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The Nirbhaya Fund was created in 2013 after the Nirbhaya rape case shook India. The case changed India’s outlook on rape and made the government take rape more seriously as a crime as well. But over the years, not only has the amount of the budget reduced, so has its distribution. There is a real lack of awareness regarding the fund which needs to be addressed.
The Nirbhaya Fund
The Nirbhaya Fund or Scheme was begun in 2013, with and an initial amount of Rs. 100 Crores. The reason this fund was created was to ensure safety and security for the women of India. In 2014-15, 1000 crores in rupees was pumped into the fund according to the annual budget. But in 2015-16, funds were cut down to 55o crores, the same was allocated in 2017-18. Together the funds stand at 3100 crores now. But its usage has been quite arbitrary and not properly managed.
18 projects that had received funds hadn’t even used them. Over 50% of the funds stand unused today, but the streets are still not safe for women. With over 500 crores one can imagine some great changes to emerge from the scheme. 20 crores was released by the Union government for the Central Victim Compensation Fund under the scheme to be used by various states and union territories.
On January 9th of this year, states and union territories were brought to task by the Supreme Court. They were to give details of the release of funds under the Nirbhaya scheme. The National Legal Services Authority was asked to prepare model rules for the victim compensation fund in six weeks.
The Usage of the Fund
The faulty usage of the funds was also commented on by Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi. It’s not only that the fund is being allocated in an orderly manner. But it is not uniformly distributed across states, 28.10 crores were released for Uttar Pradesh, and 21.80 to Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra has received 17.65 crores and West Bengal received 12.65 crores while Delhi received 8.80 crores. What’s curious is that even with these funds in place the condition of the woman doesn’t change on the streets and people are not made aware of the tools available to them to make an appeal in the case of harassment.
The fund was supposed to be a savior for women. It was supposed to bring down the crime rates against women too. But mismanagement of funds makes it hard to believe that the fund will change anything. Despite the guidelines put in place to ensure that the funds are used, we are seeing this situation today.