In a village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, a woman receives a small but steady sum each month - not wages, for she has no formal job, but an unconditional cash transfer from the government.

Premila Bhalavi says the money covers medicines, vegetables and her son's school fees. The sum, 1,500 rupees ($16: £12), may be small, but its effect - predictable income, a sense of control and a taste of independence - is anything but.

Her story is increasingly common. Across India, 118 million adult women in 12 states now receive unconditional cash transfers from their governments, making India the site of one of the world's largest and least-studied social-policy experiments.

Long accustomed to subsidising grain, fuel and rural jobs, India has stumbled into something more radical: paying adult women simply because they keep households running, bear the burden of unpaid care and form an electorate too large to ignore.

Eligibility filters vary - age thresholds, income caps and exclusions for families with government employees, taxpayers or owners of cars or large plots of land.

"The unconditional cash transfers signal a significant expansion of Indian states' welfare regimes in favour of women," Prabha Kotiswaran, a professor of law and social justice at King's College London, told the BBC.

The transfers range from 1,000-2,500 rupees ($12-$30) a month - meagre sums, worth roughly 5-12% of household income, but regular. With 300 million women now holding bank accounts, transfers have become administratively simple.

Women typically spend the money on household and family needs - children's education, groceries, cooking gas, medical and emergency expenses, retiring small debts and occasional personal items like gold or small comforts.

What sets India apart from Mexico, Brazil or Indonesia - countries with large conditional cash-transfer schemes - is the absence of conditions: the money arrives whether or not a child attends school or a household falls below the poverty line.

Goa was the first state to launch an unconditional cash transfer scheme to women in 2013. The phenomenon picked up just before the pandemic in 2020, when north-eastern

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