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This article provides information about the role of social welfare services to raise the social status of women in society:
The Central Social Welfare Board (CSWB), set up in 1953, was confronted with the arduous problem of the lack of any governmental machinery and for welfare related activities it undertook the task of promoting welfare through voluntary organisations. It also encouraged women’s organisations to take up such activities in partnership with government.
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As part of this strategy women’s organisations were promoted, especially those working with the grassroots. Mahila Mandals were promoted as ‘delivery mechanisms’ for essential services like education, health, especially for maternal and child health, both by the CSWB and the Community Development Programme through the First and the Second Five-Year Plans.
According to Vina Mazumdar, this combination of institution building and woman resource development was also expected to prepare women to participate in the political and developmental processes. Thus though the language of these strategies reflected contemporary meaning of ‘welfare’, there was a conceptual thrust (even though inadequately articulated) towards actively involving and stimulating the participation of women’s organisations in the process of change.
However, increasing bureaucratic control, top-down designing and streamlining of programmes and declining resource support to organisational and institutional development from below both reflected and contributed to the low priority and non-serious approach to basic issues in promotion of gender equality.
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The Third, Fourth and the Fifth Five-Year Plans saw a decline in support to strategies of organisation building and human resource development. The Report of the National Committee on Women’s Education saw some priority being accorded to Women’s Education. From the period of the Third Plan there was a distinct rise in the priority according to the issue of population control.
Directives from the Planning Commission, from the 4th Plan onwards, failed to integrate Family Planning with Maternal and Child Health (MCD) planning for supplementary nutrition of children and nursing and expectant mothers from poverty groups were not integrated with MCH. The Community Development Programme was another significant step in the early years of development planning. It aimed at decentralised development in the rural areas through community efforts.