Kanyashree Prakalpa –Prosperity Towards Right to Education for Women

Abstract

The Kanyashree Prakalpa (KP), a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme is an innovative project to ensure the education for girl-students so that dropout rates are reduced, also works as prosperity towards right to education for women. It was introduced on 8th March, 2013 by the Department of Women Development and Social Welfare of West Bengal for incentivizing adolescent girls to complete secondary, higher secondary and higher education, or equivalent in technical or vocational streams and also to prevent child marriage till at least the age of 18. The effectiveness of this Prakalpa immediately appears just after the implementation of it across the state. This paper evaluates the impact of this Prakalpa on female enrollment in the college. It is found that KP not only minimizes the tendency of girl students to drop out from schools at early age, at the same time it increases female admission in the college. In this study, a comparative analysis has been drawn between prior 2013 and after 2013 to show the actual increasing enrollment of female students in Ramnagar college in Purba Medinipore district, West Bengal, India. This study is based on secondary data. The findings of this study suggest that this scheme protects & empowers the girls especially from socio-economically disadvantaged families, by giving incentives to them to continue education for a longer period of time, footing their participation and meaningful contribution to the society.