Election season is here with gender friendly promises galore. These offerings are easy to dismiss as sops offered in exchange for votes. But political parties and the public alike should understand these, especially unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) through a gendered lens centred on women’s unpaid work. Only by adopting short term, medium term and long-term strategies can we breathe life into these promises to make them gender transformative irrespective of which party comes to power.

Let’s start with UCTs. The DMK and AIADMK have promised ₹2,000 per month and the TVK ₹2,500. The DMK builds on its Kalaignar Mahalir Urimai Thittam (KMUT) implemented from 2023. The government notification presented KMUT as a rights-based scheme and it is the only scheme in the country to explicitly offer the UCT as recognition of women’s unpaid domestic and care work, unpaid economic activity and underpaid employment. This recognition satisfies the first goal of the UN’s SDG 5.4, which calls upon governments “to recognise 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”.

One year after the scheme’s roll out, our mixed methods study of roughly 2200 women in eight districts found the scheme to be well targeted and implemented. 99% of the women had complete control over KMUT monies. There was significant improvement in women’s financial inclusion, financial well-being and access to financial........

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