Uttar Pradesh’s Planning Department has launched a groundbreaking initiative, the Women’s Empowerment and Equality (WEE) Index, designed to comprehensively track and enhance women’s self-reliance across the state. This significant tool, developed in collaboration with the Udaiti Foundation, aims to provide crucial insights for targeted planning and policy intervention by assessing women’s economic, social, and educational progress at the district level.
The WEE Index will play a vital role in evaluating the impact of government schemes on women’s well-being, specifically focusing on promoting their dignity and self-reliance. It covers all 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh, utilising 49 indicators and data from 15 different government departments.
Understanding the WEE Index parameters
The WEE Index evaluates district performance across five key parameters:
Entrepreneurship: Measuring women’s involvement in starting and running businesses.
Employment: Assessing women’s participation in the workforce.
Education and Skill Development: Tracking progress in women’s access to education and vocational training.
Livelihood: Evaluating opportunities and stability in women’s income generation.
Safety and Transportation Infrastructure: Examining the environment for women’s security and mobility.
District Categorisation under WEE Index
Based on their performance across these parameters, districts are categorised into four distinct groups:
Champions: Districts demonstrating strong overall performance in women’s empowerment. This category includes Lucknow, Kanpur Nagar, Varanasi, Jhansi, Sultanpur, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Prayagraj, Ayodhya, Sonbhadar, Rae Bareli, Gorakhpur, Deoria, Ambedkar Nagar, Agra, and Ghaziabad.
Leaders: Districts showing robust performance, though needing to sustain their momentum. This group comprises Pratapgarh, Moradabad, Barabanki, Aligarh, and Bareilly.
Contenders: Districts with potential for improvement and growth in women’s empowerment. Ghazipur, Jalaun, Muzaffarnagar, and Bulandshahr fall into this category.
Aspirational: Districts requiring significant focus and intervention to uplift women’s empowerment indicators. This category includes Chandauli, Baghpat, Amroha, Badaun, Sitapur, Siddharthnagar, Balrampur, Mahoba, Sambhal, and Shravasti.
UP govt’s commitment: Eight women-centric schemes
The WEE Index’s findings are based on the impact of eight specific women-centric schemes implemented by the Uttar Pradesh government between 2017 and 2024. These initiatives, a mix of state-specific and national programs, underscore the government’s sustained commitment to women’s empowerment across various dimensions:
Education
Health
Financial Independence
Safety
Livelihood Generation
By meticulously tracking progress through the WEE Index, Uttar Pradesh aims to foster greater dignity, self-reliance, and overall advancement for women throughout the state.
Uttar Pradesh has been at the forefront of implementing a series of impactful women-centric schemes aimed at enhancing safety, education, and economic independence. These initiatives demonstrate the state’s commitment to fostering a supportive environment for women’s growth and self-reliance.
Mission Shakti: A dual-phase push for safety and empowerment
The Mission Shakti campaign in Uttar Pradesh began with a clear mandate: to ensure the safety, dignity, and empowerment of women. Its initial phase, running from October 2020 to April 2021, strategically focused on broad awareness campaigns. This included promoting self-reliance schemes, delivering self-defense training in over 40,000 schools, and expediting trials for crimes against women.
Building on this foundation, Mission Shakti Phase Five has significantly broadened its reach and impact. The program has successfully instilled confidence, safety awareness, and self-reliance in millions of girls across 1.34 lakh schools. Notable achievements include self-defense training for 10 lakh girls, scout and guide training for 80,000, and comprehensive digital and financial literacy programs reaching over 10 lakh students.
Mukhyamantri Kanya Sumangala Yojana: Empowering girls through financial support
The Mukhyamantri Kanya Sumangala Yojana, launched by the Uttar Pradesh government, is a vital scheme dedicated to the welfare and education of girls from economically weaker families (those with an annual income below Rs3 lakh). This initiative provides substantial financial assistance, disbursed in six crucial phases, totalling up to Rs 25,000.
The support covers various milestones in a girl’s life: birth, full vaccination, admission to Classes 1, 6, and 9, and finally, upon admission to a diploma or degree course. Recognising the growing costs of higher education, the scheme’s financial assistance was significantly expanded from Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 on August 30, 2023. As of May 2025, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced that approximately 24 lakh girls across Uttar Pradesh have already benefited from this transformative Yojana.
Lakhpati Didi Programme: Fostering women millionaires at the grassroots
As of November 2024, Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhpati Didi programme has achieved remarkable success in boosting women’s economic independence. This initiative has seen over 1.37 lakh women in the state become ‘lakhpatis,’ meaning they now earn an annual income of ₹1 lakh or more. The scheme has notably led to income growth among 13.28 lakh women Self-Help Group (SHG) members, with an ambitious target of making 28.92 lakh women lakhpatis over the next three years.
The programme achieves this by connecting women to diverse income-generating sources, including agriculture, dairy farming, silk production, and fisheries, through robust departmental convergence. Crucially, 4,274 community resource persons have been trained to provide essential guidance, helping these women establish sustainable livelihoods and achieve true financial independence.
Mukhyamantri Samuhik Vivah Yojana: Enabling mass marriages with enhanced support
The Mukhyamantri Samuhik Vivah Yojana, introduced in October 2017, provides crucial financial assistance for mass weddings, particularly benefiting economically weaker families in Uttar Pradesh. Initially, the scheme offered Rs51,000 per couple. However, a significant revision in 2025 saw this aid increased to Rs 1 lakh per couple, and the annual income eligibility expanded from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 3 lakh.
To date, this scheme has facilitated marriages for over 4.76 lakh couples. This includes substantial support to specific communities: 2.20 lakh Dalit couples, 1.30 lakh OBC couples, and 40,000 couples from minority communities have benefited, underscoring the scheme’s broad reach and inclusive impact.
BC Sakhi Yojana: Empowering rural women as financial enablers
The BC Sakhi Yojana, launched on May 22, 2020, in Uttar Pradesh, has revolutionised rural financial inclusion by appointing over 50,000 rural women as Banking Correspondents (BC Sakhis). These women play a critical role in providing essential banking services at the grassroots level.
Each BC Sakhi receives a monthly honorarium of Rs 4,000 for six months, along with device support to perform their duties effectively. Their efforts have yielded impressive results, collectively facilitating financial transactions worth over Rs 31,626 crore. In return, these BC Sakhis have earned more than Rs 85.81 crore in income through commissions and incentives, significantly boosting their economic standing and promoting financial literacy in remote areas.
Mahila Samarthya Yojana: Catalysing rural women’s economic empowerment
Announced in the Uttar Pradesh budget on February 22, 2021, the Mahila Samarthya Yojana (also known as Mahila Samriddhi Yojana) is dedicated to the economic empowerment of rural women. Its core objective is to promote cottage and home-based industries by organising women into Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and connecting these groups to markets and institutional credit, thereby enhancing household incomes and living standards.
Under this scheme, each women’s SHG receives a substantial Rs25,000 in seed grants. They also benefit from a 2% interest subvention on loans up to Rs 2 lakh, free skill-development workshops, and access to shared machinery at Common Facility Centres. Furthermore, the scheme guarantees their participation in state fairs and e-NAM platforms, alongside providing digital literacy training. By mid-2025, this comprehensive support had helped over 1.2 lakh women across 4,500 SHGs boost their household incomes by an impressive 35%, highlighting the scheme’s transformative impact.
Here’s the information about the Uttar Pradesh government’s women-centric schemes, rewritten in a different way with headlines:
Shabari Sankalp Nutrition Scheme: Battling malnutrition across 39 districts
The Shabari Sankalp Nutrition Scheme, inaugurated on October 23, 2017, is Uttar Pradesh’s dedicated effort to combat malnutrition among women and children. This crucial program targets 39 identified districts, including tribal areas, to deliver comprehensive nutritional support.
The scheme employs a multi-pronged approach, providing direct cash transfers (ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 per month), distributing supplementary nutrition kits (which include fortified food), offering community kitchen meals, and ensuring regular health check-ups. As of mid-2024, the initiative has positively impacted over 4.5 lakh individuals and has been instrumental in reducing malnutrition levels by 18%.
Sakhi Niwas: Providing safe and affordable housing for working women
The Sakhi Niwas, also known as the Working Women’s Hostel Scheme, is a centrally sponsored program operating under the broader Mission Shakti umbrella, overseen by the Ministry of Women & Child Development. This initiative focuses on ensuring safe and affordable accommodation for working women.
In line with this, the Uttar Pradesh government has launched 18 new Sakhi Niwas hostels, each designed to accommodate 50 women. These hostels are strategically located across nine key districts, including Lucknow, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Gorakhpur, Agra, Bareilly, Meerut, Ghaziabad, and Gautam Buddha Nagar. Four of these facilities are entirely funded by the central government, while the remaining are supported with a 60% central and 40% state contribution. The goal is to have all these hostels fully operational by October 2024, providing much-needed secure living spaces for working women in urban centres.
Uttar Pradesh is actively pursuing a comprehensive and forward-thinking strategy for women’s empowerment, marked by significant policy initiatives and the recent introduction of the Women’s Empowerment and Equality (WEE) Index. Launched in 2025 by the Planning Department, the WEE Index represents a crucial step towards data-driven governance. By meticulously tracking women’s progress across economic, social, and educational spheres in all 75 districts, this index provides invaluable insights for targeted planning and effective policy intervention, allowing the state to categorise districts and guide resource allocation.
The foundation of this progress rests upon eight key women-centric schemes implemented since 2017. These initiatives, spanning areas like safety, education, health, and economic independence, demonstrate Uttar Pradesh’s holistic commitment to uplifting women. From Mission Shakti’s focus on security to the Lakhpati Didi programme’s drive for financial autonomy, and the Kanya Sumangala Yojana’s support for education, the state is consistently investing in its female population. The integration of robust policy implementation with the analytical power of the WEE Index suggests a sustained and impactful drive towards inclusive development and greater dignity for women across the state.
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