Unveiling the efficacy of the Kanyashree Prakalpa; A critical analysis of West Bengal’s initiative to enhance women’s education and diminish dropout rates

Document Type : Original

Authors

Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Marwadi University, Rajkot, India.

Abstract

Comparative public policy is a domain of interdisciplinary study that uses public policy as a unit of analysis for comparing different regimes. A crucial aspect of public policy is public policy evaluation, which must deal with the impact of the policy and not with policy output. Evaluating public policy is crucial for governments because the success or failure of a given policy directly influences the government’s image, impacting its likelihood of returning to power. In most cases, governments focus on highlighting policy outputs which consists of superficial statistical data. Such data may not be a proper representation of the actual impact of the policy. In this regard, this paper aims to evaluate the ‘Kanyashree Prakalpa’ of the West Bengal Government to promote women education and reduce dropout rates. Department of Women Development and Social Welfare, Government of West Bengal (DWD&SW) has designed the Kanyashree Prakalpa in 2012- a conditional cash transfer scheme with the aim of improving the status and well-being of the girl child in West Bengal by incentivizing schooling of all teenage girls and delaying their marriages until the age of 18, the legal age of marriage. Using Thomas R. Dye’s conception of public policy evaluation, this paper aims to study each indicator of the ‘Kanyashree Prakalpa’ to understand the actual impact of the policy in solving the problem it claims to address, and thereby mention ways to improve the policy to better address the pressing problems related to girl child education in India. The paper also addresses the compatibility of the policy in relation to certain SDGs.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Main Object: Politics

Scope: India

موضوع: سیاست

حوزة موضوعی: هند

References

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Journal of Countries Studies
Volume 4, Issue 4
2027
Pages 681-705

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History

  • Receive Date: 20 September 2025
  • Accept Date: 19 October 2025
  • First Publish Date: 05 November 2025
  • Publish Date: 20 February 2027

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