WELFARE SCHEMES FOR WOMEN

MINISTRY OF WOMEN AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 16-AUGUST, 2012

          Many welfare schemes for women are implemented by Government of India, State Governments and Union Territory Administrations. The details of major schemes under implementation by Ministry of Women and Child Development for the welfare of women are as under:

           i. RAJIV GANDHI NATIONAL CRECHE SCHEME FOR THE CHILDREN OF WORKING MOTHERS (RGNCS) provides day care facilities to the children in the age group 0-6 years from families with monthly income of less than 12000/-. In addition to being a safe space for the children, the crèches provide services such as supplementary nutrition, pre-school education and emergency health care, etc.
          ii. CENTRAL SOCIAL WELFARE BOARD: The main women welfare related schemes and programmes being implemented by CSWB are family counselling centres, awareness generation programme and condensed courses of education for women.
          iii. NATIONAL MISSION FOR EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN (NMEW) is an initiative of the Government of India for empowering women holistically. It is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme sanctioned in April 2011 and acts as an umbrella Mission with a mandate to strengthen inter-sectoral convergence.

           iv. WORKING WOMEN’S HOSTEL (WWH) Scheme envisages provision of safe and affordable hostel accommodation to working women, single working women, women working at places away from their home-towns and for women being trained for employment. 
          v. SUPPORT TO TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMME (STEP) for Women was launched as a Central Sector Scheme during 1986-87. It aims at making a significant impact on women by upgrading skills for self and wage employment. The target group includes the marginalized assetless rural women and urban poor.
          vi. RASHTRIYA MAHILA KOSH (RMK) with a corpus of Rs.100 crore extends micro-finance services to bring about the socio-economic upliftment of poor women.
          vii. INDIRA GANDHI MATRITVA SAHYOG YOJANA (IGMSY) is a Conditional Cash Transfer scheme for pregnant and lactating (P&L) women introduced in the October 2010 to contribute to better enabling environment by providing cash incentives for improved health and nutrition to pregnant and nursing mothers.
          viii. SWADHAR SCHEME: The Ministry of Women and Child Development had been administering Swadhar scheme since 2001 for Women in difficult circumstances. Under the Scheme, temporary accommodation, maintenance and rehabilitative services are provided to women and girls rendered homeless due to family discord, crime, violence, mental stress, social ostracism. Another scheme with similar objectives/target groups namely Short Stay Home (SSH) is being implemented by Central Social Welfare Board.           ix. UJJAWALA is a comprehensive scheme for prevention of trafficking and rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration of victims of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation. 
This was stated by Smt. Krishna Tirath, Minister for Women and Child Development in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha today. 

SIBAL FOR SEPARATING REGULATORY SERVICES FUNCTIONS OF DOP

Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal has called for restructuring of 150-year-old Department of Post by separating its regulatory and services functions to meet challenges of technological age.

“The postal department should also restructure itself to meet challenges of 21st century. The Department of Post (DoP) should look into prospect of bifurcating the Ministry from the regulator and the operator, just as was done in the telecom sector,” Sibal told PTI.

He said that the DoP should explore possibility of having different entities namely policy making, regulator and service provider.

“No decision has been taken yet. It is all a matter of debate and dialogue at the moment,” Sibal said.

DoP, which has around 5 lakh employees, is responsible for policy making, regulation and providing postal services, at present.

The over 100-year old Indian Post Office Act bars any individual or entity from delivering letters for commercial purpose. The business of private courier companies is built around delivering documents, parcels and others items which do not fall under the category of ‘letter’.

Sources in the Ministry said that Sibal held a meeting with DoP officials early this week on the issue of finanlisation of the National Postal Policy 2012 and asked them to prepare roadmap for restructuring as well.

They said that next meeting on the issue is expected to take place in 15 days.

They said that the Minister, in June, had asked DoP to set up a body to oversee the unbundling of its functions.

An independent body named Postal Development Board (PDB) will be responsible for the overall development and governance of the postal sector, they added. The PDB will also draw a road-map for unbundling of postal department functions.

The Minister had also instructed DoP to constitute a Postal Advisory Board (PAB), in line with Telecom Commission, which should have representation from Government, industry players, academics and other stakeholders, they said. The role of PAB will be to provide inputs to PDB on policy matters.

The government in 1997 created the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to regulate the sector. Under New Telecom Policy 1999, Government further restructured DoT by separating service providing function from it.