Mother of all advice

AYUSH's unscientific advisory betrays a social agenda

In India, five women die every hour during childbirth, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and childbirth-related deaths account for 17 per cent of such deaths globally. These deaths are principally on account of the poor health of mothers, anaemia-related post-partum haemorrhages and deficient medical facilities. Such inconvenient socio-economic truths co-exist uneasily with the increasingly muscular nationalism that sees India as an emerging global power. Yet, if an AYUSH ministry advisory issued last week is to be believed, the remedy to the high rate of maternal mortality is embedded in abstaining from non-vegetarian food, sex, lustful thoughts and bad company, focusing on spiritual contemplation (aided by hanging beautiful pictures in the room and so on) and other related gems. This was, Minister of State (Independent Charge) Shripad Naik said in defence against the uproar that followed, the accumulated wisdom of centuries of yogic practices. 

In truth, these strictures have no basis in anything, let alone medical science. Had such indigenous “practices” really worked, Indian women, most of whom rely on the accumulated wisdom of local midwives rather than the services of trained gynaecologists, would have followed them long ago and India would not have a maternal mortality rate (MMR) of 174 per 100,000 live births (for 2016, according to WHO) or 167 per 100,000 (for 2013, according to government statistics) neither of which looks acceptable. India almost matches Pakistan (178) and Bangladesh (176) and trails Sri Lanka (30) and Bhutan (148) on this account. China, the country with whom we like to think we are competing with, has an MMR of 27, which has nothing to do with following AYUSH ministry-prescribed best practices in maternity care. Mr Naik’s statement also contradicts India’s significant improvement over the past decade, when the reduction from 212 deaths per 100,000 births in 2007-09 was achieved principally through improvements in expectant mothers’ access to better nutrition and healthcare. He is also undermining his own government’s attempts to deliver better (non-spiritual) healthcare to expectant mothers and infants via the recent all-India expansion of the conditional cash-transfer scheme under the maternity benefits programme. The Rs 6,000 per child cash incentive is payable in three instalments linked to regular check-ups and child vaccinations.

At any other time, it would have been possible to dismiss this advisory as freelance zaniness of an overzealous minister. But the fact that the ministry, which usually restricts its advice to such unexceptionable stuff as the benefits of practising yoga daily, should gratuitously offer advice on a matter that is strictly under the purview of the Ministry of Women and Child Development suggests that maternal and infant health is not its principal concern. Taken together with official strictures against eating beef and cow slaughter, a cattle-trading ban, and unofficial initiatives such as vigilante “Romeo squads” and gau rakshaks, a suggestion that momos be banned and increasing restrictions on women’s freedoms in the public sphere, this advisory appears to be part of an effort to drive a specific social agenda. For a country that aspires to compete on the frontiers of cutting-edge space technology, such antediluvian proclivities urgently need to be curbed.