AP Minorities Welfare department and Union ministry of Minority Affairs make tall claims about educational and economic empowerment of women but they have very few specific schemes to address the issuesand concerns of the fair sex which constitutes 50 percent of the minority population in Andhra Pradesh and the country.

Apart from pre- and post-matric scholarship and fee reimbursement schemes, which are meant for both the sexes, the specific initiatives of Minorities Welfare department include pre- and post-matric hostels and residential schools for girls, development of minority women and children in urban and rural areas (DOMWUA), conduct of mass marriages for poor minority girls and assistance for divorced Muslim women.

The ministry of Minority Affairs’ schemes for both the sexes include pre- and post-matric and merit-cum-means scholarships.

Specific initiatives for girls and women include Maulana Azad national scholarships for meritorious girl students and the much-touted scheme for leadership development of minority women, which has proved to be a non-starter over the last five years. Giving the background of the Leadership Development of Minority Women programme, the high-profile National Advisory Council (NAC)’s Working Group on Minority Affairs, in its draft recommendations, points out that the scheme was developed, based upon a detailed blue-print submitted to the ministry of Women and Child Development by the Planning Commission’s 11th Plan Steering Committee for Women and Children. It was formulated as ascheme for Leadership Development for life, livelihood and civic empowerment of minority women.

The scheme, after being transferred to ministry of Minority Affairs, was recast as Scheme for Leadership Development of Minority Women. However, the scheme suffered from design flaws. Subsequently, the scheme for Leadership Development of Minority Women with a budgetary allocation of 15 crore for the 11th plan is yet to be rolled out.

Minorities Welfare department runs four pre-matric hostels, five post-matric hostels and four English medium residential schools for minority girls in the State. In all, about 400 boarders are lodged in pre-matric hostels and 250 boarders in post-matric hostels for girls. Residential schools for girls have sanctioned strength of 160 students each. AP State Minorities Finance Corporation (APSMFC) is the nodal agency for maintenance of the hostels and residential schools which are all being run in rented buildings.

On the lines of Kalyanamastu scheme run by Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanams, Minorities Welfare department introduced a scheme for performance of mass marriages of poor Muslim and Christian girls through AP State Wakf Board. Mass marriages are conducted thrice in a year on auspicious days and assistance of Rs 15,000 is given to each bride. About 1,689 marriages were performed under the scheme during 2008-10.

APSMFC has been made the nodal agency for this scheme recently. Wakf Board provides maintenance allowance to about 500 divorced Muslim women on the directions of courts under the provisions of Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 1986. APSMFC extended micro-credit assistance to minority women enrolled under selfhelp groups (DOMWUA) for a couple of years and virtually scrapped the scheme in the last three years.

About 10,000 minority women SHGs were sponsored by APSMFC but most of these have become defunct. However, minority women SHGs formed by Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (Serp) and Mission for Elimination of Poverty in Municipal Areas (Mepma) under Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP) have been doing well in the rural and urban areas respectively.

At a recent workshop on 12th plan for Minorities hosted by Minorities Welfare department, there was consensus among participants on the need for focusing on economic empowerment and literacy and educational advancement of Muslim women. The working group on women empowerment chalked out an action plan on strategies, priorities and programmes for the development of minority women.

Specific recommendations of the working group included expansion of educational opportunities for minority girl-children through opening of more pre- and postmatric hostels and residential schools, wider coverage of girls under scholarships and fees reimbursement schemes, imparting vocational and technical training through opening of industrial training institutes and polytechnics for minority girls, expansion of self-help group network under IKP and DOMWUA, linkages with banks and access to loans for self-employment, training for women for income generation and entrepreneurship programmes, linkages with the market for their products and equitable share for minority women under all the schemes implemented by the department of Women Development and Child Welfare.

The working group on minority affairs, constituted by NAC, has noted that the scheme for leadership development of minority women has tremendous potential to make a positive contribution to development of minorities, cutting across schemes and sectors. NAC recommended that the planning commission should re-design the scheme for the 12th Plan and enhance the allocations to Rs 500 crore during 2012-17.

(The writer is a member of AP Legislative Council and journalist)

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / Home> City> Hyderabad / by Syed Amin Jafri / December 25th, 2011