Page 6 - Kanyashree Coffee Table Book_Low res

India too has its caged birds – the millions of
adolescent girls who, confined by their gender, exist

as daughters, sisters, wives and mothers – with no
identity to call their own. India’s Constitution
guarantees its citizens the fundamental rights to
equality, freedom, and education, and the right
against exploitation. The reality however is that for

the majority of girls from disadvantaged backgrounds
across the country, such entitlements remain out of
reach. Invisible and unheard, they live dreary lives,

their bodies, minds, aspirations and talents sacrificed
at the altar of child marriage and other
gender–discriminatory practices.
In October 2013, the Government of West Bengal
launched Kanyashree Prakalpa, a conditional cash

transfer scheme that provides a safety net for those
vulnerable families who are forced, by tradition, social
compulsion or poverty, to truncate the education of

their daughters and contract them to wholly illegal
and dangerous marriages. Kanyashree’s
In her seminal 1969 autobiography “I Know programmatic strategy directly strikes at the
Why the Caged Bird Sings” Maya Angelou, inter–linked issues of child marriage and female
who has been described as a symbolic
school dropouts. The Scheme provides every
character for every black girl living in
adolescent girl between the age of 13 and 18 with an
America, refuses to be confined by the
annual scholarship, and a one–time grant when she
constraints of her personal history and the
graduates from the scheme at age 18. The stipulation
histories of all the African – American
women of her time. Instead she evolves being, of course, that she be in education and
from being a childhood victim of systemic unmarried at the time of getting the benefits. To
racism, abuse, poverty and patriarchy to a reinforce the positive impact of increased education
self–deterministic adult with a strong and delayed marriages, the scheme also works to
sense of her own identity in a deeply
enhance the social power and self–esteem of girls
unequal society.
through a range of ‘cash plus’ interventions.