“If you educate a boy, you educate an individual but if you educate a woman, you educate a family.” While this quote symbolizes the importance of a woman in a society, the scenario of a woman in some cases is sadly far from what it ought to be. The girl child in India faces the prospect of discrimination even before she is born; thereafter she is discriminated for education, health, nutrition and safety.Since recently, with a declining sex ratio, India faced the prospect of a society without women, which is impossible to even fathom. Considering the magnitude of this, our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi started the Beti-bachao, Beti-padhao initiative in 2015. The initiative was deliberately launched in Haryana in view of the skewed sex ratio in the state and had the objective of eradicating gender discrimination in the society, which in turn would empower women.
Fast forward four years, the initiative has reaped various benefits for the girl child. It has laid importance on some basic and yet prominent points, such as improving the sex-ratio; ensuring survival and protection of the girl child by criminalising female foeticide; working towards securing education for the girl child; securing personal and professional development; introducing gender equality in the curriculum of schools; preventing child marriages; preventing dowry and dowry deaths; and promoting the concept of simple weddings so as to move away from the idea of a ‘Big Fat Indian Wedding’ which created a societal pressure on the family of a girl to spend a huge amount of money.
As the movement gathers momentum, I feel that the Beti-bachao, Beti-padhao initiative by the Modi government is based on the ideology that a woman deserves to be empowered and gender discrimination is something that must be eradicated from our society for it to be an ideal one. My vision for my beloved motherland, India, is for it to be a home where it recognizes that the single best investment a society can make is to educate the girl child. God made everything in pairs. Day & night; Sun & Moon, Light &dark, Earth & sky; so also man & woman; Son & daughter! A daughter deserves everything a son does!