Women’s empowerment, often framed by Modi’s government under the phrase “Nari Shakti,” meaning women’s power, runs through several major schemes and legislative moments across his tenure. This article covers the specific initiatives behind the rhetoric and what independent reviews have found about their results.
Beti Bachao Beti Padhao
Modi launched the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme, meaning “Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter,” on January 22, 2015, in Panipat, Haryana, a location chosen deliberately because Haryana had, and largely still has, one of India’s most skewed child sex ratios. The scheme, run jointly by the Ministries of Women and Child Development, Health and Family Welfare, and Education, initially targeted 100 “gender-critical” districts before expanding nationwide.
What Official Reviews Found
A Comptroller and Auditor General review of the scheme found it had fallen short of its core objectives, with child sex ratios actually deteriorating in many districts across Haryana and Punjab during the review period, and a parliamentary committee separately found sex ratios had declined in 53 of 161 participating districts between 2014-15 and 2016-17. Reporting on the scheme’s spending also flagged that a large share of its budget, with cited figures ranging from roughly 56 to 80 percent of funds spent between 2014 and 2021, went toward publicity and advertising rather than direct health or education interventions, and that in one specific year, 2016-17, only around 5 crore rupees of a 43 crore rupee allocation was properly utilised, a significant implementation gap between the scheme’s high public visibility and its documented on-ground results.
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The Triple Talaq Law
The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, which criminalised the practice of instant “triple talaq,” passed the Rajya Sabha by a vote of 99 to 84 on July 30, 2019, and took legal effect shortly after. Modi and the BJP have consistently framed this law as a gender-justice measure correcting what they describe as a longstanding wrong against Muslim women. The law drew specific opposition from the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which argued the state lacks authority to legislate on religious matters, and from several opposition parties who objected specifically to the law’s criminalisation clause, carrying up to three years’ imprisonment, arguing a civil remedy would have sufficed without adding a criminal penalty, a position that also drew comment from human rights advocates noting that triple talaq became, as a result, the only form of divorce in India carrying criminal consequences, a distinction applying exclusively to one religious community’s practice.
The Women’s Reservation Bill
Modi introduced the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, the Women’s Reservation Bill, on September 19, 2023, notably the first bill introduced in India’s newly constructed Parliament building. It passed the Lok Sabha the following day by a vote of 454 to 2, with the only dissenting votes coming from AIMIM MPs who wanted the bill to also include sub-quotas for OBC and minority women, and passed the Rajya Sabha near-unanimously on September 21, 2023, receiving presidential assent on September 28, 2023. Modi’s framing emphasised the bill’s long, repeatedly stalled legislative history, first attempted in 1996 and again under PM Vajpayee’s government, positioning its eventual passage as a long-overdue achievement.
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The Implementation Delay Criticism
Despite its overwhelming passage, the bill’s actual implementation is tied to a future delimitation exercise, the redrawing of parliamentary constituency boundaries, which itself depends on the country’s next census, meaning the reserved seats the law provides for are unlikely to actually take effect before the 2029 general election at the earliest, and possibly not until 2034. This delimitation linkage has drawn specific criticism from political analysts who have characterised it as a delay tactic, since a law celebrated with near-unanimous parliamentary support may not produce any actual reserved seats for a full decade or more after its passage. Critics have also noted the bill excludes the Rajya Sabha and state Legislative Councils, and several opposition parties criticised the absence of OBC and minority sub-quotas, arguing the eventual benefits would disproportionately favour urban, upper-caste women.
The “Nari Shakti” Framing in Broader Rhetoric
Beyond these specific schemes and legislation, Modi frequently groups women together with three other constituencies, the poor, youth, and farmers, in a recurring rhetorical formula describing these four groups as the ones he considers most important to serve, a formula repeated across numerous Independence Day and campaign speeches over the years, including during the 2024 election cycle. This grouping reflects a deliberate rhetorical choice to position women’s empowerment not as a standalone, siloed policy area but as one of a small number of central, cross-cutting priorities running through his broader governing philosophy, even as the specific implementation record across individual schemes, as detailed above, has been genuinely mixed.
Bottom Line
Modi’s women-empowerment agenda spans Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’s child-sex-ratio focus, the 2019 criminalisation of triple talaq, and the 2023 Women’s Reservation Bill’s near-unanimous parliamentary passage, each accompanied by substantial rhetorical emphasis on “Nari Shakti.” Independent reviews have found real gaps between this rhetoric and documented results, from the CAG’s findings on Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’s advertising-heavy spending and underwhelming sex-ratio outcomes, to the Women’s Reservation Bill’s implementation being pushed potentially a full decade past its celebrated passage due to its dependence on a future delimitation exercise, illustrating a recurring pattern across these initiatives of ambitious framing meeting slower, more complicated on-ground delivery.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available government and parliamentary records and news reports listed below. It is written for general informational purposes and does not represent an official statement from the Government of India or the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
FAQ
When will the Women’s Reservation Bill’s seat quotas actually take effect?
Not before the 2029 general election at the earliest, and possibly not until 2034, since implementation depends on a future delimitation exercise tied to the next census.
What did the CAG find about Beti Bachao Beti Padhao?
That child sex ratios deteriorated in many participating districts despite the scheme’s high visibility, and that a large share of its budget went to advertising rather than direct interventions.
Why did some opposition parties object to the triple talaq law specifically?
Not to banning the practice itself, but to its criminalisation clause, arguing a civil remedy without imprisonment would have sufficed. —
