Over the past few years, the surest way to win an Indian state election has been to deposit money straight into women’s bank accounts. Madhya Pradesh’s Ladli Behna scheme lit the fuse in 2023, and one state after another — cutting neatly across party lines — has followed with a localised version. Women now make up close to half of India’s electorate, and, as this BBC report notes, the appeal of a monthly transfer is obvious: unlike a road or a hospital, the money is immediate, visible and personal. The awkward part, as Maharashtra’s auditors are now finding, is that the bill for all this generosity eventually falls due.
Mayuresh Konnur and Zoya Mateen tell the story through Nirmala Bawaskar, a widow who works as a housemaid in Maharashtra’s Sambhajinagar (erstwhile Aurangabad) district. Until two years ago, she had no bank account of her own and signed documents with a thumbprint. That changed when she enrolled in the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana , launched just months before the 2024 Assembly election, which pays eligible women 1,500 rupees (about $17) a month. For her it meant a first bank account and, for the first time, money she could call her own. “Though it is a small amount, it really helped us, especially with medical expenses,” she says. “I was so motivated by it that I even learned how to write.”
Bawaskar is one of more than 26 million women enrolled. That very scale is why the scheme is now under the scanner. India’s national auditor found that Maharashtra’s Women and Child Development Department overspent its authorised budget by Rs 35 bn rupees, spending Rs 332 bn rupees on Ladki Bahin in a single financial year. It also flagged Rs 156 bn rupees quietly parked in special accounts in the year’s final three months despite no immediate need — a manoeuvre it said weakened financial discipline and reduced legislative oversight of public spending. For a newsletter that cares about capital allocation, that insight into lack of oversight is important: money moved to escape scrutiny is rarely money well spent.
The politics were never subtle. The ruling Mahayuti alliance — led by ruling dispensation in Delhi — launched the scheme after a bruising 2024 general election. A Lokniti-CSDS survey found support for the alliance climbing to 54% among beneficiaries. The opposition cried vote-buying, even as it dangled cash transfers of its own.
Then came the clean-up. Once e-KYC was made mandatory, the rolls fell from 26.3 million to about 17 million. Records obtained by The Indian Express showed that roughly two-thirds of those dropped had simply NOT completed e-KYC. Rather more awkwardly, government data showed nearly 29,000 men and some 8,000 government employees had also been drawing payments meant for low-income women.
The two economists the piece quotes are refreshingly undogmatic. Welfare economist Neeraj Hatekar notes that a woman in Maharashtra earning 300 rupees a day makes only 6,000-7,000 in a good month, so 1,500 rupees “is a big amount” — yet argues the same money might achieve more spent on healthcare, childcare and transport. Renowned economist Ajit Ranade frames the fiscal question most sharply: “You might divert funds to these schemes and win an election. But what about the long-term damage [to the state’s finances]? That is never audited.”
That is the tension the piece leaves you with. For Bawaskar, none of the accounting drama alters what the scheme has given her. “It’s money of my own,” she says. “That’s what matters to me.” Whether a state can keep that promise to 17 million women without ever auditing its true cost is the harder question.
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