A lot of changes have been taken place in the field of the social domain.
These changes are as follows:
(a) Human Rights Protection Act 1993: The government is trying hard to reduce the social disparity and to bring all the classes of people in the society into the mainstream of economic development. Human Rights Protection Act was passed in 1993.
(b) Establishment of Human Rights Commission: National Human Rights Commission was established under this act. The main objective of this act is to protect fundamental human rights like the right to life, equality, etc., and to see that nobody is deprived of these rights. According to this act, the commission can act on the basis of a report of a case of deprivation of fundamental rights, published in a newspaper or other media (‘Sui Moto cognizance’). A complaint can be lodged by a social activist or a social institute on behalf of the victim.
(c) The ‘Domestic Violence Act of 2005: The domestic violence act was passed in 2005 to provide protection to women from domestic violence. The most important provision of this act is the right of a woman to the house where she has been residing even if she doesn’t own the house.
(d) Low sex ratio of girls: According to the 2011 census, the sex ratio of girls in India is very low. In the age group of 0-6 years, the number of girls is 914 against 1000 boys. This is really an alarming situation and several women organizations raised a voice expressing their concern over this matter.
(e) Government schemes to overcome this problem: The state government of Maharashtra implemented different schemes to overcome the problem of the low sex ratio of girls. The Maharashtra state government banned sex/gender prediction tests of a fetus and launched a programme called ‘Lek Ladki’.
After all these programmes, awareness has been created among the people and the social loathing for the birth of a girl is diminishing.
