Circular for Closing of Vidya Lakshmi Bond Scheme for Girls Education in Gujarat State Director Primary Gujarat State Gandhinagar
Vidhyalaxmi Bond Scheme For Girls
Vidhyalaxmi Bond of Rs.2000/- is given to girl entering in Secondary Education belonging to village having female literacy rate less than 35% and belonging to bellow proverty line family. When this girl is passing Std. 10, the bond amount with interest is paid to her.Budget Provision of Rs.3.00 crore has been done for the financial year 2013-14 under the scheme.
Vidya Lakshmi Yojana (VLY), a Gujarat government scheme to encourage girls to finish schooling by issuing Rs 2,000 bonds to them, not only suffers from operational flaws in defining and reaching out to beneficiaries, but also has glaring discrepancies in the conditional cash transfer (CCT) scheme that has been in place for over last 16 years since the launch of the scheme in 2002, according to a report of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad and UNICEF.

The collaborated study on the implementation of scheme, however, notes that the government failed to provide information even under the Right to Information (RTI) Act and therefore lacked in data on how many of the bonds were realised. Consequently, the researchers used date from other reports like CAG among others for the report.

The Vidya Lakshmi Yojana was launched by the BJP government in 2002 when the dropout rate among girls between class I and class VIII was a staggering 35 per cent — almost one-third of girl students used to drop out from schools every year. To reduce and dropout rate and enhance education among girls, the government launched the scheme for girls belonging to below poverty line (BPL) families of urban areas and those living in villages reporting less than 35 per cent literacy levels.

As per the scheme, when girls enroll in class I of a government school, they are entitled to receive a Narmada Nidhi bond of Rs 2,000 (which was Rs 1,000 till 2012). On completion of class VIII, the bond is matured and returned to them with interest. The bond is purchased in the joint name of District Education Officer (DEO) or District Primary Education Officer (DPEO), the girl student, and parent/guardian on enrollment in Class I.

Although the government attributes the reduction in the dropout rate among girls — from 35 per cent in 2001-02 to mere 7.28 per cent in 2013-14 — because of the success of the VLY, the IIMA-UNICEF research found that the bonds were not attractive enough. The report stated that all households claimed that the mix of a very high gestation period of eight years and a “meagre” amount, ranging between Rs 3,500-4,000 for Rs 2,000 Narmada Nidhi bond due to the “fluctuating” interest rate — varied between 11 per cent and 8.5 per cent — made the scheme “not attractive enough or worth all the administrative hurdles”.

From 2003 to 2013, the state government purchased bonds worth Rs 163.24 crore in the scheme, as pointed out in the 2014 CAG report, and the annual interest rate given on the bond has been altered several times. Adding to it, the district-wise target for the Vidya Lakshmi bonds were not revised since 2004, two years after the introduction of the scheme, the report stated.

Circular for Closing of Vidya Lakshmi Bond Scheme for Girls Education in Gujarat State Director Primary Gujarat State Gandhinagar

Even though the fall in dropouts has been significant since the inception of the scheme, it is difficult to ascertain whether and how much the scheme contributed to this, the report says. Moreover, the fall in dropout rates among boys in the same period has been larger. Consequently “sufficient information is not available to isolate the effects of this scheme in reducing dropouts,” the report points out. The report with specific field-based insights from Ahmedabad also reveals glaring discrepancies in the conditional cash transfer (CCT) scheme as “many eligible households not being able to access or being excluded from the scheme”.