In contemporary Indian politics, women voters are often discussed through the language of schemes: cash transfers, subsidised gas cylinders, bicycles, free bus travel, self-help loans, nutrition support. Campaign strategists speak of “women beneficiaries” as if they were a newly discovered electoral category.
Tamil Nadu knew better, and knew earlier. Long before political consultants turned women into spreadsheets and welfare into branding, the state had been treating women not merely as dependents inside a household, but as political stakeholders in their own right. Their votes were courted, organised, symbolised and, over time, empowered through one of India’s longest experiments in social welfare politics.
The story begins, in part, with food. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Dravidian movement reshaped Tamil Nadu politics through language pride, caste mobility and anti-Centre sentiment. But it also understood the politics of domestic life. Rising prices, ration shops, school access, nutrition and household dignity mattered profoundly to women, even when public politics remained male-dominated.
By the time M G Ramachandran, the matinee idol-turned-Chief Minister, expanded the noon-meal programme in schools in the early 1980s, the political significance was unmistakable.
What began as a modest feeding programme evolved, over decades, into one of India’s most elaborate school nutrition systems. The expansion through successive governments was interesting: K Kamaraj revived the Madras-era meal scheme in the 1950s; M Karunanidhi broadened it in the early 1970s; MGR scaled it statewide in the 1980s; and in 1989, eggs were added to the menu under the DMK. The programme kept growing thereafter — from one egg a week to two, then three a week in 2007, and by 2010, to eggs on all five school days, with bananas for children who did not eat eggs. By 2021, the menu included rice, sambar, pulses, fortified salt, potatoes on Fridays and sweet pongal on special occasions, reaching more than 5.5 million children through over 43,000 meal centres.
Stalin’s Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme extended Tamil Nadu’s long welfare tradition into the first hour of the school day, providing morning meals to primary school children. These were child welfare schemes, but their emotional beneficiaries included mothers whose children were now fed well.
Political scientists have long noted that welfare schemes tied to everyday survival can create durable loyalties, especially among women voters who often manage household scarcity more directly than male earners.
If MGR introduced the grammar of the state’s relationship with women stakeholders, Jayalalithaa sharpened the syntax. Her years in office saw an expansive set of programmes that often addressed women not through ideology but through practical relief: marriage assistance, maternity support, women’s self-help groups, subsidised essentials, and later the famous “Amma” brand ecosystem — canteens, salt, water, pharmacies, cement.
To critics, these were freebies. To millions of women, they were infrastructure. The Amma canteens, in particular, offered something male analysts often underestimated: affordable cooked food that reduced domestic labour and daily expense.
Economists in the Amartya Sen-Jean Drèze tradition have long argued that welfare cannot be measured only in cash. A scheme that saves a woman two hours of travel, lowers the burden of cooking, or allows her to seek work may create as much value as money in hand. Time, in poor households, is often a hidden currency.
The DMK, long caricatured by rivals as more masculine in tone and cadre culture, adapted over time. M Karunanidhi’s governments expanded social sector delivery in education, health and reservations, but it is under M K Stalin that the party has most explicitly pursued the women-voter compact.
The current administration’s free bus travel for women on state-run buses altered mobility at scale. For some, it reduced transport costs. For others, it expanded the geography of work, study and care.
Then, in September 2023, came the Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thittam: Rs 1,000 monthly transferred to eligible women heads of households. In budgetary terms, it is massive. In political terms, it recognises a reality Tamil Nadu grasped long ago — money in a woman’s account can carry more than monetary value.
By early 2026, the programme had expanded to about 1.31 crore beneficiaries, up from 1.13 crore in its first phase after an additional 17 lakh women were added in late 2025. For 2025-26, the state allocated Rs 13,807 crore to fund the scheme. Its impact is often measured in modest but intimate terms. Many women use the KMUT money to buy rice and vegetables every month, or even to pay for blood pressure and diabetes drugs.
What makes Tamil Nadu distinct is not merely the number of schemes, but the historical sequencing. Women here were gradually treated as citizens whose support had to be earned repeatedly across generations.
This also helps explain turnout patterns. In several recent elections across India, women’s participation has risen sharply. In Tamil Nadu, the phenomenon sits atop older foundations: literacy gains, public health improvements, welfare access, strong local political networks, and decades of targeted mobilisation.
Tamil Nadu’s women are not only decisive voters; they are also among the most sought-after workers in the state’s high-precision manufacturing economy. In the assembly lines of electronics giants such as Foxconn and Samsung, as well as in auto-components, textiles and semiconductor-linked supply chains, Tamil women, compared to even women from other neighbouring states, are often preferred for their consistency, dexterity, lower attrition and ability to adapt quickly to exacting production standards, thanks to their relatively better operative knowledge in English.
Women voters in Tamil Nadu are not a monolith. Urban salaried women, factory workers, fisherwomen, Dalit women, upper-caste homemakers, self-help group members, first-time college voters and elderly pensioners may respond to entirely different political cues. Welfare matters, but so do inflation, safety, prohibition, jobs, education and dignity.
This election, as in many before it, every major party speaks to women in one register or another. The DMK defends its welfare model. The AIADMK invokes its Amma legacy. New entrants promise safety, anti-corruption and household relief.
But the deeper truth predates all of them. Tamil Nadu did not wait for the age of direct benefit transfers to understand women as political agents. It learned that lesson in ration queues, school kitchens, bus stops, maternity wards, self-help meetings and polling booths.
The writer is Deputy Associate Editor, The Indian Express
