India’s Lok Sabha recently heard a report from a Parliamentary Committee on Women’s Empowerment. More than 80% of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Funds were spent on media efforts, according to new research. This is the moment to go beyond awareness and take action to achieve results in women’s education and health, according to the committee.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi initiated the programme in January 2015 to improve the child sex ratio, which was 918 girls over 1000 boys at the time. In the report, titled ‘Empowerment of Women through Education with Special Reference to Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’, the committee headed by Heena Vijaykumar Gavit presented the findings.
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There was a payout of Rs 446.72 crores in 2016-19, according to the committee, for the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao initiative. Most of the money was spent on media campaigns, which included jingles in Hindi and regional languages, radio, SMS, television and pamphlets and adverts in print media, among other things.
Advertising should be phased out of the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao program, the committee concluded. Instead, they urged the deployment of initiatives that would lead to results. Investing the finances to begin working on the scheme’s objective and taking steps to achieve outcomes in the areas of female education and health are now necessary.
The committee also noted that, despite the fact that the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme’s spending plans had previously been established, this large amount of money was nonetheless spent on media advertisements. According to the idea, each district will get Rs 50 lakhs per year to be used for media initiatives. This sum was to be broken down into six more parts.
Planned expenditures for the 50 lakhs were also broken down into specific sectors and fields. All of the funds were to be used for awareness initiatives and innovation development, with the remaining 16 percent to be used for inter-sectoral dialogue. 10% for health and education sectoral interventions, 6% for monitoring operations, and 8% for Flexi funds.
