Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Has Not Caused Any Significant Shifts: Report
Opacity surrounded the outcomes of the BJP-led NDA government’s flagship scheme for girl children. Data on sex ratio and education do not show significant changes
The government’s flagship mission focussed on the girl child has not resulted in any significant behavioural change or tangible impacts, finds new research. Nearly a decade since the launch of the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao awareness campaigns, sex ratio at birth has barely improved and a July 2024 paper found that there has been no statistically significant impact on girl children’s enrollment, grade completion and girl-specific educational expenditure.
In January 2015, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the scheme in Haryana’s Panipat, he said, “I am begging you for the lives of daughters.” As the name suggests, the scheme has two purposes – ensuring the survival and protection of girl children and encouraging their education.
The mission does this by adopting a multi-sectoral approach where 10 ministries, including education, health and skill development and entrepreneurship partner with the Ministry of Women and Child Development to conduct activities that are aimed at improving the sex ratio at birth, enrolment of girl children at secondary level and more.
Since its inception, over Rs 1,000 crore has been allocated for the scheme. But, most of it has remained unutilised with only 18% of the Rs 222 crore allocated for 2022-23 utilised till December 2022. Of the amount that has been spent, most (54%) went to media and advocacy.
An August 2020 assessment of the scheme funded by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) found that 88% of the 816 households across 14 states were aware of the scheme and could state at least one of the primary objectives.
But since the scheme was subsumed in 2021 under Mission Shakti’s Sambal sub-scheme, there is increased opacity over the budgetary allocations and expenditures specific to the scheme, making it difficult to ascertain its exclusive impacts.
Social Factors Need To Change
Of the three objectives stated in the scheme’s guidelines, two revolve around stopping female foeticide. To assess this, the government uses sex ratio of children between the ages of 0 to 6 years. While the ratio of female children in this age group has increased from 918 in 2014-15 to 934 in 2021-22, the child sex ratio is not a good indicator for sex selection, say experts.
“In public discourses and the media, the child-sex ratio has often been used to comment on the level of sex ratio at birth and by implication on sex selection,” stated a 2020 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA report). It added that because of the sex-based factors impacting early childhood mortality, the ratios are not identical.
Also the focus on child sex ratio instead of sex ratio at birth masks the impact of the scheme, said Srinivas Goli, an associate professor at International Institute for Population Sciences. “Sex ratio at birth has been worsening since the 1990s. Even 0-6 years sex ratio has not shown substantial increase because the highest component to that is sex ratio at birth,” he said.
As per the Sample Registration System, in 2011, the sex ratio at birth was 906 which declined to 899 in 2018 and increased to match the decade-old level of 907 in 2020.
On the other hand, son preference has been decreasing steadily from 41% in 1992-93 to 15% in 2019-21. There is no doubt that son preference has reduced due to increased awareness, said Srinivas, “But there is no corresponding or substantial improvement in sex ratio at birth. This tells us that the programmes that we are implementing may not bring behavioural changes.”
According to Srinivas, addressing the root causes of son preference is essential to improve the ratios. In a 2022 paper, he found a negative correlation between patrilocality–the system wherein a married couple and their children stay with, and care for, the male partner’s parents – and child sex ratio. “Schemes like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao or other conditional cash transfer schemes are not going to make substantial progress until the social structure where parents expect sons to take care of them in old age is not tackled,” he said. “And a main policy change that needs to happen for that is to provide social security benefits to the older population to make them self-reliant.”
No Impact On Enrollment, Learning Outcome
In addition to sex ratios, the scheme’s awareness programmes have also had no impact on girl children’s education-related indicators. For the first three years, the scheme was implemented only in 100 districts until March 2018 when it was extended to the rest of the country.
The July 2024 paper that we mentioned earlier compared the impact of the awareness programmes over the three years in districts where the programme was introduced against districts where it was not. The authors found no impact on enrollment, grade completion, learning outcomes or expenditure on girl children’s education.
The authors also spoke to school teachers and parents and found that many parents believe that basic literacy is enough for girl children and choose after that to engage them in household chores.
Gross enrollment rates for girl children have been on a rise but it has more to do with preparing them for the “marriage market”, said Srinivas. “If it is for empowerment, then there should be some improvement in indicators like marriage autonomy or financial autonomy but that is not happening,” he pointed out.
And these conservative ideas are percolated directly by the government. In his speech to launch the scheme, the only statement PM Modi made about educating girl children was this: “We want our daughter-in-law to be educated, but we second guess when we have to educate our daughter. If we want our daughter-in-law to be educated, then it becomes our responsibility to educate our daughter.”
The other factors that the paper highlighted as barriers for girl children’s education were infrastructure-related. The distance to school and lack of toilet facilities were issues. “Despite girls showing a keen interest in education, they often feel discouraged due to lack of proper toilet facilities for girls. As a result, girls tend to drop out of schools and the gender gap in terms of grade completion persists,” said the paper.
No Data, No Transparency
Almost a quarter (23.8%) of the schools do not have usable toilets, found the 2022 Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER). The proportion has marginally decreased from 25.8% in 2018. In fact, providing functional toilets in every school is one of the 10 monitorable targets listed in the scheme guidelines.
But there is no clarity on the progress with this target, as the government has not released any data on the budget allocated for this initiative and the number of toilets built.
Also most other targets cannot be solely attributed to this specific scheme as they are already the goals of other initiatives and existing policies of other ministries, as we had reported in April 2024.
The lack of disaggregated data has also become a major challenge for assessing the progress and impact of the scheme. In 2021, the scheme was clubbed under Mission Shakti and since then, it has become difficult to ascertain the allocation and expenditure under the scheme, said Protiva Kundu, research lead at Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), an independent think tank.
“Since the allocation of resources is based on the child sex ratio in a district, the government should release state-wise and district-wise data on child sex ratio and release and expenditure of funds under the scheme,” said Protiva. “There should also be data on component-wise allocation of funds to understand how much funds are being spent on marketing or advocacy activities and for multi-sectoral initiatives.”
The output-outcome framework which focuses on outcome-based monitoring of schemes should clearly provide information on target, achievement and allocation and expenditure for the scheme, she added.
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