Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
MUMBAI, INDIA — Ruhi Khan shares a one-room apartment in western Mumbai’s Santacruz area with her husband and two children, and her family shares a bathroom with 20 other households on her floor. Rent is 8,000 Indian rupees (about US$93) a month.
Last summer, the Bharatiya Janata Party — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party — promised 1,500 rupees a month to women in the state of Maharashtra whose household income was less than 250,000 rupees a year, as long as they supported the party.
Khan qualified. She’s a stay-at-home mom, and her husband, a driver, earns 15,000 rupees monthly. She voted for the BJP.
“The extra money,” she says, sitting on a stone bench near her home, “is very valuable to us.”
But the stipends were short-lived. When the monthly deposits to Khan’s bank account stopped in December, she was confused.
“They announce these programs in a hurry and then withdraw them whenever there is a stress on the budget,” says Mehjabeen Rizvi, a social worker who’s worked with Mumbai’s most vulnerable women for 20 years.
Can Money Buy Democracy?
This article is part two in a three-part series. To read the other parts of the series, click here.
Maharashtra is 9.3 trillion rupees (US$109 billion) in debt — its biggest deficit in history. For 2025-26, state finance minister Ajit Pawar projected a revenue shortfall of 459 million rupees (US$5.4 million). To cut costs, the state cut the cash-transfer program by 100 billion rupees. But in Maharashtra, home to Mumbai, India’s financial and commercial center, economists say the state budget faces much bigger stressors than the cash transfers.
The cost of cash
Since 2020, political candidates across India have made low-income women voters a simple promise: unconditional cash for votes. If the candidate’s party takes power, these voters can expect monthly transfers from state government coffers to their bank accounts — indefinitely.
But though the cost of the program is relatively high compared to other government programs, it’s still a sliver of what’s spent elsewhere.
“If we contrast the subsidy being given to big corporates and the paltry amounts being transferred to these women, it is clear that the former outweighs the latter,” says Jayati Ghosh, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
In 2019, for instance, the Indian government reduced tax rates for companies with thousands of rupees of turnover, resulting in the country losing around 1 trillion rupees of revenue in 2020-21. Niramala Sitharaman, the country’s finance minister, who was responsible for the tax cut, said it would boost investment and bring jobs to the country.
Moreover, the government subsidizes many essential goods and services for the whole population, irrespective of financial need. For example, every resident of Bengaluru who has a drinking water connection from the state’s water supply department receives water at the small portion of the cost the state incurs for supplying it to them, according to a January 2024 report. Similarly, many states, like Punjab, Delhi and Karnataka, offer a limited amount of free electricity to every household. Many who can afford to pay end up using these services for free.
“There is no question of whether the state can afford this,” says Ritu Dewan, a Mumbai-based economist and vice president of the Indian Society of Labour Economics. “They surely can. They just need to readjust their priorities and give benefits to those who need it the most.”
Shaky support
The government says the delay to Khan’s disbursements was because it was vetting beneficiaries. Aditi Tatkare, minister for women and child development, told reporters in January that some ineligible women had availed of the benefits. In March 2025, after the vetting process concluded, Khan received all the money owed to her.
Khan could breathe a sigh of relief — and so could the politicians who had promised her, and women like her, the cash. After all, the transfer programs are so popular that political leaders will face severe backlash if they try to end them. Their recipients, as the programs intended, are now a strong voting bloc.
“They come together as women and are not divided on the basis of caste or other identities,” says Rizvi, the social worker.
Khan now goes to regular women’s meetings, where she discusses issues like price rises and how to hold political parties accountable. She’s cautious, she says, and plans her expenses carefully.
“In case the money stops reaching my account in the future, I want to be prepared,” she says.
Amid the state budget cuts, Khan worries whether the transfers she now relies on will vanish again.
“Being poor is not easy,” she says. “Soak in the benefits while they last.”
Can Money Buy Democracy?
This article is part two in a three-part series. To read the other parts of the series, click here.
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.