Delay daughter’s marriage, earn reward

The government plans to provide cash and non-cash incentives to parents in backward districts to encourage parents to register the birth of daughters, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Nov 3, 2007, 03:22:25 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In an effort to reduce gender discrimination against girl children, the government plans to provide cash and non-cash incentives to parents in backward districts to encourage them to register the birth of daughters, send them to school regularly and not rush them into marriage as soon as they are 18 years old.

A pilot scheme has been submitted to the Planning Commission by the Women and Child Development Ministry, according to which adherence to these guidelines would be ensured by community vigilance groups to be appointed in each village.

The pilot scheme is to be introduced in the country’s backward districts from the next financial year. It aims to promote “desirable behaviour and practices” for the girl child.

The gross enrollment rate of the girl child in schools is still lower than boys’ and their dropout rate very high. According to the National Family Health Survey-3, 57 per cent of girls are married before the legally marriageable age of 18. In some backward areas, the proportion of child marriages is as high as 80 per cent of marriages of girls.

The scheme has been proposed to improve India’s dismal record on gender discrimination and on preventing child marriages and gender discrimination. “Improving community practices will help India in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. India is at present lagging behind in meeting the goals,” said a Planning Commission official.

Another incentive to delay girl’s marriage would be an insurance cover to the girl child till she gets married. “The insurance amount would be given the girl at the age of 18 after she completes her basic education,” a Women and Child Development Ministry official said.

To prevent misuse of the incentive, the ministry has proposed community vigilance groups, who will ensure that girls are sent to school and are not abused or exploited.

The scheme will be discussed by the Planning Commission on November 8.

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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