NEW DELHI: In most Indian states a daily wage worker earns more in a single day than an elderly widow receives from the central government in an entire month. The Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme pays Rs 200 per month to poor Indians aged 60 to 79. That amount has not changed since 2012. A government-commissioned impact assessment of the National Social Assistance Programme, submitted to the Ministry of Rural Development in 2026, has now put a number to what that freeze has cost the pension has lost nearly 45 per cent of its real value since it was last revised.
The report’s findings have renewed a debate that parliamentary committees and auditors have been raising for over a decade without result.
Five Schemes, One Common Problem
The National Social Assistance Programme runs five schemes covering India’s most economically vulnerable elderly persons, widows, disabled individuals and families that have lost their primary breadwinner. Every central benefit amount across all five schemes was last revised in 2012 and has remained unchanged since.
The Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme pays Rs 200 per month to beneficiaries aged 60 to 79 and Rs 500 to those aged 80 and above. It currently covers 2.21 crore elderly persons. The Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme pays Rs 300 per month to widows aged 40 to 79 and covers 67 lakh beneficiaries. The Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme pays Rs 300 per month to persons with severe disabilities between 18 and 79 years and covers 8.33 lakh people. The National Family Benefit Scheme provides a one-time lump sum of Rs 20,000 to BPL families that have lost their primary breadwinner a figure also unchanged since 2012. The Annapurna Scheme provides 10 kg of food grain per month to senior citizens not receiving the old age pension and covers 8.31 lakh beneficiaries.
Together these five schemes support 3.09 crore of India’s poorest citizens. The central government spent Rs 9,652 crore on NSAP in FY2024-25.
What Rs 200 Buys in 2025
The government-commissioned assessment is unambiguous on this point. The same basket of food and essential items that Rs 200 could buy in 2012 now requires approximately Rs 360 to 380. In real terms Rs 200 today is worth roughly Rs 90 to Rs 110 in 2012 purchasing power. The pension has not kept pace with the cost of rice, dal, oil or medicine.
State-level field evaluations paint the human picture behind that arithmetic. Beneficiaries in Mizoram and Meghalaya report using the pension to buy rice, dal and cooking oil on a weekly or fortnightly cycle rather than stocking a full month’s supply. In Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, the CAG performance audit of NSAP documents that pensioners rely on the scheme as a partial supplement to irregular casual wage income and that the amount is insufficient to cover basic food and medicine without family support.
Field interviews across state-level evaluation reports suggest that the NSAP pension covers approximately 10 to 15 per cent of a poor elderly household’s monthly food and medical expenditure. The rest is made up by family remittances, small agricultural produce sales or simply going without.
A Budget Frozen in Name and Shrinking in Reality
The central allocation to NSAP has been nominally flat for years. The scheme received Rs 9,652 crore in FY2024-25. It has been allocated the same Rs 9,652 crore in FY2025-26. In nominal rupees the number has not moved.
The longer trend is starker NSAP’s share of the Union Budget fell from approximately 0.58 per cent in FY2014-15 to 0.19 per cent in FY2025-26, according to an analysis by The Wire and Centre for Financial Accountability. A programme meant to serve India’s poorest has been progressively deprioritised as a share of what the government spends.
When asked in the Rajya Sabha in 2024 why pension amounts had not been revised, the Ministry of Rural Development gave a straightforward answer. During the 15th Finance Commission cycle from 2021 to 2026, the government had considered revising both coverage and the rate of pension assistance but decided against it. The reason given was “available financial space.” The scheme was approved for continuation in its present form.
What Committees Have Said and What Has Changed
The 15th Lok Sabha Estimates Committee said in 2014 that the Rs 200 pension under IGNOAPS for persons aged 60 to 79 was “too small and inadequate.” It recommended raising the amount to Rs 300 and indexing it to inflation going forward. Neither recommendation was implemented.
The Comptroller and Auditor General in Report No. 10 of 2023 found that NSAP was not fully compliant with direct benefit transfer norms, that cash payments were still being made in some states, and that pension arrears had accumulated across multiple states and union territories. The CAG noted that pension amounts were low relative to the scheme’s stated objective of social security without specifying a revised figure.
A civil society coalition linked to the Indira Gandhi National Pensioners’ Parishad demanded in 2025 that the pension be raised to Rs 4,000 per month twenty times the current central amount with equal sharing between the Centre and states and mandatory indexation to inflation. Economists cited in parliamentary advocacy notes have estimated that a minimum of Rs 2,000 per month is required for a dignified old age.
The State Top-Up Gap
The Ministry’s position has consistently been that states are expected to supplement the central pension. Maharashtra tops up the widow pension to Rs 1,500 per month the central share is Rs 300 and the state adds Rs 1,200. Meghalaya ensures IGNOAPS beneficiaries receive Rs 500 per month at the 60-plus level. According to PIB, state-level top-ups for IGNOAPS range from Rs 50 to Rs 5,700 per month across states and union territories.
That range tells its own story a widow in one state may receive Rs 1,500 a month, a widow in another receives Rs 300. Both are covered by the same national scheme. The central floor has not moved in thirteen years and the states that needed the most support have in many cases added the least.
The Number That Does Not Move
India’s total trade deficit with China crossed USD 99 billion in FY2024-25. The government found financial space to sustain production-linked incentive schemes worth tens of thousands of crores. The NSAP budget allocation for the elderly poor, widows and disabled has remained at Rs 9,652 crore and the per-person monthly amount at Rs 200 through two Finance Commission cycles, four Union Budgets multiple CAG audits, and at least one parliamentary committee recommendation that it be changed.The government’s own commissioned assessment now confirms what the Estimates Committee said in 2014 and what 2.21 crore elderly Indians have experienced without needing a report to tell them. Rs 200 a month in 2025 is not a pension it is a gesture toward one.
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