'From Guarantees to Rights' by Prabha Kotiswaran

In August 2023, the newly elected Congress-led government of Karnataka launched five guarantees: Gruha Lakshmi, a female targeted unconditional cash transfer; Anna Bhagya, a food security scheme; Gruha Jyothi, an electricity subsidy for households; Shakti, a free bus scheme for women; and Yuva Nidhi, financial assistance for unemployed youth. The Gruha Lakshmi scheme functions alongside other welfare programmes that collectively form Karnataka’s “Five Guarantees”. Karnataka offers a unique case study for assessing not only the state’s cash transfer scheme but also the gendered impacts of universal basic services, especially since several of the basic services or guarantees are either directed at women (fare-free travel) or intersect with women’s gendered roles, whether in terms of food provisioning or using electricity for their UDCW. With these goals in mind, the Laws of Social Reproduction project undertook an empirical study of the state guarantees a year into their rollout, setting out to ascertain women’s own views on UCTs and assess both the intended and unintended consequences of the guarantees.

With Discussant:

Dipa Sinha, Visiting Professor, Azim Premji University and Lead Researcher, International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs)

Andrew Percy, Co-Director of the Social Prosperity Network, Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London

Professor Prabha Kotiswaran is Professor of Law and Social Justice at the King’s College London Dickson Poon School of Law. Her main areas of research include criminal law, transnational criminal law, feminist legal studies and sociology of law. She is the author of Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor: Sex Work and the Law in India, published by Princeton University Press (2011) and co-published by Oxford University Press, India (2011), which won the SLSA-Hart Book Prize for Early Career Academics and has been extensively reviewed by several law and inter-disciplinary journals. Her research has been funded by the AHRC, Leverhulme Trust, ESRC, European Research Council, the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and the Institute for Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School. She was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2014.