Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana

The girl child’s discrimination is rampant in India, it runs acros all caste, creeds and religion etc. It manifests itself in various forms. Discrimination with the girl begins even before her birth in the form of female foeticide and continues afte the birth. The adult sex ratio fell from 972 females for every 1000 males in 1901 to 927 in 1991. It has increased in last two decades. It has increased to 933 in 2001 and 940 in 2011, but the child sex ratio (ages 0-6) have dropped from 945 in 1991 to 914 in 2011. Child sex ratio has declined sharply since 1991. Sex selective abortions are mostly blamed on technology, but technology alone is not responsible for this problem. Along with technology mindset and male dominated society are also responsible. According to Amartya Sen there are two main inequalities which are present against Girls. They are educational inequality and health inequality. There is a proverb saying” Educate a man, you will educate one but educate a women, you will educate a nation”. By the age of 18 girl children have received on average 4.4 years less education than boys. In India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development showed the average enrolment rate of girls, ages 6-14 and 14-18, as 93.47% and 36.77%. But they also show the 61.5% of girls drop out of school before completely class XII. Amartya Sen also says that there are more than a hundred million women missing in the world of which India has 37 million missing women by 1986. According to UNICEF, in 1984 in Bombay out of the 8,000 abortions that took place, 7,999 of them were girls.

Government has recently launched Beti bachao Beti padhao yojana for survival, protection & education of the girl child. It aims to address the issue of declining Child Sex Ratio (CSR) through a mass campaign across the country targeted at changing societal mindsets & creating awareness about the criticality of the issue. Haryana has the worst sex ratio among all states in the country standing at 879. Looking into this Government launched the scheme from panipat district of Haryana. The Scheme will have focussed intervention & multi-sectoral action in 100 districts with low Child Sex Ratio. It is a joint initiative of Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of Human Resource Development. Focus points of the scheme are:

• 100 districts with low sex ratio will be selected and atleast one district in every state.
• In 100 critical districts, improve sex ratio by 10 points in a year.
• Prevention of gender based sex selective abortion by strengthening the PC & PNDT Act with stringent punishments for violations of the law.
• Appropriate initiatives which will encourage girls to express their views and to be heard and participate effectively.
• Reduce gender difference in under-5 child mortality by 4 points by 2017.
• Increase girls enrolment in secondary schools to 79% by 2017.
• Fifty new Kasturba Gandhi bal vidhyalay by 2015.
• Monitoring of this policy will be at three levels. At the central level monitoring would be done by secretary, MWCD by a task force. At state level monitoring task force will be headed by state secretary and finally at the district level monitoring will be done through district action plan.
• Since independence several policies and programmes are launched to end the discrimination of girl child. Important amongst them include:
• Dowry prohibition act 1961;

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