Sreelatha Menon: Let them eat cash?

EAR TO THE GROUND

It does not make for refreshing reading to hear that women will starve to feed their children. And so badly do they need medical advice that many of them die giving birth to children. There is evidence on the deaths and the starvation, but more on that later.

One has to only look at the other side of the coin of this martyrdom documented by various surveys.

The Government of India has always believed that the women and children need to be protected from starvation, malnutrition and death, hence the decades old Integrated Child Development Services. It has set up anganwadis or nurseries in villages and backward urban areas that feed pre-school children, pregnant and lactating women.

The children below the age of three can't sit in anganwadis so mothers are provided ready-to-cook food packs usually containing nourishing stuff made of soya and wheat that lasts a week. There is a packet for the mother too if she is pregnant or lactating. A few years ago, the ICDS was modified to include services for adolescent girls too.

Now, that is not the other side of the coin of women's martyrdom. This is: the government is now upset about the poor indicators reflected by the National Family Health Survey, which shows maternity and infant mortality rates as high as ever. Besides, the Supreme Court is insisting on providing anganwadis on demand and reaching every community of 80 families. That will mean a lot of money from the measly Rs 4,700 crore, which till recently was only Rs 1,500 crore.

The government plans to get rid of the food meant for pregnant and lactating mothers and adolescents. It has also decided to do away with plans to have pre-school teaching in the centres.

Instead, it will give some cash to pregnant women to take care of their nutrition. And while anganwadis are for all women and children, the proposed new cash aid would be restricted only to below-poverty-line (BPL) women.

Right to Food activists like Jean Dreze, Biraj Patnaik and many others who have been fighting for improving the ICDS, are distraught. Money is not the same as nutrition aid, they point out. Poverty would force a woman to donate any cash incentive to the family fund rather than think of buying special food for herself.

So, this is the other side of the martyr story. In fact, any one can have the privilege of being a martyr. One only has to be in a position of weakness. Here the government is in the position of power. Therefore, when schemes are trimmed, women and children have to fall by the wayside.

The new ICDS package was reviewed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this week. Whether he is happy or not with it, one agency which is surely not going to like it is the Supreme Court, which has, in a PIL on Right to Food, already ruled that anganwadis have to be in every hamlet, about 13 lakh of them, which is double of what we have now. It has asked for pre-school as well, besides continued feeding of pregnant and lactating mothers. It does not say feed only BPL women. It says feed all mothers, all children and all girls.

What's next? Some poison in dole?