No ‘Sakhi’ for women; govt spends more on VVIP movement than ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’

HYDERABAD: The Union Budget for 2019 has seen a substantial cut in its allocations for Sakhi One Stop Crisis Centres (OSCC) and schemes for women helplines. For the OSCs the budget fell from Rs 302 crores to Rs 274 crores and for the helpline, the budget fell from Rs 28.8 crores to Rs 17.7 crores, this year. When central government announced the Sakhi One Stop Crisis Centres (OSCC) scheme in 2015, the deal was that the government shall back its expenses until the centres became self-sufficient.

However, three years later, there are many centres still in need of funds. Moreover, most of Telangana’s 10 Sakhi centres became operational only last year. This has fetched stark responses from activists. “This is the issue with most flagship projects like OSC -- which are envisaged at providing a shelter, medical and legal help all under one roof -- they take ages to implement on ground level.

Had the implementation completed on time, this cut would not have hurt much,” noted Mamtha Raghuveer, of NGO Taruni. Meanwhile, the revised estimates on money spent on ‘maintenance cost of aircraft of Air India for VVIP travel’ in 2018 saw the number shoot up from `141 crore proposed initially to `420 crore. In the Friday’s budget, its allocation was kept at `220 crore. But current trends indicate that next year’s revised estimates shall reveal much higher expenditure.

In contrast, the Friday budget marked the possible expenditure on Centre’s flagship Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme at Rs 280 crore -- the same amount announced for the scheme in 2018-2019. As for the revised estimates, they have also shown the same value. Moreover, a recent reply to a question raised in Lok Sabha revealed that the Centre spent 56 per cent (`155.71 crore) of the total BBBP funds on advertisements but released only `70.63 crore to the districts in 2018.

‘PWDs IGNORED’
Activists have claimed that the budget allocations for Persons with Disability is a huge disappointment.
Dept of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities saw only a total of `54 crore increase in budget for
existing schemes. The National Institute of Mental Health Rehabilitation which was a flagship project last year got a fund cut from Rs 14.5 crore to Rs 10 crore.