Viksit Bharat ki Atmanirbhar Betiyan: Exploring the Role of CCTs and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao in Empowering Girls in India
Funding Agency : Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR)
Principal Investigator: Anindita Majumdar
Co-investigator: Rituparna Patgiri, Paro Mishra and Anasua Chatterjee
Duration/Starting Year: 2024-09-20 to 2024-09-10
Status: Ongoing
Viksit Bharat ki Atmanirbhar Betiyan is aimed at the promotion of Government of India’s Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (B3P) scheme through three focused interventions: one, collecting quantitative and qualitative data on the current and long-term impact of conditional cash transfer schemes (CCTs) on girls and their families who have participated in the schemes; two, promotion of B3P through a sustained awareness program amongst the identified survey population; three, highlighting the benefits of skill development and economic empowerment through CCTs for girl children in the form of training workshops conducted by women students at IITs and state/regional universities amongst identified survey population.The identified regions include Assam, Delhi, West Bengal and Telangana. These four regions have been chosen in terms of personnel support as well as the differential approach to CCTs for girl child empowerment.Telangana has few schemes supporting the girl child as opposed to West Bengal, Delhi and Assam, which have had award-winning and sustained interventions. The comparative focus of how these programs have been received and developed in the different regions is also an important focus of our research. Beti Bachao Beti Padhao stands out as a flagship scheme because of its focus in relation to the empowerment of the girl child, including education, prevention and feticide and availability of nutrition. In these goals, while recognising the negative impact of child marriage, the scheme hopes to move away from a focus on marriage and dowry for the girl child, instead suggesting the way forward towards ‘atmanirbharta’.