India may have stumbled into one of its most consequential social experiments without fully intending to: paying women simply for being the invisible engine of the household economy. What began as scattered state-level schemes of unconditional cash transfers has, in just a few years, grown into a nationwide phenomenon touching 118 million women. The sums are small, the politics loud, and the implications profound. For decades, unpaid domestic and care work has propped up India's economic life without ever entering its accounting systems. Women spend hours each day cooking, cleaning, caregiving and managing crises ~ labour that sustains families, frees up men for paid work, and substitutes for public services that are missing or inadequate. Yet this work has been treated as natural, expected, and essentially valueless.
The quiet flow of 1,000 to 2,500 rupees a month into women's bank accounts ~ for those who meet the basic eligibility filters ~ challenges that assumption in subtle but significant ways. The most striking lesson from the early evidence is not what these transfers do but what they don't do. They do not deter women from seeking paid work, nor do they entrench domestic roles ~ fears often raised in feminist debates. Instead, they provide something Indian women have long been denied: predictable personal income and control over it. Whether spent on groceries, school fees, medicines or emergencies, the money represents agency. In many households, it reduces the friction of asking for cash. In others, it opens space for women to participate more strongly in decision-making. But to assume that a modest monthly deposit can correct deep structural inequities would be naïve.
Advertisement
These schemes do not reduce the load of unpaid work, nor do they create opportunities for employment ~ the absence of which continues to push women out of the labour force. They do not, on their own, alter social norms that assign domestic responsibility almost entirely to women. And in many states, they have become an unmistakable tool of political mobilisation, especially in the run-up to elections. Cash deposits timed with polling schedules are not a coincidence; they are a strategy. Yet, dismissing the entire experiment as vote-buying would overlook the genuine shift taking place. Women who control their own money, even a little, report a sense of dignity. Some invest in micro-enterprises. Others manage crises without depending on husbands. A few, for the first time, question politicians directly. These are not trivial gains. The real test now lies in what India chooses to build around this foundation. If the payments continue in their current form - automatic once eligibility is established ~ while also being framed as recognising unpaid work and paired with financial literacy and employment pathways, they could catalyse long-overdue change in gender relations. If not, they risk settling into another layer of paternalistic populism. India's cash-transfer moment is still in its early chapters. Whether it matures into empowerment or becomes entrenched as political patronage remains an open question.