The Politics of Social Welfare: The BJP and the Discerning Voter

Abstract

Voting studies tell us that voters reward incumbents who take care of the economic self-interest of voters. However, is the relationship between services and votes simple and straightforward? Are there conditions when welfare provisioning does not convert into votes for the incumbent? Data from the National Election Studies 2024 appears to suggest that voters are discerning and concerned about access issues when it comes to welfare delivery. Voters do not cast their votes only on whether they received private (welfare) benefits but also consider factors such as their experience and well-being while accessing those goods and services. Examining the relationship between welfare services and voting, the article demonstrates that individual-level processes are politically significant enough to influence vote choices between the benefits and the votes. These findings could inform scholarly studies and policy debates on social service delivery and vote choice.

Keywords

India pocketbook voting welfare Lok Sabha elections Votes Bharatiya Janata Party access

Comparative studies show that if incumbent governments take care of the voters’ economic self-interest and make them better off, the ruling parties will be rewarded electorally. Parties are, therefore, incentivized to run programmes with particularistic benefits that impact people’s livelihoods, finances, bank accounts, and so on to influence voter preferences and enhance their re-election prospects. While this is seemingly straightforward, it also raises new questions. Will voters express support only because they benefit from a policy, or is there something more?

Let us go back two decades in time to understand the role of welfare protection in voting choices. After the electoral results of 2004, it was realized that there was a huge gap between the growth buzz about India often heard in international forums and the demands of the poorer and socially economically marginalized sections of society. ‘India shining’, as Sharma (2019) notes, ‘concealed deep wells of discontent’, including agrarian distress, rural disenchantment, and unemployment. Notwithstanding the fact there could be many factors that would have influenced the election outcome, the perception that questions of state responsibility and abdication and feelings of exclusion played a definitive role in shaping the policy agenda of the subsequent United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government (Hasan, 2006).

A closer examination of the 2004 election results also highlighted a sharp divide in the social bases of political parties. The Congress was the ‘party of the underdog’ representing the marginalized sections vis-à-vis the BJP, which got more votes from the wealthier and better-off sections (Yadav, 2004). The UPA, led by the Congress, not surprisingly, prioritized redistribution over growth and inaugurated what later came to be called a ‘new rights agenda’ (Ruperalia, 2013). While economic reforms continued, the sustained high growth gave the government adequate fiscal space, allowing for greater welfare provisioning. Subsequently, welfare services became an integral element of political mobilization and competition.

The scholarship on the politics of welfare in India has worked on two dimensions in the post-economic reforms era. One set of studies has focussed primarily on the programmatic elements, including design, implementation, prioritization, delivery, and welfare service outcomes, as well as variables that potentially influence welfare services, including state capacity, leadership, bureaucracy, and sub-national and party regime variation among others (e.g., Chhotray et al., 2020; Deshpande et al., 2017; Drèze & Khera, 2017; Khera, 2011b; Rahman & Pingali, 2024; Tillin et al., 2015). These studies revolved around questions of who gives what, when, and how and do not directly address whether policy elements impinge on vote choices.

The other set of studies examines the influence of welfare policies on two related elements, including credit attribution and voting behaviour. Most studies have noted that in a federation when policy formulation and execution are diffused across various levels, credit attribution becomes slightly complex (Deshpande et al., 2019; Gupta et al., 2022; Ray & Varughese, 2021; Tillin, 2022). On the issue of vote choices, questions of whether there was a difference between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries (Attri & Choudhary, 2022, p. 150), whether particular programmes had greater leverage than others (Mishra & Attri, 2019) and issues of competitive welfarism (Aiyar, 2019) and welfare spending (Chandrasekhar & Ghosh, 2014) among others have received attention.

The success of the UPA in 2009 was attributed among other things to a series of ‘pro-people legislative and policy initiatives’ including the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act among others (Yadav & Palshikar, 2009). Like the UPA, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has also ridden the welfare horse. In 2019, ‘Ujjwala’, a programme that attempts to provide clean cooking fuel to deprived households, was underlined as a major factor in the victory of the BJP (Attri & Jain, 2019). However, in 2024, despite the hype and hoopla on welfare services and delivery, the BJP could not hold on to its previous vote share, much less add to it. Why has welfare provisioning not translated into votes?

While both sets of studies have bridged the gap between politics and public policy in India, they do not necessarily talk to each other. Drawing from the programmatic elements’ literature, this article brings to the forefront the experience of accessing welfare and examines if it matters for vote choices. Voters probably do not cast their votes only on whether they received welfare benefits but also consider factors such as their experience and well-being while accessing welfare. This article argues that between the welfare benefits and the votes, there are individual-level processes which are politically significant enough to influence vote choices. By bringing together both strands of literature on the politics of welfare in India, this article could inform scholarly studies and policy debates on social service delivery and vote choice.

The article concludes that parties can probably generate goodwill and electoral rewards from welfare programmes only if there is a positive experience when seeking these services. Experience matters, especially when people do not have a favourable opinion about their personal finances and circumstances. In other words, welfare benefits, which are difficult to access, especially when people’s personal economic predicament is not bright, may not bring in the votes. Therefore, parties and governments will have to focus on improving access and other dimensions of the economy that impact personal well-being for electoral rewards.

This article is structured as follows. The first part of the article attempts to place the BJP welfare regime in the context of the evolution of welfare delivery in India. The subsequent part draws up a conceptual framework and empirical strategy to make sense of the relationship between welfare delivery and vote choice. The third part of the article examines welfare service delivery in India. Welfare and vote choice are discussed in the subsequent part. The final section concludes.

The Politics of Welfare

Three elements have driven social welfare in India. Initially, the imperatives of democracy and a concern for socio-economic inequalities and the poor dominated the making and implementation of welfare programmes. These two elements are legacies of the national movement and the Constituent Assembly debates and were integral to the planned economic growth strategy. The state was to play a significant role, primarily because it was believed that social forces were status quoist and would not let change happen.

However, with the move to a market-led growth strategy, from being a good in itself, welfare became an antidote to the limitations of the market. The reforms, it was felt, could be sustained only if the rising economic and social inequalities and insecurities were taken care of. Welfare provisioning, which had gone out of favour given the lack of political support and funding resources, now returned to the centre stage but more as an appendage to the success of economic reforms.

Given the budget constraints and the limited possibility of the state making a significant public investment in welfare, parties had to adapt to satisfy the current economic logic and re-election needs. Traditionally, besides safety nets and work programmes, governments invested in sectors like health care and education in the name of welfare services. Here, welfare seeks to enable people by providing them access to good health and increasing their capabilities through education. However, the outcomes and effects of these policy choices and investments ‘do not conveniently materialize with the rhythm of the electoral calendar’ (Manin et al., 1999, p. 15), were not visible, and made credit claiming difficult.

In the second coming of welfare, or what Sarangi (2023) sees as a more ‘responsive’ welfare strategy, provisioning had to meet internationally accepted, supposedly more efficient and equitable norms and delivery mechanisms. Basically, all government spending had to cope with the demands for market-compatible forms of state intervention. There is a marketization of welfare, where the state is only one among the service providers, and people are ‘consumers’ (Keat et al., 1994). The new model, which relied on technology, cash subsidies, and direct income transfers and focussed on smart and efficient delivery, made the outputs more tangible. At the same time, welfare delivery, in the form of direct income transfers and cash subsidies, puts money in people’s hands and gives them the ‘freedom to choose’ what they want.

For instance, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana or PM-JAY, which provides a health cover of ₹5 lakhs per family per year for hospitalization, allows beneficiaries to use any ‘empanelled public or private hospital in India to avail cashless treatment’.² This organization of public welfare, according to market principles, supposedly ‘empowers’ citizens but also erases the difference between citizens and consumers. This changed focus of welfare awakened the dormant third element, political competition.

For political parties, this welfare provisioning model presented new opportunities, and they soon discovered that welfare could be used to mobilize voter support. I assume that parties focus on what matters for re-election rather than considering the soundness of policies or the long-run effects on the general economy. Besides cash transfers, goods like housing and gas connections are definite and ‘tangible’ (Chhibber & Verma, 2019) and can easily be connected to the benefactor. The new welfare model solved the twin challenges of tangibleness and brand identification for parties. Consequently, social welfare in India is far removed from where it began, and it now not only fills in for the limitations of the market but has also become a key component in the electoral arithmetic of political parties.

In its first term (2014–2019), the BJP made two distinct turns on welfare to make space for itself in the already crowded marketplace for welfare. Despite being critical (during the campaign) of how welfare was being delivered, the party could not do away with welfare but fitted itself into the citizen-as-consumer model of welfare delivery. First, the party moved away from welfare as a means of socio-economic transformation to welfare as a ‘compensating redistribution’ (Roy, 2019) without public goods (Kapur & Nangia, 2015). The welfare programmes that the party has pushed include providing clean cooking fuel, toilets, housing and food rations, among others. However, it must be mentioned that some of these programmes existed even before. For instance, the housing scheme now known as PM Awas was Indira Awas, the PDS became the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), and Swachh Bharat was Nirmal Bharat (Khera & Asjad, 2024). Second, it has pushed for direct transfers and focused on improving welfare delivery efficiency by relying heavily on technology, what is often called the JAM (Jan Dhan Bank Accounts, Aadhaar, and Mobile) trinity. The party and the government have claimed that technology and direct transfers have reduced leakages and increased transparency and efficiency in service delivery.

I assume that political parties in democracies are incentivized to distribute everything they can access in ways that bring them electoral and political benefits. Despite being critical of centrally sponsored schemes when in the opposition, the BJP in government has gone big on them. Most sectors in which schemes are implemented are either in the concurrent or state lists. Given their lack of resources, states do not have much leverage when it comes to centrally sponsored schemes.

The centralizing thrust is pushed further by monopolizing credit through branding. Almost all schemes are branded to leave no room to guess who the benefactor is. The centre has rebuked states and threatened to cut off access to programmes when it has not been given due credit. States, especially those ruled by those opposed to the BJP, have been critical of the branding policy since states bear 40% of the costs (Nichenametla, 2022). This attempt to centralize credit is another key feature of the current welfare regime.

The centralizing push by the party is understandable, given that in 2019 there was an element of retrospective voting, and welfare programmes did matter under certain conditions (Deshpande et al., 2019). Furthermore, if we assume that voters make retrospective judgments, then they also signal to parties what they want (Manin et al., 1999, p. 10). This may explain the prominent place of social welfare in the BJP Manifesto.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the party went to elections on the grounds that, among other things, over the last decade, its ‘model of inclusive growth’ had removed nearly 25 crore people from poverty. The government it maintained had fulfilled their ‘basic needs’, including bank accounts, gas connections, toilets, water, houses, and electricity. The party claimed that if re-elected, it would continue these ‘pro-people decisions and actions’ and launch a ‘final and decisive assault’ against poverty to take India into the top 3 economies of the world (BJP Manifesto, 2024). Despite this massive push for welfare, it did not necessarily bring the BJP concomitant results.

Conceptual Framework, Data, and Empirical Strategy

The theoretical framework draws from the existing literature on two sets of relationships, including individual conditions/location and their impact on voting behaviour and the impact of policies and programmes on vote choices. The study uses evidence from the National Elections Studies (NES) post-poll survey on welfare and voting in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The post-poll survey covered almost the entire country and was conducted in 23 states across 191 parliamentary constituencies. This study uses a data set of 19,663 voters weighted by state population (2011 census). The survey included questions on welfare schemes, some of which have been asked in previous national and state election surveys. The study revolves around three questions. First, who benefits from the social welfare programmes? Second, who do beneficiaries credit for the welfare schemes, the central, state or local government? Third, do welfare benefits translate into votes for the incumbent government?

Pocketbook Considerations

In the case of India, Suri (2009) found that while voters are concerned both about the general economic (socio-tropic) as well as their personal (pocketbook) conditions when it comes to voting, the latter weighed more on their choices than the former. Voters are, therefore, likely to reward incumbents when they are doing well financially and punish them when it is bad. Meyer and Malcolm (1993, p. 510) had earlier found that when ‘voters feel economically less secure, they will be frustrated and more critical of the ruling party irrespective of its policies, pronouncements, or leadership’. One of my independent variables is how people’s sensitivities about their individual financial (microeconomic) conditions can colour their judgement about government performance.

Voters are less (more) inclined to vote for the incumbent if they are dissatisfied (satisfied) with their personal economic condition. The personal financial condition of the citizen could be a factor that influences vote choices. When people have a negative perception of their personal economic condition, they might feel that the welfare services or policies that they have benefitted from have not made a difference in their lives.

Welfare Benefits

Elections provide citizens an opportunity to select (Fearon, 1999) sanction, and hold representatives accountable (Franklin et al., 2014). While elections by and large play a retrospective role, they also serve as a signalling device. They enable voters to tell parties and representatives what they want. That politicians want to be re-elected and governments and parties do things to win elections is a given. In India, incumbent governments post 2004 both at the centre and in the states have focussed on increasing welfare services to mobilize support and ensure their re-election and this attention to social welfare has probably gone up over the years.

For instance, a report by CRISIL Ratings (2023) found that the spending on social welfare by eleven states (which account for three-fourths of the aggregate gross state domestic product [GSDP]) would touch a decadal high of 1.7% of the GSDP or around 4 lakh crores. This expenditure the report notes includes, ‘direct transfers, cash incentives and distribution of personal or household goods’ but does not include spending on ‘education, agriculture, public health and other key sectors, which are budgeted separately’. Among the various revenue expenditure components, the report estimates that spending under social welfare grew 15%–16% between the period 2018 and 2023.

When welfare becomes a key tool for mobilizing voter support, it is not surprising that government parties have aggressively branded and marketed their welfare schemes to underscore the linkage between the party and the programme (Suri, 2024). The assumption is that those who benefitted from a particular policy will give credit to the so-called ‘benefactor’. We should then expect those who benefitted from programmes to vote for the incumbent.

In NES 2024, voters were asked about whether they benefitted from five major social welfare schemes, including the Public Distribution System (PDS), Ujjwala (free gas connection with cylinder), MNREGA, Ayushman Bharat (Free hospital treatment up to 5 lakh rupees per family) and the housing scheme. These welfare programmes impact personal finances and probably give beneficiaries greater financial liquidity and therefore the ‘freedom’ to use it to buy commodities that they could not have afforded but for these welfare benefits.

To examine whether welfare provisioning helps bring credit and votes, I first distinguish between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries and then make a further distinction between beneficiaries depending on the number of welfare schemes they benefitted from. I created a variable with three categories: non-beneficiaries, those who benefitted from one to two schemes (few schemes) and those who benefitted from more than three schemes (schemes plus). I expect that those who have benefitted will credit and vote for the incumbent, and the more welfare services they benefit from, the more likely the incumbent will get the votes.

Access and Service Delivery

Following the discussion above, it follows that self-interest depends heavily on the personal experiences of people. When every party or government has a set of programmes, they could legitimately claim credit for, the number of programmes may go out of the competition equation. I can think of at least two theoretically motivated reasons which make it challenging for parties. First, an increase in welfare services could enhance voter expectations, ‘ratcheting them upwards’ and encouraging voters to start looking for alternative parties (De Kadt & Lieberman, 2020). When welfare becomes the new normal, voters’ expectations about the nature of service delivery and quality of services could go up. In other words, we could expect voters to become more discerning about their expectations from the government, putting pressure on the incumbent, who now has to not only have a reasonable basket of programmes but also ensure their quality and see that the citizen is able to access these services. Thus, claim-making could act like a double-edged sword.

Second, it follows that voters may not only evaluate governments on the number of services but could focus on other elements. For instance, while social protection and welfare programmes may be designed to meet certain hardships, they may create their own difficulties (Garland, 2016). In this context, it may be useful to ask if the government claims of success that technology-reliant welfare delivery has helped reduce leakages, save resources, and so on matter to the welfare beneficiaries? In all likelihood, beneficiaries are probably unconcerned about the issues that the government claims credit for as their expectations possibly revolve around the delivery dimension.

Most social welfare programmes are implemented by state and local governments, even if conceptualized and primarily funded by the central government. On the ground, access to welfare services can often be tricky, as it depends on the existing governance mechanisms, the delivery infrastructure, and capacity of agencies (Heath & Tillin, 2018; Khera, 2011a; Kohli et al., 2020). Direct benefit transfers do not solve performance and delivery problems, and complex procedural requirements could deny welfare services to those genuinely in need (Narayanan, 2023). In another context, it was found that beneficiary experience matters and is critical to the acceptance of a technology-reliant new welfare system (Muralidharan et al., 2023). Difficulty in access may dampen the benefits of a policy.

Previous studies have noted that since 2014, the BJP has put in considerable effort to build a perception, ‘vishwas’ (Sircar, 2020) that the welfare and economic benefits were being provided by Narendra Modi (Aiyar & Tillan, 2020). However, I argue that credit monopolization and centralization may not bring imagined electoral rewards if people struggle to access welfare services. If the central government was advantaged by the strong political attribution of welfare benefits to Modi, then it is likely that this same credit could negatively impinge on votes when service delivery is poor as people may attribute poor delivery also with the so-called benefactor. This means that while voters are likely to acknowledge the receipt of welfare services and even credit the benefactor for the same, they might not cast their votes only on the receipt or non-receipt of services.

In a study of voter responses to service delivery in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Lesotho, De Kadt and Lieberman (2020) found that improvement in service provisions did not necessarily increase support for the incumbent party. They found that issues of corruption and ratcheting expectations impinged on voter choices. Likewise, we can expect that despite the increased welfare services and coverage, and voters crediting the incumbent for these services, votes may not follow if the discerning voter factors in other elements including the difficulties while obtaining services.

To understand why credit attribution may not bring in the votes, I focus on the level of difficulty that individuals have to undergo to obtain the benefits of welfare. My primary independent variable is the issue of access. I believe focussing on access, an individual-level factor that comes in between benefitting from services and voting, nuances the assumption that voters are likely to vote for governments or parties that claim credit for welfare service delivery.

All beneficiaries of welfare services were asked about their overall experience with welfare schemes. There were four answer categories: very easy, easy, difficult and very difficult. These were combined to create binary response categories of easy and difficult. Those who found it easy to benefit from welfare services are more likely to vote for the incumbent than those who found it difficult. Voters are likely to be more (less) inclined to vote for the incumbent if access to welfare is perceived to be easy (difficult).

Ideology

Likewise, attitudes and ideological considerations also matter; individuals could also have a position on what the state should do in society and the economy (Chhibber & Verma, 2018). One of the questions that policy makers across the globe face is the trade-off between growth and equity (Ostry et al., 2021). I assume that when governments invest more in physical capital assets like infrastructure, they are targeting growth and efficiency, and when they focus on redistribution and welfare programmes like MNREGA or the PDS, the focus is on equity. This distinction only serves as a heuristic device to distinguish between different priorities and I understand that it is not neat and there could be spill over effects. Over the last decade, the BJP-led central government has prioritized structural reforms and growth. The government has massively increased capital expenditure, attempted to mobilize more revenue and improve spending efficiency by following more targeted social support policies (IMF, 2023).³ It follows that voters with similar preferences should support the incumbent.

Voters who think that governments ought to spend more on physical capital assets than redistribution or subsidies should be supporting the government. In the NES 2024, there was a straightforward question that asked whether building better roads and railways is more important for the nation’s development than subsidizing/supporting the poor via welfare schemes. The responses were recoded into three categories. At the two ends were those who agreed and disagreed with the statement and those who were in the somewhat agree and disagree category were put in the middle category. Those who agreed with the statement were the enablers, and those who disagreed were the helpers. Those in the middling category were undecided. If this economic philosophy influences vote choices, the enablers should vote in favour and the helpers should overwhelmingly vote against the incumbent.

Congruent and ‘double engine’ Government

The incumbent has consistently stated that a congruence between governments at the state and centre would lead to better benefits for the people of a state.⁴ The so-called ‘double-engine’ with greater welfare services should allow the incumbent to monopolize credit and create more partisan voters. We should then expect higher support for the incumbent in states aligned with the centre. To test this hypothesis, I create two categories of states: those that are ruled by the incumbent and parties aligned with the central government and the other includes states that other parties rule. This will allow me to examine whether the incumbent control of state governments enhances electoral returns.

Vote for Incumbent

Elections allow voters to hold incumbent governments accountable for their performance (Key, 1966). Vote choice is the dependent variable in this study. I create a binary variable of incumbent and opposition. The incumbent category includes the BJP and its pre-electoral allies, and the category called opposition includes all other competing parties. This includes the Congress, the parties in the India alliance and the other parties that did not belong to either of these groups but contested the election (Appendix A). This categorization is based on the understanding that any vote for the opposition is a collective vote against the government, indicating an indictment for a variety of reasons, including poor personal economic situation, a troubled economy, and unpopular policies, leaders and candidates, among others.

Control variables help account for factors that could potentially influence the observed outcomes and underscore the actual effect of the main independent variables. Based on previous studies on Indian elections, several factors that have been influential in determining vote choice are selected in this study. These include the political and socio-demographic control variables, including party closeness, satisfaction with government performance (Chhibber, 2009; Verma, 2012), gender (Deshpande, 2004, 2009), location (Alam & Ahmed, 2017; Falcao, 2009), class (Jaffrelot, 2019; Sridharan, 2014, 2020), religion (Alam, 2009, Sircar, 2022), caste (Verma, 2009). I use cross-tabulations to compare the distribution of the independent variable with the dependent variable (Appendix C), with a special focus on the difference between different groups in the variables. The chi-square test and independent samples T-test are significant and robust tests for hypothesis testing in the social sciences. The study uses a multiple regression model in order to understand if welfare programmes impact vote choices.

Welfare Service Delivery in India

Two features of welfare service delivery can be discerned from the NES survey. First, we see there is a secular increase in the number of beneficiaries of various social welfare programmes. Second, these beneficiaries are distributed across different sections of society and one cannot discern any particularistic focus.

The first point that stands out is the increase in the percentage of voters who reported to have benefitted from select welfare programmes across the country. When we examine data on the five major social welfare schemes, we see that the percentage of voters who reported benefiting from a scheme varied from one-fourth to two-thirds (25%–67%) of the respondents. The increase is stark when we compare the beneficiaries from similar schemes between the last two elections. While an average of 27% of the electorate claimed to have benefitted in 2019, 41% said they could take advantage in 2024 (Table 1).

The general expansion of social welfare programmes as well as the beneficiaries of welfare programmes has implications for electoral democracy. Voter expectations and preferences on welfare and a ‘ratchetting of demands’, will push welfare issues on to policy platforms of political parties. Likewise, voters could also compare policy positions, offerings as well as delivery of services by different (party)governments. This also means that electoral campaigns can become platforms for policy deliberation and preference articulation. We saw this in 2019, when the NYAY campaign of the Congress was pitted against the BJP’s cash transfer scheme to farmers, which Aiyar (2019) points out did not look very different and only looked like an extension of the BJP agenda. Likewise, it was noted the Right to Apprenticeship spelt out in the budget speech in July 2024, drew from the Congress’s manifesto which proposed an apprenticeship program called Pehli Naukri Pakki.⁵ This means that welfare and protection matter and also makes the politics of welfare central to voter mobilization and electoral campaigns.

One cannot extricate any dramatic differences between the states when implementing the schemes. States with congruent governments appear to have done better than the national average when delivering the health scheme, whereas opposition-ruled states did much better on food delivery. When delivering fuel and housing, Odisha outperformed all other states and was among the top states in providing work opportunities.

In the larger states of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, the coverage of beneficiaries was much lower than the national average for almost all schemes. This pattern fits with the traditional weak to moderate character of their welfare regimes (Tillin et al., 2015). Likewise, despite having BJP governments, Gujarat and Haryana are in the lower half of welfare service delivery providers. Nevertheless, as noted earlier, the coverage of welfare schemes has increased across all states compared to 2019.

Whether this increase in beneficiaries indicates better delivery of welfare programmes or a rise in the indigent population is worth asking. While we have no official data on the number of poor people, reports from other agencies and ground reports from the media note that the number of people who cannot afford basic food is reasonably high (Global Hunger Index, 2023). The rise in distress probably pushed the government to expand the provision of free food grains to people under the National Food Security Act in December 2022.⁶

It is therefore not surprising that the sharpest rise in beneficiaries was among those who used the PDS. While only four of every 10 (43%) of the respondents claimed to have been beneficiaries of the PDS in 2019, it went up to a whopping two-thirds (67%) in 2024 (Table 1). Furthermore, more than half (56%) of the urban and three-fourths (73%) of the rural voters claimed to have benefitted from the PDS (Table 2). Many voters across different communities claimed to have benefitted from the PDS. No other welfare service saw such a high level of demand. The social profile of beneficiaries reveals that welfare services were available to a broad section of the population. As in 2019, for some of the services, the richer and better-off sections also appear to have benefitted.

Table 1.

Comparing State-wise Beneficiaries from Welfare Schemes in 2019 and 2024.

Schemes	Work		Housing		Food		Health		Fuel
States/Election	2019	2024	2019	2024	2019	2024	2019	2024	2019	2024
Andhra Pradesh	38	51	13	19	88	83	8	17	20	13
Assam	24	54	12	30	9	60	23	61	24	34
Bihar	9	48	20	28	39	79	13	38	33	62
Chhattisgarh	49	59	18	30	66	85	36	63	45	54
Delhi		3		4		41		15		13
Goa		14		14		27		14		9
Gujarat	4	26	16	39	31	25	19	38	33	51
Haryana	8	12	7	4	34	43	12	46	23	15
Jammu and Kashmir	19	27	10	17	30	38	4	60	27	33
Jharkhand	34	29	47	48	45	88	43	41	61	72
Karnataka	7	36	28	28	34	57	13	50	34	59
Madhya Pradesh	28	17	38	21	50	70	22	13	62	69
Maharashtra	6	14	11	19	8	35	4	21	20	29
Odisha	13	55	20	64	91	73	7	27	59	80
Punjab	12	17	5	7	18	47	11	47	10	24
Uttar Pradesh	13	22	16	23	46	75	15	30	36	42
West Bengal	40	32	20	19	52	89	19	10	26	44
Himachal Pradesh	35	31	10	8	45	62	20	31	14	23
Uttarakhand	45	40	6	11	57	54	22	39	32	27
Telangana	43	56	14	22	81	75	10	24	26	37
Tamil Nadu	33	46	44	32	46	75	37	24	29	58
Rajasthan	36	53	34	32	37	64	26	43	54	63
Kerala	26	24	15	9	73	85	16	15	45	2
India	21	34	21	25	44	67	17	30	34	45

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

Table 2.

Beneficiaries by Location and Community From Welfare Schemes (2024).

Welfare	Rural	Urban	UC	UOBC	LOBC	Dalits	Adivasis	Muslims
Work	41	***	27	39	34	40	51	23
Housing	29	18	20	29	23	31	37	21
Food	73	56	60	69	74	80	71	67
Health	31	27	29	31	30	30	26	28
Fuel	49	36	39	56	43	51	58	36

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

Note: UC: Upper Caste; UOBC: Other Backward Castes; LOBC: Lower Other Backward Castes. *** The question in the survey was as follows. ‘In the last five years, have you or someone from your family benefitted from the following government schemes?’ The question was asked to everyone irrespective of location and those in urban areas would have also responded if someone in the family benefitted. Since, it would be erroneous to report beneficiaries for a rural scheme in urban areas, it is being left blank.

Welfare and Votes

Over the years the NES has refined its questions to get a more nuanced picture of the relationship between welfare and the vote. While the early studies focussed on the awareness of schemes, recent studies not only distinguish between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries but also between schemes and their relationship with votes. NES 2024 goes a step ahead and attempts to map citizen experience with welfare service delivery. Another tradition of the NES has been to examine credit attribution for welfare programmes.

As in prior research, in 2024 too, non-beneficiaries are less likely to vote for the incumbent. Likewise, those who obtained benefits from fewer schemes, by and large preferred the opposition compared to the incumbent (See Chart 1). The incumbent’s advantage increases as the volume of scheme benefits increases. However, if we examine voting choices more closely, we get a slightly different picture.

Despite the variation in access to the programmes, there is a clear trend regarding credit attribution (Table 3). Over six out of every 10 voters credited the central government for the schemes, including work, housing, health, and fuel. There is a 30-point increase in the number of people crediting the centre compared to 2019 for these schemes. Likewise, more than half the respondents gave the central government credit for the food programme. Given the branding and the constant reminder through advertisements in multiple spaces that these programmes were personal ‘guarantees’ of the prime minister, this attribution is not surprising (Kumar et al., 2024).

Chart 1.

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

Table 3.

Credit Attribution for Welfare Schemes in 2019 and 2024.

	State Government		Central Government
	2019	2024	2019	2024
Work	36	27	57	64
Housing	36	26	57	64
Food	64	35	31	55
Health	35	26	62	66
Fuel	15	25	81	68

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

The massive spending by both the government and the BJP on advertisements that were similar sounding almost erased the difference between the two and gave the latter a much greater advantage compared to other parties.⁷ This advertising and the emphasis on marketing using the prime minister as the mascot was supposed to give salience to the party message and increase party visibility. Insights from studies elsewhere show that more visible a party and its message is, the more likely it will get votes (Hopmann et al., 2010). It appears that the party message, that the central government was responsible for the welfare programmes did have its intended effect.

However, does credit get translated into votes? Given the competition among political parties to claim credit for welfare provisioning, parties get an advantage only when the vote and the credit go in the same direction and with the same strength. Citizens who benefitted from schemes voted for the party that governed at the level they thought was responsible for welfare provisioning. While the opposition had a great advantage over the incumbent among those who thought that others (state or local governments) were responsible, the incumbent did not necessarily have the same advantage when it came to those who thought that the centre was responsible (See Chart 2). For instance, the opposition had a 30-point advantage over the incumbent for both the work and food schemes and a 20-point advantage for the housing programme. The incumbent had only a 10-point advantage over the opposition in housing and health and a single-digit advantage for the other schemes. So, while the incumbent does have an advantage, it is not a runaway lead. While the voter had no hesitation in giving credit where it is due, it does not appear that the votes followed.

Chart 2.

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

The BJP has believed it would be gainful to campaign about the advantages of having the same party at both levels. Its campaigns in state legislative assembly elections have pushed the idea of a ‘double-engine’ government. However, it appears that the voter had a different logic. While the central government got credit for welfare programmes across the country, irrespective of the party government at the state level, the incumbent party at the centre (supposedly responsible for the policies) did not get the votes even in states ruled by the incumbent (Table 4).

Table 4.

Votes in Incumbent and Opposition States.

States	Votes
States	Opposition	Incumbent
Opposition	63	37
Incumbent	51	49

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

In states ruled by opposition parties, when the voter gave credit to the state government for welfare schemes, the vote also followed. However, in states with congruent governments, the votes were split between the opposition and the incumbent when the voter credited the state government (Table 5). In both opposition-ruled and incumbent states, when voters credited the local government for the welfare schemes, the chances of voting for the opposition were much higher. The voter acknowledges but is not necessarily beholden to the scheme provider.

Table 5.

Credit and Votes in the States.

States	Credit	Work		Housing		Food		Health		Fuel
		Vote		Vote		Vote		Vote		Vote
		OPPO	INCUM	OPPO	INCUM	OPPO	INCUM	OPPO	INCUM	OPPO	INCUM
OPPO	State	77	23	74	26	75	25	72	28	73	27
	Centre	49	50	45	55	48	52	50	50	52	48
	Local	72	28	81	19	77	23	71	29	63	37
INCUM	State	50	50	42	58	49	51	42	58	47	53
	Centre	43	57	45	55	46	54	43	57	44	56
	Local	60	40	52	48	59	41	47	53	52	48

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

Note: OPPO- Opposition, INCUM- Incumbent.

So why do credit and votes not follow each other? The centre designs, partly funds, and wants credit for the programme. Given the limited fiscal space, it wants to create efficient delivery systems and relies heavily on technology, including digitization of records and biometrics, to reduce leakage and corruption and ensure the targeting of welfare benefits. However, it is not the centre that implements these programmes; the state and local governments do. There have been severe last-mile delivery issues, including unfair exclusions and navigation and access problems for those with access (Viswanathan & Seth, 2021). When we control access, when citizens face difficulties, they are more likely to hold those claiming credit responsible for their woes (Table 6).

Table 6.

Welfare Access and Beneficiary Votes in the States.

States	Access	Vote
States	Access	Opposition	Incumbent
Opposition	Easy	57	43
Opposition	Difficult	68	32
Incumbent	Easy	37	63
Incumbent	Difficult	60	40

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

The discerning voter is more concerned about the nature of the service rather than who provides it. In states with congruent governments, the incumbent had an advantage over the opposition when the voter had easy access to services. However, when it became difficult, the incumbent lost nearly 20 points to the opposition. Our main independent variable, the nature and quality of access appears to make a difference to the voter.

The personal financial condition of voters and its relationship with welfare schemes was also decisive in voting choices. When individuals are satisfied with their personal financial circumstances, the more welfare programmes they benefit from, the greater the support for the incumbent. In sharp contrast, when unsatisfied with their personal circumstances, the volume of programmes does not matter (Table 7). It follows that the programmes on offer did not do much to change their personal economic circumstances and this probably influenced voting choices.

Table 7.

Pocketbook Considerations, Welfare, and Votes.

Personal Financial Condition	Schemes	Opposition	Incumbent
Satisfied	Non-beneficiaries	51	49
	Few schemes (1–2)	53	47
	Schemes plus (3–4)	44	56
	Total	49	51
Not satisfied	Non-beneficiaries	75	25
	Few schemes (1–2)	77	23
	Schemes plus (3–4)	68	32
	Total	74	26

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

When we control the level of access of beneficiaries, we get the same picture, as the access to programmes gets difficult, the voters favour the opposition. When individuals were satisfied with their personal financial situation and had easy access, the incumbent got a 15-point advantage over the opposition. However, when access became difficult, the incumbent lost the advantage to the opposition even if the voter was satisfied with the personal financial condition. At the same time, when the individual was unhappy with the personal financial situation, it did not matter whether the access was difficult or easy; the opposition benefitted. Those who were not satisfied and also found it difficult to access welfare services were most critical and more likely to vote for the opposition than anyone else (Table 8).

Table 8.

Pocketbook Considerations, Access, and Votes.

Personal Financial Condition	Access	Opposition	Incumbent
Satisfied	Easy	42	58
	Difficult	57	43
	Total	49	51
Not satisfied	Easy	65	35
	Difficult	77	23
	Total	74	26

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

Given the focus on welfare in the manifestos and electoral campaigns, attempts to monopolize credit for welfare programmes, and the increased accessibility to social welfare, it is useful to ask whether welfare mattered for vote choices. Using a regression analysis, I attempt to understand the relative (statistical) significance of welfare delivery in deciding vote choices in the 2024 elections (See Chart 3). The dependent variable is a binary variable votes for an incumbent or the opposition.

Chart 3.

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

Around 21% of the variance in the voting choice (dependent variable) can be explained by the independent variables in this model. In the model, we see that the incumbent gains when the voter claims to be close to the incumbent, is located in incumbent-ruled states, and when the volume of welfare services enjoyed and media exposure increases, and loses when access to welfare becomes difficult and when citizens feel that their personal financial situation is not in good shape. Given all other variables, when I compare welfare provisioning or benefits and access to welfare services, I find that access is potentially more likely to influence vote choices. With other backward castes as the control category, the incumbent is more likely to get votes from Hindu upper castes compared to other communities. Among different communities and groups, those who identify as Muslims are least likely to vote for the incumbent. Other controls like economic class did not have a significant impact on vote choice. Location was not included in the model given the wording of the question on beneficiaries of schemes.

The high correlation of satisfaction with government seemed to indicate that it plays a key role in determining vote choice (see Appendix B). However, at the same time, it is also possible that satisfaction with the incumbent could be due to factors that are not necessarily (welfare) policy-related, but may be because of psychological or emotional reasons which this study has not been able to capture. For these reasons, I did not include satisfaction with government performance in the final model.

Conclusion

We know that individual voting decisions could result from innumerable factors, including loyalty/attachment to political parties and leaders, satisfaction with government and/or leader, policy considerations, ideological positions, media influence, group loyalties, regional identities, campaigns and debates and many more. Given the increased number of welfare beneficiaries and the politics of welfare becoming central to the mobilization and campaign strategies of political parties, this article was motivated to investigate the electoral implications of welfare services. The article attempted to nuance the ‘pocketbook’ voting argument and demonstrate that welfare provisioning with particularistic benefits may not bring expected electoral rewards under certain conditions.

This article confirmed that there are individual-level processes that are politically significant enough to influence vote choices. Welfare benefits may generate goodwill and long-lasting electoral rewards only if welfare beneficiaries have a positive experience using these services. The empirical results of this study show that while welfare benefit losers are less likely to support the incumbent, the delivery of programmes, too, matters. While the voters credited the incumbent central government for the welfare services, their votes did not necessarily follow. The voter clearly distinguishes between the provider and the nature and delivery of services. Even those who benefitted from schemes were not inclined to vote for the incumbent if they had difficulty accessing services. If welfare services are meant to enhance the personal economic condition of the citizen, it does not appear to be happening. Voters unsatisfied with their current financial situation were unlikely to vote for the incumbent, even if they received welfare benefits.

Likewise, having the same party in power at different levels did not make any difference to the voter. It may have been easy for the party when it comes to campaigning, but the voter was more concerned with the delivery dimension. The voter appears to have punished the incumbent government and party. Credit claiming, therefore, has its limits and will benefit the party only if delivery systems and administration at the local level are improved. Centralization of welfare delivery in terms of administrative requirements also does not probably help.

Finally, if welfare provisioning is an integral part of the voter mobilization strategy, governments may have to concentrate on improving access and other dimensions of the economy that impact personal well-being for electoral rewards. Welfare beneficiaries are no longer passive recipients but have become discerning consumers. Is there a transformation of the welfare beneficiary to a more discerning recipient? This study is not equipped to make that claim. When the voter becomes more discerning, it cuts down incumbency advantage and creates a more level playing field. Claim-making alone may not give incumbent parties an easy passage to power. A discerning voter creates space for the opposition, forcing governments to be more accountable. Opposition parties can underline service delivery issues, push alternate welfare models, and challenge governments. Incumbent governments will have to focus on, among other things, improving service delivery to meet the ‘increasing’ citizen expectations. Therefore, the emergence of a discerning voter is a good sign for democracy and democratic accountability.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their suggestions and inputs on an earlier version this article. I am grateful to Rajeshwari Deshpande and Suhas Palshikar and for their observations and suggestions. I thank Himanshu Bhattacharya, Jyoti Mishra, and Vibha Attri of the Lokniti/CSDS team for their help with the data and problems related to analysis. The data used were made available by the CSDS Data Unit. Neither the Lokniti network nor the Data Unit bear any responsibility for the analysis and interpretation presented here; I am responsible for any errors that remain.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: received under the University of Hyderabad, Institution of Eminence Professional Development Assistance funds and funds from the RUSA grant awarded to Savitribai Phule Pune University.

Appendices

Appendix D.

Regression Results with Vote Choice as Dependent Variable.

Model		Unstandardized Coefficients	Coefficients^a	Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.
Model		B	Std. Error	Beta	t	Sig.
1	(Constant)	0.049	0.031		1.6	0.110
	Welfare access	–0.101	0.008	–0.102	–12.468	0.000
	States by alignment	0.135	0.008	0.136	16.803	0.000
	Economic ideology	0.021	0.007	0.026	3.13	0.002
	Pocketbook	0.15	0.009	0.134	16.308	0.000
	Upper castes (Hindu)	0.068	0.011	0.054	6.087	0.000
	Scheduled castes (Hindu)	–0.104	0.012	–0.077	–8.727	0.000
	Scheduled tribes (Hindu)	–0.008	0.015	–0.004	–0.516	0.606
	Muslims	–0.359	0.013	–0.244	–28.008	0.000
	Other minorities	–0.059	0.015	–0.035	–4.063	0.000
	Welfare beneficiaries	0.038	0.008	0.038	4.698	0.000
	Economic class	0.006	0.004	0.011	1.372	0.170
	Media exposure index	–0.016	0.004	–0.034	–3.99	0.000
	Closeness to party	0.122	0.005	0.202	24.522	0.000

Source: Based on author calculations from the NES 2024 data set, available at the CSDS Data Unit.

Note: ^aDependent Variable: Vote CHOICE. Adjusted R Square: 0.210.

Notes

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