Socio-economic impact of the Mahtari Vandan Yojana on women beneficiaries’ livelihoods in Raipur District, Chhattisgarh

Introduction

Women's economic and social empowerment is central to both individual welfare and household livelihoods, yet women often contribute to household income without independent control over resources. Income security and social protection are therefore key to strengthening their economic position, and direct income transfers addressed to women have emerged internationally as an instrument that raises the consumption floor of poor households while placing resources in women's hands (Duflo, 2012; Haushofer & Shapiro, 2016) [6,9] . A recurring finding is that resources controlled by women are allocated disproportionately to food, children and household security, and that a predictable income can enlarge women's voice in household decisions (de Brauw et al., 2014; Attanasio & Lechene, 2014) [2,4] . In rural India, women's livelihoods remain highly vulnerable. Many work as casual agricultural or wage labourers or fall outside recorded employment, and gendered constraints on landholding, mobility and formal finance limit their economic agency. Government welfare programmes and targeted financial assistance have consequently become important means of strengthening women's economic security, reaching marginalised groups in large numbers even as the depth of benefit depends on administrative access (Drèze & Khera, 2017; Garikipati, 2008) [5,7] . Chhattisgarh is a predominantly agrarian state in which many rural women depend on agricultural labour, wage work and public employment for livelihoods within low-and irregular-income households, making women-oriented interventions directly relevant to its rural economy. The Mahtari Vandan Yojana was launched by the Government of Chhattisgarh in March 2024, with the first instalment disbursed on 10 March 2024 (Press Information Bureau, 2024) [13] . Administered by the Department of Women and Child Development, it transfers Rs 1,000 per month Rs 12,000 per year to eligible women through Direct Benefit Transfer into the beneficiary's own bank account; eligibility covers married women aged 21 and above and expressly includes widowed, divorced and deserted women (Government of Chhattisgarh, 2024) [8] . As a universal entitlement paid into the woman's account, it belongs to the broader class of direct income transfers whose livelihood effects are internationally documented but locally understudied.

Existing work on such schemes in India has focused largely on design, coverage and implementation, with little evidence www.extensionjournal.com on their actual socio-economic and livelihood implications among beneficiary women at the local level how the transfer is received, used and experienced, and whether it is associated with discernible changes in household income, savings and women's economic agency. This gap is particularly evident for Raipur district. The present study addresses it by assessing livelihood-level outcomes among beneficiaries in two blocks of the district.

Objective

To assess the overall socio-economic impact of the Mahtari Vandan Yojana on women's livelihoods in Raipur district of Chhattisgarh.

Materials and Methods

Study area and respondents

The study was conducted in Raipur district of Chhattisgarh, in two purposively selected development blocks Arang and Abhanpur chosen for their relevance to the assessment of scheme outcomes among rural and peri-urban beneficiaries. The study covered 200 women beneficiaries of the scheme, 100 from Arang and 100 from Abhanpur. The procedure used to select individual respondents within each block is accordingly, the sample is described as a beneficiary-based sample of equal size from the two blocks and is not characterised as random, systematic or stratified.

Analytical tools

Analysis used only tools supported by the data: frequencies and percentages [(f / N) × 100, N = 200]; class mid-point means and standard deviations for the interval data on income, expenditure and savings, with change expressed in absolute terms and as a percentage change; weighted average scores for the ten empowerment statements, WAS = (5n₅ + 4n₄ + 3n₃ + 2n₂ + 1n₁) / N, with the statements ranked accordingly; and a composite empowerment index (CEI), computed as each respondent's mean of ten item scores and normalised to a 0-100 scale as ((CEI -1) / 4) × 100. No inferential test (t-test, chi-square or regression) was applied; statistical significance is neither reported nor implied.

Results and Discussion

Socio-economic profile of beneficiaries

The socio-economic profile (Tables 123456) describes a socially disadvantaged, low-income sample. Most beneficiaries (61.0 per cent) were aged 31-50 years, and while 82.5 per cent were married, 17.5 per cent were widowed, abandoned or divorced women who typically lack a second earner and whose inclusion is an important test of a scheme's reach to the vulnerable. Backward and scheduled categories together formed 77.0 per cent of the sample (OBC 53.0, SC 21.0, ST 3.0 per cent), consistent with the tendency of Indian welfare programmes to enrol marginalised groups in large numbers (Drèze & Khera, 2017) [5] . Education was low 54.5 per cent were educated at or below the primary level and 31.5 per cent were illiterate, against only 8.5 per cent graduates a base that constrains a woman's ability to complete application formalities and operate a bank account unaided and that has been identified as a cause of exclusion elsewhere. The occupational and household profile explains why a Rs 1,000 transfer is consequential despite its size (Tables 3456). Homemakers with no independent earning formed the largest group (30.0 per cent), and agricultural, daily-wage and MGNREGA workers a further 42.0 per cent; the illustrative weighted-average individual earning of about Rs 3,665 per month is roughly 29 per cent of mean pre-enrolment household income. For a homemaker the transfer is a first independent income, and for casual workers a substantial addition groups found to register the largest proportionate gains from an assured transfer. The sample was almost equally nuclear (53.5 per cent) and joint (46.5 per cent), a distinction relevant to women's control over resources (Garikipati, 2008) [7] ; 63.0 per cent of households earned Rs www.extensionjournal.com 1,00,000 or less a year, confirming the low-income character of the sample against which an additional Rs 12,000 a year is a meaningful accretion (NABARD, 2018) [12] .

Access to and utilisation of the scheme

Receipt of the benefit was well established and largely regular (Tables 78). Since payment is a uniform Rs 1,000 per month, the cumulative amount is a function of duration: 71.0 per cent had received the benefit for more than eighteen months and 53.5 per cent for more than twenty-four, so the changes reported below reflect a settled rather than transient experience. Payment was regular every month for 73.5 per cent of respondents and mostly regular for a further 22.5 per cent, providing predictability necessary for the savings behaviour observed later; the 26.5 per cent experiencing some delay reflects the kind of administrative weakness documented for other schemes. Utilisation was strongly welfare-oriented (Table 13). More than half of beneficiaries (54.0 per cent) applied the amount principally to food, children's education and healthcare, 15.0 per cent to a small enterprise or agricultural inputs, and only 3.5 per cent to festivals an allocation consistent with the tendency for transfers received by women to be channelled towards children and household welfare (de Brauw et al., 2014; Singh, 2025) [4] .

Changes in household economic conditions and livelihood

Household income shifted upward at its lower end (Table 9, Fig. 1). The number of households earning less than Rs 10,000 per month fell from 71 to 43 (a 14.0-percentage-point reduction), and the share in the two lowest brackets declined from 73.0 to 65.0 per cent, the distribution moving rightward rather than being transformed consistent with evidence that transfers raise the income floor of the poorest without altering the overall structure (Haushofer & Shapiro, 2016) [9] . Expenditure rose more modestly (Table 10), indicating that the transfer was not wholly absorbed into consumption. The clearest economic pattern is in savings (Table 11, Fig. 2). Households saving less than Rs 1,000 per month fell from 38 to 6, and those saving Rs 3,001-5,000 rose from 30 to 68, so the proportion saving more than Rs 3,000 more than doubled, from 16.0 to 38.0 per cent consistent with the propensity to save observed when women hold an independent, predictable stream of resources (Ashraf et al., 2010) [1] . In mean terms (Table 12), monthly income was higher by Rs 1,373.33 (10.94 per cent), expenditure by Rs 570.36 (5.38 per cent) and savings by Rs 802.94 (40.99 per cent), the savings rate rising from 15.60 to 19.83 per cent, so that most of the additional resource associated with the scheme was retained rather than consumed (Duflo, 2012) [6] . That the mean income increment exceeds the nominal transfer by Rs 373 should be read cautiously: with a recall design and no control group, this differential cannot be attributed to any single cause and may reflect recall effects or concurrent changes in other earnings.

Women's decision-making and empowerment

Decision-making over the benefit was substantially, though not universally, controlled by the beneficiary (Table 14): in 78.0 per cent of cases the woman decided its use herself (37.0 per cent) or jointly with her husband (41.0 per cent), consistent with evidence that transfers to women raise female influence over household expenditure (Attanasio & Lechene, 2014) [2] ; the residual quarter without effective voice illustrates the persistence of the 'impact paradox' whereby household welfare improves without a matching gain in the woman's agency (Garikipati, 2008) [7] . Perceptions of welfare expenditure corroborate this (Table 15): 81.0 per cent reported increased spending, wholly or in part, on children's education and 82.0 per cent on health and nutrition, while 72.5 per cent reported reduced dependence on borrowing; the persistence of borrowing in 27.5 per cent of households indicates that a transfer of this size eases liquidity pressure without extinguishing structural indebtedness (Banerjee et al., 2015) [3] . Empowerment was moderate and evenly distributed (Tables 16-17, Fig. 3). All ten statements fell within the moderate band (4.20-5.00 strong; 3.40-4.19 moderate), with an overall weighted average score of 3.838 a positive but modest pattern in keeping with the wider cash-transfer literature (Diaz-Pardo & Rao, 2024). The ranking is instructive: the highest-scoring items belong to the woman's personal domain (overall wellbeing 4.075, self-confidence 4.015, reduced dependence for small expenses 3.970) and the lowest to the household and community domains (social status 3.645, bargaining power 3.640, community participation 3.445), so the association diminishes as one moves from the individual outward corroborating the view that resources are necessary but not sufficient for agency (Kabeer, 2005) [10] . The composite empowerment index averaged 3.838 (SD 0.566; 70.96 on a 0-100 scale), with 81.0 per cent of women moderately or highly empowered and only 2.0 per cent recording low empowerment; the small standard deviation indicates a broadly even effect, an equity consideration central to a universal entitlement (Malhotra & Schuler, 2005) [11] . The block-wise index was nearly identical (Abhanpur 3.842, Arang 3.835), suggesting that a transfer paid into the woman's own account operates largely independently of local conditions. 181920), beneficiaries assessed the scheme positively: 72.5 per cent were satisfied or highly satisfied and 87.5 per cent favoured its continuation, while 78.5 per cent sought skill training alongside the cash benefit an expressed recognition of the limits of an unsupported transfer, since combining finance with skill training and collective enterprise yields more sustained livelihood outcomes than a standalone transfer. The scheme thus appears well targeted and largely stable in disbursement, and is associated with higher household income and, more markedly, higher savings, a welfare-oriented use of the benefit, substantial decision-making autonomy, and a moderate, even improvement in personal empowerment. Its economic effect is genuine but proportionate, and its capacity to generate durable livelihoods on its own remains limited.

Summary & Conclusions

The scheme served predominantly vulnerable women (63.0 per cent of households earning Rs 1,00,000 or less a year, 54.5 per cent educated to primary level or below, 17.5 per cent widowed, divorced or deserted), with receipt largely regular and of long standing. Mean monthly household income was higher after enrolment by Rs 1,373.33 (10.94 per cent) and savings by Rs 802.94 (40.99 per cent), lifting the savings rate from 15.60 to 19.83 per cent; the benefit was used chiefly for food, education and health, and 78.0 per cent of women decided its use themselves or jointly. Empowerment was moderate (mean score 3.838), strongest in the personal domain and weakest in community participation, and 87.5 per cent of beneficiaries favoured continuation. The Mahtari Vandan Yojana is associated with a positive, measurable and reasonably equitable pattern of livelihood change among beneficiary women in the Arang and Abhanpur blocks of Raipur district. Its reach among lowincome, low-literacy and single-earner women suggests that it is directed towards the households for which an assured income is most consequential. The economic pattern is genuine but proportionate: income rose by about 11 per cent and, more notably, most of the additional resource was retained as savings, while the benefit was used for food, education and health and most women exercised substantial control over its use. The social pattern follows a gradient strongest in the woman's personal domain and weakest in community participation indicating that command over an independent income does not by itself dissolve the household and community structures within which women act. The broader implication is that a modest, predictable, individually held transfer can meaningfully strengthen income security, savings and personal empowerment among rural women, even where it does not create new livelihoods; its capacity to generate durable livelihoods appears limited without complementary support, as the demand for skill training among 78.5 per cent of respondents underlines. These conclusions derive from a cross-sectional, recallbased, beneficiary-only assessment without a control group, and are therefore stated as associations and reported changes rather than causal effects.

Policy Implications and Recommendations

1. Stabilise regular disbursement. Because the observed savings behaviour rests on predictable receipt and 26.5 per cent of respondents experienced some delay, improving the regularity and timeliness of the monthly transfer would consolidate one of the scheme's clearest benefits. 2. Link the cash benefit to voluntary skill-development and livelihood support. As 78.5 per cent of beneficiaries sought skill training and only 4.5 per cent were in a selfhelp-group enterprise, pairing the transfer with skill and micro-enterprise support would address its limited livelihood-creating capacity. 3. Strengthen financial inclusion and the productive use of savings. Given the marked rise in savings alongside persistent borrowing in 27.5 per cent of households, access to formal savings and affordable credit would help convert savings into productive assets. 4. Support enrolment for the most disadvantaged. Since 54.5 per cent of respondents were educated to primary level or below, continued facilitation of application and banking formalities would help ensure low-literacy and single-earner women are not excluded. 5. Institutionalise periodic beneficiary-level monitoring.

The strong endorsement of continuation (87.5 per cent) provides a basis for embedding regular block-level assessment of livelihood outcomes into the scheme's administration.

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