4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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First, the scheme’s design is simple– there are two age-appropriate benefits, and their purpose is immediately linked to the aspirations of its target group. It is made accessible to girls in educational institutions, has very basic eligibility criteria and asks for minimum of documentation, and banks provide no-frills banking facilitates, with the scheme’s benefits transferred directly to bank accounts in the girls’ names. The scheme’s simplicity lends itself to dynamism: it is continually being refined and streamlined as challenges present themselves in the field, and is extensible, both horizontally and vertically.
Secondly, the Scheme is goes much beyond financial enablement to promote all round development. Throughout the state, Kanyashree girls participate in year-round activities to broaden their vision and skills. Complementary initiatives are emerging in every district. Kanyashree sanghas– girls groups with a distinct Kanyashree identity are being set up in schools where Kanyashree girls learn life-skills, receive vocational training, training in martial arts and other activities that promote self-esteem and confidence in themselves.
Kanyashree has now become a brand, a platform for adolescent girls of the state, and its enormous database facilitated by e-governance ensures tracking of individual girls and their linkages to other adolescent girls’ progammes in the state.
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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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The Scheme has been designed and is implemented by the DWCD in convergence with 13 other government departments. At state level, the State Level Project Management Unit (under the DWCD) is the main administrative unit, with corresponding units established in each of the state’s 20 districts.
The scheme’s beneficiaries access the scheme through a single-window service delivery mechanism: application forms are available with the approximately 16,000 schools, colleges and other educational institutions and other institutions, and candidates are supported by the school staff in filling up application forms, collecting and collating supporting documents and in liaising with neighborhood banks for the opening of bank accounts.
From this point onward, service delivery is completely online through Kanyashree Online (wbkanyashree.gov.in), the scheme’s e-governance mechanism maintained by the National Informatics Centre, West Bengal. E-Governance ensures that the scheme delivers implementation and monitoring management of a high order; and efficient and effective service delivery. An important point to note is that girls receive their financial benefits through bank transfer after thorough matching of accounts with banking servers, and after a thorough field verification.
Kanyashree Prakalpa has a multi-tiered monitoring structure, with a State-Level Steering and Monitoring Committee chaired by the Finance Minister and comprising high-level government functionaries from all departments providing strategic guidance. In addition, the Chief Minister personally monitors the scheme on a regular basis. Every District has a Steering and Monitoring Committee, headed by the District Magistrate, and block and district level officials monitor the performance of schemes, and continually refine processes to work around area-specific challenges.
The implementation structure of the scheme has enabled it to reach almost 4 million girls studying in over 16,000 educational institutions of all forms in the state. Moreover, through the Scheme’s communication strategy, families and communities vulnerable to child marriage are regularly exposed to child marriage prevention messaging through local media. In fact, Kanyashree is now a brand in its own right, and has become an emblem of girl’s empowerment throughout West Bengal.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The West Bengal government announced the scheme on March 8, 2013 and launched it on October 1, 2013. In the interim period, the following significant actions were taken to operationalize the scheme.
a) Process maps and Implementation guidelines were developed and refined through a number of consultations convened by the Secretary, DWCD at the state, district and grassroots levels.
b) Convergent implementation platforms, including the state and district management units and monitoring mechanisms were formalized and recruitments undertaken.
c) Through discussions with the State Level Banking Committee, procedures and protocols were established to provide accessible, no-frills banking facilities to Kanyashree candidates, including a simplified one-page application form.
d) The Scheme’s MIS strategy was developed, and the development of an e-portal undertaken by the National Informatics Centre West Bengal.
e) Significant stakeholders were oriented and trained through a Training-Of-Trainers approach, and Implementation Guidelines disseminated.
f) A communication strategy was developed by UNICEF, a media partner selected as per government guidelines, and the communication strategy launched.
g) On August 14, 2013 (now celebrated annually as Kanyashree Day), state wide events were held to publicize the Scheme. In Kolkata, the event was presided over by the Chief Minister of the state. The Scheme was formally launched on 1 October, 2013.
The Scheme’s implementation is driven by a process of continual improvement in the years following its launch, the following are the major steps taken to strengthen its implementation and impact:
a) Several policy amendments were made, the most significant being the raising of the annual scholarship from Rs. 500/- to Rs. 750/- based on feedback from beneficiaries, and were disseminated in a second version of the Implementation Guidelines. Service delivery is held to standards set in the West Bengal Right to Public Service Delivery Act, 2013.
b) In 2014, a baseline study was conducted by Nielsen India Private Limited. Continual monitoring is effected through online reporting, field verification, spot checks and structured and unstructured reporting formats. The government strongly supports independent third-party evaluations. While a multi-phased state-wide rapid assessment by Kadence International and an impact evaluation by Calcutta University are underway, Pratichi Institute have recently submitted a process evaluation which is submitted with this nomination.
c) The Scheme’s e-governance mechanism Kanyashree Online (wbkanyashree.gov.in) has matured into a full-fledged transformational model of governance, with a significant focus on digital participation for adolescent girls.
d) A robust application tracking and grievance redressal mechanism has been constituted, and beneficiaries communicate with implementers through multiple channels – face to face in schools, at block and district offices, through push-and-pull sms messaging, through Kanyashree Online as well as through a mobile application.
e) Continual interaction is encouraged between all levels of implementation – state, district, block and grassroots and refresher trainings at regular intervals ensure that all stakeholders are up-to-date and are supported in implementation.
The benefits paid out under the scheme are funded by the Government of West Bengal, as are the administrative costs. Kanyashree’s budget under the DWCD has been Rs. 31.33 billion with 95.68% of the fund going directly to beneficiaries, and only 4.31% spent on administrative costs. Also, the funds of other departments and schemes relevant to adolescent girls are used for allied activities. The state government and political parties across the board look on the scheme’s expenditure as an investment in its adolescent girls, an investment which will pay dividends in the future in terms of increased income and tax –paying citizens.
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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The key person is the Secretary of the DWCD, the nodal department for the development of women and children, who was guided the Chief Secretary of the state. The scheme is backed by committed political support, with the Chief Minister of West Bengal being its main guiding force.
While the DWCD is the nodal department for Kanyashree Prakalpa, key implementing departments are the Finance Department, Departments of School Education, Higher Education, Technical Education, and Minority Affairs and Madrasah Education.
The Department of Health & Family Welfare, Municipal Affairs, Panchayat and Rural Affairs, Sports and Youth Affairs, Mass Education and Information and Cultural Affairs promote and support the scheme in their own domains, and are an integral part of the Steering and Monitoring Committees at state and district levels, facilitating programme implementation and providing linkages to Kanyashree girls in the various schemes available to socio-economically disadvantaged adolescent girls and their families.
The National Informatics Centre West Bengal is responsible for the setting up of the Kanyashree Portal, a single-window portal for e-governance of the Scheme. Other key partners are the State Level Bankers Committee who facilitated and simplified the process of opening no-frills accounts for recipients.
UNICEF Office for West Bengal have provided technical support in developing the communication strategy, conducting periodic surveys and supporting the baseline study.
At the grassroots level, several NGOs have facilitated the establishment of Kanyashree Clubs and other behaviour change elements of the communication strategy.
Of course, the mainstay of the scheme are the educational institutions and their staff, who serve as the single-window service delivery point of the programme. Not only do they serve as the single-window service delivery point of the programme, teachers and other staff are actively involved as advocates for the empowerment of girls and against child marriage.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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Because of the Scheme’s goal of empowerment of girls through eradication of child marriage and promotion of education for girls, it directly contributes to SDG goals 1, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10. E-Governance, convergence and partnerships in implementation contribute to SDG goals 9, 16 and 17.
Through its conditional cash transfers, Kanyashree has enrolled almost 4 million girls aged 13 – 19 years since October 2013, thereby ensuring that this cohort stays in education and unmarried till at least age 18. Of these girls, approximately 1 million have achieved this goal.
Each of these girls has a bank account in her name, and over 7 million cash transfers (both the annual scholarship and the one-time grant) have been disbursed since the scheme’s inception.
The scheme’s communication strategy has ensured that each of these girls, their school-mates, both male and female, their parents, families and community are aware of the scheme’s purpose, and the core message of gender equality through education, choice, and economic empowerment. The state’s position on child marriage is unequivocal and clear, and Kanyashree has given various concerned stakeholders the wherewithal to take an overt stand against child marriage. This includes state officials mandated with preventing and reporting child marriages, teachers and community members, forward-thinking religious leaders, community based groups and NGOs. Most importantly, it has allowed adolescent girls to speak of their own choices and wishes to their parents.
Girls under the Kanyashree umbrella are preferentially linked to government departments’ education, health, skills development facilities and schemes to ensure their advancement. One of the major linkages are with SABLA, where out-of-school SABLA girls are mainstreamed into education and provided Kanyashree benefits, and already-enrolled Kanyashree girls are linked to SABLA and receive its life-skills trainings and nutritional components.
While Kanyashree’s e-governance mechanism has been central to the successful implementation of the scheme, and has emerged as a valuable database of vulnerable adolescent girls in the state, continual capacity-building, feedback from the bottom-up and a willingness to learn from the field has been one of the scheme’s most valuable processes. A number of gaps pointed out in the process evaluation conducted by Pratichi were already a part of internal monitoring exercises, and had been addressed before the report was published in February 2017. (Pratichi’s field study commenced in February 2016).
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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The main challenge in implementing Kanyashree has been to ensure that each of the scheme’s approximately 4 million beneficiaries, their families and communities, stakeholders in 16,000 and more educational institutions, and local, district and state-level administration remain focused on the key purpose of the scheme: prevention of child marriage; and that all steps taken, when dealing with associated issues, have positive messaging. Although focusing on the poorest of the poor, being associated with Kanyashree has become a matter of prestige; and this has been ensured by
a) Political support of the highest order
b) Continual and consistent public and media attention on the empowerment of girls
c) Ensuring that all administrative personnel are provided regular high-quality capacity building to ensure consistency of implementation and public advocacy.
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