Girl Child Promotion & Welfare Schemes: A State wise Analysis

Policy Update
Debjani Chatterjee

Background

India has introduced a wide range of schemes to support the education, safety, health and economic development of girls across different states and union territories. Despite significant progress in female education and social development, girls in India continue to face structural barriers linked to poverty, early marriage, school dropout, inadequate healthcare and limited economic opportunities. These challenges are not uniform across the country and often vary by state, region, caste, income and rural or urban location. Government schemes for girls have therefore evolved as targeted policy responses to address different dimensions of disadvantage, from educational access and financial support to health, protection and skill development. A state wise comparison is therefore important to assess whether differences in programme design, coverage and delivery are reflected in measurable outcomes such as school retention, delayed marriage, financial autonomy and gender related indicators.

Functioning

• Institutional architecture: Women and girl child schemes are mainly implemented through State Departments of Women and Child Development, Social Welfare, Education, Health and Finance. District administrations, block offices, schools, colleges, Anganwadi centres and local bodies support delivery. For example, West Bengal places Kanyashree under the Department of Women and Child Development and Social Welfare, with educational institutions acting as the main interface with beneficiaries.

• Funding mechanism: Most state schemes are funded through state budgets and delivered through Direct Benefit Transfer or bank based payments. The benefit may be a scholarship, one time grant, recurring income support or assistance linked to education, health or marriage. The Government of India DBT platform provides the wider digital transfer framework.

• Beneficiaries: Eligibility differs across schemes. Common conditions include age, residence, family income, school enrolment, marital status and number of children. Some programmes provide wider support to women, while others focus specifically on adolescent girls or girl children.

• Implementation process: Applications are generally submitted through government portals, schools, local offices or designated centres. Officials verify identity, income, residence, education and other required documents before approval. After verification, eligible beneficiaries receive assistance through bank accounts. Kanyashree uses educational institutions and local administrative offices as important delivery points.

(The distribution indicates that state interventions are concentrated differently across the girl child lifecycle, with some states adopting education focused models while others combine education, financial assistance and marriage related support).

• Monitoring mechanism: States increasingly use online portals, MIS systems, beneficiary databases and district level monitoring. Kanyashree provides online tracking, registered institutions and multiple levels of monitoring. Its official portal currently records applications, sanctioned cases and unique beneficiaries.

• Stakeholders: State departments, district officials, schools, colleges, Anganwadi workers, banks, local governments, families and beneficiaries all have roles. Effective coordination among these stakeholders is important for timely payments, grievance handling and better outcomes. Across states, the institutional design varies, but the common focus is to connect financial support with education, health, protection and empowerment.

Performance

• Beneficiary coverage: The selected state welfare programmes demonstrate substantial reach, but beneficiary figures are not directly comparable because states report different years, beneficiary definitions and geographical levels. Andhra Pradesh, for example, reports 5,73,315 Amma Vodi beneficiaries in Chittoor district alone; this is a district level figure and should not be treated as the statewide beneficiary count.

Bihar provides a clearer recent example of payment performance. As of 22 December 2025, 1,98,000 beneficiaries had been identified under the graduation component of Mukhyamantri Kanya Utthan Yojana and all 1,98,000 had been paid. Under the intermediate component, 5,71,694 beneficiaries were identified and 4,55,714 had been paid.

West Bengal’s Kanyashree Prakalpa has also achieved large cumulative coverage. The 2025–26 Budget Speech reports 96.30 lakh beneficiaries since inception. During 2025–26, 15.50 lakh girls were enrolled in the Annual Scholarship component and 2.24 lakh in the One-Time Grant component. For 2024–25, the corresponding figures were 15.75 lakh and 2.01 lakh respectively, with ₹593.51 crore released.

Odisha reported 1.18 crore women beneficiaries under Subhadra at the March 2025 disbursement. The scheme is designed for eligible women aged 21 to below 60 and provides ₹50,000 over five years through annual instalments.

• Financial performance: State budget documents demonstrate significant public expenditure on women- and girl-focused programmes. Odisha allocated ₹10,000 crore for Subhadra in the 2024-25 budget, while Tamil Nadu allocated ₹420 crore for Pudhumai Penn in 2025-26.

However, budget allocation should not be confused with actual expenditure. The CAG’s audit of Odisha reported that the revised 2024–25 provision for Subhadra reached ₹13,195.92 crore, while actual expenditure was ₹10,136.61 crore. This illustrates why future comparisons should distinguish between budget estimates, revised estimates, releases and actual utilisation.

Historical figures should also be labelled clearly. Rajasthan’s Economic Review recorded a ₹250 crore budget provision for Rajshree Yojana in 2020-21 and expenditure of ₹150 crore up to December 2020. This is useful as historical evidence but should not be presented as a current 2025–26 performance indicator.

Table: State-wise beneficiaries enrolled, beneficiaries paid and funds disbursed under PMMVY, cumulative since inception up to 22 November 2021 

• Physical progress and administrative delivery: Several states have developed digital systems for registration, verification, payment and monitoring. Jharkhand’s Savitribai Phule Kishori Samridhi Yojana portal, for example, provides scheme-wise and class-wise information and tracks application and payment status.

Maharashtra’s Economic Survey reported that 2.38 crore women had availed benefits under Majhi Ladki Bahin and that ₹17,505.90 crore had been spent up to December 2024. Since this is a dated figure, it should be reported as such rather than treated as a current 2025–26 total.

• Re-enrolment and access gaps: The national Kanya Shiksha Pravesh Utsav campaign provides evidence of both outreach and remaining access gaps. By 2023, 1,44,107 out-of-school adolescent girls had been identified and mapped across 22 States/UTs, of whom 1,00,786 had been re-enrolled into the education system. State-level re-enrolment varied considerably; for example, Gujarat reported 17,341 re-enrolments and Andhra Pradesh 7,228. Because the campaign covered 22 States/UTs rather than all 28 states, these figures should not be interpreted as a complete national state ranking.

• Education and retention: UDISE+ 2024-25 provides a more consistent basis for comparing girls’ school-retention outcomes. Using the gender wise Secondary (Class IX–X) dropout rate, the girls’ dropout rate was 12.5% in Andhra Pradesh, 17.7% in Arunachal Pradesh, 16.7% in Assam, 6.8% in Bihar, 11.6% in Chhattisgarh, 6.3% in Goa, 14.6% in Gujarat, 4.1% in Haryana, 4.8% in Himachal Pradesh, 2.4% in Jharkhand, 14.6% in Karnataka, 3.7% in Kerala, 14.6% in Madhya Pradesh, 10.3% in Maharashtra, 8.6% in Manipur, 16.6% in Meghalaya, 16.0% in Mizoram, 11.2% in Nagaland, 12.6% in Odisha, 5.2% in Punjab, 7.1% in Rajasthan, 8.4% in Sikkim, 5.3% in Tamil Nadu, 10.7% in Telangana, 10.2% in Tripura, 5.1% in Uttar Pradesh, 3.0% in Uttarakhand and 16.7% in West Bengal.

These figures show considerable interstate variation in girls’ secondary-school retention. However, dropout rates should be interpreted as education-system outcomes rather than as direct measures of the effectiveness of any single state welfare scheme, because schooling outcomes are also affected by household income, school availability, social norms, migration, transport, infrastructure and other policies.

• Digital governance and monitoring: A broader governance trend is the movement towards DBT, Aadhaar linked or bank verified payments, online registration and dashboard-based monitoring. Goa’s Griha Aadhaar, for example, operates through Aadhaar linked DBT, while Jharkhand provides online application and payment-status tracking for Savitribai Phule Kishori Samridhi Yojana.

• Overall assessment: Government data indicate substantial expansion of welfare delivery for women and girls across Indian states. Nevertheless, beneficiary numbers alone are insufficient to evaluate outcomes. The available evidence varies considerably in year, geographical coverage and definition of beneficiary. A stronger comparative framework should therefore combine programme reach with common indicators such as girls’ secondary dropout, enrolment and re-enrolment, higher-education participation, payment timeliness, expenditure utilisation and, where available, outcomes related to child marriage, employment and citizen satisfaction.

The key monitoring gap is therefore not simply the absence of schemes, but the absence of a uniform state-level framework that links programme inputs → beneficiaries reached → payments delivered → education/social outcomes.

Impact

• Improved school retention and reduced dropout: West Bengal’s Kanyashree Prakalpa has shown a clear link between financial support and continued education among adolescent girls. A government rapid assessment found that girls dropping out in the selected sample of schools declined from 161 in 2013 to 14 to 71 in 2014 to 15, a reduction of about 56 percent. The scheme also aims to delay marriage and improve girls’ social and financial empowerment through education and direct transfers.

Source: UDISE+ 2024–25. 

• Reduction in early marriage: Kanyashree was designed to keep girls in education and discourage marriage before 18. Government NFHS data show that the share of women aged 20 to 24 married before 18 in West Bengal was 41.6 percent in NFHS 5. This shows that child marriage remains a serious concern despite the existence of the scheme, suggesting that financial incentives need to be supported by stronger social and community interventions.

• Higher education support for girls: Tamil Nadu’s Pudhumai Penn provides ₹1,000 every month to eligible girls continuing into undergraduate, diploma or ITI education. Government data show that the scheme is specifically designed to increase female participation in higher education and reduce financial barriers to continuation. Its DBT model also gives direct financial support to students.

• Greater financial autonomy for women: Odisha’s Subhadra Yojana provides evidence of an early economic empowerment effect. The Odisha Economic Survey 2025 to 26 reports that 65 percent of surveyed beneficiaries experienced improvement in financial autonomy and 98 percent reported greater confidence in handling money and preparedness for the future. Around 80 percent reported using the funds for productive purposes, while 80 percent expressed interest in using future transfers for business expansion and asset creation.

• Women’s decision making: Karnataka’s government assessment of Gruha Lakshmi found that the transfer increased women’s voice in some household financial decisions, although the effect remained limited. Only 5 percent reported greater involvement in large purchase decisions and 6 percent reported a stronger role in final decisions on large purchases. At the same time, 63 percent reported no reduction in their unpaid domestic work burden. This shows that income support can improve financial agency without automatically changing gender roles within households.

• Improvement in education and reduction in child marriage in Uttar Pradesh: NFHS data show that women in Uttar Pradesh with ten or more years of schooling increased from 32.9 percent in NFHS 4 to 39.3 percent in NFHS 5. The share of women aged 20 to 24 married before 18 declined from 21.1 percent to 15.8 percent. These changes are consistent with the objectives of Mukhyamantri Kanya Sumangala Yojana, but they cannot be treated as the direct impact of the scheme because several education, health, legal and social interventions also operate in the state.

• Support for vulnerable children: Kerala’s Snehapoorvam has provided educational assistance to children who have lost one or both parents or lack adequate family support. The Kerala State Planning Board reported 58,106 beneficiaries up to March 2017, showing its contribution to keeping vulnerable children connected with education.

• Improved gender balance: At the national level, the Sex Ratio at Birth improved from 918 girls per 1,000 boys in 2014–15 to 929 in 2024–25, according to HMIS data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Haryana also recorded a substantial improvement, with its SRB rising from 871 in 2014 to 923 in 2025, according to the Haryana government. This improvement has occurred alongside sustained enforcement, monitoring and awareness efforts under Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and related measures.

• Greater educational continuity: Girls’ Gross Enrolment Ratio at the secondary level increased nationally from 75.51 percent in 2014–15 to 80.2% in 2024–25 (Ministry of Women and Child Development, 2026). This reflects wider improvement in girls’ access to secondary education, supported by schemes promoting continued schooling.

• State level social outcomes: Madhya Pradesh’s Economic Survey reports that its sex ratio at birth increased from 927 in NFHS-4 to 956 in NFHS-5, while female literacy increased from 44.4% in NFHS-3 to 65.4 percent in NFHS-5. The state attributes this progress partly to Ladli Laxmi Yojana and related interventions, although the indicators cannot be attributed to the scheme alone.

• Broader developmental impact: Taken together, these schemes are intended to strengthen girls’ access to education, social protection and financial resources. Available state and national indicators show progress across several of these dimensions, but differences in programme design, implementation and wider socioeconomic conditions make it difficult to attribute these outcomes to individual schemes 

Emerging issues

• Persistent interstate differences in child marriage: NFHS 5 data show substantial variation across states. The share of women aged 20–24 married before 18 was 40.8 percent in Bihar and 31.8 percent in Assam, compared with 5.8 percent in Goa and 12.1 percent in Chhattisgarh. This indicates that girl child interventions need stronger state and district level targeting rather than uniform implementation.

• Uneven educational retention: UDISE+ 2024-25 reports a secondary school dropout rate of 20.0 percent in West Bengal, 18.3 percent in Arunachal Pradesh and Karnataka, 17.5 percent in Assam, and 15.5 percent in Andhra Pradesh, compared with 4.8 percent in Kerala. These differences highlight continuing gaps in keeping girls in secondary education.

• Sex ratio remains uneven: The Ministry of Women and Child Development’s BBBP dashboard reports a national sex ratio at birth of 930, but state figures range from 882 in Bihar and 915 in Maharashtra to 977 in Goa and 973 in Tripura. Such variation shows that gender preference and the social environment for girls remain important concerns in several states.

• Education and social outcomes require convergence: BBBP itself focuses on survival, protection, education and development of the girl child, while Mission Shakti brings together BBBP with other women focused services. However, differences in early marriage, school retention and sex ratio suggest that awareness campaigns alone cannot address all barriers. State programmes therefore require stronger convergence across education, health, social protection and local administration.

• Need for district level monitoring: National and state averages can hide local disparities. The Ministry of Education provides district level PGI reporting, while UDISE+ now provides detailed school level indicators. Linking these datasets with girl child scheme coverage can help identify districts where high dropout, early marriage or poor social indicators coincide and enable more targeted interventions.

Way Forward

• Adopt a state specific approach: States face different challenges, so a single model should not be applied uniformly. West Bengal’s Kanyashree combines annual scholarships with a ₹25,000 one time grant, while Uttar Pradesh’s Kanya Sumangala links payments to six stages from birth to higher education. States should strengthen existing models based on their local gaps rather than create parallel schemes.

• Link transfers with measurable outcomes: Financial assistance should be connected with school retention, transition to secondary and higher education, timely immunisation and prevention of child marriage. BBBP already identifies secondary enrolment, dropout reduction and adolescent health as key objectives. Outcome monitoring should therefore move beyond beneficiary numbers.

• Strengthen last mile delivery: Digital applications should be supported by schools, Anganwadi Centres, Panchayats and frontline workers. Mission Shakti specifically emphasises digital infrastructure, last-mile tracking and Panchayat participation. This can reduce documentation and access barriers for vulnerable households.

• Use district level dashboards: UDISE+ 2024-25 records 11.93 crore girls enrolled from pre-primary to higher secondary nationally. States should combine such education data with scheme applications, payments, dropout and transition indicators to identify districts requiring additional intervention.

• Expand convergence beyond cash: Girl-child welfare should combine education, health, nutrition, transport, digital access and skills. PMMVY already demonstrates how DBT can support maternal benefits, while state schemes can connect girls with scholarships, bicycles, technology and vocational opportunities.

• Improve evaluation and transparency: Every state should publish annual data on eligible girls, applications, approvals, rejected cases, payments, stage completion and outcomes, disaggregated by district and social category. This would help assess whether higher spending is translating into better education, delayed marriage and improved opportunities for girls.

References and Links

• Ministry of Education. (2025). UDISE+ 2024–25: Report on school education in India. Department of School Education & Literacy, Government of India. https://www.education.gov.in/ 
• Ministry of Women and Child Development. (n.d.). Beti Bachao Beti Padhao. Government of India. https://wcd.gov.in/offerings/beti-bachao-beti-padhao-scheme 
• Ministry of Women and Child Development. (n.d.). Mission Shakti: Guidelines for implementation. Government of India. https://wcd.gov.in/offerings/mission-shakti-guidelines-for-implementation-mission-shakti 
• Ministry of Women and Child Development. (2021, December 3). Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana. Press Information Bureau, Government of India. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1777726&utm_&reg=48&lang=2 
• Ministry of Women and Child Development. (n.d.). Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana. Government of India. https://www.wcd.gov.in/offerings/pradhan-mantri-matru-vandana-yojana 
• Ministry of Women and Child Development. (2022, August 1). Enrolments under PMMVY. Press Information Bureau, Government of India. https://www.pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=1846142&reg=48&lang=2 
• International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), & ICF. (2021). National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), 2019–21: India report. IIPS.
• NITI Aayog. (2026). School education system in India: A temporal analysis and policy roadmap for quality enhancement. Government of India. https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2026-05/School-Education-System-in-India.pdf 
• Ministry of Women and Child Development. (2026, February 6). Beti Bachao Beti Padhao focuses on creating mindset and behavioural changes towards the girl child. Press Information Bureau, Government of India. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2224413&utm&reg=48&lang=2 

About the Contributor

Debjani Chatterjee is a policy researcher with a background in Finance and Political science. Her work focuses on leveraging data analytics to support evidence based policy research.

Acknowledgement

My sincere thanks to the Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI) for the opportunity to prepare this policy update article. IMPRI’s dedication to connecting research with actionable policy practice provides an invaluable platform for learning.

Reviewed by Ninchen Tamang and Shruti Chandra

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the official position or views of the organization.

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