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A PIB Backgrounder titled 'Sashakt Nari, Sashakt Bharat', issued for the 80th Independence Day, consolidates the coverage figures of every major women-focused scheme across health, education, skills, finance and safety.
Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana reports 5.13 crore beneficiaries enrolled and Rs 20,571 crore paid as on 31 July 2026; Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan has examined over 7.50 crore pregnant women.
National Family Health Survey comparisons show institutional births rising from 78.9 per cent in NFHS-4 (2015-16) to 90.6 per cent in NFHS-6 (2023-24).
On the economic side, women hold 32.68 crore of the 58.90 crore Jan Dhan accounts, and two-thirds of the 57.79 crore Mudra loans have gone to women entrepreneurs.
The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 - the 106th Constitutional Amendment - reserves 33 per cent of seats for women in the Lok Sabha, State Assemblies and the Delhi Assembly, to take effect after post-census delimitation.
Arrest the declining Child Sex Ratio and secure the survival, protection and education of the girl child across a life-cycle continuum.
Key: Launched on 22 January 2015 at Panipat, Haryana. It is a tri-ministerial scheme run jointly by the Ministries of Women and Child Development, Health and Family Welfare, and Education. It focuses on institutional deliveries, girls' secondary enrolment, dropout reduction and antenatal registration. NFHS-5 (2019-21) recorded a sex ratio of 1,020 females per 1,000 males against 943 in Census 2011.
Provide partial wage compensation and nutrition support to pregnant and lactating women through Direct Benefit Transfer.
Key: Implemented pan-India from 1 January 2017 by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, in discharge of the maternity-benefit obligation in Section 4 of the National Food Security Act, 2013. Rs 5,000 is paid in two instalments for the first living child and Rs 6,000 for a second child if the child is a girl. 5.13 crore enrolled, 4.37 crore paid, Rs 20,571 crore disbursed as on 31 July 2026. It now sits within Mission Shakti.
Guarantee a fixed-day, free and assured antenatal check-up to every pregnant woman, with focused tracking of high-risk pregnancies.
Key: Check-ups are held on the 9th of every month at government facilities. Over 7.50 crore pregnant women examined and 6.85 crore antenatal check-ups conducted; 1.03 crore high-risk pregnancies identified for digital tracking; 8,812 volunteers registered and over 22,000 facilities participating as on 13 August 2026.
Eliminate out-of-pocket expenditure on childbirth in public health institutions.
Key: Entitles every pregnant woman to free delivery including caesarean section, plus free transport, diagnostics, medicines, blood and diet. Over 1.99 crore pregnant women and 16.85 lakh sick infants assisted in FY 2024-25; more than 18.05 crore beneficiaries since 2014-15.
Residential schooling for girls from SC, ST, OBC, minority and below-poverty-line families in educationally backward blocks.
Key: Launched in August 2004 and now implemented within Samagra Shiksha under the Ministry of Education. Enrolment rose from 6.07 lakh in 2020-21 to 7.58 lakh in 2025-26. NEP 2020's Gender Inclusion Fund provides the additional targeted support for disadvantaged girls.
Reduce the financial barrier to girls' higher and technical education.
Key: The Central Sector Scholarship reserves about 50 per cent of awards for meritorious girls from economically weaker families; the National PG Scholarship pays Rs 1.5 lakh a year, including to 3,000 women annually; the AICTE PRAGATI Scholarship has offered 10,000 scholarships a year since 2014-15, benefiting nearly 36,000 girls by 2024-25.
Draw girls into science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers from school level.
Key: Running since December 2019 for girls of Classes IX to XII, it has benefited over 1.12 lakh girls across 300 districts as on March 2026. Supernumerary seats raised women's participation in IITs and NITs from below 10 per cent to over 20 per cent.
Short-term, industry-aligned skilling, with a dedicated track for adolescent girls in new-economy trades.
Key: Nearly 45 per cent of PMKVY beneficiaries are women; version-wise, PMKVY 1.0 trained 19.85 lakh, 2.0 trained or oriented 1.10 crore, 3.0 trained 7.37 lakh and 4.0 has trained over 28 lakh with 19.36 lakh certified. NAVYA (2025) trains girls aged 16-18 in digital marketing, cybersecurity and AI-enabled services across 27 aspirational and North-Eastern districts in 19 states; 1,060 girls trained as of June 2026.
Umbrella mission for women's safety, security and empowerment.
Key: Runs two sub-schemes - Sambal for safety and security, Samarthya for empowerment. One Stop Centres (Sakhi Centres) and 642 Nari Adalats are operational; Women Helpline 181, linked to the Emergency Response number 112, has supported over 1.05 crore women to 31 July 2026; the SHe-Box portal handles workplace harassment complaints online.
Build a Self Help Group economy in which rural women earn sustained incomes and run enterprises.
Key: The SHG platform spans 7,627 blocks with 1.51 crore community cadre members and has accessed over Rs 12.18 lakh crore of bank credit through 50,548+ Bank Sakhis (6 February 2026). Lakhpati Didi, which targets annual household incomes of at least Rs 1 lakh for SHG women, covers 34 States and UTs, 757 districts, 94.31 lakh SHGs and 10.14 crore SHG members as on 31 March 2026. NaMo Drone Didi, with an outlay of Rs 1,261 crore for 2023-24 to 2025-26, targets 15,000 drones for women's SHGs; 1,094 drones had been distributed.
A small savings instrument exclusively for the girl child to fund education and marriage.
Key: Launched on 22 January 2015 alongside Beti Bachao Beti Padhao. Deposits start at Rs 250, earn 8.2 per cent tax-free annual interest and qualify under Section 80C, with partial withdrawal allowed for higher education. Total deposits exceeded Rs 3.33 lakh crore as on December 2025.
Integrated nutrition and early childhood development delivery through the Anganwadi network.
Key: Over 8.94 crore beneficiaries, including 64.46 lakh pregnant women, 45.44 lakh lactating mothers and 15.68 lakh adolescent girls as on 31 July 2026. 1.29 lakh Anganwadi Centres have been upgraded to Saksham Anganwadis in the last five years, with about 13.31 lakh Anganwadi Workers in position.
Creates the entitlement to maternity benefit of not less than Rs 6,000 for pregnant and lactating women. PMMVY is the scheme through which this statutory entitlement is delivered, which is why PMMVY is a legal obligation and not merely a welfare programme.
Inserts Articles 330A and 332A to reserve one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha, the State Legislative Assemblies and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, including within seats already reserved for SCs and STs. Passed by the Lok Sabha on 20 September 2023 and the Rajya Sabha on 21 September 2023, it received assent on 28 September 2023. The reservation runs for 15 years, is subject to extension by Parliament, rotates across constituencies after each delimitation, and takes effect only after a delimitation exercise following a census.
The law behind the SHe-Box portal named in the release, which allows online filing of workplace sexual harassment complaints and their tracking through Internal and Local Committees.
Reserves not less than one-third of seats and chairperson posts in Panchayats for women; the release's figure of 14.5 lakh women elected representatives, nearly 46 per cent of the total, shows actual representation running well ahead of the constitutional floor.
Nodal agency for the National Family Health Survey. NFHS-6 was conducted in 2023-24 for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, covering about 6.79 lakh households across 715 districts, and for the first time was coordinated entirely by IIPS. The NFHS is the source of the institutional-birth, antenatal-care and sex-ratio comparisons in this release.
Nodal ministry for PMMVY, Mission Shakti (Sambal and Samarthya), Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0, and a partner ministry in Beti Bachao Beti Padhao.
The Ministry of Rural Development's mission that builds and finances the SHG network underpinning Lakhpati Didi, Bank Sakhi, NaMo Drone Didi and the Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme, which had backed 4.32 lakh enterprises by 30 June 2026.
The public procurement platform whose Womaniya initiative channels government purchase to women-led enterprises; over 2.1 lakh such enterprises are registered and won more than Rs 28,000 crore of contract value in FY 2025-26, 5.6 per cent of GeM's order value.
| Scheme | What it gives | Ministry | Distinctive marker |
|---|---|---|---|
| PMMVY | Cash maternity benefit by DBT - Rs 5,000 for the first living child, Rs 6,000 for a second child if a girl | Women and Child Development | Delivers the Section 4 entitlement of the National Food Security Act, 2013 |
| PMSMA | Free assured antenatal check-up, with high-risk pregnancy tracking | Health and Family Welfare | Fixed day - the 9th of every month |
| JSSK | Free delivery including caesarean, plus free transport, diagnostics, medicines, blood and diet | Health and Family Welfare | Targets out-of-pocket expenditure, not cash transfer |
| Poshan 2.0 / Saksham Anganwadi | Supplementary nutrition and early childhood care through Anganwadis | Women and Child Development | Delivered through 13.31 lakh Anganwadi Workers |
The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023 is already part of the Constitution, but it reserves seats rather than creating them, and the amendment itself makes its commencement conditional on a delimitation exercise carried out after the relevant Census figures are published. Delimitation is the redrawing of constituency boundaries and the reallocation of seats, done by a Delimitation Commission; only once constituencies are redrawn can one-third of them be earmarked for women and rotated after each subsequent delimitation. The reservation applies inside the SC and ST reserved seats as well, runs for 15 years unless Parliament extends it, and covers the Lok Sabha, State Legislative Assemblies and the Delhi Assembly - not the Rajya Sabha or State Legislative Councils.
Simple Analogy: The law is a seat-allocation rule waiting for a seating plan: the rule is written and binding, but nothing can be allotted until the hall is measured and the chairs are laid out again.
Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya scheme launched for residential upper-primary schooling of girls.
Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram introduced to make public-facility childbirth free of cost.
National Food Security Act creates the statutory maternity benefit entitlement in Section 4.
Beti Bachao Beti Padhao launched at Panipat, Haryana; Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana launched the same day.
Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan begins fixed-day antenatal care on the 9th of every month.
Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana rolled out pan-India.
Vigyan Jyoti begins encouraging girls of Classes IX-XII into STEM.
Mission Shakti launched as an umbrella mission with the Sambal and Samarthya sub-schemes.
Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam passed - Lok Sabha 20 September, Rajya Sabha 21 September, assent 28 September - as the 106th Constitutional Amendment.
NaMo Drone Didi approved with a Rs 1,261 crore outlay running to 2025-26; NFHS-6 fieldwork conducted.
NAVYA begins vocational training for girls aged 16-18; the first batch of 17 women cadets graduates from the National Defence Academy.
Nationwide HPV vaccination campaign launched for about 1.2 crore girls aged 14.
PIB releases the 'Sashakt Nari, Sashakt Bharat' backgrounder consolidating these figures.
The 106th Amendment's commencement depends on delimitation after a census, tying women's reservation directly to the Census exercise and to Article 82 on readjustment after each census.
Jan Dhan (32.68 crore women's accounts), Mudra (two-thirds of loans to women), SVANidhi (46 per cent women beneficiaries) and the SHG-bank linkage worth over Rs 12.18 lakh crore make the gender question a banking-sector question, useful for banking exams as much as for GS3.
Women hold 49.72 per cent of ABHA accounts under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission and 22.48 crore of the 45.5 crore Ayushman cards - a link between gender data and India's health-data infrastructure.
The first 17 women cadets graduating from the NDA in 2025, with 158 having joined since 2022, follows the Supreme Court rulings opening the NDA and permanent commission to women, a standard GS2 polity-and-society link.
The Womaniya initiative on GeM shows procurement being used as an affirmative instrument, connecting to the wider debate on public procurement preferences for MSMEs and women-owned enterprises.
The HPV vaccination campaign launched on 28 February 2026 for 14-year-old girls, alongside 8.73 crore women screened for cervical cancer, connects welfare delivery to the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases.
GS Paper 2 > Welfare Schemes for Vulnerable Sections; GS Paper 1 > Role of Women
General Awareness > Government Schemes
General Awareness > Financial Inclusion and Government Schemes
General Awareness > Current Affairs and Schemes
Women-focused schemes and NFHS indicators appear in Prelims almost every year and are staple SSC and banking general-awareness material.
Number of girls per 1,000 boys in the 0-6 age group; arresting its decline is the founding objective of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao.
The two sub-schemes of Mission Shakti - Sambal for women's safety and security, Samarthya for their empowerment.
A Self Help Group woman whose household achieves a sustainable annual income of at least Rs 1 lakh, delivered through DAY-NRLM.
A trained SHG member who acts as a banking correspondent for her community; over 50,548 had been trained as of 6 February 2026.
A community-level women's grievance redressal forum under Mission Shakti; 642 were operational as per this release.
An NEP 2020 instrument providing targeted support for disadvantaged girls across the school system.
Additional seats created over and above the sanctioned intake, used in IITs and NITs to raise women's participation from below 10 per cent to over 20 per cent.