“You call it vote-buying. She calls it groceries, school fees, and the courage to say ‘enough.’ Who is right?" Late afternoon light slants through a mud-walled house in Bihar. Rekha unlocks her phone. Her balance flashes Rs 10,000. She breathes. The grocery list shrinks into plans: seeds, medicine, a school fee. For the first time in months, the shopkeeper cannot decide what her family will eat.

This is not sentimentalism. It is policy meeting life. The World Bank’s JEEViKA retrospective survey found that “household savings increased drastically," with 95 per cent of households in programme areas reporting that they were saving. Crucially, “in programme areas, 18-20 per cent more women have a say in the political preferences of the households." These are measurable shifts in mobility, voice, and bargaining power — not abstractions.

Why the change now? Because the plumbing finally worked. After 2014, Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar IDs, and mobile access — the JAM trinity — made direct transfers feasible at scale. Where subsidies once flowed through clerks, contractors, and touts, funds could land straight in a woman’s bank account. States such as Odisha moved early to put money........

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