Modi misled nation by announcing UPA's 2013 maternal benefit scheme as new, his own: Data analysis site

By A Representative
A top data analysis site has said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim of “new” maternity benefit scheme of Rs 6,000 to be transferred directly to the beneficiary is “misleading”. Announced on December 31, 2016, it is meant for pregnant women, who undergo institutional delivery and vaccinate their children.
“We fact-checked his claim, and found that the provision of Rs 6,000 to pregnant women already exists as part of the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013”, says Devanik Saha, who is at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, in the site's analysis, insisting, “Therefore, his claim of the benefit being a new scheme is incorrect.”
The Act has "a special focus" on the nutritional support to women and children, according to the relevant provision of the NFSA, Saha says, adding, besides meal to pregnant women and lactating mothers during pregnancy and six months after the child birth, such women are to be "entitled to receive maternity benefit of not less than Rs 6,000.”
Pointing towards how this came about, the analysis says, “The Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY), a maternity benefit programme introduced in 2010, provides for conditional cash transfer for pregnant and lactating women of 19 years or older for first two live births. It is operational in 52 districts as a ‘pilot’.”
It adds, “The cash incentive provided under the scheme was increased from Rs 4,000 to Rs 6,000 in 2013 to comply with the minimum maternity entitlement provision of the NFSA”, though regretting, even after three years of the Act was passed, the benefit has not been implemented in any state, including his own, Gujarat. The only exception is Tamil Nadu.
In fact, says the site, “The All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government in Tamil Nadu, in 1987, under former Chief Minister MG Ramachandran, launched the state’s flagship programme for pregnant women – Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy Maternity Benefit Scheme, named after the prominent women’s rights activist.”
Calling it “the first-of-its-kind scheme in the country”, the site says, initially the scheme provided “an amount of Rs 300 to every woman below the poverty line to help cover the expenses incurred during childbirth.”

“The sum was increased to Rs 500 in 1995. A little over a decade later, the amount was raised more than ten-fold to Rs 6,000. Then, in 2011, the state government doubled the sum to Rs 12,000”, the site says.
The result, says the site, is that “Tamil Nadu has the second lowest infant mortality rate (20 per 1,000 live births) among all states in India, only behind Kerala (12).”
Government figures show that Modi’s Gujarat has an IMR of 35 per 1,000 live births, higher than 10 out of 21 major states. The states which perform better than Gujarat, apart from Tamil Nadu and Kerala, include Himachal Pradesh (32 per 1000 live births), Jammu and Kashmir (34), Jharkhand (34), Karnataka (29), Maharashtra (22), Punjab (24), Uttarakhand (33), and West Bengal (28).
The site further says, the programme further helped Tamil Nadu reduce maternal mortality rate, which is 90 per 100,000 live births compared to the national average of 178.
Modi’s announcement of Rs 6,000 as maternal benefit comes following a letter to him by members of several civil rights organizations and writ petition in the Supreme Court. Those who wrote to Modi included National Alliance for Maternal Health and Human Rights, Alliance for Right to Early Child Development, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, and Right to Food Campaign.
The letter reminds Modi that “section 4(b) of the NFSA provides for maternity entitlements of Rs 6,000 for all pregnant women, except regular public sector employees, who currently have more substantial entitlements in keeping with global norms.”
Calling it “one of the most important provisions of the Act”, the letter regrets, “the Central Government has completely ignored it. The law has been grossly violated for more than three years, without any justification whatsoever.”
The letter says, the Ministry of Woman and Child Development filed a very misleading affidavit to the Supreme Court on October 30, 2015, “claiming that it was planning to extend the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY) from 53 ‘pilot districts’ to 200 districts in 2015-6 and to all districts in 2016-17.”
It adds, “Contrary to this claim, the budget allocation for IGMSY in the 2016-17 Union Budget remains a measly Rs 400 crore (as in 2015-16 and 2014-15), making it impossible to go beyond the 53 pilot districts. Universal maternity entitlements of Rs 6,000 per child, a very modest and outdated norm, would require an annual allocation of Rs 15,000 crore at the very least.”

Comments

Covishield controversy: How India ignored a warning voice during the pandemic

Dr Amitav Banerjee, MD * It is a matter of pride for us that a person of Indian origin, presently Director of National Institute of Health, USA, is poised to take over one of the most powerful roles in public health. Professor Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian origin physician and a health economist, from Stanford University, USA, will be assuming the appointment of acting head of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USA. Bhattacharya would be leading two apex institutions in the field of public health which not only shape American health policies but act as bellwether globally.

Growth without justice: The politics of wealth and the economics of hunger

By Vikas Meshram* In modern history, few periods have displayed such a grotesque and contradictory picture of wealth as the present. On one side, a handful of individuals accumulate in a single year more wealth than the annual income of entire nations. On the other, nearly every fourth person in the world goes to bed hungry or half-fed.

When a lake becomes real estate: The mismanagement of Hyderabad’s waterbodies

By Dr Mansee Bal Bhargava* Misunderstood, misinterpreted and misguided governance and management of urban lakes in India —illustrated here through Hyderabad —demands urgent attention from Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), the political establishment, the judiciary, the builder–developer lobby, and most importantly, the citizens of Hyderabad. Fundamental misconceptions about urban lakes have shaped policies and practices that systematically misuse, abuse and ultimately erase them—often in the name of urban development.

'Serious violation of international law': US pressure on Mexico to stop oil shipments to Cuba

By Vijay Prashad In January 2026, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US security—a designation that allows the United States government to use sweeping economic restrictions traditionally reserved for national security adversaries. The US blockade against Cuba began in the 1960s, right after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but has tightened over the years. Without any mandate from the United Nations Security Council—which permits sanctions under strict conditions—the United States has operated an illegal, unilateral blockade that tries to force countries from around the world to stop doing basic commerce with Cuba. The new restrictions focus on oil. The United States government has threatened tariffs and sanctions on any country that sells or transports oil to Cuba.

Thali, COVID and academic credibility: All about the 2020 'pseudoscientific' Galgotias paper

By Jag Jivan The first page image of the paper "Corona Virus Killed by Sound Vibrations Produced by Thali or Ghanti: A Potential Hypothesis" published in the Journal of Molecular Pharmaceuticals and Regulatory Affairs , Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2020), has gone viral on social media in the wake of the controversy surrounding a Chinese robot presented by the Galgotias University as its original product at the just-concluded AI summit in Delhi . The resurfacing of the 2020 publication, authored by Dharmendra Kumar , Galgotias University, has reignited debate over academic standards and scientific credibility.

When grief becomes grace: Kerala's quiet revolution in organ donation

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Kerala is an important model for understanding India's diversity precisely because the religious and cultural plurality it has witnessed over centuries brought together traditions and good practices from across the world. Kerala had India's first communist government, was the first state where a duly elected government was dismissed, and remains the first state to achieve near-total literacy. It is also a land where Christianity and Islam took root before they spread to Europe and other parts of the world. Kerala has deep historic rationalist and secular traditions.

Bangladesh goes to polls as press freedom concerns surface

By Nava Thakuria* As Bangladesh heads for its 13th Parliamentary election and a referendum on the July National Charter simultaneously on Thursday (12 February 2026), interim government chief Professor Muhammad Yunus has urged all participating candidates to rise above personal and party interests and prioritize the greater interests of the Muslim-majority nation, regardless of the poll outcomes.

The Galgotia model: How India is losing the war on knowledge

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Galgotia is the face of 'quality education' as envisioned by those who never considered education a tool for social change or national uplift — and yet this is precisely the model Narendra Modi pursued in Gujarat as Chief Minister. In the mid-eighties, when many of us were growing up, 'Nirma' became one of the most popular advertisements on Doordarshan. Whether the product was any good hardly seemed to matter.

Beyond the conflict: Experts outline roadmap for humane street dog solutions

By A Representative In a direct response to the rising polarization surrounding India’s street dog population, a high-level coalition of parliamentarians, legal experts, and civil society leaders gathered in the capital to propose a unified national framework for humane animal management. The emergency deliberations were sparked by a recent Suo Moto judgment that has significantly deepened the divide between animal welfare advocates and those calling for the removal of community dogs, a tension that has recently escalated into reported violence against both animals and their caretakers in states like Telangana.

Search This Blog