May 4, 2026 was a turning point in West Bengal’s political history, a day met with mixed emotions of relief and anxiety. A few days before the Legislative Assembly election results, Polity Action Lab (PAL), a volunteer group, undertook a qualitative research study across Kolkata, Asansol and Diamond Harbour speaking to 63 women through focus group discussions and interviews, seeking their political voice on issues of safety, social welfare, infrastructure and more. The study was informally titled The Women of West Bengal: The WOW Factor of Elections.
The election season, with all its usual gimmicks and phrases like nari shakti doing the rounds again, motivated us to speak to diverse groups of women – students, working professionals, disabled working professionals, domestic workers, informal workers and housewives. Each with a distinct lived experience and lived expertise, which we sought in order to frame our policy recommendations. ‘Women’s welfare’ is public policy’s favourite word, but what do women really want? Here is a look at our findings.
Rattirer Sathi: No companion for women
Every year, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) publishes its Crime in India report, and for the last four years the report points to the same finding: Kolkata is the safest city in India. As part of our study, we asked women what they thought about this claim. The responses were telling – some sniggered, some rolled their eyes, others spoke of self-imposed curfews at 6 pm. Much was communicated through pauses, anxious glances, and body language. Some women held both truths at once: “I personally feel safe, but whether the city itself is safe – I’m not sure.”
Public buses and local trains were described as sites of daily harassment; unwanted contact normalised to the point where women have stopped reporting it or even talking about it. It is of no surprise that what does not get reported, does not make it to the NCRB’s report. The rape and murder at R. G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in 2024, which came up in every focus group unprompted, has left a lasting wound. One participant’s cousin quit her nursing job out of the fear that followed the incident. Only two out of 63 women had heard of the Rattirer Sathi scheme, the state’s flagship programme for women’s safety, and a few women from Kolkata remembered seeing a pink booth though it closes at 11 pm, some remarked.
‘Bhata’ politics
Lakshmir Bhandar, Kanyashree and Banglar Yuva Sathi emerged as the social welfare universe for most of our participants with zero awareness of any other non-cash transfer schemes. Scheme information flowed almost entirely through ‘clubs’ and party workers, meaning women outside political networks remain excluded. When asked what their opinion was about these schemes, the reality turned sharp. The words ‘trap’, ‘bait’, and ‘sedative’ came up across multiple groups, in different cities, from women who had never met each other. The unanimous demand, from urban students to rural homemakers, was not a higher allowance. It was livelihood skills and opportunities to be financially independent.
For wheelchair users, ‘bhata politics’ appeared in a different shade. While several cash transfer schemes in West Bengal have seen periodic increases over the years, the disability pension has remained fixed at Rs.1,000 per month since its inception in 2010 under the Left Front government. The scheme was repackaged and relaunched as Manabik under the Jai Bangla umbrella of social security schemes by the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) government in 2018. However, despite the rebranding and across 15 years of AITC governance, the pension amount itself did not change. Participants also raised concerns over the removal of the income slab as an eligibility criterion, pointing to misuse and leakages within the scheme.
Across groups, women spoke about social welfare schemes with a strong sense of entitlement, accountability, and responsibility. Many were conscious of who should rightfully benefit, openly critiqued misuse, and emphasized the need for monitoring and grievance redressal. Their engagement with cash transfer schemes challenged the simplistic ‘freebie’ narrative often used in public discourse, revealing instead more nuanced and politically astute perspectives. For example, some participants observed that Kanyashree did not track classroom attendance and the motivation to apply for the scheme was the cash handout and not better educational outcomes.
“Men use their environment as a toilet,” one participant said flatly. “We cannot.”
Not one of the 63 women reported consistent access to a clean public toilet on her daily commute. Women restrict their water intake to cope and the consequence is chronic dehydration, uterine tract infections (UTIs), and kidney problems. Children in some primary schools go through the entire school day unable to relieve themselves because of unusable bathrooms, with mothers fearing that their children, especially daughters may develop UTIs.
In Asansol’s colliery neighbourhoods, respiratory problems are an everyday reality. In Dhenua, women continue to cook over chulhas in 40 degrees Celsius heat and bathe in eutrophicated ponds. In Diamond Harbour’s Madhabpur, ponds have dried up, leaving only a single handpump as an entire village’s water supply. We asked Kolkata participants about air pollution in the city especially during winters, when it surpasses Delhi. Their response: “We have AQI monitors in college, we know the state of air pollution. But the media doesn’t report it as often.”
Disability welfare is still at the margins
Participants with disabilities – visual, locomotor, invisible – described a system of compounding exclusions. The Unique Disability ID (UDID) application process was reported as complex and tedious, with participants citing multiple rejections on the digital portal without adequate support in reapplying. A participant complained about being misclassified as ‘mentally retarded’ when she had a locomotor disability, during certification. Participants highlighted that awareness within the broader medical fraternity was limited when it came to disability, particularly in the continued use of outdated and derogatory terms such as ‘retarded’.
Instead of functioning as an integrated support system for persons with disabilities, schemes like Manabik and UDID often operate in silos, shaped by Centre-state fragmentation, with ordinary citizens bearing the brunt of this competitive social welfare politics. Poor information flow and the absence of targeted enrolment camps for persons with disabilities leave many beneficiaries unaware of other schemes such as the Aids and Appliances for Persons with Disabilities Scheme (started in 1981 across India) and Scheme for Economic Rehabilitation of Adult Persons with Disabilities (started in 2012 in West Bengal).
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What women are demanding is neither radical nor new. Clean and accessible toilets, menstrual leave, livelihood and home-based work opportunities, social welfare linked to capacity building, and accessible public infrastructure like interconnected metro ramps. These are not questions of new schemes, but of political and administrative will.
As part of a slew of reforms undertaken by Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, all state-run and state-aided schools are now mandated to sing Vande Mataram during morning assemblies. But the real challenge lies elsewhere – in undertaking deeper, structural reform of West Bengal’s public education system. These schools need more teachers, better infrastructure, stronger classroom learning, and enough teaching hours so that education is not outsourced to private tuition.
In this new political era, the hope is for governance that goes beyond optics and prioritises the long-term strengthening of public institutions.
Informative. Hope the education and health system is strengthened soon.