The growing significance of women as a voting bloc in Indian elections has fundamentally restructured state-level welfare campaigns. While political parties compete to capture this electorate, their policy choices reflect divergent understandings of gender-responsive development. This can be understood using development theory, moving from Women in Development (WID) to Women and Development (WAD), and finally to Gender and Development (GAD). In this context, several cases, including those of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar, illustrate the transition from viewing women as passive recipients of welfare to recognising them as active agents of structural change, yet women as a vote bank continues.
India’s policy approach has been heavily focused on the WID framework, which seeks to integrate women through economic opportunities without questioning the patriarchal structures. Programs like the National Rural Livelihoods Mission self-help groups, Skill India, Stand-Up India and micro-loans via the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana seek to enhance women’s participation in existing economic structures by expanding access to credit, skills, and livelihood opportunities. These policies, however, assume that access to credit and skills training are sufficient to integrate women into the labour market, yet they focus less on critical barriers such as the unpaid care burden, safety, and mobility. As documented in the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) annual reports published by the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI), the rise in the national Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR) from 23.3% in 2017–18 to 41.7 percent in 2023–24 has not led to formal, salaried employment. This jump was widely celebrated as a remarkable achievement on the path to Viksit Bharat 2047. However, during the same period, an analysis indicated that the share of employed women in self-employment rose from 51.9% in 2017-18 to 67.4% in 2023-24. This is read with a decline in regular salaried jobs to 15.9% in 2023-24 from 21% in 2017-18.
In contrast, the WAD framework recognises that women’s unpaid reproductive and domestic work is critical to the functioning of the economy. The cash flows for women are a growing recognition of women’s contribution to household welfare. There is an increasing trend in Indian politics with an expansion of unconditional cash transfer programmes for women from one in 2000 to 15 states by 2025, covering 13 crore women. Schemes like Tamil Nadu's Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam, Madhya Pradesh's Ladli Behna Yojana, Karnataka’s Gruha Lakshmi and West Bengal's Lakshmir Bhandar transfer cash directly into women’s bank accounts, providing an essential income base that reduces immediate household vulnerability. However, while these programmes successfully strengthen social protection, they do not inherently transform the gendered division of unpaid care work or the structural constraints of the labour market. Recognising that sustainable empowerment requires moving beyond standalone income support, states have increasingly introduced complementary programs, prioritising different structural barriers depending on their policy goals.
{{/usCountry}}In contrast, the WAD framework recognises that women’s unpaid reproductive and domestic work is critical to the functioning of the economy. The cash flows for women are a growing recognition of women’s contribution to household welfare. There is an increasing trend in Indian politics with an expansion of unconditional cash transfer programmes for women from one in 2000 to 15 states by 2025, covering 13 crore women. Schemes like Tamil Nadu's Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam, Madhya Pradesh's Ladli Behna Yojana, Karnataka’s Gruha Lakshmi and West Bengal's Lakshmir Bhandar transfer cash directly into women’s bank accounts, providing an essential income base that reduces immediate household vulnerability. However, while these programmes successfully strengthen social protection, they do not inherently transform the gendered division of unpaid care work or the structural constraints of the labour market. Recognising that sustainable empowerment requires moving beyond standalone income support, states have increasingly introduced complementary programs, prioritising different structural barriers depending on their policy goals.
{{/usCountry}}For example, Tamil Nadu integrates cash welfare with targeted interventions to dismantle barriers to economic agency. By pairing the Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam with the Vidiyal Payanam scheme for free public transit and the Pudhumai Penn scheme for higher education subsidies, the state addresses the critical mobility and educational constraints that keep women out of the workforce. Together, these integrated measures simultaneously alleviate household vulnerability while enhancing women’s physical mobility, educational capacity, and access to formal labour-market opportunities.
In terms of political representation, in 2006, to reduce the gender gap in the local power structure, Bihar became the first state to introduce a 50% reservation of seats for women in Panchayati Raj institutions. However, several constraints on their effective functioning after becoming local leaders, including male interference in decision-making, have been reported. It goes against the very objective of GAD to transform unequal gender power relations and strengthen women’s political agency. In March 2025, the ministry of panchayati raj launched the Asli Pradhan Kaun? media campaign to discourage proxy representation.
Then, the Women’s Reservation Act, 2023, officially came into force, seeking to reserve a 33% quota of seats in the Lok Sabha, state legislative assemblies and the NCT of Delhi. But the Act’s actual implementation is contingent upon conducting and publishing a census, a delimitation exercise, and an allocation and rotation of seats reserved for women in these three groups of legislative bodies. The quota is intended to be implemented in future by 2029.
These complementary schemes indicate that several Indian states are slowly moving away from welfare measures centred solely on income support towards interventions that address structural barriers in mobility and education—by focusing on women’s capabilities. Nonetheless, India’s gendered development landscape is caught at a critical crossroads. The transition from WID-based economic integration to WAD-style cash validation has fully recognised women’s financial vulnerability. It is incomplete, though. Persistent challenges, including unequal intra-household power relations, proxy political representation, labour-market segmentation, and the uncertain implementation of broader political reforms, continue to limit women’s substantive empowerment.
Moving forward, the policy paradigm should focus more on a GAD-aligned social infrastructure improvement/creation. Only when women find themselves capable as active and independent citizens can the promise of inclusive development be fulfilled.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Mehdi Hussain, former research associate, Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi.