5 months ago
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India’s kid extortion systems person oscillated betwixt benevolent payment and post-violation enforcement; neither is equipped to forestall harm. Odisha is pioneering a 3rd pathway: a preventive, adolescent-centred governance exemplary rooted successful hyper-local vigilance and real-time data. The State Strategy and Action Plan to End Child Marriage (SSAP 2024), ADVIKA, Jashoda, and SUBHADRA unneurotic institutionalise rights-based governance arsenic the norm.
The urgency is clear. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 shows that Odisha’s full fertility complaint has dropped to 1.8, down from 2.1 successful 2015-16, beneath replacement level. The 2011 Census pegged the colonisation astatine 4.1 crore; this is projected to scope 4.9 crore by 2036. Over these 25 years, the State volition spot 25% less births, which astir translates to 70 lakh less children. This demographic contraction, coupled with an ageing population, alters the argumentation landscape.
These shifts intersect with entrenched inequities: women represent 49.46% of the population; 83% of citizens unrecorded successful agrarian areas, and 83.6% of women unrecorded successful these spaces. About 40% of Odisha belongs to the Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste communities. Policy cannot spend to beryllium reactive; it indispensable expect vulnerability.
Despite measurable advancement successful respective areas, Odisha’s travel towards sex justness faces structural headwinds. The enactment ratio astatine commencement has declined to 894 (NFHS-5). Odisha ranks precocious nationally successful cyber-crimes against women, with 542 cases (2.4 per lakh). In 2022, 1,120 radical were trafficked, including 140 insignificant girls. The State registered 5,581 missing children. These statistic signify a deeper malaise.
Odisha’s caller reforms bespeak this recognition. The revised SSAP 2024 reorients child-marriage prevention astir household strengthening, assemblage surveillance, organization convergence, and accountability. The outcomes are noteworthy: betwixt 2019 and 2024, the State prevented implicit 14,000 kid marriages; 13,536 villages and 954 Gram Panchayats declared themselves child-marriage-free. The organization architecture has expanded accordingly. In 2024, Odisha appointed implicit 10,000 kid matrimony prohibition officers and much than 63,000 kid matrimony accusation officers, creating a decentralised vigilance system.
If SSAP is the protective framework, ADVIKA is its empowerment engine. Reaching 23.14 lakh adolescents, the programme promotes enactment and agency. It has cultivated 90,000 sakhis and sahelis and 84,000 sakhās and bandhus, who relation arsenic adjacent educators and archetypal responders to forestall kid marriage, trafficking, and abuse.
Meanwhile, the integration of Child Helpline 1098, Women’s Helpline 181, and ERSS (112) has reduced effect times. Child Help Desks astatine 10 large railway stations service arsenic frontline defence against trafficking and unsafe migration. The Amari Shishu dashboard links aggregate databases to way susceptible children and guarantee strategy convergence.
Prevention cannot win without societal protection. The Ashirbad strategy has supported implicit 51,000 COVID-orphaned children, preventing distress-induced aboriginal marriage, oregon labour. Jashoda supported 1,486 children successful 2024–25. A renewed accent connected family-based attraction — kinship, foster attraction oregon adoption — has led to 278 adoptions successful 2024–25, indicating reduced reliance connected organization care.
Complementing these measures are the Orphan Survey and Disability Survey, which place the State’s astir invisible children and guarantee timely linkage to services.
Economic bureau completes Odisha’s empowerment architecture. Subhadra has enabled implicit 1.1 crore women to unfastened integer slope accounts, asserting fiscal independency arsenic a right, not a privilege. Subhadra Plus interventions further safeguard the miss kid crossed each stage, keeping her successful school, connecting her to skills and enterprise, and surrounding her with networks of peers and protection. Collectively, these initiatives crook concern into freedom. Odisha’s experimentation shows what tin beryllium achieved erstwhile kid extortion is treated not arsenic a payment work but arsenic a governance priority.
Shubha Sarma is Principal Secretary, Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Odisha.
Anu Garg is Development Commissioner-cum-Additional Chief Secretary, Planning and Convergence Department, Government of Odisha
