Intersecting Gender, Caste, And Religion Shapes Access To Child Welfare Programs

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Aayush Khadka & Ajay Kumar Yadav

ABSTRACT

While the child welfare system in India has multiple programmes covering nutrition, education, protection and social security, access to these programmes is significantly unequal according to gender, caste, and religious factors. The study explores why some communities continue to be systematically excluded from welfare benefits despite constitutional protection, inclusive policy initiatives and decades of welfare growth. This article employs a critical intersectional analytical approach for exploring how social, cultural and other overlapping identities — of a girl child from a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, of Muslim and other minorities, of nomadic and of stigmatised groups — contribute to vulnerability and develop compounded barriers to accessing welfare support. What remains the underlying problem still is a huge disconnect between policy and practice, combined with pervasive institutional bias, discriminatory social norms, barriers to documentation and local level digital inequalities that further compound the geographic marginalization, these all act as structural barriers to equitable delivery.

Keywords: intersectionality; gender; caste; religion; child welfare schemes; systematic exclusion; structural inequality; policy implementation; India.

INTERSECTING GENDER, CASTE, AND RELIGION SHAPES ACCESS TO CHILD WELFARE PROGRAMS.pdf

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