India state unveils new policy on women

On the eve of International Women's Day, the Maharashtra cabinet yesterday declared a new women's policy that would have a far-reaching impact on their welfare by focussing on their empowerment at the grassroots level.

Perhaps, for the first time a woman's progress is looked at from various factors, right from ensuring that the girl child is not only educated and given nutritious food the way a male child is, there would be efforts to stop child marriages with the new focus on all-rounded development. A task force is being set up under the state chief secretary to make sure that the policy is implemented at all levels in the state right from the village to the urban areas.

At a press conference after the weekly cabinet meeting, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said the policy is based on the special component plan that will bring different departments and ministries including education, co-operative societies, tribal welfare, water supply, rural development and so on under one roof where co-ordination will take place under the state's Social Welfare Minister Jaywant Awale.

The policy also stipulates that civic bodies will increase their budgetary allocation for women and child welfare from five to 10 per cent. "A micro credit programme will be started to provide loans to women to set up their own business besides ensuring one-third reservation for women in aided, non-aided schools and co-operative societies. We will also follow up with the centre for a 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament."

In order to help women market their produce and products, 30 per cent of the space in commercial complexes constructed by municipal councils and corporations will be reserved for women.

Deshmukh also said that the government will create an awareness programme for parents to stop child marriages so that the children get a proper education. Indian marriage laws insist that a boy should not be less than 21 years of age and a girl 18 years to be married though it is common that couples are younger and sometimes even below 12. At least 65 per cent of marriages in the Marathwada region are of children, he said.

Henceforth, printing presses of wedding cards, owners of marriage halls and even priests who conduct the marriage will have to produce proof of the couple's age or face action against them. As for girls dropping out of schools to take care of their younger siblings, the government will build creches for the young ones so that mothers too can carry on their work.

Meanwhile, Nirmala Samant-Prabhavalkar, chairperson, Women's Commission, and former mayor of Mumbai, told Gulf News, "If you want to give respect and dignity to women, then offer them viable projects to supplement their family income or become self-reliant, particularly destitute women. That is why we have been vigorously working on different income-generating schemes for women in Maharashtra who are eager to be involved in such projects. Wherever I go, women come and tell me, 'give us work through your schemes and we will show what good results we can produce'," she says.

This year has been declared as the Women's Empowerment Year by the central government.
The Women's Commission has worked out a list of viable projects that can be promoted as long as women, at least ten of them, come together to form a co-operative so that bank loans, infrastructural facilities, subsidies on power, water and raw materials and even a ready market for their products can be offered to them.

Milk co-operatives run exclusively by women may be the first of the projects that will come through in Sangli and Satara where milk production is high. Other major areas include farming for growing vegetables and fruits, the powerloom industry and setting up of sugar factories.