Schemes for Women and Children: Notes and PYQs

The Constitution asks the State to protect women and children in several places at once: Article 15(3) permits special provision for them, Article 39 asks that the tender age of children not be abused, Article 42 asks for maternity relief, Article 45 asks for early childhood care and education below the age of six, and Article 21A makes free and compulsory education a fundamental right from six to fourteen years. Central schemes are the machinery built on those directions, and examiners ask three things about each of them: the year it began, the ministry that runs it and the exact benefit it gives.

The two umbrella missions

From 2021 the Ministry of Women and Child Development reorganised its many schemes into three umbrellas. Mission Shakti is for women and has two parts: Sambal, which deals with safety and security and contains the One Stop Centres, the women helpline, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and the Nari Adalat, and Samarthya, which deals with empowerment and contains Shakti Sadan, Sakhi Niwas, the Palna creche scheme and the maternity benefit programme. Mission Vatsalya is for children in difficult circumstances and carries forward the Integrated Child Protection Scheme and the institutions required by the Juvenile Justice Act. Mission Poshan 2.0 merges the supplementary nutrition programme of the anganwadi system with the nutrition mission.

Schemes for the girl child and for mothers

Beti Bachao Beti Padhao was launched on 22 January 2015 from Panipat in Haryana to arrest the fall in the child sex ratio, which the Census of 2011 had put at 918 girls per 1,000 boys in the age group of zero to six years. It is run jointly by the ministries of Women and Child Development, Health and Family Welfare, and Education, and it works through awareness, enforcement of the law against sex determination and improvement in the education of girls. Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana, launched on the same day, is a small savings account that a parent or guardian may open in the name of a girl before she completes the age of ten, for a maximum of two girls in a family; deposits are made for fifteen years and the account matures twenty-one years after it is opened, with the interest rate notified by the government every quarter. Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, which began on 1 January 2017, pays a cash incentive of five thousand rupees in instalments to a pregnant and lactating woman for her first living child, as partial compensation for wage loss. The Janani Suraksha Yojana of 2005 and the Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram of 2011, both under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, promote institutional delivery by paying a cash assistance and by making delivery, including caesarean section, drugs, diagnostics, diet and transport free in public hospitals.

Schemes for children

The Integrated Child Development Services, launched on 2 October 1975, is the oldest and largest of these programmes and the parent of the anganwadi system. It offers six services at one place: supplementary nutrition, pre-school non-formal education, immunisation, health check-up, referral services and nutrition and health education for mothers. POSHAN Abhiyaan, the National Nutrition Mission, was launched on 8 March 2018 from Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan to reduce stunting, undernutrition, anaemia and low birth weight through convergence and technology. The mid-day meal programme, which began on 15 August 1995, was renamed the PM POSHAN scheme in 2021 and provides a cooked meal in government and government-aided schools. Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, started in 2004, runs residential upper primary schools for girls of disadvantaged groups.

Protection, shelter and livelihood

The Nirbhaya Fund was set up in 2013 to finance projects for the safety of women, and the One Stop Centre scheme, known as Sakhi and launched in 2015, is financed from it; each centre gives a woman affected by violence medical aid, police help, legal aid, counselling and temporary shelter in one building. The women helpline works on the number 181 and the child helpline on 1098. Ujjwala, started in 2007, works against trafficking through prevention, rescue, rehabilitation and repatriation. Swadhar Greh and the new Shakti Sadan give shelter to women in difficult circumstances, while Sakhi Niwas is the working women hostel. For livelihood, the Support to Training and Employment Programme for Women dates from the 1980s and the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh, a micro-credit fund, from 1993.

The laws behind the schemes

Schemes rest on statutes, and examiners mix the two. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 fixes the minimum age of marriage at eighteen years for women and twenty-one for men. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 gives effect to Article 21A. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 govern child protection, the latter creating the Child Welfare Committees and Juvenile Justice Boards that Mission Vatsalya funds. The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 raised paid maternity leave for women in the organised sector from twelve to twenty-six weeks. The Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994 bans sex determination and is the law Beti Bachao Beti Padhao seeks to enforce.