CLAIMS

“When mothers and daughters get strong, the family gets strengthened and the welfare of the mothers and daughters is a priority for our government”: Narendra Modi.

“Our government is committed to ensuring the holistic well-being of every family, and this begins with the health and dignity of the women”. Narendra Modi.

“Gone are the days when our sisters and daughters had to endure pain and indignity due to the absence of toilets in their homes”. Narendra Modi

“A distortion has crept in our conduct and we at times insult women. It’s important to get rid of every speech and conduct that lowers the dignity of women,” Narendra Modi.

“India can move forward only by raising the levels of respect for women and the sense of equality. I call upon all of you to move forward with the determination to remove every obstacle coming in the way of all women, sisters, daughters”. Narendra Modi.

Free vaccinations for pregnant women; financial assistance of Rs 5,000 during pregnancy; provision of free healthcare services, up to Rs 5 lakhs for frontline workers such as ASHA and Anganwadi workers.

Pucca houses and Ujjwala Gas Cylinders for women.

50 per cent Jan Dhan Accounts are in the name of women.

65 per cent Mudra Loans have been availed by women.

More than 10 crore SHG women have benefited and more than 1 crore women have become lakhpati Didis. The goal is to convert 3 crore women as ‘Lakhpati Didis’.

TRUTH

Modi’s assertion about women and girls becoming strong in his regime and of their welfare being a priority for his Government rings very hollow in the face of the reality of their lives which has worsened in his regime.

Women and children in India are among the hungriest and most malnourished in the world. India finds itself very low in the World Hunger Index and social norms ensure that women and girl children are the hungriest members of families.

The National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS 5) says “Thirty-six percent of children under age five years are stunted; 19 percent are wasted; 32 percent are underweight” Dec 2022.

Another survey tells us that ‘in India 44 per cent of children under the age of 5 are underweight.72 per cent of infants and 52 per cent of married women have anemia. Research has conclusively shown that malnutrition during pregnancy causes the child to have an increased risk of future diseases, physical retardation, and reduced cognitive abilities.’

Funds for PM POSHAN, the renamed midday meal scheme, were severely under utilised. The allocations for this scheme have also been reduced. The PM-Poshan scheme, earlier known as the Mid Day Meal programme, has been allocated 11,600  crores in 2023-24, down from the revised allocation of 12,800 crore in 2022-23.

The Public Distribution System has also suffered budget cuts, huge numbers of ration-cards have been cancelled and the much touted ‘free’ ration scheme of 5 kgs to each member of a ration-card holding family is highly inadequate in both quantity and coverage.

“A Harvard study, published in February, ‘24  in the JAMA Network Open, a peer-reviewed journal, found that India had by far the largest number of zero-food children (6.7 million), which is almost half of all zero-food children in the 92 countries included in this study. Zero-food children” are children between 6 and 23 months old who did not consume any milk, formula, or food in the last 24 hours.”

The UN Report on Maternal and Infant Health (May 2023)  found that progress in reducing the number of women and babies who die every year during pregnancy, childbirth, or the first weeks after birth has stopped since 2015.

The Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana pays only a onetime benefit of Rs 5,000 that has remained unchanged since 2017. It has been recently increased to Rs 6000 only for the second girl child. Hardly 20 per cent of the eligible beneficiaries are able to access the scheme, and after making Adhaar mandatory for registration, that number declined by 46 per cent in 2022. The budgetary allocation declined by 17 per cent in 23-24 compared to the previous years. Only 29 per cent beneficiaries received both instalments.  Here it is important to remember that BJP-ruled States like Assam, UP, Bihar, MP are the worst performers with maternal mortality rates higher than the national average.  On the other hand, a state like Kerala has an MMR of 42 which is similar to that of developed countries.   

With the closure and mergers of thousands of Government schools, girls education has been badly effected. Their lack of access to smart phones has made things worse.  Scholarships to SC,ST students are also not being paid.  All this will result in increased drop-out rates for girl children.

The Parliamentary Committee report on the Centre’s Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme (Save the girl child, Educate the girl child) stated that between 2016-19, of the 446.72 crores released, 78.9 per cent was spent on media advocacy.

Due to the increased costs of re-filling cylinders given under the ‘Ujjwala Scheme’, many cylinders are lying empty. In 2021-22, 90 lakh beneficiaries did not get their cylinders refilled (The ‘Hindu’); about 1 crore got their cylinders refilled only once. 

In replies to Parliament, the Government has had to admit that most of the beneficiaries had got their cylinders refilled only once and a substantial number had never refilled their cylinders.

While, provision of toilets in the homes is crucial to the health and security of women and girl children, in 2017 UNICEF reported that India had the highest number of people in the world – about 620 million – who defecated in the open (Hindustan Times). Modi had promised that by 2019, every citizen would have a toilet. The gap between promise and reality can be seen that, in his own constituency of Varanasi, by 2019 only 7327 toilets were built against a target of 234,489.

In September, 2023,  the World Bank released its report “Progress on Sanitation in Rural India: Reconciling Diverse Evidence”, and said that usage of toilets built in rural India under the Modi government’s flagship Swachh Bharat Mission declined by 12 percentage points between 2018-19 and 2020-21.

The decline in usage of toilets was most pronounced among the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) communities — 20 and 24 percentage points, respectively. The backsliding implied that “a full quarter of the country’s rural population was not regularly using toilets by 2021.”

While more than half of the Jan Dhan Yojana (JDY) accounts are held by women, they constitute less than 30 per cent of borrowers and receive credit for only 27 per cent of their deposits as compared to 52 per cent for men. Most of their accounts are inactive or are used only to access benefits from Government schemes.

The Government claims that it is supporting the SHGs in a big way, but the reality is that lending to them has been handed over to exploitative MFIs.  Many of the women have fallen into debt traps and have to face humiliation and even violence at the hands of the MFI loan collectors.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) Report, 2023, crimes against women registered a 2.13 per cent increase in 2022 over 2021. In 2017, over 3,15,215 cases of crimes against women were registered. This increased to over 3,65,300 cases in 2022. The increase in the rate of crimes against women over a six-year period is quite significant, at 15.88 per cent. In 2014, the rate of crimes against women, which is the number of crimes against women per one lakh population of women, was 56.3. This rose to 66.4 in 2022.

Uttar Pradesh topped the list in crimes against women for six consecutive years from 2017 to 2022. Delhi and Haryana were among the states with high crime rate against women in 2022.

The NCRB data has recorded a 94.47 per cent surge in sexual offences against children since 2017. Uttar Pradesh has recorded the highest crimes in this category as well, with 8,136 cases out of a total of 63,414 cases recorded in 2022. In 2017, 32,608 incidents under POCSO were registered, which rose to 63,414 in 2022, a 94 per cent increase. The conviction rate in India continues to be low, between 23 to 25 per cent.

BJP leaders and governments do everything in their power to protect perpetrators of crimes against women who belong to their party. Kuldeep Sengar, a BJP MLA in UP, was given protection in a horrifying case of the rape of a minor followed by the murder of her father.

BJP MP, Brijbhushan Saran Singh has been accused by gold medal winning women wrestlers of misusing his position as head of the Wrestling Federation to sexually harass them.

A student of IIT/BHU in the PM’s constituency Varanasi was gang-raped by 3 BJP workers. Even though they were identified within hours, they were not arrested for more than 2 months.

A minister in the BJP Government in Haryana, Sandeep Singh, has been named in an FIR filed by a government coach accusing him of sexual harassment but he continued as a minister till Khattar’s resignation and no action has been taken against him.

A dalit woman in Hathras, UP was gang-raped and severely injured by 4 males belonging to the CM’s Kshatriya caste and was accused of being a liar by him.  After her death followed by an adverse decision by the district court, the victim’s family lives under threat.

In Manipur, women belonging to the tribal, Christian community were handed over to a mob by policemen. They were stripped and subjected to every kind of humiliation and sexual abuse. For 3 months the BJP CM and the PM remained silent.

11 criminals convicted of gang-rape and murder in the Bilkis Bano case were set free by the Gujarat BJP Government. When their release was challenged in the Supreme Court, both the state Government of Gujarat and the Government of India did everything in their power to protect the convicts.

Women in India today are the most insecure, they most vulnerable to assault and violence and the most deprived of justice.

ENSURE THE SECURITY AND WELL BEING OF WOMEN!  DEFEAT BJP!

Published by Communist Party of India (Marxist)