How Vijay weaves a welfare net for daily life
On Friday morning, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay stepped inside some government buses at Chennai’s Koyambedu bus terminus, and handed women something that ordinarily costs only a few rupees: a ticket. Except these bus tickets required no payment.
The launch of Vettri Payanam, an expansion of the state’s free bus travel programme for women and transgender persons, was the latest in a succession of welfare measures rolled out by the five-month-old Vijay government.
Together, they are beginning to reveal the contours of its welfare politics, which retain popular schemes inherited from the previous DMK-led government, enlarge their reach, and place alongside them new benefits drawn from the Vijay-led Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam’s (TVK) election promises.
Individually, they are schemes. Taken together, they suggest an attempt to mark the state’s presence at several points in the life of a household – from birth and school to college, work, marriage and everyday commute.
Until now, women travelled free on Ordinary buses in metropolitan and urban areas and on Ghat Ordinary services for journeys up to 40 km. From Friday, this facility has been expanded to Express, Limited Stop Service and Deluxe government buses operating in metropolitan and urban areas, Mofussil Ordinary buses, and Ghat Ordinary services beyond 40 km.
According to a government’s statement, 12,695 buses belonging to the seven State Transport Corporations have been brought under Vettri Payanam, operating 1,68,500 single trips. The government expects around 84.32 lakh women to benefit every day.
The expansion had been announced by Vijay in the state Assembly on August 24 under Rule 110. At the time, as per the government’s statement, the CM framed it explicitly as a question of social justice. The government’s principle was that women, irrespective of where they lived in Tamil Nadu, should not lose opportunities because of transport costs.
The government said the expansion would make public transport more accessible across the state, enabling girl students to travel to colleges farther from home and women and transgender persons to reach workplaces, medical facilities and other essential services without paying bus fares.
The scheme will not, for now, be implemented in Chengalpattu and Tiruppur districts because the Model Code of Conduct is in force for the Madurantakam and Dharapuram Assembly bypolls scheduled for October 6.
Vijay’s roadmap
The political significance of Vijay’s welfare push lies partly in what his government has chosen to continue.
Ten days before the bus expansion, Vijay sat with schoolchildren in Chennai and ate breakfast as his government extended the free breakfast programme, introduced under the DMK government in 2022, from Classes I-V to Classes VI-VIII in government and government-aided schools.
The expansion added around 15 lakh children to that programme, which provides one strand of Vijay’s approach. The other is the rollout of schemes carrying the imprint of TVK’s own campaign.
Six days after the breakfast expansion came one of its most striking instances. At Madurai’s Government Rajaji Hospital on September 28, Vijay launched the Thaimaaman Thanga Mothiram Thittam, under which eligible newborns delivered in the government health facilities will receive a one-gram, 22-carat gold ring.
The symbolism is distinctly Tamil. “Thaimaaman” means maternal uncle, a relationship that carries a ceremonial role in many Tamil families, particularly around childbirth and their other milestones. The scheme converts that familial vocabulary into welfare – at birth, the government assumes the symbolic role of the maternal uncle arriving with a gift of gold.
The Vijay government’s first Budget in August had already signalled how broad this welfare architecture could become.
It allocated Rs 560 crore for the newborn gold-ring programme. Under Annan Seer Thittam, eligible brides are to receive an eight-gram gold coin and a silk saree, backed by an allocation of Rs 812 crore. Another Rs 2,000 crore was allocated for the Vetri Laptop Scheme for college students.
The Budget also proposed modernising more than 3,700 government schools, a school sanitation programme, residential schools for disadvantaged students and expanded welfare schemes covering senior citizens, transgender persons and women.
Then came another large household intervention. On August 24, Vijay announced Annapoorani Super Six, under which eligible women-headed households would receive three free cooking-gas cylinders a year. The government estimated that about 1.30 crore families would benefit and put the annual cost at about Rs 4,000 crore, with implementation scheduled from Pongal in January 2027.
The scope of these programmes inevitably bring Vijay’s welfare project up against a key question: how will Tamil Nadu pay for it?
The TVK government’s Budget itself acknowledged the difficulty. Tamil Nadu’s debt burden was approaching Rs 11 lakh crore, even as Finance Minister N Marie Wilson argued that tighter administration, technology-driven governance and improved revenue collection would eventually provide the fiscal space for expanded welfare, education and healthcare expenditure.
This tension is evident because the TVK came to power with promises extending considerably beyond what has so far been implemented. Before the election, it was estimated that implementing its larger welfare commitments could push the state’s annual welfare spending close to Rs 1 lakh crore, compared with roughly Rs 65,000 crore in welfare schemes and subsidies under the previous government in 2025-26.
For the Vijay government, therefore, the emerging model is not simply one of replacing the welfare politics that preceded it during the Stalin-led DMK government. In several important areas, it is building on it.
