Leveraging Bank Deposits to Secure the Future of the Girl Child in India: An Assessment of Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana (Ssy) in Rural Jammu and Kashmir, India

Aswini Nanda, Central University of Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir

Paper is an attempt to understand how bank deposits are used to empower the girl child in India through an innovative scheme in response to masculine sex ratio, low age at marriage and poor enrolment in schools. Named as Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana (SSY), scheme promises higher returns as well as tax rebate on the savings by the households in the name of their girl child up to 10. Maturing after 21 years, scheme operated by local post office/bank yields good monetary returns to the parents that can be used for education of girl child as well as her marriage expense. Launched in 2015, the scheme is popular among poor parents and middle class. It uses primary data from more than 2000 households in poorest three districts of rural Jammu and Kashmir in India to reflect how scheme is been well-liked by the parents. Households are selected though multistage stratified random sampling and father/mother of the girl child are interviewed to understand the interface with the scheme. Results indicate that scheme is extremely popular with the parents in spite of their poverty, education, infrastructural accessibility, etc. even if the maturity of the scheme is far-off, and add to education of the girls while battling some negative stereotypes regarding girl child.

Keywords: Economic Demography, Population Policies, Children, Adolescents, and Youth, Human Capital, Education, and Work

See extended abstract.