The Narendra Modi-led government has provided ‘Suvidha, Suraksha, Samman’ (facility, security, respect) to women during the last nine years, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Thursday while addressing a congregation of beneficiaries of government schemes.

Thoughtfully planned schemes like Ujjwala for gas connections, Swachhta for female toilets and Jal Jeevan for tap water in households not only provided Ease of Living to women but also gave them a sense of self-confidence with self-esteem, he said at Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh.

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The Minister said there has been a paradigm shift in public service delivery and the implementation of government schemes in the last nine years. “Be it DBT, or provision of basic facilities like electricity, water, toilets to poor people, all these have brought a revolution at the grassroots level,” he said.

Jitendra  Singh said that Prime Minister Modi has put Nari Shakti at the forefront of India’s development journey. With a promise to remove drudgery from the daily life of Women, he said the increased usage of LPG cylinders under the Ujjwala Yojana has saved crores of women from chronic respiratory disorders through smoke-free kitchens.

With the success of the ”Swachh Bharat Abhiyan”, crores of women were now able to access toilets in their homes without any fear of safety or violation of dignity. Walking long distances to fetch water for daily consumption was gradually becoming a thing of the past as households across the country were getting tap water connections under the Jal Jeevan Mission.

He said women’s empowerment was contingent upon the economic empowerment of women. Programmes such as MUDRA Yojana in which 68 per cent of loans have been extended to more than 27 crore women, have enabled crores of women across the country to pursue micro-level entrepreneurship and become financially independent.

Under the PM Awas Yojana, women were being made owners of the family home thus becoming active participants in household decision-making. In the last nine years, women have grown from strength to strength.

Their success could be seen in the significant increase in the numbers of female police personnel, medals won by sportswomen for the country and enrollment of women in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

The government has transformed Women from being targets of welfare to agents of empowerment. “Today it is no longer women development, but women-led development,” he said.