Maneka Gandhi’s Q&A Facebook Chat

As part of Vikas Parv to mark two years of Narendra Modi government all the ministers are trying to connect with the citizens and bring to them the major achievements of their respective ministries.

The Union Minister of Women & Child Development, Maneka Sanjay Gandhi too held a live Q&A session on Facebook.

The interaction was aimed to get a one-on-one feedback on citizens' perspective of Good Governance and suggestions on the way forward for Transforming India. The live chat, which began at 9 AM, received an overwhelming response with questions ranging from women's security to child health to the policies and schemes of the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Nearly 1,500 questions were received and 1,00,000 people were reached during the session. The main questions that were answered were on various topics ranging from the recently released Draft National Policy for Women to Adoption, Violence against women, Harassment against elderly women to Child rights, Foster care, Gender sensitisation, among others.

The WCD Minister shed light on the various initiatives of the Ministry like digitisation of Anganwadis, One-stop centres to help women in distress, Training of women sarpanches, Panic buttons in phones, 33% reservation in police, Women volunteers in every village and several similar efforts for women and children of the country.

She added that these initiatives have already started showing positive results and others would be apparent as time goes by. The success of the chat be measured by the fact that it had to be extended due to the heavy stream of questions.

More Facebook Chats:

The great response from the citizens encouraged the minister who said that, "Facebook Live Chat will be a regular feature as it is one of the finest ways to connect with people in the tech-savvy world".

Maneka Gandhi had held the first Q & A session on Facebook India last year in September, in which she highlighted the new initiatives being taken up by the Government for women and children and also received valuable suggestions from the people.

Important announcement by the minister:

As a pioneering initiative to connect with people, Maneka Sanjay Gandhi invited women journalists from across India to a common platform. This will be the first time that journalists from various corners of the country will be brought together with others from larger media houses on June 7, 2016 in New Delhi.

This will provide them a platform to interact among themselves, as well as with the Minister and Ministry's officials. They will get an insight into the Government's initiatives for women and children which it is hoped will empower them to write constructively about the same.