Govt Spent 56% Of Funds On Publicity Of 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao', 25% Used For Actual Work

The scheme launched by Modi government in January 2015 to address the declining child sex ratio and women empowerment, is reduced merely to the PR machinery. More than 56 per cent for the ¡°Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao¡± scheme have been utilised in media and advertisement related activities.

In contrast to this, less than 25 per cent of the amount has been distributed to states and districts, shows the information released by the government.

More than 19 per cent of the funds were not released by the government.

So far, the government has allocated Rs 648 crore for the programme in the last five years and spent 56.27 per cent of it, or Rs 364.66 crore, on advertising.

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Only 24.5 per cent, or Rs 159.18 crore, of allocated funds were distributed to states and districts. In 2017-18, the funds allocated were higher. Sixty-eight per cent of the Rs 200 crore or Rs 135.71 crore, assigned to advertising. In 2016-17, Centre had allocated Rs 29.79 crore for publicity and distributed only Rs 2.9 crore to states and districts.

For 2018-19, government had reserved Rs 280 crore for the scheme, out of which Rs 155.71 crore was allocated for advertising and almost half of it, Rs 70.63 crore were distributed to states and districts.

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The data is according to the answer provided by Dr Virendra Kumar Union Minister of State for Women and Child Development, in the Lok Sabha, on January 4, 2019. The response was in question by five Members of Parliament: Kapil Patil and Shivkumar Udasi of the BJP, Sushmita Dev of the Congress, Gutha Sukender Reddy of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and Sanjay Jadhav of the Shiv Sena.

The data clearly shows that government showed more concern towards publicity and advertisement and very little towards actual ground work for the programme.