to deliver than an instant cash transfer.
Cash can ease immediate distress, but it cannot fix unemployment, teacher shortages, broken hospitals or failing agriculture. These are structural problems that only strong institutions and resilient public infrastructure can resolve.
At the same time, the story of direct cash transfers carries a powerful subtext — women’s empowerment. When money is transferred directly to women, the message is both economic and political: it recognises women as independent financial agents. In many households, these transfers have become the primary source of family well-being, shaped by women’s own decisions — whether for children’s education, healthcare, nutrition or even small self-employment ventures. This is no small shift in a deeply patriarchal society.
But empowerment cannot be reduced to the act of transfer alone. True agency depends on women’s dignity, autonomy and control over money — free from coercion or appropriation. While system-level improvements in banking access, digital infrastructure and financial literacy are important to strengthen this control, they remain secondary to the deeper political signal that women are direct claimants of State support, not passive dependents.
Yet, cash transfers cannot risk becoming a substitute for systemic reforms. If fiscal deficits continue to rise while roads, schools and hospitals stagnate, the long-term cost will be borne not by political parties, but by citizens.