India, Oct. 5 -- It was Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi who made the announcement, on video conference, from New Delhi. Though the scheme is named the Mukhya Mantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, it was not chief minister Nitish Kumar but the Prime Minister who announced Rs.10,000 each to 7.5 million women in poll-bound Bihar to kickstart livelihood activities. The BJP is the junior partner in a coalition alliance with Nitish Kumar's JD (U) in a state assembly election. "It's clear the BJP wants control and the Prime Minister wants his imprint on the developmental model in Bihar since 2006-07 under Nitish Kumar," said Manisha Priyam, Sir Louis Matheson distinguished visiting professor, Monash University. It's a model that has, so far, paid rich dividends to Nitish Kumar, who has survived 20 years of incumbency, mainly on the strength of the women vote and a slew of schemes targeting women. Among the schemes are: Free bicycles to secondary school girls to reduce dropout rates, 50% reservation for women in panchayats and urban civic bodies, 35% reservation in government jobs, and Jeevika, a skill and livelihood-based self-help group scheme with 12 million women members, to whom he promised to bring in prohibition if voted back to power in 2015. A record 60.5% women turned up to vote and ensured his victory. Despite the prognosis of financial ruin, the chief minister kept his word. In Bihar, a state with a high male migrant population, women's voter turnout has been higher than that of men since 2010. That year it was 54.5% for women and 51.1% for men. In 2015, 60.5% for women, 53.3% for men and in 2020, 59.7% for women, 54.7% for men. In 2020, the Nitish Kumar-led NDA won the assembly election by a narrow margin. A poll analysis by Lokniti-CSDS found that the win was partly due to young women voters. In the 18-29-year-old category, 40% of women voted for the NDA; the men were less enthusiastic with only 33% voting for the alliance. Unconditional cash transfers, once derided by Modi as revdi or freebies, have become an electoral strategy in successive state elections - from Madhya Pradesh to Maharashtra and Karnataka to Himachal Pradesh. Across 11 states and across party lines, 113 million women are receiving payments from Rs.1,000 to Rs.2,500 a month with another five states promising similar schemes, according to a July 2025 policy brief by professor Prabha Kotiswaran of Kings College, London. "Cash transfers are recognition of women's unpaid care work inside the house," Kotiswaran said on the phone. Her research has found that they result in increased spending on items like medicine and significant improvement in the financial well-being of the women beneficiaries - 99% of whom had control over the money - and also their greater decision-making power within households. Shamika Ravi, member of the Prime Minister's Economic Council, agreed. "Within households where there have been traditionally significant inequities, cash transfers to women have been effective in empowering them as reflected in their enhanced consumption share." But cash transfers come at a cost to the exchequer: It can range from Rs.200 crore (Himachal Pradesh) to Rs.36,000 crore (Maharashtra). Can states afford it, or, will these come with cuts to government spending on health and education? How will they impact longer-term investments on, for instance, childcare infrastructure that can enable greater workforce participation by women? For now, there is only one question in Bihar, and that is the expediency of a win. If nothing else, the promise of cash transfers signals the ever-growing power of the woman voter. That at least is not going away anytime soon....