Inside Tamil Nadu's women’s rights grant programme

In the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, 60-year-old Ayesha Fatima recently received INR 1,000 (USD 12) from the state government as part of a targeted basic income scheme.

She lives in a rural suburban area of the state near the city of Trichy, and has been single-handedly raising her two grandchildren ever since her daughter passed away in 2020. 

"I make ends meet by working as a part-time domestic helper," Fatima told FairPlanet. "While INR 1,000 is not much, it goes a long way in helping me pay my grandchildren’s school fees and look after their miscellaneous expenses."

On 15 September, the state government of Tamil Nadu unveiled the Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam (women’s rights grant), a programme that offers a monthly cash assistance of INR 1,000 to female heads of families who are above 21 years of age and have an annual household income of less than INR 2.5 lakhs (USD 3,000). The scheme is expected to benefit roughly 10 million women in the state.

The objective of the scheme is two-fold: recognise women’s unpaid labour and improve their standard of living, thereby reducing poverty. The state government has allocated INR 7,000 crore for the scheme during 2023-2024. 

"Women heads of families who have been affected adversely by [...] the overall price rise will greatly benefit from this scheme," P. Thiagarajan, the state finance minister at the time, said while announcing the state budget in March 2023. 

This scheme follows in the footsteps of similar experiments aimed at economically uplifting women in other parts of the country, including in the states of West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. 

Supporting women on the ground

According to the 2023 Global Gender Gap Index published by the World Economic Forum, India ranks 127 out of 146 countries. The index analyses gender parity across four key dimensions, including economic participation and opportunity.

Given the prevalent economic gender disparity in India, FairPlanet interviewed several beneficiaries of the rights grant scheme in Tamil Nadu to assess the impact of such initiatives on women at the grassroots level.

We found that while the majority of beneficiaries, like Fatima, utilised the cash assistance to support their families’ needs, a few had the autonomy to allocate it towards fulfilling their individual requirements - a goal the scheme ostensibly aspires to achieve.

80-year-old Selvi M., for instance, who lives in Tamil Nadu’s Karur district, shared that the monetary assistance will help her cover her recurring medical bills. 

"As I grow older, I have been falling sick more often and am in need of regular medical check-ups," Selvi told FairPlanet. "Just last month, I suffered from a severe bacterial infection, and since I don’t have an income of my own, I was entirely dependent on my son for healthcare. I am looking forward to saving these monthly grants from the government and using them when necessary for my hospital bills without overburdening my son." 

Meanwhile, 45-year-old Shahana Firdous, who operates a home-based business grinding and selling flour and spice mixtures, is looking forward to reinvesting her monthly government cash assistance into her small enterprise. 

"At the moment, my profit-to-expenditure ratio is quite tight, and I am hoping to be able to reinvest my monthly grant into the business, so that I can expand it a little over time," Firdous said. 

The Path to Universal Basic Income

Discussions on Universal Basic Income (UBI) have been ubiquitous in India for the past few years, with various political parties announcing UBI-related schemes.

In the run-up to the 2019 national elections, the Congress party promised a "minimum income guarantee for every poor person in the country" if elected. Earlier this year, the party introduced the Rajasthan Minimum Guaranteed Income Bill (2023) in the state of Rajasthan. 

Meanwhile, in November 2023, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government vowed to extend its current nation-wide free ration programme for the next five years, which is expected to benefit about 800 million people living in poverty.

Public policy analysts believe that such schemes, including targeted basic income for women, could serve as a foundation for the nationwide implementation of UBI and help reduce extreme poverty. 

"Given the very high level of income inequality that has arisen in the last few decades due to uneven economic growth, leaving a sizeable (at least one-third) population to barely survive [on less than a dollar a day], UBI can address extreme poverty, hunger and malnutrition issues," Niranjan Sahoo, senior fellow at ORF Governance and Politics Initiative, told FairPlanet.

Sahoo added that post-covid, with escalating economic disparities and a lack of credible social protection, India needs a UBI-like measure to address challenges for both rural and urban poor in the informal sector.

When asked about the long-term economic feasibility of implementing UBI in a country with as vast a population such as India's, Sahoo noted that "while UBI may cost the government exchequer anywhere between 1-2 per cent of the GDP, India can afford this by pruning many existing welfare schemes which are wasteful."

He added, however, that UBI should be rolled out a temporary measure, with the long-term goal of creating more significant employment opportunities, skills and durable social protection.

UBI support gains momentum globally

Amidst rising global inflation, the adverse impact of Covid-19 on the Global South ( it is estimated that the pandemic pushed 67.8 million people into extreme poverty in Asia in 2022) and advancements in frontier technology that may lead to widespread job loss, calls for UBI have been growing louder across the globe. 

Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of the Google-acquired DeepMind, warned that states should take cognizance of AI-induced job loss and argued for 'material compensation' along the lines of UBI.

Over in the UK, the  government announced in June 2023 a pilot UBI trial that provides GBP 1,600 per month to 30 beneficiaries for a period of two years. 

Other regions, states and nations that have experimented with UBI include Scotland, Kenya, Alaska and Finland.

Some studies have shown that UBI in the form of direct cash transfers can help large sections of the poor to tide through economic difficulties with better food security. Policy analysts, such as Sahoo, believe that the most disadvantaged, including the urban poor, women in the informal sector, gig workers and unemployed youth, can benefit greatly from UBI in the Global South.

Image by Tom Chen.