New Delhi, Oct 28 (IANS) If all goes well, the government will soon launch a national programme, called the National Mission for Women, to combat social evils against women. This will be chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the ‘umbrella mission’ will cover all existing programmes for women’s welfare and evaluate and monitor their efficacy.

“The idea of the National Mission for Women was proposed initially by President Pratibha Patil. There are many women-centric programmes in different ministries and this mission will converge them all and monitor them,” Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath said at a press conference in the capital Wednesday.

The mission, which will be on till 2018, will compare figures of maternal mortality, child sex ratio, age of a girl getting married and other such social development indicators - at the beginning and at the end - and then suggest policy changes and new schemes to improve the status of women.

The Planning Commission has allocated Rs.8,670 crore for a period of nine years for the mission.

Also proposed by the women and child development ministry is the “Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls” to improve the nutritional status of girls, who are out of school.

“This programme will be implemented in anganwadi centres,” Tirath said.

The minister, who chaired a national meeting of state ministers and state secretaries in-charge of women and child development Wednesday, said that from just seven states which had agreed to implement the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS), now all others have expressed their interest in it.

“ICPS is a scheme that was launched this year to increase awareness and work on issues of child rights like setting up of foster care homes. Seven states had signed an MoU till now with the centre to jointly handle this scheme financially, but all the other states have said that they will sign it in the next two months,” Tirath added.