The perks and costs of Ladki Bahin

For farm worker Vaishali Khakare at Sillod in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, formerly Aurangabad, the Ladki Bahin Scheme has changed her standing within her joint family.

- Surendra P Gangan

She uses the ₹1,500 per month that she gets from the state to send her son for Class 12 coaching. “He is a bright student who passed his Class 10 Board exam with 82% and aspires to study BSc-Agriculture. The Ladki Bahin instalments have not only helped me fund his coaching but also pay the ₹450 monthly state transport bus pass he needs to reach the coaching class, 14 km away from our village,” she says.

Elsewhere in Maharashtra, Priyanka Shinde, a resident of Wadibamni at Dharashiv — previously Osmanabad — leads a women’s self-help group that sells organic ground masalas. Until July last year, the group struggled to raise a bank loan for expansion.

“As soon as the first instalment of Ladki Bahin came in August last year, 25 of us started a monthly chit fund of ₹1,000 each. With the ₹25,000 at our disposal each month, we use it to expand our individual businesses,” says Shinde. “Some women have started selling sarees in addition to masalas while a few others have purchased grinding mills for pulses. Not just banks, even local shop owners are happy to give us credit now.” The monthly ₹1,500 from the government has given women like her the “confidence of a crorepati,” she adds.

Maharashtra’s largest welfare scheme--a spin-off of Madhya Pradesh’s Laadli Behna Scheme—introduced on August 19 last year, has been widely credited with propelling the three-party Mahayuti alliance to an emphatic win in November's Assembly elections. But the scheme that started as a political imperative in the light of the ruling alliance’s poor performance in Lok Sabha elections, is turning into a financial albatross.

“Ladki Bahin’s annual burden on the exchequer is around ₹46,000 crore which is more than 7.2 % of the total annual budget of Maharashtra. With a revenue deficit of ₹20,000 crore already in the budget, it is not clear how the burden of this scheme is to be borne,” says economist Ajit Ranade.