A task force will be appointed to examine the issue about the age of girls entering motherhood as the Government asserted that it will keep its focus on the welfare of women and children besides the disadvantaged communities.
Focusing on the social welfare sector, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a Rs 35,600-crore outlay for nutrition-related programmes for 2020-21 and an amount of Rs 28,600 crore was allocated for programmes specific to women.
The Budget fixed Rs 85,000 crore for the welfare of scheduled castes and other backward classes (OBCs), and Rs 53,700 crore for scheduled tribes in the next fiscal.
Noting that more and more opportunities were opening up for women to pursue higher education and career, Sitharaman said the entire issue about the age of a girl entering motherhood needed to be seen in a new light and proposed to appoint a task force for the purpose. It would present its recommendations in six months’ time, she added.
Sitharaman said the Government’s “Beti Bachao Beti Padhao” scheme had yielded “tremendous” results with the gross enrolment ratio of girls across all levels of education now being higher than boys.
At the elementary level, it was 94.32 per cent against the 89.28 per cent for boys, and similar trends were also observed at the secondary and higher secondary levels, she said. The Union Budget allocated Rs 10,103.57 crore to the social justice and empowerment ministry for 2020-21 as against the Rs 8,885 crore given to it in 2019-20. The initial expenditure proposal for the ministry was Rs 10,070 crore for the ongoing fiscal, before being revised downward to Rs 8,885 crore.