Govt stole my 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' slogan: cop

A woman police officer in Rajasthan has claimed that the government stole her phrase ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ for its flagship campaign to save and educate the girl child.

Chetna Bhati, SHO of a women's police station in Udaipur, claimed to have penned the slogan on August 3, 2012, when she was posted in Nagaur. The campaign was launched in October 2014 and formally inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2015 to address issues like the decline in the child sex ratio, education for girls and women empowerment.

She has now written to the prime minister, seeking recognition of her creativity.
Chetna, who hails from a village in Jaisalmer, said she coined the 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' phrase for a poem she wrote to describe the plight of the girl child. According to Chetna, during a posting in Nagaur in 2012, she sent an official email to the then chief minister Ashok Gehlot, seeking permission to release some posters on the girl child issue with her slogan on it. "But I did not receive a reply. I still have a copy of the email I sent to the chief minister. Over the years, I had forgotten about it. But when the campaign was launched, I was shocked to see that my slogan was used," Chetna told Deccan Herald.  

Action and hope 

Chetna filed RTI applications on November 20, 2015, with the Prime Minister's Office to know the name of the writer and process used by the government to 'get hold of the phrase/slogan'.

“I filed an RTI application with the PMO and asked them about the author of the slogan. The applications were transferred to the departments for women and child development and school education. However, nobody was able to provide any information,” Chetna told DH.

Not satisfied with the response, Chetna has pinned all hopes on Modi. “Our prime minister comes across as sensitive when he addresses the public through ‘Mann ki Baat’. I have written to him and hope that he looks into the matter so that I get due credit for my slogan.” 

With post-graduate degrees in History and English, Chetna worked as a government school teacher before she joined the police force in 1996.