Integrity Score 1090
No Records Found
No Records Found
When the state should be improving access to nutrition and employment opportunities for young women, it is concerning itself with marriage.
The cabinet has given the green signal to increase the age of marriage for Indian women from 18 to 21 years to reduce maternal mortality and undernutrition.
We have been told that this was done after wide consultations with young people, university students, and NGOs working in this sector, particularly in states with high child marriage rates. But will increasing the age of marriage really address the problem of maternal mortality and undernutrition or is this yet another attempt to infantilise Indian women, especially those women who choose to exercise their agency to select partners who may be of a different caste or a religion?
The most common reason why women die during childbirth in India is due to post-partum haemorrhage, or excessive blood loss during or immediately after childbirth, a condition also more likely to occur in women who are anaemic. Data from the NFHS-4 (2015) indicates that over 50% of Indian women enter pregnancy with anaemia and the country has the highest global burden of anaemia in terms of the absolute numbers of women and children who are anaemic.
Also, the burden of maternal mortality is not borne equally by all states.
Better maternal health is inextricably linked to other development initiatives such as a well-functioning public health infrastructure, low levels of poverty, and food security. Maternal Mortality Ratio in India ranges from a high of 215 deaths in Assam per 100,000 births to a low of 43 per 100,000 births in Kerala, according to the Sample Registration System data for 2016-2018. Among the larger states, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh also have very high levels of maternal mortality.
With regard to undernutrition, the government’s attempts to address the problem of anaemia, one of the several and most common form of undernutrition through iron folic acid supplementation in the last two decades have failed miserably as recent rounds of NFHS data and research have indicated.
Read more- https://m.thewire.in/article/women/heres-why-the-move-to-increase-womens-age-of-marriage-is-a-red-herring/amp