A DECADE OF BETI BACHAO BETI PADHAO: EVALUATING CHILD SEX RATIO, GENDER EQUITY, AND THE STATUS OF THE GIRL CHILD IN HARYANA

Abstract

The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) scheme was launched by the Government of India on 22 January 2015 at Panipat, Haryana, as a tri-ministerial initiative of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and the Ministry of Human Resource Development/Education, in response to Haryana’s persistently low child sex ratio and the wider national problem of gender-biased sex selection. Haryana was chosen as the launch site precisely because, as per the 2011 Census, its overall sex ratio (877 females per 1,000 males) and child sex ratio (834) were among the lowest recorded by any major Indian state. Nearly a decade after implementation, this paper presents an integrated empirical assessment of the scheme’s demographic, social and economic impact in Haryana, combining secondary data on sex-ratio trends and BBBP fund utilisation with a primary field survey of 500 respondents drawn from five purposively selected districts spanning the state’s northern, eastern, western, southern and central regions — Kurukshetra, Sonipat, Sirsa, Gurugram and Rohtak. The sample comprised 150 officials associated with the scheme’s administration and 350 parents, guardians and teachers directly affected by its provisions, and was supplemented by secondary data from the Census of India, the National Family Health Survey, and government reports. The study finds that Haryana’s sex ratio and child sex ratio have both risen from their pre-2015 lows — the overall sex ratio moving from 876 in 2015 to a range of 914–923 in subsequent years, and the child sex ratio from 836 in 2015 to figures as high as 917 in 2022 but that the improvement is gradual, uneven across districts and vulnerable to reversal, with the 2023 child sex-ratio estimate of 830 underlining its fragility. Officials report only partial success (58% describe “some improvement” against 25% reporting clear improvement), while 61% simultaneously acknowledge that prenatal sex determination continues and 63% report a rise in crimes against women and girl children. Among parents, guardians and teachers, more than four in five respondents (82%) express some form of preference for a son over a daughter, rooted less in outright rejection of daughters than in concerns about family responsibility, dowry, safety and the post-marital loss of a daughter to her marital family. Gendered disadvantage persists well beyond birth, in school drop-out rates, subject choice, food allocation, domestic responsibility and age at marriage. The paper concludes that BBBP has been a necessary but not sufficient intervention: it has built awareness, institutional infrastructure and a legal deterrent, but weak public cooperation, under-resourced enforcement of the PC&PNDT Act further weakened during the COVID-19 period and the persistence of dowry-linked patriarchal norms continue to limit its transformative reach. The paper closes with recommendations for strengthening surveillance and prosecution, institutionalising village and block-level monitoring, deepening community engagement, and addressing the economic roots of son preference directly.