Opinion Towards Women Empowerment Through Public Libraries in South 24 Parganas District of West Bengal
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JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 17, 2020 OPINION TOWARDS WOMEN EMPOWERMENT THROUGH PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN SOUTH 24 PARGANAS DISTRICT OF WEST BENGAL Md. Yeosuf Akhter1, Prasenjit Deb2 1Research Scholar, Department of Lifelong Learning & Extension, University of Kalyani, India 2Professor and Head, Department of Lifelong Learning & Extension, University of Kalyani, India Received: 14 March 2020 Revised and Accepted: 8 July 2020 ABSTRACT: Kanyashree Prakapla is one of the most valuable public service schemes introduced by the Government of West Bengal to develop the lives and conditions of girl children in providing cash assistance especially for the economically backward families. The purpose of this study is to find out whether this pecuniary assistance of one time grant of Rs 25,000 is endowing the poor families with any other benefit apart from helping to arrange marriage of their girl children. With the aid of this grant the girl children from poor family background are able to continue their much needed studies. The main focus of this scheme is to reduce child labour, child marriage, school dropouts, to increase female literacy, and to ensure women empowerment. Public library is a place from where all types of information are disseminated. The main aim of this study is to find out whether public libraries are able to disseminate information about Kanyashree Prakalpa and other public service schemes to girl students of marginalized families in order to empower them. It is interesting to note that during survey, handsome cases of early child marriages were found as the most alarming subject of further research. KEYWORDS: Women empowerment, public library, scholarship, female education, child marriage, dissemination of valuable information, Kanyashree Prakalpa, school dropouts, etc. I. INTRODUCTION “Educate a man and you educate an individual. Educate a woman and you educate a family”.(A. Cripps). The concept of empowerment stems from power. It is vested where it does not exist or exist inadequately. Empowering women means making women economically independent, self-reliant, and having a positive self- esteem, so that they can face any difficult situation and are able to participate in all developmental activities related to the progress of the society. Empowered women should be able to participate in the decision-making process. According to Jose´ N Harris, “Waiting hurts. Forgetting hurts. But not knowing which decision to take can sometimes be the most painful...” Unless women can help themselves spontaneously, they cannot be empowered. There is a need to develop regulations to reduce feminized poverty, promote education for women, and prevent and eliminate violence against women. For empowering women the Government of West Bengal has launched so many Public Service Schemes such as Kanyashree Prakalpa, Sabuj Sathi, Rupashree, Yubashree etc. Here we would like to highlight Kanyashree Prakalpa scheme only. Kanyashree Prakalpa aims at ensuring girls‟ staying in school for a longer span of time to complete studies and delay their marriages till the age of at least 18. Kanyashree‟s approach is quite simple: it uses a social safety net mechanism that has shown a high degree of success in transforming the lives of children and adolescents in several countries in the world. This scheme operates primarily on the platform of Conditional Cash Transfers. The scheme has three cash transfer components. There is a vivid discussion below. The first is an annual incentive of Rs. 750/- (now it is Rs. 1,000/-) to be paid annually to the girls of age group 13 to 18 years (studying in Class VIII or equivalent or above for every year that they remain in education, provided they are unmarried at the time). The second is a one-time grant of Rs. 25,000/-, to be paid after a girl turns 18, provided that she was engaged in an academic or occupational pursuit and was unmarried. The third one is that Rs. 2,000 to be given to female students of Arts and Commerce Stream and Rs. 2,500 to female students of Science Stream for University level on a monthly basis. The term „education‟ encompasses secondary and higher secondary education, as well as the various vocational, technical and sports courses available for this age group. Given that children from socio-economically disadvantaged families are more vulnerable to child marriage, the scheme is open only to girls from families whose annual income is Rs. 1,20,000/- or less. For girls with special needs, orphans and girls in J. J. Homes the income criterion is waived. Girls with special needs, but in a class below VIII, can also apply for the annual scholarship. 3211 JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 17, 2020 Public Library acts as a nerve of knowledge centre in our civilization. Laura Bush in her famous quote said, "I have found out the most valuable thing in my wallet is my library card”. The Public libraries have their stocks for the common people and users‟ requirements where the Library is situated. Sometimes Public Library offer some knowledge disseminating programs such as seminars, workshops, quiz contests, displaying new arrival of books, displaying old and rare stocks etc. Women empowerment can be improved with the help of Public Library also. Various types of women empowerment related training can be offered by the Public Libraries such as training of tailoring, sewing, women awareness training etc. Public Library has a great role for empowering the women. Many types of research have been done on the empowerment of women and the public library system. They are as follows: Jindal and Tripathi (2020) found in their study that women have been advancing, progressing and proving that they can surpass men in any sector, whether it is in sports, arts, science, politics, and service or anywhere: she is at par with men. Yet, she ponders for safety. Pessimistic and gruesome cases of brutal rape and murder by the nexus of many trafficking methods have alarmed and gained the entire nation‟s attention on the necessity for effective measures of security and safety of women in country. According to Batra and Yadav (2020), the study found that positive changes occurred in case of household decision making process especially in sale and purchase. Similar results were observed in case of expenditure on health. After becoming part of groups, women are now well aware about voting rights and quota in local Panchayat. The leadership skills are significantly improved in this case. The econometric analysis shows that education and position in groups are important factors in these aspects of empowerment. The study also observed that the participating NGOs have contributed a significant role in this process and suggests strengthening the capacities of such organizations so that other SHGs can get benefit and be successful. In the study of Nisa and Saranyadevi (2020), it was found that women empowerment ensures autonomy to women to practice, exercise, take decisions and make strategic life choices independently. It is the process in which women elaborate and recreate what they can be, do, and accomplish in a circumstance that they previously were denied. This study is based on both primary and secondary data. This paper is a study on government policies, role of society and organization to understand the importance of women empowerment for inclusive growth in the private sector of any nation. This study brings up all the hindrances and barriers related to women empowerment in this competitive world and suggests changes in acceptance level, perception, education and employment opportunities empowering women to make a difference of significance. Shikalgar (2020) stated in his study that in India, the emergence of liberalization and globalization in early 1990s aggravated the problem of women workers in the unorganized sectors from bad to worse as most of the women who were engaged in various self-employment activities have lost their livelihood. Despite the tremendous contribution of women to the agricultural sector, their work is unjustly considered as an extension of household domain and remains non-monetized. In 1992 Government introduced Micro Finance facilities through Self Help Group (SHG) Launched by NABARD. It was an insignificant beginning of a Pilot Programme launched by NABARD by linking 255 SHGs with banks in 1992. However in 2009-10, the programme has reached a certain dimension by linking 69.5 lakh saving-linked SHGs and 48.5 lakh credit- linked SHGs and thus about 9.7 crore households are covered under the programme. Out of this women saving- linked SHGs is 5310436 and credit linked women SHGs is 3897797 and loan distributed to these groups is Rs. 23030.36 crore which is 82.1% of total loan outstanding up to the year ended on 31.03.2010.(NABARD Report). According to Madhan (2019), the paper is basically vivid and inquisitive in nature. In this paper an attempt has been taken to scrutinize the empowerment of women in India. The data used in it is purely from secondary sources according to the need of this study. The study betrays that women of India are comparatively disempowered and they enjoy somewhat lower status than that of men in spite of many efforts undertaken by Government. It is found that acceptance of unequal gender norms by women is still prevailing in the society. The study concludes by an inspection that access to Education, Employment and Changes in Social Structure are only the legalizing factors to Women Empowerment. According to Monica (2019) this paper seeks to understand how much women are empowered to be on its own and how women are contributing to the national economy. The breeze of women entrepreneurship is touching all the areas to trigger the potentials out. In the words of Late Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, “You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women”.