Protest tunes and mottos on their lips and toddlers nestled in their arms, nearly 70 ladies march in file into the three-storied District Panchayat office in Gujarat’s Dahod. Confidently, the ladies climb the very first 2 floorings and park themselves outside the office of the Chief District Health Officer. While lots of young moms sit along the corridor tending to their young babies and nursing them, others dance in circles to impromptu renditions of folk songs that are focused on shaming the government authorities for 9 current maternal deaths in the district and prevalence of poor nutrition. The primary refrain, though, is that the officials are forcing the mothers, who live in remote villages, to take a trip for hours to demand their rightful advantages, when they ought to really be caring for their kids. “Siblings have actually been pushed around and forced to come to the district panchayat,” they say.
Dahod is mostly a tribal district bordering Madhya Pradesh. “743%of the population [is] from the Scheduled Tribes such as Bhil, Nayak, Rathwa, Bhabhor; individuals take a trip to various parts of the State looking for work. Hardship, early marital relationship and illiteracy with greater household size is the normal profile of the backwoods of Dahod,” explains Neeta Hardikar, co-founder of ANANDI, an NGO which works for poor rural women in Gujarat.
These are also the factors mentioned by the Population Structure of India for a high decadal growth in the population of Arranged People in the district between 2001 and 2011 which, at 34%, was almost double that of the rate of population development in the nation. For Dahod as an entire, this figure was 30%, and for Gujarat, it was 19.28%. On the ground, too, four to five children in a household appears to be the norm.
A 120- km travel for young moms
The mothers are here to demand their maternity privileges under the Central federal government’s Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) and the Gujarat government’s Kasturba Sahay Poshan Yojana (KSPY). Originating from the remote towns of Piplod, Dabhva, Bara, Fulpura and Juni Bedi in Devgadh Baria taluka, they have taken a trip for almost three hours and covered a distance of about 120 km in jeeps.
The protest by the ladies is timed to accompany the 3rd anniversary of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s televised address, in which he promised a sum of 6,000 to pregnant females and young mothers across the country, on the birth of their first child. This program was later christened Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana. The scheme guarantees an overall sum of 5,000, to be given in three instalments to pregnant ladies and breast feeding moms. Those who get similar benefits from their employers and civil servant are omitted from the plan.
The benefit is provided just for the very first live birth and the cash is to be credited to the beneficiary’s Aadhaar-linked cost savings account in different periods over a duration of almost 14 months. Each instalment is paid after the mothers fulfill certain conditions– the very first instalment after early registration of pregnancy; the 2nd instalment after six months of pregnancy on the conclusion of at least one ante-natal check-up; and the 3rd instalment after the registration of child-birth and the first cycle of immunisation of the child.
The federal government has actually clubbed this with the Janani Suraksha Yojana, which provides a benefit of700- 1,000, to claim that ladies will get “on an average” 6,000 for every very first kid.
A mother with her second child at the Junibedi village of Dahod taluka, Gujarat
.|Picture Credit: Vijay Soneji
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In Dahod, amongst those inhabiting the second-floor corridor is a grief-stricken and expressionless 26- year-old, Ushaben Girishbhai Naik.
Back at her house in village Juli Bedi, the woman’s grandfather pulls out from an iron trunk among the couple of memorabilia he has– a piece of paper on which is doodled Vilas’s date of birth, April 3, 2018; and date of death, December 12, 2019.
When Vilas was 14 months old, an examination by a regional health employee connected with ANANDI, the NGO, exposed that she weighed merely 5.2 kg, (i.e.) 30%-45%less than her perfect weight.
