National girl child day is celebrated every year on 24th of January as a national observance day for the girl child. This celebration was started to offer more supports and new opportunities to the girls in the country. It is celebrated to increase the awareness among people about all the inequalities faced by the girl child in the society. Inequality about girl child is a vast problem which includes many areas like inequality in education, nutrition, legal rights, medical care, protection, honour, child marriage and so many.

Why National Girl Child Day is Celebrated??

• It is celebrated to promote the girls position in the society to make their living better among society people.
• It is very necessary to remove different types of social discrimination and exploitation that girls generally face in their life.
• They should be aware of all their legal rights and the facts of life.
• They should be aware that they have the good education, nutrition and health care rights.
• They should be well aware about legislations including Domestic Violence Act 2009, Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 and Dowry Prohibition Act 2006 in order to get their proper rights and face all the challenges in life.
• In our country, female literacy rate is still 53.87% and one third of the youngster girls are malnourished.
• Various steps have been taken at national and state level by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to improve the girl child status through a range of schemes.

Various schemes for Girl Child:-

• Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Hindi: बेटी बचाओ, बेटी पढ़ाओ, Save girl child, educate girl child) is a Government of India scheme that aims to generate awareness and improving the efficiency of welfare services meant for women. The scheme was initiated with an initial corpus of ₹100 crore
• Sukanya Samriddhi Account (literally Girl Child Prosperity Account) in a Government of India backed saving scheme targeted at the parents of girl children. The scheme encourages parents to build a fund for the future education and marriage expenses for their female child
• The Women and Child Development Ministry had implemented a scheme called “Dhanalaksmi” to make cash transfer to the girl child family to fulfil the basic needs such as immunization, birth registration, school enrollment and maintenance up to the Class VIII.
• The Right to Education Act has made available the free and necessary education to the girl child.

National Girl Child Day celebration was started by the Women and Child Development Ministry since 2008 to celebrate as the national observance.