The National Girl Child Day is celebrated in India on January 24. It is celebrated to spread awareness about the inequalities faced by the girl child in the country, to encourage the girl’s situation in the society, to offer more supports and new opportunities to the girls in the country and to aware them that they have equal rights of the good education, nutrition and health care.

It was initiated by the government in 2008. Union Ministry of Women and Child Development has been taking different initiatives to address and reverse the trend of declining sex ratio in the country. The trend of decline in the Child Sex Ratio (CSR), defined as number of girls per 1000 of boys between 0-6 years of age, has been unabated since 1961. The decline from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001 and further to 918 in 2011 is alarming and reflects both, pre-birth discrimination manifested through gender biased sex selection, and post birth discrimination against girls. Government has announced Beti Bachao Beti Padhao initiative which is a joint initiative of Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of Human Resource Development with objectives of preventing gender biased sex selective elimination, ensuring survival & protection of the girl child and ensuring education and participation of the girl child.

The Ministry has come up with many steps to contribute to the upliftment of the girl Child like to take the Pride in daughters, to oppose the mindset related to Paraya Dhan, to promote equality between boys and girls, to secure admissions and retention of girl Child in schools, to Support women’s right to inherit and own property and much more.

The objective of all these initiatives is to work towards ensuring that girls are born, loved and nurtured and grow up to become empowered citizens of this country with equal rights and opportunities. Also, International Day of the Girl Child, started from 11 October 2012, is observed on 11 October as declared by the United Nations. It is also called the Day of the Girl and the International Day of the Girl.