HER VOICE, HER CHOICE

Mahayuti reaped huge electoral dividends from its direct benefit transfer scheme for women

- KAVITHA IYER

On the morning after the Maharashtra Assembly election results, Shaina N.C., former BJP spokesperson who switched to the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction) to contest from the Mumbadevi constituency in Mumbai, broadcast a message on WhatsApp. She had polled over 40,000 votes, more than any previous Shiv Sena candidate in Mumbadevi, "despite not one Muslim vote", she said of her loss to Amin Patel of the Congress. Patel won his fourth election from the iconic constituency named after a temple to a goddess who gives the financial capital its name.

Shaina told THE WEEK that 40,000 women, including 15,000 Muslims, had enrolled for the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana in the Mumbadevi assembly constituency. The scheme entails a payment of 1,500 every month to all women aged between 21 and 65 years in families with an annual income below 2.5 lakh.

“It was a game-changer and a phenomenal endeavour by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde,” she said, “and it changed the way women voted because these kinds of welfare schemes really impact their lives.”

Much like in other states—Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh owe huge victories to similar schemes—the Ladki Bahin programme is being acknowledged as a major driving force behind the Mahayuti victory. It is little wonder then that Devendra Fadnavis and Shinde both thanked the state’s women voters—the state recorded a 6 per cent increase in women voters’ turnout compared with the 2019 election.

Another significant increase in voter turnout was in Thane district, Shinde’s home turf. It was seen as an outcome of his personal goodwill and the flurry of sops introduced in the final weeks of his government, including a removal of road toll tax at key entry points into Mumbai city. The district recorded a turnout of 53.1 per cent against 48.03 per cent in 2019. Shinde’s own assembly constituency of Kopri-Pachpakhadi recorded a rise of nearly 6 per cent from 2019.