Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan today appealed to the countrymen to "gift a skill" to sisters on Raksha Bandhan to make women self-reliant, saying that with changing times, our understanding of responsibility to protect them should also be re-imagined.
"Gift a skill to your sister this year instead of gifting her material things, which though high on emotive value, does little to empower her well-being. Pay her fees for enrolment in a skills' programme. Take her to a skill-counselling centre.
"To protect a sister is to equip her to become economically self-reliant, to unshackle her from a cycle of dependency that is often her biological destiny, to gift her a skill that will see her through life's challenges," the Union skill development minister said in a video released on his social media accounts.
The minister also appealed to spread the initiative through social media and otherwise.