Critical Analysis: On Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Campaign Completing 11 Years
Eleven years after Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, high crime rates against women reveal the gap between intent, political promises, and everyday safety.
Eleven years ago, Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao was launched with the right intent and an urgent promise. Save the girl child. Educate her. Give her a fair shot in a country that had quietly learnt to look away from its daughters. Over a decade later, the slogans are familiar, the hoardings have faded, but the question remains painfully alive: how safe is a woman in India today?
The numbers refuse to stay quiet. According to the NCRB, nearly 4.5 lakh crimes against women were registered in 2023. That is not a spike caused by one bad year or one state — it has been a steady pattern. About 30,000 rape cases, thousands of kidnappings, and the most reported crime of all: cruelty by husbands or relatives. These are not statistics from the margins; they describe everyday India.
To be fair, the scheme has not been meaningless. Sex ratios have improved in some districts. School enrolment among girls has gone up. Conversations around female foeticide are no longer whispered. These shifts matter and deserve acknowledgment. But celebration feels premature when violence remains so ordinary, when safety still depends on luck, location and silence.
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What has also become routine is the politics around women — schemes announced before elections, cash transfers framed as empowerment, token gestures passed off as reform. Welfare matters, but freebies are not protection, and slogans do not substitute accountability. A girl may be encouraged to study, but what awaits her when she steps outside? A system where justice is slow, reporting is traumatic, and survivors are still asked the wrong questions.
The uncomfortable truth is this: saving and educating the girl child was only the beginning. The harder work — dismantling patriarchy, reforming policing, ensuring swift justice, changing social attitudes — is still half done. Eleven years on, Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao stands as a reminder of intent, but also of distance. Between what we promise our daughters, and what we actually give them.
