India has rapidly seen the widespread rollout of unconditional cash transfers for women covering 10 crore women across 11 states. While the stated purposes of these schemes vary, they arguably represent a form of social protection and recognition of women’s unpaid domestic and care work, as required under Sustainable Development Goal 5.4.
In light of the links between such cash transfers and unpaid domestic and care work, the Laws of Social Reproduction compiled detailed information on the introduction and operation of these cash transfers across India. This interactive map offers an overview of both ongoing and proposed schemes across states. We also undertook empirical research analysing the impact of these schemes in Goa, Assam, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal; with the findings documented in our research.
Click on any state to view its ongoing and proposed cash transfer schemes.
The past few years have witnessed a dramatic shift in India’s welfare regime. India has historically had large-scale welfare programmes such as the Public Distribution System for food access, the Integrated Child Development Services Scheme to reduce child mortality and malnutrition and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme guaranteeing wage employment in rural areas.
Just before the pandemic, the government of Assam announced the roll-out of UCTs to women under the aegis of the Orunodoi scheme. Meanwhile, early in the pandemic, the central government offered UCTs of 500 INR (approximately 6 USD) per month for 3 months to all women with PMDJY bank accounts. Soon after, Assam rolled out its UCT scheme for resident women from socio-economically vulnerable backgrounds.
While Assam was the first state in recent years to roll out its Orunodoi scheme in October 2020; the first UCT aimed at poor women was in fact the Griha Aadhaar launched by Goa in 2013. Since 2020, however, these schemes have increasingly become a key electoral strategy, to gain the female vote.
UCT schemes for women have been rolled out in 11 states benefiting an estimated 11.3 crore (113 million) women, with a promise of future rollout of such schemes in an additional 5 states. The amounts provided under these schemes range from 1000 INR (approximately 12 USD) per month provided by Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh; to 2500 INR (approximately 30 USD) per month paid by Jharkhand.
These schemes have been the subject of heated debate, with accusations of them being ‘freebies for votes’. However, many schemes either implicitly or explicitly recognise the role of women in maintaining the household and performing unpaid domestic and care work or ‘UDCW’. From a feminist perspective, these UCTs partially comply with Sustainable Development Goal 5.4 calling on states to ‘recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate’.
These schemes also emerge against the backdrop of India’s low female labour force participation rate (‘FLFPR’). While the low FLFPR is attributable to multiple factors, a key contributor has been the unequal burden of UDCW on women, as compared to men. According to the 2019 Time Use Survey, the time spent by Indian women on UDCW was more than eight times that of men, while in 2024 the survey found that women spent 289 minutes a day on UDCW, compared to 88 minutes for males.
These disparate burdens on women are driven by a culture of gendered familialism, where UDCW is presumed to lie in the domain of the family and for which women are expected to assume primary responsibility. The lop-sided distribution of UDCW prevents women from engaging in paid employment which renders them economically dependent and vulnerable. UCTs could potentially play a powerful role in addressing these deeply embedded vulnerabilities and inequalities.