Women's Empowerment
Lt. Gen Arjun Ray (Retd) firmly believes that human security can exist only when there is gender equality. If human development is not engendered, human development will be endangered. He introduced several programmes to ensure that men and women are treated on par and that there is not gender discrimination.
Objectives
- Cater to basic needs of women to enable them to be good mothers and equally good daughters.
- Improve the status of women within the family and community.
- Assure women are involved in family planning decisions.
- Provide quality health care and nourishment to bring down the death rate of pregnant women and to reduce pere-natal deaths.
- Provide high quality school and college education.
These objectives have been outlined keeping in mind the traditional parameters of one's religion.
Lt. Gen Arjun Ray (Retd) also established 11 Empowerment Centres for 700 girls. This is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. The composite package at these centres include:
- Specific vocational training in tailoring, woolen garments, carpet weaving and shawl making.
- Computer literacy and digital fluency along with Internet access. The ratio of computers to girls in these schools is 1:7.
- Enhanced literacy up to class XII under the National Open School (NOS) Scheme.
- Social education to include health care.
- First aid and health prevention norms in accordance with standards laid down by St. John's Ambulance.
- Free lunch and health care.
In addition, Lt. Gen Arjun Ray (Retd) established 60 Adult Education Centers (AEC) to provide basic literacy, social education and health care to about 3600 non-literate women between the ages of 18 to 40. As an incentive, a good number of these centres are provided with community TV sets, sewing and knitting machines. Each batch of women go through an eight month course of training.All women in Adult Education Centres and empowerment centres - 4100 in all, are administered one calcium and one iron tablet daily. A women's hostel with a capacity of 25 girls was opened in Leh.
Scholarships for as many as 75 girls has been arranged. Of them 36 girls are being admitted to schools in Chandigarh and Bangalore.
Many women have been employed as school teachers, nursing assistants and dental technicians.
Women are allowed as much as a 50% reservation in the village poultry cooperatives.
Lt. Gen Arjun Ray (Retd) also made provisions for the rehabilitation of widows. This includes construction of homes for them, provision for 500 free cooking gas connections, priority in job placement and financial support.
