Kanyashree Project-A key to Empower Marginal Women in West Bengal

09/09/2016

Moumita Ghosh*

     

In the course of democratic development the most important point is consider development as social transformation process, this is high time to understand that development is not confined within profit oriented motive but it also associated with sustainability, social safety nets, greater participation, poverty reduction and equal gender rights within the country and in the mind of people.( Hartwick,2009).Woman empowerment is not only a corporate terminology now a day, people should give equal opportunity to their daughter as they use to give their son in every sphere of life, only by which girls can develop self esteem from very tender age. This self esteem give them courage to be educated and financially independent.  Child marriage is a serious problem in present world, mainly in developing countries like South Asian countries, Africa and Latin America. Child marriage is a violation of children human rights, despite of being prohibited by law; it’s continued to rob million of girls under eighteen and their childhood. Child marriages denies girls, their right to make vital decision about their sexual health and well being and also associated with less education, ill health, poor prospect and increase the risk of violence and early death. According to the District Level Health Survey – 3, 2007- 08, West Bengal ranks fifth highest in the country when it comes to the prevalence of child marriage. In the year 2013 State Government of West Bengal introduced a holistic approach as Kanyashree Prakalpa for underprivileged girls of the state. The scheme is designed in such a way that reducing the tendency of drop out from school; it motives girls of poor families to pursue higher study and at the same time protect them from the harmful social custom of marriage at young age.

Section of Woman as a Focus Group in Marginal society:

Marginality is generally used to describe and analyse socio-cultural, political and economic spheres, where disadvantaged people struggle to gain access to resources, and full participation in social life.  In other words, marginalized people might be socially, economically, politically and legally ignored, excluded or neglected, and are therefore vulnerable to livelihood change. A section of women and girl child in West Bengal are deprived from their economic and social rights in every sphere of their life. Poverty and patriarchy are the main cause of their condition and this situation force them to marry in a early age which also have a chain negative reaction in their life. Patriarchy, in its wider definition, means the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general and woman are subordinate in the case of rights and access to property and decision making. After 2013 Kanyashree Prakalpa plays a vital role to protect the underprivileged girl child of this state from the darkness of early marriage.

Child Marriage A Concern For West Bengal:

West Bengal is one of those states in India which had done worse performance in prevention of child marriage. It is a great shame for Bengal. Bengal was one of the states which led India to its modernity by making various socio cultural reforms. This is the land of Kavi guru Rabindranath Thakur and Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar who always fought for rights of woman and equalitarian society in India but unfortunately the present Bengal is far behind among states in India regarding the significant social issue of preventing child marriage. Lack of effective measures during last three decades pushed West Bengal out of the track. According to the District Level Health Survey – 3, 2007- 08, the state ranks fifth highest in the country when it comes to the prevalence of child marriage, almost every second girl is a child bride (54.7%). According to District Level Health Survey -4, 2012-2013, the percentage of girls aged 18 years currently getting married before 18 years was 32.1%. As per Rapid Survey on Children (2013-2014), 44.47% of women aged 20-24 were married before age 18.  Survey reveals that Murshidabad, Malda, Birbhum, Purulia, Bankura, Dakshin Dinajpur, South 24 Parganas, Nadia and Cooch Behar are more vulnerable districts where the highest incidence of child marriage in the state. The most important factor which to be noticed in this context that even in non-slum areas in the heart of the city of Kolkata, where families are wealthier and girls are likely to be better educated, more than a quarter of girls are married before they reach adulthood. It signifies that till today in West Bengal child betrothal and marriage is considered to be a gendered practice. An overwhelmingly large percentage of girls are married at before reaching adulthood which reflects backwardness in the set of mind of the people.

Negative Impact of Child Marriage:

Child marriage affecting more girls than boys and is a type of sexual abuse of minor girls which has a consecutives negative impact on their health, leaves them financially and socially disempowered. According to UNICEF motherhood among teenagers is nine times more among girls with no schooling than among woman with 12 or more years of education. Negative impact of child marriage are:

1.      School  Dropout

 Child marriage leads to girls dropping out school, which limits their scope of future development. The Selected Education Statistics (2010-11) published by MoHRD, Government of India shows that for the state of West Bengal the gross enrollment ratio of girls gradually decrease from 88% at elementary level to 59% in high school level and 33.3% at higher secondary level, so the dropout rates between class I-X was found to be as high as 47.9% by the same report. Higher secondary education is not free so poverty-stricken parents choose to invest their money to marry their girls rather than their education. As a result, poverty plays a vital role that fuels child marriage, in turn perpetuates feminization of poverty. 

2.      Trafficking

Child marriage is one of the lures that the human exploitation rackets often use to entice poor parents. There is no concrete date of how many numbers of young girls who have gone missing because of child marriages. Simply because such marriages are arranged by fraudulent means and there is no data of it. It is significant to note that the districts which rank the highest amongst all districts in the state for child marriages, namely, Murshidabad and Malda, are also considered the most vulnerable to trafficking because these districts share a border with Bangladesh. In many cases girls who drop out of school are sent away by parents to earn their dowries by working as child labour in various metropolitan cities within India and sometimes outside India, which also makes them vulnerable to traffickers.

3.        Maternal ill health and mortality

Child marriage is one of the deterrent factors which hamper the progress of maternal and child health and improvements in the nutritional status of children in West Bengal. Child marriages result in early pregnancies, which in turn lead to high maternal and infant deaths, and are also a leading cause for malnutrition among children. Owing to the marriage at early stage girls becoming mothers at that period when they are not out of childhood themselves.

4.      Psychosocial disadvantage

The loss of adolescence, the forced sexual relations, and the denial of freedom and personal development attendant on early marriage have profound psychosocial and emotional consequences. The impact can be subtle and insidious and the damage hard to assess.

Kanyashree Prakalpa- A Project To Empower Girl Child

After independence there are various laws made for prevention of child marriage, but the unfortunate truth is it can’t stop child marriage from our state and country, the Department Of Women Development And Social Welfare And Child Development (DWD) implemented anti child marriage campaigns spreading the message of prevention, and endorsing enforcement of the law and its penal position for adults.  Human rights research shows that the greatest obstacles to girls' education are child marriage and subsequently pregnancy and other domestic chores. Naturally to ensure that girls stay in school would be an effective protective measure against child marriage. And in order to do in an effective way what the state needs a government sponsored social welfare scheme for girls that directly helps and motivates students to continue study. The present Government of West Bengal, just after coming in to the power in the year 2012 under the leadership of Smt. Mamata Banerjee, has taken special initiative for compulsory female education and in order to support it under the supervision of the Department of women Development and Social Welfare, West Bengal (DWSW) introduced in the year 2013 the Kanyashree Prakalpa – a conditional cash transfer scheme with the aim of improving the status and well-being of the girl child in West Bengal by incentivizing schooling of all teenage girls and delaying their marriages until the age of 18, the legal age of marriage. Kanyashree Prakalpa is a West Bengal Government sponsored scheme which presently is implemented in all districts of the state. 49,27,079 girls are enrolled in Kanyashree Prakalpa in West Bengal till date.

Observations:

Comparing National Level Survey -3 (2005-2006) and National Level Survey -4(2015-2016) in case of West Bengal number of girls married before 18 and infant and maternal mortality rate are decrease  than previous years for a small percentage. To spread out message and thought state government observes Kanyashree Day on 14 th of August every year, where 27 lacks kanyashree girls are observed this day in the year 2015. A recently released set of data shows adolescent girls in rural Bengal setting a nationwide trend with their keenness to go to school. Compared to their male counterparts, the central survey shows, rural girl students have a better attendance record. The NSSO survey, carried out in January-June 2014, shows that in the gross attendance ratio and net attendance ratios in primary, upper primary and secondary classes, girls have overtaken boys by a good measure in rural Bengal. The results came in three months after the West Bengal Government’s launched its Kanyashree scheme -a conditional cash transfer or CCT to stop adolescent dropouts among girl students. State women and child development minister Dr Shashi Panja said, “When Kanyashree was launched by the Chief Minister in October 1, 2013, it was followed by a sustained media campaign. This, we felt, had touched the common psyche. Otherwise, the number of beneficiaries would not have reached 2.5 million.

Conclusion:

Time has come to bring a radical change in the dominant ideology of patriarchy. This dominant ideology, which is produced from patriarchal structures, is found in all areas of social relations. It is said that it is not enough to change only family value system, the laws of inheritance, property distribution; right over children should also be changed. To bring equality, it is essential to establish equal right between men and women in all respects of life. The responsibilities of women should also be equally distributed. In fact, I believe that real democracies and egalitarian societies can only be established if we practices democracy, equality and mutual respect within the family. Real peace in society can only be established if we experience peace at home. Early marriage is closely associated with poverty. Some interventions on behalf of adolescent girls have focused on improving their economic situation as a means of granting them higher status and more control over their lives including their options in marriage. This scheme is expected to bring about measurable improved outcomes for the education, health (especially infant and maternal mortality) and empowerment of the state's girls, their children and immeasurable benefits for larger society, because I believe than equity in gander is not a feminist issue rather it is the most important human issue of the society.

This paper can be concluded with hope and a quote of Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai that, “Extremist have shown what frightens them most: a girl with book.”  

Please Tie Our Hand to Make Our Girl child RESOURCE Not BURDEN of Society

References

• Anderson, J. Larsen, J. E. (1998) Gender, Poverty and Empowerment. Critical Social         Policy, 18(2): 241-258.
• A detail report on child marriage in South Asia will be found in “Solidarity for the Children of SAARC”, Child Marriage In South Asia: Realities, Responses And The Way Forward.

• Brodwin, P. (2001) Marginality and Cultural Intimacy in a Trans-national Haitian Community, Occasional Paper No. 91 October. Department of Anthropology,       University   of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA 
• Dreze, J. and Sen, A. (2013). An Uncertain Glory: India and Contradictions (Vol. I). Penguin Books

• Hartwick, R. P. (2009). Theories of Development, Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives       (Vol. II). New York: The Guilford Press, ISBN 978-1-60623-065-7
• Kanyashree Implementation Guideline, 2013

*Student, 2007

moumitagh1985@gmail.com, Part-time Ph. D. Research Scholar of Geography, University of Calcutta, Assistant teacher of Geography in Karanjali B.K.Institution