Women Empowerment in India Under Narendra Modi Govt

Whether a woman chooses career over her motherhood or motherhood over her career, the right to choose what she wants is the real women empowerment. Has the Narendra Modi Government done enough?

Women in India and their Empowerment

According to the 2011 census, India has a total population of 586.47 million women or 48.5%. India has a very golden history regarding women in the ancient times. Hindu scriptures have compared women with nature and goddess but with changing time the definition changed. Due to numerous invasions, women had to go through major sacrifices and torture.

In independent India, the situation went better. Women have held the position of prime minister, president, chief minister, governor, speaker of Lok Sabha and many more eminent positions. Yet there is lot to achieve.

Modi Governments initiative for Women Empowerment

The prime minister of India launched an initiative in Haryana known as Beti Padhao Beti Bachao yojna to stop girl feticide and to promote education in girls. The scheme showed positive results as many places that had low sex ratio bettered with time. India has a sex ratio of 933 women per one thousand men. The second scheme was to sanction INR 6000 for nourishment of pregnant women.

Other Schemes:

• The government increased the maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks to allow women to take proper rest.
• Under Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Yojna, the government conducted 33 lakh health checkups for women to ensure their safety.
• The government deposited 11,000 crore rupees in 1 crore accounts to ensure better future of daughters.

 Another step taken by the government was to provide gas connection to 2 crore houses of economically weaker communities to ensure they remain healthy. 70% or 7.5 crore of the women benefited from the Mudra yojna by the government that endorsed self employment for people. This step was followed by Stand up India where many women got benefit from the loans sanctioned by the banks that ranged from 10 lakhs to 1 crore. Not only this, the government also ensured 3 million jobs in textile industry for women that had great benefit.

Is this Enough?

These steps show that the present government has done a satisfying job for women empowerment but there is lot more to do. Crime against women in still very high in India and it needs to be curbed. There are still many places where girls are deprived from primary education as the hostile atmosphere towards women prevents them to study and this must change only then we can actually ensure empowerment of women.