Integrated Child Protection Scheme and Neoliberal Governmentality: A Textual Analysis
Biplaw Kumar Singh
Abstract
The content analysis of the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) unsettles and questions the settled normative understanding of ICPS rooted in welfare logic. Anchoring the analysis in the shared temporal landscape of ICPS and Post Washington Consensus (PWC), this study shows the strong linkages of ICPS’ normative grid with the basic tenets of PWC. Drawing the inferences from the analytics of governmentality, this study exposes the ICPS’s biases toward a market-oriented solution to child protection that invisibilises the structural constraints. Therefore, it indicates that ICPS aims to realise the rights of children through neoliberal mechanisms and strategies. In this process, the welfare goal and structure of ICPS uniquely blend with neoliberal operationalisation.