Conditional Cash Transfer Schemes and Women Empowerment: A Case Study of Kanyashree Prakalpa in West Bengal

The concept of "Women empowerment" has become a burning issue for quite some time. Our society is severely gendered and there exists unequal gender relations such that women for ages have remained the victims of marginalization, inequality and oppression. To combat this practice of gender discrimination and improve the status of women in India, the Indian government has taken several actions, introduction of Conditional Cash Transfer Schemes being one of them. The West Bengal government, too, has launched such a scheme, namely "Kanyashree Prakalpa", in 2013 to encourage girls to continue their education and delay their age of marriage and make them empowered. The present study aims to determine how successful Kanyashree Prakalpa has been in bringing about the true empowerment of women, a decade after it was first introduced, in two socio-economically different districts of West Bengal, namely Kolkata and Purulia, the former being the capital and a megacity and the latter a backward district of West Bengal. By collecting data from randomly selected beneficiaries of both Kolkata and Purulia with the help of a structured questionnaire and semi-structured interview schedule and then statistically analyzing them for uncovering the patterns and trends of the impact of such programs on its recipients and finally by comparing the results of the scheme between the two districts via T test, the researcher found that while the Prakalpa yielded positive responses from both the districts, it made a greater impact in Purulia in its overall aspects.