Smriti Zubin Irani
The Indian Government has catapulted the maxim of sarvajana hitaya, sarvajana sukhaya (for the good of all, for the happiness of all) into a palpable reality in the past decade. The extant essence of janhit (public interest) has been reinvented to “mainstream” gendered experiences. Gender mainstreaming has seamlessly pervaded every sphere of statecraft, ensuring it is not reduced to the ranks of an artificial add-on.
The incumbent government adopts a system-wide gendered lens to inform policy praxis. Women have been mandatorily recognised as the head of the household for the issuance of ration cards, under the auspices of The National Food Security Act, 2013. Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) and Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) accord benefits — homeownership and LPG connections, respectively — to women beneficiaries. Such interventions have unequivocally fortified women’s access to economic resources, elevating inter alia their social status.
Earlier schemes like the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) that inadvertently exempted women from seeking health services have been re-engineered and conclusively replaced. In its place, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) not only renders households without any adult male members eligible for the scheme, but also dismisses the off-colour cap of five beneficiaries per family that would penalise women in larger families, owing to male preference. Additionally, PM-JAY supports a substantial number of health benefits packages that are either women-centric in nature or are overwhelmingly common to both men and women. Under the aegis of the scheme, more women than men have availed of oncology services.
A barely decade-old government is doing what other sattadharis who held the reins of the nation for the better part of the century could not: It is visibilising women, it is nurturing nari shakti. By placing assets such as houses and LPGs in the…