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In her seminal 1969 autobiography “I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings” Maya Angelou, who has been described as a
symbolic character for every black girl living in America,
refuses to be confined by the constraints of her personal
history and the histories of all the African – American
women of her time. Instead she evolves from being a
childhood victim of systemic racism, abuse, poverty and
patriarchy to a self–deterministic adult with a strong sense
of her own identity in a deeply unequal society.
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
I Know Why across the country, such entitlements remain out of reach.

Invisible and unheard, they live dreary lives, their bodies,
the Caged Bird minds, aspirations and talents sacrificed at the altar of child
marriage and other gender–discriminatory practices.

Sings 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.
Maya Angelou Kanyashree’s programmatic strategy directly strikes at the

inter–linked issues of child marriage and female school
dropouts. The Scheme provides every adolescent girl
between the age of 13 and 18 with an annual scholarship,
and a one–time grant when she graduates from the
scheme at age 18. The stipulation being, of course, that she
be in education and unmarried at the time of getting the
benefits. To reinforce the positive impact of increased
education and delayed marriages, the scheme also works
to enhance the social power and self–esteem of girls
through a range of ‘cash plus’ interventions.