THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 22 September 2018 (Pro-women, pro-poor)

Pro-women, pro-poor

Mains Paper: 1 | Society
Prelims level: Socio-economic data
Mains level: Role of women and women's organization, population and associated issues, poverty and developmental issues, urbanization, their problems and their remedies.

Introduction

India’s performance in poverty reduction since the early 1990s has been remarkable.
A constant criticism poverty -- social indicators like education and mortality has not been as commendable.
Absolute poverty declined from 46 per cent in 1993/94 to only 13 per cent in 2011/12 (World Bank international poverty line of $1.90 PPP dollars per person per day).
Socio-economic data has shown that improvement in indicators for women was not as good as that for men.
The major component of SBA was to make India OD (open defecation) free by October 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
It depends not only on income but also on access to services.”
Unfortunately, our reformers forgot his message as they proceeded to make India modern and prosperous but attempted to do so without improvements in sanitation.
Simultaneously, PM Modi announced the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (save the daughter, educate the daughter) initiative (aka reform).

Important highlights of the Open Defecation initiatives

Let us first recognise the boldness of the OD initiative.
A taboo conversation word — defecation — was openly discussed.
That close to 50 per cent of rural India was indulging in this practice came as a shock to most.
Newspaper stories have emerged about the “fact” that : the building of toilets has been exaggerated,

do not have enough water, unused bathrooms being used for storage of grain.

Academic analysts warned of a quick-fix; attitudinal change was required, and this was painfully slow.
A few days ago, the UN released data for under-five mortality rates for 180 countries for the period 1990 to 2017.
Apart from safety and dignity for women, open defecation has major implications for mortality, and especially mortality rates for children.

Why did the programme succeed beyond all calculations?

Because it was a pro-poor, pro-female, campaign.
Because it improved the safety and dignity of women.
Because it was (shockingly!) very well administered.
And because it was a high-profile PM campaign.

Way forward

It is not a stringent test because mortality decline is affected by at least four other important factors — income growth, technological advances (medicine and vaccination), improvement in water supply and education of women.
The largest annual pace of decline for female under-five mortality (as well as for males) was observed during the 10-year period 1990 to 2000.
The under-five female mortality rate has shown virtually no improvement for Sweden between 2010 and 2017 — a decline from the rate of 2.8 (per 100,000) in 2010 to 2.6 in 2017.
This is only a decline of (log) 7.4 per cent, compared to over a 40 per cent decline for India.
India achieves the rank of seven for female under-five mortality, a large improvement over the 15 rank just two years earlier!
Yet another performance indicator is the pace of improvement in female mortality relative to that of males.

UPSC Prelims Questions:

Q.1) Consider the following statements regarding Darwaza Band campaign:
1. Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation is the nodal ministry of the campaign.
2. Its main focus is to provide clean water to rural households.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer: A