The Illusion of Empowerment
Every election season, your feed floods with political campaigns promising “nari shakti” — a new cheque, a new scheme, a new promise of empowerment.
For a moment, it feels powerful — like women are finally being seen, valued, and supported.
But when the noise settles, and the phone goes silent, a question lingers:
Is this real empowerment, or just another illusion?
The truth is that the politics of freebies, dressed up as women’s empowerment, has become one of the most effective tools of modern electoral politics. Behind the hashtags and headlines, it’s less about progress and more about persuasion — where women are transformed into beneficiaries, not decision-makers.
The Feminisation of Welfare: A Political Strategy
In recent years, Indian politics has mastered the art of “feminising welfare” — creating schemes in the name of empowerment while ensuring control remains in male-dominated systems of governance.
From West Bengal’s Lakshmi Bhandar Scheme to Bihar’s Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, and Delhi’s Free Bus Ride for Women, the trend is clear — cash transfers have replaced conversations about structural change.
While these programs provide short-term relief, they rarely challenge the patriarchal systems that restrict women’s freedom, mobility, and decision-making power. Instead, they reinforce the idea that women need to be helped, not empowered.
Who Really Benefits?
Let’s take Bihar’s Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana as an example.
Launched in 2025, it offers ₹10,000 as financial assistance to women entrepreneurs, with additional support up to ₹2 lakh for expansion.
On paper, it looks promising.
In reality, it raises a crucial question — who truly benefits from this initiative?
If women remain confined by limited access to education, credit, and mobility, the money alone changes little. Without structural reform, these cheques become tools of dependency rather than empowerment.
As The Wire called it, this is a “giveaway blitz” — an electoral strategy, not a gender revolution.
Tokenism vs. Transformation
The West Bengal Lakshmi Bhandar Scheme, launched in 2021, provided ₹1,000–₹1,200 per month to women depending on caste categories. While 1.8 crore women enrolled, a report by the Pratichi Institute revealed that the scheme largely failed to address deeper economic issues.
Many women continued to earn below fair wages, especially in the tea industry of Darjeeling. One tea worker poignantly asked:
“They call our benefit free money. But what about our unpaid labour year after year — is that also free?”
A Times of India survey found that 85.6% of beneficiaries used the money for household expenses, not business or skill-building — proving that most women were forced to redirect the benefits into domestic survival, not independence.
This transforms “empowerment” into a subtle reinforcement of gendered roles — women as homemakers and caretakers, not decision-makers or earners.
Women as Vote Banks: The Capitalisation of Empowerment
If viewed through a feminist lens, these welfare schemes operate under a paternalistic model of governance.
Women are seen as recipients of government benevolence — “helped” rather than respected as equal participants in the economy.
When leaders call themselves “brothers working for women’s welfare,” it reinforces the same patriarchal charity model — portraying women as dependents rather than capable citizens.
The timing of these schemes, often just before elections, exposes their real intent. As The Indian Express notes, direct cash transfers often double as electoral engineering, converting empowerment into votes.
Beyond Cheques: The Path to Real Empowerment
Real empowerment cannot be wired into a bank account — it must be built into systems.
For welfare schemes to create actual change, they need:
- Training and mentorship programs for rural, Dalit, Adivasi, and Muslim women
- Financial literacy and access to credit networks
- Monitoring mechanisms to prevent misuse or male control of funds
- Representation of women in local and state-level policy decisions
Without these, welfare programs risk alienating the very women they claim to support — especially those without digital access or formal education.
As things stand, women are being used as symbols of progress while remaining excluded from the process of power itself.
When Empowerment Becomes Political Currency
Both Nitish Kumar’s Bihar and Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal have been praised as models of “direct empowerment through DBT (Direct Benefit Transfers).”
But as The Economic Times observed, these schemes often reduce women to agents of transaction, not transformation.
Empowerment that depends on a cheque is fragile — it fades when the government changes or the scheme ends.
True empowerment begins when women are no longer seen as vote banks, but as equal citizens — capable of shaping policies, leading businesses, and defining their own futures.
✳️ The Real Question
When political parties gift empowerment through money, what they often take away is the space for women to demand real reform.
Because once you accept a cheque, you’re expected to stay silent.
Empowerment is not a transaction — it’s transformation.
And until Indian politics learns that difference, the illusion of “nari shakti” will continue to shine brighter than its reality.
- Women empowerment in Indian politics
- Feminisation of welfare schemes
- Freebie politics India 2025
- Nari Shakti and patriarchy
- Tokenism in women empowerment
- Bihar Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana
- Lakshmi Bhandar scheme analysis
- Women as vote banks
