| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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Key elements of action plan
a. Formulation of a transparent, viable and self driven scheme.
b. Campaigning for scheme
c. Implementation of scheme
d. Ensuring benefits of scheme
e. Tracking of scheme
Key Development / Steps
Step 1 July 2006:-
With its commitment towards women empowerment, the State government was keen to address the declining sex ratio and gender inequalities. The issue of unwanted girl child was raised in women conference (Mahila Panchayat) on 30th July 2006. Thereafter, the Department of Women & Child Development decided to formulate a scheme that would create a positive environment for the birth, survival and well being of girl children. Health and education were also linked to the scheme to ensure holistic empowerment of women.
Step 2 August 2006- December 2006 Scheme formulation
Constitution of core team comprising of all stakeholders for timely guidance & support to ensure good practices, to make the scheme beneficiary oriented, to rectify queries / complaints received from grassroots.
Detailed statistical and financial analysis done to calculate number of potential beneficiaries, to set criteria for selection of beneficiaries, for allocation of funds & expenditure prospectively to make the scheme sustainable
Ensuring transparency and ease of access since huge volume of financial incentives involved so that it should be used for the purpose for which it is given.
Selection of suitable agency with largest outreach, secured instrument (National Savings Certificate) critical. Memorandum of Understanding made with Postal Department.
Several rounds of discussions held with senior officials of State Government, departments and stakeholders to formulate scheme (From July 2006 to January 2007).
Draft scheme sent to District Collectors, Zila Panchayat, field level functionaries, various institutions working for women empowerment and eminent persons for suggestions.
Incorporating appropriate suggestions of each stakeholder in every process of designing and implementation of scheme.
Draft on LLY shared at various forums with all stakeholders
Step 3 April 2007 onwards:- Implementation, campaigning & Monitoring
Post approval from State Cabinet in Feb. 2007, LLY implemented from 1st April, 2007
Smart democratic/ participatory leadership skills experienced during the implementation of scheme.
Monthly review undertaken to ensure smooth implementation and resolving issues.
Frequent changes in guidelines and eligibility criteria to extend outreach:-
• Registration of girl child up to five years of birth in case of families where one or both parents are dead.
• If two or more girl children are born at a time in case of first & second delivery, then all the girls are eligible for the scheme.
• Such families who have not registered within one year due to medical reasons may be considered as special cases by the District Collectors.
• Eligible girl child of women prisoners.
Issuing timely guidelines to field functionaries on changes made to ensure wide coverage
Detailed MIS, ladlilaxmi.com developed for on line tracking of each beneficiary on development indicators (health & education) till 21 years, data compilation, storage, analysis and management, collating with department of Post for NSC preparation and renewal and with Lok Sewa Guarantee Kendra for increased outreach and transparency, inbuilt SMS facilities with mobile android applications, hindi font readability, google analytics.
MIS also includes helpdesk management for responses to each query of user within 24 hours.
IEC / campaigning (pamphlets, posters, books, news, advertisements, audio-visual materials, hoardings, wall writing, cinema slides, trainings, workshops).
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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Stakeholders Contribution
A. Government of Madhya Pradesh
Full support of Mr. B.R.Naidu in implementing the scheme, sanctioning of special cases, framing policies for making scheme more beneficiaries oriented, enhancing criteria to cover eligible beneficiaries.
B. Directorate of Women Empowerment
Major contributor to the scheme was the then Director (currently Commissioner), Ms. Kalpana Srivastava. She was involved in designing, implementation, monitoring & supervision of the scheme. She along with other officers of the department like Mr. P. Narhari, Project Director, Mr. J.K. Sharma, Mr. Pankaj Mohan, Financial Advisor, Ms. Rachna Budholiya, Mr. Manish Mohan Agrawal, Ms. Tini Pandey, Mr. Arvind Singh Bhal Manager, Tarun Bamba, Anshul Agrawal ,Ms.Varsha Sharma, Ms. Richa Sawlani and Mr. Bhagwandas were actively involved in issuing timely guidelines to field functionaries on changes made in scheme to ensure wide coverage. effective IEC campaigning by designing, developing & printing of communication materials (brochures, pamphlets, hoardings and audio-visual materials)., involving stakeholders for suggestion / support, online tracking of each beneficiary to ensure effective delivery of services, coordinating with Department of Health for support services, Department of Education for enrollment of girls in school, coordinating with Department of Posts for timely preparation/delivery of NSCs, regular random checks to zero down instances of corruption if any.
C. Department of Posts & Telegraph :Preparation/ Renewal & timely delivery of instruments.
Department of Health : Providing all support services. Ensuring vaccination, routine health checks, referral if required.
Department of Education : Enrolment in school, free educational kits, nutritional meals, motivating families to prevent drop outs.
D. Girl Child
Registration, immunization, nutrition and school enrolment
E. Parents: Ensuring birth and healthy upbringing, education of girl child, population control by adopting family planning.
F. Community: Creating enabling environment for girls and women in the community.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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a. Financial Resources
The scheme is fully funded by the Government of Madhya Pradesh. The budget allocation is made every year for the initiative. At the time of inception, provision of INR 26 crores was made to implement the initiative, but increasing awareness among the public and the benefits the scheme had, has created a huge demand. Accordingly, every year substantial provision, INR 800-1000 Crores has been made to implement the initiative. At the start of this financial year, a total of INR 3142.95 crores has been spent.
The scheme is so beautifully designed that over 98% of the total outlay would be spent directly on the beneficiaries. Only 2% is kept to meet overheads which make the scheme highly cost effective.
b. Human Resources
The state has a wide geographical outreach. It has 51 district headquarters, 313 blocks, 50000 villages and over 90000 Aanganwadis. Hence a huge number of human resources were required to implement the initiative. The department had decided to implement the initiative with the existing manpower available with it without increasing the burden on the outlay of the scheme so that the administrative costs may be reduced and maximum benefits would be given to beneficiaries. A series of trainings were provided to staff at all levels for their capacity building. The intricacies of the scheme were also discussed and shared during the training to get maximum results. Regular workshops and meetings were also conducted to ensure optimum involvement of functionaries involved with the scheme.
c. Technical Resources
The scheme caters to a huge population. It was becoming difficult to track each and every family and ladli on all development indicators. There was no back up support in case if data was lost. The web based MIS at www.ladlilaxmi.com has been developed inhouse using ASP.Net technology. It functions on Intel Xeon 3440 (Intel Xeon 3440) server which enables scheme speed up processing. Huge number of users can access the portal. The system uses limestone data centre and Window Web Sever 2008 R2 operating system. It has Intel Xeon X 3440 Quad – core processor with 2.5 GHZ-4 Core. It has a band width of 5000 GB with a speed of 100 MBPS. The hardware used for hosting e-Ladli has an enormous capacity of 500 GB SATA for data storage. The entire system is hosted at ZNet Live’s Data centre and State Data Resource Centre.
e- Ladli is based on SQL server 2008 R2 data centre to create high end memory and supports 256 logical processors. The server used for e- ladli is extremely handy for running a real time system and create spaces for analysing data and cannot afford the latency of a committed write to a table first. It facilitates monitoring multiple inputs streams simultaneously, tracking, query handling, help desk, etc. It is also prone to mobile applications.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Contributing to positive sex ratio
LLY came into existence due to declining Child Sex Ratio in the state. The scheme has resulted in good responses from different castes and communities. In the first year of implementation only 40854 Girls were registered under the scheme. These girls are not only living a healthy life but as of now over 18,00,000 girls are duly registered and availing benefits of the scheme. LLY has made a positive impact on Child Sex Ratio. According to Annual Health Survey the Child Sex Ratio has increased remarkably and recorded 911 and 916 in 2010-11 and 2012-13 respectively. The scheme is able to provide financial strengths to the girls and will ensure self reliance once they attain 21 years of age.
b. Improved Health
The scheme has an inbuilt component of providing health intervention to all Ladlis. It was ensured that each girl child has availed all important vaccines like Polio, BCG, Khasra, Hepatitis B etc. so that their health status may improve. It was observed that the ladlis covered under the scheme have been immunized properly. As of now over 1.4 million ladlis are fully immunized. The ladlis are availing nutritional supplements in aanganwadis as a result of which, a number of girls have come out of malnutrition.
c. Family Planning
The scheme also envisages adoption of family planning methods for overall population control. The ladli families are willingly adopting family planning methods. There are instances where families are adopting family planning methods after the birth of two girl children only. Such instances show growing importance of girls and change in attitudes of their respective families towards the birth of girls. Even families with one girl child have undergone family planning.
d. School Enrolment
Ladlis enrolment is almost 100%. Ladlis registered in 2007, 2008 and 2009 are now enrolled in schools for their education. Total 4,13,230 ladlis are now getting formal education.
e. Environment Building
The scheme has created an enabling environment for girls in the society. Mass campaigning has led to proliferation of the scheme. It has helped in breaking traditional mindset of society where only the birth of a baby boy was celebrated. The families from all across the state are now proactively accessing the benefits of the scheme, and now the birth of a girl child is also being celebrated. The scheme has now become a movement for holistic empowerment of women.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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Monitoring
The monitoring of the scheme is done through e-Ladli by using latest ICT tools, a self managed system which generates sequential reports on physical / financial progress, outcome indicators as well as through field level reporting by district and project level authorities.
a. Field Level Monitoring
The Project Officer regularly monitors the progress through its field functionaries and also conduct random visit for data validation. The reports received from various villages are being further scrutinized at project office level and then it is fed in the central server. The information on timely issuance of National Savings Certificates (NSCs) also has been linked with the Post Office through the server. The Project Officer verifies the information on financial instruments and cross checks the pendency if any, and then the same is posted on the server under his/her close supervision.
b. District Level Monitoring
The next level monitoring is done at the district level where the District Officer validates reports from each project office, verifies the information from its data bank , prepares report on financial / physical progress, status of girl child on development indicators, on daily basis to ensure credibility and reliability of the data. The compiled report of all the project offices is prepared and submitted online to the state office.
c. State Level Monitoring
Reports from all districts are compiled at state level and verified from data bank for data validation. The state unit informs project office and the district office in case of the discrepancies, evaluates the status of girl child on several development indicators and sees whether the intervention is provided by the field functionaries on time.
Monitoring Methods
a. Activity monitoring
Physical and financial progress, beneficiary/village/project/district wise progress monitored through online MIS.
b. Process monitoring
Process monitoring by organizing workshops with all stakeholders, has helped in making the scheme more flexible and demand driven. Regular visits conducted to obtain feedback from the families on outputs. Online help desk has helped in fine-tuning the scheme as per the need of families.
c. Outcome monitoring
The targets achieved on various development indicators, number of families covered and number of National Savings Certificates issued/ renewed etc. are monitored regularly.
Evaluation
The scheme is regularly been evaluated to assess the impact of the scheme. Physical and financial evaluation is done through online MIS. Various studies have also been conducted through independent agencies to assess the impact.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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The initiative has made an impact on the survival of girl children in a patriarchal society. Even families traditionally prone to patriarchy have shown changed mindset due to the initiative leading to considerable increase in the registration of ladlis. The main obstacles encountered were as follows:-
a. Rigorous and time consuming procedure.
Initially sanction of case was accorded at headquarters. Prior to sanction, the application had to be routed through various functionaries at the village, block and district level. At every stage the application form and relevant documents were verified and then recommended to headquarter for sanction, a time consuming process.
b. Data compilation and management
LLY has extended its outreach to over 50000 populated villages, beginning with 40000 in 2007 to over 18 Lacs Ladlis in 2014, adding almost 3 Lacs Ladlis every year. Sanction of cases was initially accorded from the state office, resulting in manual storage, sequencing and managing of huge volume of data in the form of documents, with involvement of huge manpower, often causing errors and delays in resolving cases. Timely response to numerous queries was also a challenge. Manual tracking of data on developmental indicators and issuance of instruments was difficult.
These obstacles were overcome by adopting the following measures:-
a. Decentralisation of powers
With time, directorate decentralized powers to Districts. Now, Project Officer is the key person for sanctioning/rejection of all cases. In case of any difficulty, collector is the sanctioning authority. Special cases are referred to Principal Secretary for decisions.
b. Online management system
A web enabled online management system ladlilaxmi.com is now in place to monitor all aspects of the scheme. This has resulted in expeditious disposal of cases/queries. The data can be generated in time for analysis and reports.
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