A first, govt scheme for boys

The government has decided to initiate a scheme, Saksham, for the empowerment of adolescent boys — a rarity in the government, where the focus is mostly on the deprived girl child, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Sep 17, 2012, 23:08:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Boys will soon get lessons in gender sensitivity and moral behaviour.

The government has decided to initiate a scheme, Saksham, for the empowerment of adolescent boys — a rarity in the government, where the focus is mostly on the deprived girl child.

There are close to half a dozen schemes run by the central government for the empowerment of women and girls, including Sabla — a scheme for adolescent girls, and the national nutritional programme for teenaged girls.

Despite a slew of measures by the government to uplift women, crime against them is high and they also suffer bias in different forms and levels.

When it comes to education, boys get preference. Many girls are forced to leave their education to either look after younger siblings or earn for the family whereas boys continue with their education.

The societal bias has resulted in skewed sex ratio and poor nutritional and health level of girls.

More than a developmental issue, the government believes it is a social problem and cannot be tackled through financial empowerment programmes for girls.

“The mindset of men needs to be changed who are the decision-makers in Indian families,” says the UPA government's 12th plan document approved last Saturday, while claiming that girls suffer because of male bias.

To usher-in a change, the Women and Child Development (WCD) ministry wants to target young men — between 10 and 18 years — for their holistic development.

“The scheme should aim at inculcating the idea of gender-sensitivity and respect for the opposite sex,” the 12th plan document says.

The government has already allocated R10 lakh to start preparatory work on the scheme and the Planning Commission expects its roll-out from the next financial year.

It is the only new scheme the panel has proposed for the WCD ministry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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