Address the MDGs with urgency: UNMC partners
The United Nations Millennium Campaign, in association with Whypoll, launched the results of a survey conducted across India to understand the urban perception of poverty. The survey spanned 28 States and 38 Cities and over 5000 urban residents participated.
New Delhi: The United Nations Millennium Campaign, in association with Whypoll, launched the results of the first-ever pan-India Survey on urban India’s perception on poverty. With around 5,000 respondents in 38 cities across 28 states, this is the largest-ever study of urban perception of poverty conducted in India. The maiden report focuses on the perception of urban Indian regarding poverty.
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The launch of the survey results was followed by testimonials and studies pertaining to MDG 4 (Child Mortality) and MDG 5 (Maternal Health) respectively by the Family Planning Association of India and World Vision India.
The Launch was attended by members of the Millennium Campaign’s partner organizations including Family Planning Association of India (FPAI), Oxfam India and World Vision, who shared their outlook on the state of MDGs in India.
N Srimati, Executive Director, FPAI, focused on gender in her speech. She said, “Awareness building and service delivery are two major challenges in tackling the issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Women should be able to make well-informed choices along with male involvement with respect to their own health.” Srimati stressed on the active participation of the government to ensure sexual and reproductive rights to women. “It is extremely important for the government to increase public spending on health to 3% from the current 1.1% so as to enable significant progress”, She said.
Reni Jacob, Director-Advocacy, World Vision India, expressed concern about child mortality in India. He said, “Child death is the greatest human rights violation in the world but as a country, we are not taking it seriously, even though 5000 children die every day.” He further warned that the incidence of child deaths could lead to stunted growth and expressed the need to efficiently allocate and mange resources to produce optimum results.
It is noteworthy that World Vision runs a campaign called “Child Health Now” operative in seven states, which tackles child mortality and removes barriers to health access.
Moutushi, Director – Advocacy, Oxfam India, highlighting the gap between the growth rate of Indian economy and the development indices, said “It is of major concern to us to note that while the country has registered 8-10% annual rate of growth over the last few years, the development indices have either stagnated or registered only marginal improvements”. She added,” Economic and social disparities have consistently grown and urgent attention needs to be given now to bridge this development divide if India plans to remain in its accelerating growth trajectory”. said Moutushi.
With only two weeks left for the high-level Indian delegation to visit New York from September 20-22 for the United Nations MDG Review Summit, this survey serves as a crucial point of reference.
