India’s children and women not reaping growth benefits

The latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS) contains grim statistics for a nation whose economy is booming. According to the survey, India lags behind in a number of health and development indices, and the benefits of growth are not reaching women and children even in urban India.

The National Family Health Survey is a large-scale multi-round survey conducted on a representative sample of households throughout India. Its database is meant to strengthen India’s demographic and health policies and programmes. Three rounds have been completed since the surveys began in 1992. The 2005-2006 (NFHS-3) survey is the third, and was conducted by 18 research organisations between December 2005 and August 2006. The nodal agency is the International Institute for Population Sciences.

The surveys provide information at the national level and in each of the 29 states, on fertility, infant and child mortality, family planning, maternal and child health, reproductive health, nutrition, anaemia, utilisation and quality of health and family planning services.

NFHS-3 includes information on several new topics like HIV/AIDS-related behaviour and slum populations.

For the survey, 109,041 households were surveyed, of which 32.6% were urban and 67.4% rural. For the first time, unmarried men and women were included in the survey.

NFHS-3 shows that national malnutrition has gone up by 6.3% and that more and more children are becoming anaemic even before they are learning to walk. There has been a slight improvement in children’s nutritional status, with stunted growth going down from 46% in 1998-1999 to 38% in 2006. The percentage of underweight children from the last survey also dropped marginally from 47% to 46%.

Women’s empowerment has not translated to a substantial difference for over half the country’s women. Only 52.5% of women -- 61.4% urban and 48.5% rural -- said they participated in household decisions. As much as 37.2% of married women reported experiencing spousal violence, with 30.4% of those affected living in urban areas.

The survey also brought home the fact that gender biases are still deeply prevalent, with boys having greater access to education and food and more exposure to the world.

The anaemia percentage for married men and women illustrates the point. While 24.3% of married men are anaemic, the figure for women is 56.2%. Even an affluent state like Gujarat is guilty of neglecting its women and children. While 55.5% of women were anaemic last year, up from 46.3% in 1999, anaemia among children has gone up from 74.5% in 1999 to 80.1% in 2006.

In West Bengal, the picture is no different. Sixty-nine per cent of children and over 62% of pregnant women are anaemic. Among the states, Madhya Pradesh tops the malnourishment list with 60%.

The level of awareness about HIV/AIDS among men and women shows persisting educational differences between boys and girls.

Ironically, obesity shows up as a problem among the rich and middle classes. NFHS-3 reveals that 28.1% of women are obese -- most of them are from urban areas. Obesity among men is lower, at 12.1%.

One slightly positive indicator is the fact that the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime has dropped to 2.7 from 2.9 in the 1998-1999 survey. The use of contraceptives also rose from 48% to 56% in 2005-2006.

The findings of this survey have attracted a lot of attention. Women activists like Brinda Karat of the CPM, Annie Raja of the CPI and Jyotsna Chatterjee of the Joint Women’s Programme met Finance Minister P Chidambaram on February 13 to ask him to pay greater attention to “gender budgeting”. He was also urged to raise the allocations for the Integrated Child Development Scheme. Earlier, the women met Congress president Sonia Gandhi to underline the shortage of funds and lack of delivery infrastructure in poor areas.