Incentives Programs for Girl Children in India: Global Experiences, Local Reflections

ABSTRACT

Success of incentive transfers programs in South America has encouraged policymakers in India to adopt similar demand-driven approaches to reward behaviors that invest in girls and eventually change negative cultural attitudes toward them. Embrace of this approach, however, needs to be nuanced by a closer scrutiny of the gendered impact of such programs; an understanding of the differential sociocultural and public policy contexts; and a questioning of the design of the incentive transfer programs in India. Despite their political uptake, such programs address the practical needs of girls and women while neglecting their strategic interests. Furthermore, without adequate critical engagement, the programs can have unintended consequence of reinforcing gender stereotypes. Rather than importing developmental shortcuts, India should turn its gaze inward to supply-side interventions and homegrown mobilization experiences of the women’s movement.

KEYWORDS:

• Incentive transfers
• conditional cash transfers
• social policy
• gender

Notes

1. While this section is limited to the South American experience, a mixed-method evaluation study undertaken in Zambia to examine the state-supported Child Grant Program elicited that while in quantitative terms there was some improvements in decision-making power of women, a qualitative assessment illustrated that such changes were circumscribed within traditional gender roles (UNICEF 2016). In addition, Bangladesh’s stipend program for girls using a CCT approach is credited with improving health and nutritional outcomes and delaying the age of marriage, eventually enabling the country to meet MDG pertaining to elementary education of girls (Schurmann 2009). However, a WHO-funded research on the impact of the program in improving the status of women finds no evidence for such claims (Schurmann 2009).

2. The 2013 estimates by the World Economic Forum (WEF), for example, ranks Brazil and Mexico at 62 and 68, respectively, while India is ranked at 101 in gender gaps (World Economic Forum [WEF] 2013). The Gender Inequality Index of the Human Development Report ranks Mexico at 73, Brazil at 85, and India at 127 (United Nations Development Program [UNDP] 2014).

3. The share of men in sterilization is a mere 1.9 percent (United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA] and GoI 2005).

4. The World Bank estimates the total health expenditure per capital in a country as the sum of public and private health expenditures as a ratio of total population. It covers the provision of health services (preventive and curative), family-planning activities, nutrition activities, and emergency aid designated for health.

5. For example, during the unrest following the Babri Masjid demolition, a watershed event characterized by the destruction of a mosque by Hindu men and women, who were mobilized on the grounds that the mosque was erected over an ancient temple of Ram.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ipsita Sapra

Ipsita Sapra is an associate Professor with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, a public funded university in India and a premier Social Science institution established in 1936. Dr. Sapra was a development practitioner for more than a decade before moving into full-time academics since 2010. Dr. Sapra received her Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, where her work involved understanding the livelihoods of young persons with disabilities in rural India. She received the Commonwealth and the British Chevening Scholarship. Dr. Sapra is a regular contributor to international magazines on development (such as D+C, Germany), has written three book chapters (two published and one accepted by Springer), and has written more than 200 blog articles on developmental issues.