Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao: Going strong a decade since launch

BBBP was launched to ensure the survival and protection of girl children and encouraging their education.

Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao—the flagship programme of the government aimed at addressing declining Child Sex Ratio (CSR) and related issues of empowerment of girls and women in the country—successfully marks 10 years since its launch in 2015.

Launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Panipat, Haryana, on January 22, 2015, the focus of the scheme is to spread awareness around protection of girl children and enable their education.

Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (BBBP) is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Women & Child Development, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education. The government initially launched BBBP in 100 districts in the first phase of the scheme and later expanded it to 61 additional districts in the second phase.

The key achievements

The scheme, launched to ensure the survival and protection of girl children and encouraging their education, has witnessed applauding success in improving sex ratio in the country and increasing girls’ enrolment for education.

The Sex Ratio at Birth (SRB) in India has improved from 918 in 2014-15 to 930 in 2023-24 as per the provisional data of Health Management Information System (HMIS) of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW).

Meanwhile, the National Gross Enrolment ratio of girls in school at the secondary level has increased from 75.51 percent in 2014-15 to 79.4 percent in 2021-22 including rural areas, according to the data of Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE +) of the Department of School Education and Literacy.

Addressing the impact of BBBP, the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her 2020 Budget speech said that girl enrolment in elementary schools was higher than that of boys because of the scheme launched by the government.

Fund allocation for BBBP

Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao is a centrally sponsored scheme with 100 percent funding by the central government in all the districts of the country. The government has released Rs 401.04 crore till the financial year 2022-23 for the scheme since its launch in 2015,  official data shows.

In the initial years, the government spent maximum funds on media advocacy to spread awareness about the scheme in the country. A report submitted by the Committee on Empowerment of Women pointed out that 78.91 percent of the total funds for the scheme between 2016 and 2019 has been spent only on media advocacy, and not on sectoral intervention on health and education for women.

The government, however, later addressed the concern. It said that as the scheme had been able to create awareness for the cause, media advocacy campaign had zero budget or incurred minimal expenditure. In July 2022, the government said- “Since BBBP has been designed to bring an attitudinal shift in the society towards valuing the girl child, expenditure towards media advocacy was more in the initial stages to create scheme awareness and behavioural change.”

The government allocates funds to districts based on the differential SRB status. The funds are released under three brackets - districts with SRB less than or equal to 918 are allocated Rs 40 lakh per year, districts with SRB from 919 to 952 are allocated Rs 30 lakh/year, while districts with SRB more than 952 are allocated Rs 20 lakh/year.