• The ministry of women and child development, in partnership with the ministry of education and UNICEF, launched ‘Kanya Shikhsa Pravesh Utsav’ to bring back out-of-school adolescent girls to formal education.

• The campaign has been launched with the objective of enhancing enrolment and retention of girls between 11-14 years of age in school. 

• The initiative intends to build on the existing schemes and programmes like Schemes for Adolescent Girls (SAG), Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) and National Education Policy (NEP) to work on a comprehensive system for out of school girls.

• The campaign will be rolled out under Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme by targeting more than 400,000 out of school adolescent girls as primary beneficiaries.

• Over 400 districts across all states will be funded under Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme for outreach and awareness generation at grassroots level to sensitise communities and families to enrol adolescent girls in schools, over and above the funding from Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan and the Anganwadi workers (AWWs) will be further incentivised for counselling and referring out of school adolescent girls.

Beti Bachao Beti Padhao 

• Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme was launched on January 22, 2015 at Panipat to address the declining Child Sex Ratio (CSR). 

• The CSR, defined as the number of girls per 1,000 boys in the age group of 0-6 years, declined sharply from 976 in 1961 to 918 in Census 2011. 

• The issue of decline in the CSR is a major indicator of women disempowerment as it reflects both, pre-birth discrimination manifested through gender biased sex selection, and post birth discrimination against girls (in form of their health, nutrition, educational needs). 

• The scheme was initially launched in 100 districts in 2014-15, and was expanded to 61 additional districts in 2015-16. Following initial success of the scheme, the initiative has been expanded to all districts of the country through a nationwide mass media campaign, and focussed intervention and multi-sectoral action in select districts. 

The objectives of scheme:

• Prevention of gender biased sex selective elimination.

• Ensure survival & protection of the girl child.

• Ensure education and participation of the girl child.

• This is a tri-ministerial initiative of ministries of women and child development, health & family welfare and education with a focus on awareness and advocacy campaign for changing mindsets, multi-sectoral action in select districts, enabling girls’ education and effective enforcement of Pre-Conception & Pre Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PC&PNDT) Act.

• At the central level, ministry of women and child development is the nodal ministry for implementation of this scheme. A strong monitoring mechanism has been established at national, state/UT and district level.

• The BBBP scheme is 100 per cent funded by the central government and funds are directly transferred to designated BBBP accounts of selected districts under multi-sectoral intervention.

Impact of BBBP scheme

• The scheme has stirred up collective consciousness towards changing the mindset of the nation towards valuing the girl child. It has resulted in increased awareness, sensitisation and conscious building around the issue of declining CSR across the country. 

• As a result, a favourable trend with concerted efforts at national, state and district levels has been seen in Sex Ratio of Birth (SRB) at state/UT level.

• The multi-sectoral intervention laid emphasis on awareness and advocacy & launched focused campaigns for changing mindsets, for effective enforcement of Pre-Conception & Pre Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PC&PNDT) Act and enabling girls’ education amongst other things. 

• Many districts have introduced interventions mainly towards engaging communities, improvement in Sex Ratio at Birth, promoting institutional deliveries, maintaining village level record of birth and their exhibition in public places through birth registration, encouraging celebration of girl child, challenging son-centric rituals and reversing the social norms, re-enrollment drives for getting girls back to schools and other initiatives.

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