Champion of the girl child

At the launch of a project related to maternal and child health care in New Delhi on Tuesday, Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi said she was sceptical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign when it was launched earlier this year. She said the government wanted to find out in states such as Haryana, which has one of the lowest sex ratios the number of females per 1,000 males among Indian states, who in the family took the decision whether a girl should be born. It was found that the dadi (grandmother) took this decision, she said. I am also a dadi, and we are very powerful people, Gandhi quipped. So we have to make dadis the torchbearer of the PMs campaign.