Scheme for girl child gets poor response

It was started with the aim of bettering Delhi 's sex ratio. But the girl child protection scheme run by Delhi government has managed to reach only a dismal proportion of the children that it was meant for. Even as the government is set to start more financially rewarding scheme from January 2008, its track record of needs serious attention.

In the current financial year, money has so far been disbursed in the name of only 1,641 children—according to the government's own estimates in the latest annual report on registration of births and deaths, more than one lakh girls are born in the city's hospitals in one year. Under the scheme, applicable only in case of institutional deliveries, Rs 5,000 is deposited by the government in the name of a girl child and when the child reaches 18 years of age, she will get Rs 18,000. 

In fact, the response to the scheme was so poor that the department has not even managed to spend the amount of Rs 1 crore that had been allocated for the purpose in the state budget. The department has so far spent Rs 82.5 lakh. Social welfare secretary Gyanendra Srivastav admits that the current scheme for girl child protection “has been a complete failure,” and the reason for this is that the scheme itself was "flawed". "On the one hand we were trying to promote institutional deliveries so that the incentive was only for girls born in hospitals, on the other, there was no income cap. Bulk of the institutional deliveries are still in the well-off classes for whom Rs 18,000 is hardly worth going through the paraphernalia and the paperwork required," he added. Lack of awareness about the scheme, especially among people of the lower socio-economic strata led to the department not getting too many applications. The applications in addition to requiring attachment of a number of documents are a time bound process a family can apply for inclusion in the scheme only within two months of a daughter's birth. 

The department, Srivastav says, has learnt from its mistakes so that once the new scheme under which Rs 30,000 will be released in the name of every girl child in a phased manner till the time she reaches class XII so that the girl gets Rs 1 lakh when she turns 18 starts, there will be intensive awareness initiatives. 

(Source: The Times of India , November 3, 2007)