Women Power in Maharashtra : She Will Have the Final Say

WHEN JANNABAI GOT ₹3,000 in her bank account, she was elated. She used most of the money—the first two instalments under the Maharashtra government’s Ladki Bahin Yojana—to return a small portion of the ₹40,000 she had borrowed from her son and acquaintances for her appendicitis operation. To date, she has received ₹6,000 under the scheme. A domestic help from Perane village of Pune district, Jannabai earns ₹8,000 a month. She does not know her exact age, guessing it to be somewhere between 40 and 45, but she remembers that her son was a year old and her daughter two when her husband walked out of their lives about two decades ago. When she heard from other women about the scheme, she thought of giving it a shot and applied for it. Living with her aged mother, she is barely able to make ends meet. “This money has come in handy. I am grateful to the government. Now, how can I be unfaithful to it?” says Jannabai, as she waits for the next instalment ahead of Deepavali.

She is among nearly 2.5 crore women in the state who have received funds through direct benefit transfer (DBT) ever since the scheme, estimated to cost the state exchequer ₹46,000 crore annually, was launched with ef­fect from July. The Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, seeking to provide ₹1,500 to women in the age group of 21-65 every month, was announced by Maharashtra Finance Minister Ajit Pawar in the budget of June 28, 24 days after the Lok Sabha results threw up a disheartening verdict for the ruling Mahayuti, an alliance of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The scheme, aimed at financially empow­ering women who belong to families earning less than ₹2.5 lakh annually, is being seen as a game changer for the Mahayuti in the Assembly elections to be held on November 20.

The Mahayuti, which has initiated eight other schemes targeting women, is hoping the women-oriented theme will draw its beneficiaries to it, giving it an edge over the opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) comprising Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar’s NCP. In the Lok Sabha polls, MVA won 30 of the 48 seats, with Congress’ tally rising to 13. The Mahayuti, which has 210 of the 288 MLAs in the Assem­bly, won just 17. With just about four-five months to go for the Assembly elections then, the ruling alliance had no time to waste.

The state government turned to what has become one of the most sought-after vote banks—women. In this year’s Lok Sabha polls, the percentage of women voters across the country lagged behind men by just 0.02 per cent. In 19 states, the percentage of women voters exceeded that of men.

According to the Election Commission, new women voters enrolled exceeded new male voters by 15 per cent. In Maharashtra, how­ever, the turnout of women voters was lower than that of men by 4.41 per cent (wider than the 3.75 per cent gap in 2019), indicating their disillusionment with governments or ire over the twists in the state’s politics.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, for the first time the percent­age of women voters across India exceeded that of men by 0.16 percentage points, nudging political parties to amplify their outreach to them. No party could ignore them. With women already becoming a significant vote base for BJP in the 2014 and 2019 elections, the Modi government wooed them with more schemes in 2024—increasing the target of its Lakhpati Didi scheme, providing training to women in self-help groups (SHGs) to enable them to earn an income of at least ₹1 lakh annually, from 2 crore to 3 crore, extending health insurance under the Ayushman Bharat scheme to all ASHA workers, free cervical cancer vaccination, extending the Ujjwala scheme providing free LPG cylinders to poor women, and publicising the passage of the women’s reservation Bill called Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, ensuring 33 per cent reservation for women in Lok Sabha and state Assemblies. In October, BJP leader from Odisha Baijay­ant ‘Jay’ Panda, in a post on X, said a tribal woman insisted on giving ₹100 to “convey thanks” to the prime minister for his efforts during a membership drive in the state’s Sundar­garh district. Modi had launched the Subhadra scheme in September in Bhubaneswar, providing ₹10,000 in annual as­sistance to women aged 21 to 60, with an annual income of ₹2.5 lakh or less, in two equal instalments through DBT, one of BJP’s manifesto pledges. In the May Assembly elections, BJP had come to power in Odisha, ending the 24-year-long rule of Biju Jana­ta Dal’s (BJD) Naveen Patnaik for whom women voters had been a strong bastion, particularly with his government’s Mission Shakti empowering SHGs.

Other parties too, realising the growing role of women voters in deciding their political fate, wooed them, cutting across caste and community lines. Last year, the Congress government in Karnataka launched the Gruha Lakshmi scheme, providing ₹2,000 every month to women heading a below poverty line (BPL) family, keeping its pre-poll promise. In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress government launched the Lakshmi Bhandar scheme in 2021, providing financial assistance of ₹1,000 to eligible women in the age group of 25- 60. For Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Scheduled Caste (SC) women, the amount was scaled up to ₹1,200. In Jharkhand, also head­ing for Assembly polls along with Maharashtra, Chief Minister Hemant Soren has launched a financial assistance of ₹1,000 a month for women in the 21-50 age group. In Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin’s DMK government last year launched the Kalaig­nar Magalir Urimai Thittam, granting ₹1,000 every month to women over 21 with family income not exceeding ₹2.5 lakh, family land holding not over five acres of wetland and 10 acres of dry land, and consuming less than 3,600 units of electricity in their households.

In March 2023, as the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh headed for Assembly elections later in the year in the face of anti-incumbency, then Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan came up with the idea of the Ladli Behna Yojana, providing ₹1,000 to women aged 23-60 with an annual income of less than ₹ 2.5 lakh. Closer to the elections, the amount was raised to ₹1,250 and the minimum age for eligibility lowered to 21. By June, when the first instalment was to be released, over a crore women had enrolled for the scheme. Besides this, the BJP manifesto included other schemes like free education for BPL girls from kindergarten to post-graduation, concrete homes for beneficiaries of the Ladli Behna scheme and increasing assistance to ₹2 lakh under the Ladli Laxmi Yojana for girls from birth to marriage, a scheme initially launched in 2007 by Chouhan, who came to be called “mamaji (uncle)” after that. Competing with BJP’s promises, Congress pledged an assistance of ₹1,500 a month to women under a Nari Samman Nidhi, pushing Chouhan to promise ₹3,000 under the Ladli Behna scheme. Congress also assured ₹2.5 lakh to girls from birth to marriage under a Bitiya Rani scheme along the lines of Ladli Laxmi Yojana, ₹1.01 lakh for marriage of girls from poor families and loans up to ₹25 lakh to women-led startups.

THE MAHARASHTRA GOVERNMENT has apparently taken the cue for its Ladki Bahin scheme from Madhya Pradesh’s Ladli Behna scheme, which was seen as one of the major factors responsible for BJP’s victory in the November 2023 Assembly polls, winning 160 of the 230 seats in the state, recording an all-time high in polling at 77.15 per cent, with a 2 per cent increase in women voters. BJP captured around 50 per cent of women’s vote, up from 43 per cent in 2018, while Congress’ dropped by 3 per cent.

In Maharashtra, within just three months, with the state government considering July to be the starting month for its Ladki Bahin scheme, 2.5 crore women have already been registered for it. Financial provision of ₹46,000 crore has been made till March 2025 for the scheme which is costing the state exchequer nearly half the estimated ₹1 lakh crore earmarked for the various schemes announced ahead of elections. Publicity for the scheme itself has cost ₹200 crore, according to reports citing an RTI query. The governing alliance partners are counting on the scheme to give them an edge, particularly in constituencies where margins are thin. In the Lok Sabha polls, victory margins in Maharashtra were around 5,000 in nearly 20 of the 48 seats.

Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has an­nounced that his government has decided to pay the November instalment of the scheme early as a Deepavali bonus. Accord­ing to sources, 2.34 crore beneficiaries have already got ₹7,500. Shinde has recently said that the scheme will not only continue but also be backed by increased funding. Launch­ing the scheme in August, Shinde had said, “I only want to say that we will not only give them ₹1,500, we will make them indepen­dent, we will make them self-reliant.” As per the labour force survey in the state, the employment percentage of men is 59.1 per cent while that of women is 28.7 per cent. The government is hoping that the scheme would help in enhancing women’s economic independence, leading to improved health and nutrition. Besides the Ladki Bahin Yo­jana, other schemes for women in the state include 10,000 pink rickshaws for women and a fee waiver for vocational education of girls from poor families.

The government is hoping that the Ladki Bahin Scheme would help in enhancing women’s economic independence, leading to improved health and nutrition. The Mahayuti alliance sees the scheme as a silver bullet while the Opposition is guarded in castigating it, even as questions have been raised about its financial viability

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The ruling parties see the Ladki Bahin Yo­jana as a silver bullet while MVA is guarded in castigating a scheme meant for poor women, even as questions have been raised about its financial viability from various quarters. Political analysts in the state say that while the scheme could give the Mahayuti an ad­vantage, it is faced with other issues like the Maratha quota agitation and agricultural crisis, particularly in rural Maharashtra. “The scheme has created a political euphoria through marketing, propagating and advertising. It is to be seen how women respond to it in the elections. This has also sparked competitive credit taking for the scheme between the Shinde and the Fadnavis groups in the alliance in which each party is worried about its own political survival,” says Mumbai-based analyst Surendra Jondhale.

Unlike Jannabai, a beneficiary who feels she owes her allegiance to parties in the ruling alliance, another recipient of the Ladki Bahin funds who has received ₹4,500, Sangeeta, holds her cards close to her chest, saying the government is giving money under the scheme but is unable to contain price rise. “The prices of food items have shot up. We are facing severe water shortage and have to buy drink­ing water. Whichever party comes to power should resolve these issues,” says Sangeeta, who earns ₹12,000 a month working as a domestic cook in Pune’s Wagholi. With her mason husband jobless after an accident, she is the sole bread winner in her family.

It is to be seen what promises MVA, which is drafting its mani­festo, makes to women of the state to blunt the political fallout of the Mahayuti’s flagship scheme. As parties vie for their vote, Jannabai and Sangeeta have some reason to smile, no matter who wins.

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Amita Shah