Sixth Five Year Plan: The Shift from Welfare to Development

From the Sixth Plan (1980-85) onwards, a marked shift took place from the Welfare to a Development approach. While the welfare approach treated women as beneficiaries or recipients of benefits, the development approach recognized women as participants in development and not as development targets. It was not enough to introduce a few women specific schemes, but there was need to strive for an all-round development of women. Look at the examples given below:

Example 1: A women in the village was given tailoring lessons under one of the government schemes. But, she had no other means of economic needed to open a small tailoring business. So her training was going waste. She was treated as a target of a welfare programme and afterwards nobody asked her what she really wanted. This is an example of the welfare approach with fixed targets.

Example 2: Before sanctioning women's development programme in a village, a meeting of the women who were residents of the village was called. They were asked to name a few programme which they thought would be helpful to them to better their economic status. They were also asked to give suggestions as to how best these programmes could be implemented. Since the women identified the setting up of a milk- cooperative and basket weaving as their priorities, the development agency started a milk co-operative and provided the initial funding. Training in basket weaving, especially keeping the market needs in view was also given. In this case women were not treated simply as beneficiaries or receivers of a welfare programme, but they were consulted about their choice of a programme and also involved in managing the programme. This is an example of the development approach.

Towards the end of the Sixth Five Year Plan i.e., Plan i.e., in 1985, the Department of Women and Child Development was set up as part of the Ministry of Human Resource Development. This Department was created to function as a central agency to formulate and implement plans, policies and programmes for the development of women and children.