Modi scheme "deprives" entitlement to 57% pregnant women; 95% working in informal sector not to get maternal benefit

By Our Representative
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-publicized Pradhan Mantri Matru Vendana Yojana (PMMVY), “launched” last year, will deprive entitlement to 57% of needy pregnant mothers. Revealing this, India’s well-known advocacy group, Right to Food Campaign (RFC) has said this is the direct consequence of restriction imposed to providing benefit to “to only the first birth”.
Calling the conditionality “fundamentally discriminatory to the most marginalized and vulnerable women from socially discriminated communities such as scheduled castes and tribes (SCs and STs) and minorities, putting their lives at risk”, RFC says the Sample Registration System report on fertility indicators show that only “43% of the current live births in India are first order births”.
Insisting that “maternity entitlements are a critical tool to fight malnutrition and infant and maternal mortality”, RFC says, the failure to provide entitlement to such a big number of pregnant women has come about after a series of Government of India steps to undermine the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013.
PMMVY, which is the direct successor of the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY), initiated by the UPA government, interestingly, provides just Rs 5,000 to pregnant women, as against Rs 6,000, which came into effect after the NFSA, 2013 was passed.
Yet another step taken to undermine maternal benefit to pregnant women, says RFC, was the amended Maternity Benefits Act (MBA), which, even while expanding maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks, “covers only about 18 lakh women in the organised sector, whereas over 2.3 crore deliveries take place in India each year.”
“The MBA does not include in its ambit more than 95% of women in the country who work in the informal sector”, RFC complains, adding, “It is unacceptable that a wage compensation of less than half of minimum wages, that too only for one birth, should be the norm for the rest of women under the PMMVY.”
“In fact”, says the top advocacy group, “The modest maternity entitlement under the PMMVY is barely equivalent to five weeks of minimum wages in Bihar (compared to the more than 6 months of paid leave offered in the formal sector)”, adding, “With the PMMVY, the government has squandered the opportunity created by the NFSA, 2013.”
Demanding that not only should the Government of India create a situation under which the negative PMMVY changes should be reversed, RFC wants that the budgetary allocation be “expanded from Rs 2,700 crore to at least Rs. 8,000 crores – 60 per cent of Rs 13,000 crore, the amount necessary to meet the NFSA (assuming a birth rate of 19 per thousand and an effective coverage of 90%).”
RFC’s demand comes amidst the 2015-16 National Family Health Survey (NFHS) pointing out that India’s infant mortality rate is 41 deaths per 1,000 live births. Worse, it says, “World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics show that 174 out of 100,000 Indian women die in childbirth, compared with 23 and 44 out of 100,000 in countries like China and Brazil.”
Endorsed by other civil rights groups such as National Federation of Indian Women, the National Alliance for Maternal Health and Human Rights, Nazdeek and Sahyog, the statement comes close on the heels of RFC telling media, quoting official data, that as of today only 96,000 women out of the 53 lakh beneficiaries have been identified received maternity entitlements.

Comments

India’s climate tech ecosystem in dire need of both early, growth-stage funding: Report

By Our Representative India’s climate tech ecosystem, which boasts over 800 startups, is in dire need of both early and growth-stage funding to leverage its full potential, according to a report by Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (Ventures) and MUFG Bank , Japan. Despite a robust initial funding landscape, with approximately two-thirds of climate tech startups receiving seed capital, growth-stage investments remain critically lacking.

'Flawed' argument: Gandhi had minimal role, naval mutinies alone led to Independence

Counterview Desk Reacting to a Counterview story , "Rewiring history? Bose, not Gandhi, was real Father of Nation: British PM Attlee 'cited'" (January 26, 2016), an avid reader has forwarded reaction in the form of a link , which carries the article "Did Atlee say Gandhi had minimal role in Independence? #FactCheck", published in the site satyagrahis.in. The satyagraha.in article seeks to debunk the view, reported in the Counterview story, taken by retired army officer GD Bakshi in his book, “Bose: An Indian Samurai”, which claims that Gandhiji had a minimal role to play in India's freedom struggle, and that it was Netaji who played the crucial role. We reproduce the satyagraha.in article here. Text: Nowadays it is said by many MK Gandhi critics that Clement Atlee made a statement in which he said Gandhi has ‘minimal’ role in India's independence and gave credit to naval mutinies and with this statement, they concluded the whole freedom struggle.

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

By Rajiv Shah* The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

UNEP report on how climate crisis is impacting displacement, global conflicts, declining health

By Shankar Sharma* A recent report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), titled "A Global Foresight Report on Planetary Health and Human Wellbeing," warrants urgent attention from our country’s developmental perspective. The findings, detailed in the report, should be a source of significant concern not only globally but especially for our nation, which has a vast population and limited natural resources.

Industries fueling climate crisis draining public funds in Global South: ActionAid

By Our Representative A new ActionAid report has exposed the alarming financial drain on the Global South, as climate-wrecking industries like fossil fuels and industrial agriculture receive over US$600 billion annually in public subsidies. The report, "How the Finance Flows: Corporate Capture of Public Finance Fuelling the Climate Crisis in the Global South", reveals that an average of US$677 billion in public finance is directed toward climate-destructive sectors each year, depriving crucial social sectors such as education.

75 years of revolution: How China moved away from ideals of struggle for human liberation

By Harsh Thakor* On October 1st, we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, a pivotal moment in the struggle for human liberation. From 1949 to 1976, China achieved remarkable social equality and revolutionary democracy, outpacing other developing nations in literacy, health care, agricultural output, and industrial production.

Will Bangladesh go Egypt way, where military ruler is in power for a decade?

By Vijay Prashad* The day after former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left Dhaka, I was on the phone with a friend who had spent some time on the streets that day. He told me about the atmosphere in Dhaka, how people with little previous political experience had joined in the large protests alongside the students—who seemed to be leading the agitation. I asked him about the political infrastructure of the students and about their political orientation. He said that the protests seemed well-organized and that the students had escalated their demands from an end to certain quotas for government jobs to an end to the government of Sheikh Hasina. Even hours before she left the country, it did not seem that this would be the outcome.

Overcoming extreme backwardness 75 yrs ago, China has 'risen to 2nd largest economy of the world'

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* On October 1, 1949, the revolutionary people of China established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) by defeating Western imperialism, Japanese colonialism, and Chinese feudal warlords who unleashed a ‘white terror’ on Chinese people, communists and revolutionaries.

Search This Blog