Context: Recently, the Ministry of Women and Child Development Saturday has said that many districts covered under the ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Andolan’ have shown an improvement in sex ratio at birth.

About Beti Bachao Beti Padhao

• It is a joint initiative of Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of Human Resource Development.

The objectives of the initiative are

• Prevention of gender biased sex selective elimination
• Ensuring survival & protection of the girl child
• Ensuring education and participation of the girl child

The target groups of BBBP are

• Primary: Young and newly married couples; Pregnant and Lactating mothers; parents
• Secondary: Youth, adolescents (girls and boys), in-laws, medical doctors/ practitioners, private hospitals, nursing homes and diagnostic centres
• Tertiary: Officials, PRIs; frontline workers, women SHGs/Collectives, religious leaders, voluntary organizations, media, medical associations, industry associations, general public as a whole.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development would be responsible for budgetary control and administration of the scheme from the Centre.

Achievement of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao

• Sex Ratio at Birth: The Ministry said that Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB) metric has improved by 16 points from 918 (2014-15) to 934 (2019-20) in 422 out of the 640 districts covered under the scheme.
• The districts, which had very low SRB in 2014-15, have shown huge improvement after implementation of the scheme.
• The Ministry highlighted to Mau in Uttar Pradesh (694 in 2014-15 to 951 in 2019-20), Haryana’s Karnal (758 to 898), Mahendergarh (791 to 919), and Rewari (803 to 924), and Punjab’s Patiala (847 to 933).

Health: The percentage of first trimester antenatal care registration has also improved from 61 per cent in 2014-15 to 71 per cent in 2019-2020.

• The percentage of institutional deliveries has increased from 87 per cent to 94 per cent in the same period.

Education Sector: The gross enrolment ratio of girls in schools at the secondary level has improved from 77.45 per cent to 81.32 per cent between 2014-15 to 2018-19.

• The percentage of schools with functional separate toilets for girls has shown improvement from 92.1% in 2014-15 to 95.1% in 2018-19.

Significance of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao

• It has been able to bring the focus on important issue of female infanticide, lack of education amongst girls and deprivation of their rights on a life cycle continuum.
• The scheme has successfully engaged with Community to defy the age old biases against the girl child and introduce innovative practices to celebrate the girl child.
• People are using the BBBP logo on their own volition at various places such as school buses, building, stationeries, transport vehicles etc. to affirm their commitment to the cause.
• The frontline government employees have been successfully collaborating at the level of community for observing the son centric rituals while celebrating the birth of girl child i.e. Kuwapoojan, Thalibajana etc.
• The mothers and girl child are being felicitated at community level and in hospitals by Administration to establish the relevance of the girl child.