Digital India 2018: Government launches NARI portal for women empowerment

Till date, the Indian Government has implemented a number of schemes and legislations for women to provide them with equal rights, economic opportunities, social support, legal aid, and housing among many other benefits. However, there is often a lack of awareness of these provisions and difficulties in accessing their benefits.

Thus, to provide women citizens with easy access to information on government schemes and initiatives for women, Union Minister for women and child development Maneka Gandhi has now announced the launch of a new web portal for women. Dubbed as NARI, this new web portal will provide information on all government schemes for women.

"After almost 75 years, this is the first time in India, a new portal has been launched which will provide access to all government schemes and other important information. The portal provides links to the Ministries, Departments and various autonomous bodies offering these schemes as well as easy access to online applications and grievance redressal," the Minister said to the media.

#NARI is a niche initiative by @MinistryWCD to list down all the Centrally & State Specific Schemes. The information will be updated on real-time basis: Smt. @Manekagandhibjp pic.twitter.com/li2X4d4GAQ

— Ministry of WCD (@MinistryWCD) January 2, 2018

As such, users can log on to www.nari.nic.in to access information on different programs offered by various State governments as well as the Centre. The NARI portal carries details on 350 different schemes for women and will be updated from time to time.

The schemes are divided into seven different categories - education, health, employment, housing, and shelter, addressing violence, decision making, and social support. The Minister also noted that NARI elaborates on how the Government is focused to economically empower women through schemes under Direct Benefit Transfer as well.

In addition to this portal, Maneka also unveiled a website for NGOs called e-SAMVAD, an interactive portal allowing NGOs to contact the ministry and share their feedback, suggestions, grievances and their best practices.

Interacting with the press, the minister also commented that the government will initiate a trial run of mobile phones with a panic button from January 26 in Uttar Pradesh. The government in an order in April 2016 has already made it mandatory for all mobile phone manufacturers to provide a panic button feature in cell phones. However, its implementation has been delayed.

The move aims at improving security for women by providing them a tool to alert the local police while NARI and e-Samvad portals have been launched to generate awareness and put together relevant information scattered at different websites.

All in all, by introducing such initiatives it looks like the Indian government is working hard to realize its Digital India dream.