The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) scheme was brought into existence in the year of 2015 by Central government, under the ministry of Women and child welfare and development.
However, in the year 2018, the scheme got more grip and started considering the project district wise, where a specific district was considered for the complete in the development and the state government was help responsible to produce the expected results, supported by central government officials.
In the 2019, very recently a fake news was spread stating the the government would distribute
Rs. 2,00,000 to every girl child of India. Fake forms were distributed in many a parts of Uttar Pradesh and it became viral quickly acroos the social media platforms. On investigation, the news being fake was found and the central government released a notification on its website, stating about the same and alarmed the public about various possible frauds related to the scheme in different states and asked the public to be alert about it.
As we always do, let us try to understand, what Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme all about is and how it could be beneficial or be a bane for the commons of India. It is also important for us to understand the objectives of the scheme, so that we can analyze the results to say about its success.
The declining sex ratio, especially in the norther parts of India, during the two consecutive census of 1991 to 2001 and 2001 to 2011, raised a red flag and asked for swift actions to ensure the child an women in the country are protected.
The decline in the sex ration between the years 1991 to 2001 was observed to be from 945 to 927. This further declined to 918 in 2011 and therefore it was the a do or die situation for any government to act upon this issue.
Therefore, it was understood that the women in the nation are getting disempowered and to stop this, actions, both before the child birth and after the child birth are highly essential. All those tools which could help the parents detect the gender of the child in mother’s womb, were to be curbed. This would ensure that the affordability and the availability of such services are blocked.
A new face of the above scheme was introduced in the year 2015, where the PM of the the nation focused majorly on the following three objectives:
- Prevention of gender biased sex selective elimination
- Ensuring survival & protection of the girl child
- Ensuring education and participation of the girl child
The point now is to understand, if the BBBP scheme was a success of failure?
Points that prove the BBBP scheme helped the Indian girl child: Success of BBBP
- This was the first of its kind attempt, which was well planned and had clear objectives.
- The BBBP scheme aimed initially at the super critical areas within India, for ex: Haryana, where the sex ratio was deprived and also the overall empowerment of the girl child was found to be missing.
- The project was considered to be taken up at grass root level.
Why BBBP scheme can be regarded as a failed project?
Even though the thought behind the scheme was highly noble, the implementation at the lower levels has completely failed to deliver, and therefore the following are the major discussions about why this project failed?
- Insufficient allocation of funds and inefficient release of funds.
- Deficiency in proper monitoring and district and taluka level.
- Improper planning on expenses in later parts of the project, ex: 47% of expenses were on communications while only 5% on education, by end of 2017 – 18.
- If specific districts are considered in Haryana and Punjab, the sex ratio has drastically reduced even after implementation of BBBP scheme.
- The target of ensuring secondary education to all girl children and also to bring back/ re-enroll all the girls who were forced dropped out of school in northern parts of India, was also left uncompleted.
- Specific to Haryana and Punjab, the money allotted by the government for the implementation of the project, was found to have been spent on marketing about the BBBP scheme, which majorly marketed the leaders of the government and the local government bodies. It therefore, found itself short of funds to propagate BBBP scheme.
- Under the plan, region experts are required to viably screen and guarantee that the utilization of sex-assurance instruments by families and specialists prompts stringent lawful activity against them. The rules of the plan stress the significance of implementing the PCPNDT Act at the national, state and area levels. In any case, there were different gaps in implementation seen which legitimately weaken experts’ checking limit.
- The rules expressed that to guarantee responsibility and improvement in administrations, it was imperative to record all exercises led at the area, and gram panchayat levels. After looking into it further, the CAG report found that there were no records of usage for different exercises held for Information, Education and Communication (IEC) exercises and children improvement, during the initial years of BBBP scheme.
- The absence of implementation, execution, preoccupation of assets and the disappointment of observing instruments are a portion of the explanations behind the failure of the BBBPS. To accomplish the goals of the plan, the legislature must guarantee stricter requirement of the arrangement rules and improve the checking instruments it utilizes.
With whatsoever has happened, this scheme definitely is worth a laud and therefore the government should act swiftly act upon the deficiencies and take appropriate measures to ensure that the objectives of the BBBP scheme are met.
The following ways can help to make the scheme better.
- To increase the planned expenditure of the project, especially on the education and health related aspects of the girl child.
- The female frontline workers, who can understand the ground level problems should be the head at district levels. This is to ensure proper implementation of the project.
- To ensure that the task force is properly trained, and this will help us in proper implementation of the project.
- Involve non-government partners like NGOs or private companies and create win – win situations.
Ex: Involving companies who make sanitary pads can help women understand the importance of usage of sanitary pads better and they can also train the in house team of BBBP scheme better.
- Digitalize to create transparency – The present government has laid so much importance on the digitalization and therefore, the same can be used here to ensure real time documentation and create transparency in the systems.
Conclusion:
The Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme was a long overdue intervention to ensure the basic survival of girls in a highly discriminatory environment. However, despite being well-intentioned, it presently risks becoming a toothless scheme wherein its central objective of improving the child sex ratio (CSR) in some of the country’s worst performing districts remains unmet owing to ineffective implementation.
Further, evidence from initial evaluation suggests that State and District level task forces have not even managed to convene regularly, let alone actually monitor the quantitative output targets set out in the scheme. Most critically, expenditure of funds earmarked for the scheme has been centered on national level media campaigns, as opposed to community level interventions for improving education and health outcomes.
In order to ensure that the BBBP’s implementation is reoriented towards the right direction, the national, state and district level task forces must assume the overall responsibility for scheme’s implementation at each level, and be held accountable for successes and failures.