The key findings from the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) of selected states have reminded us that India is facing a crisis of poor nutrition outcomes.
Prevalence of stunting among children has remained stagnant or increased in most of these states. The appalling under-nourishment of children reflects poor maternal nutrition, widespread anaemia and insufficient breastfeeding. Anaemia among women also remains very high and has, in fact, increased in several states.
Clearly, there is an urgent need to boost maternal well-being through comprehensive maternity protection, including health services, supplementary nutrition and wage compensation for the period during late pregnancy, childbirth and exclusive breastfeeding. The existing arrangements for maternity entitlements are inadequate as the Maternity Benefit Act (2017) addresses only those women who work in establishments with 10 or more workers.
The Periodic Labour Force Surveys (2019) show that labour force participation rates among women aged 15 and above is only 25% and among them only 12% work in such establishments. For all other women, the only maternity entitlement available is through the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, a cash transfer scheme of only ₹5,000, grossly under-budgeted, and barely addressing 25% of pregnant women.
Women in agriculture, scheme workers such as anganwadi workers and ASHAs, street vendors and domestic workers are not even included in the Act. There was a possibility for addressing these lacunae in the Code on Social Security (2020) for which rules are being drafted. Unfortunately, this Code has missed the opportunity for creating a framework for universal maternity entitlements.
The Code and the draft rules are exclusionary in the provisions for maternity benefits, which are a cut-and-paste from the Maternity Benefit Act, 2017, where only women who are in formal employment are eligible. The Code specifies that to be entitled for a maternity benefit, a woman should have worked in an establishment for a period of at least 80 days in the 12 months preceding her expected date of delivery, which makes it further difficult to avail the benefit given the precarity of work.
The Code is further discriminatory towards women with more than two children and deprives the third or later child of the care and breastfeeding from their mother as she would get only 12 weeks leave instead of the recommended period of six months (World Health Organization). The maternity benefits are also limited to only three months in the case of adoptive and surrogate mothers. In fact, maternity benefits should be gender neutral as “parental benefit”, since sometimes men may need to care for the child, or the adoptive parent may not be a woman/mother.
Even for women who are eligible, the onerous documentation requirements as laid out in the draft rules include a certificate from a medical officer and a notice to the employer, as well as making submission of Aadhaar details mandatory for unorganised sector workers, and digital application is the norm. This puts an unnecessary burden on the pregnant woman. It would be simpler to rely on the registration of pregnancy with the health department or the Integrated Child Development Services, by just adding a column in the Mother and Child Protection Card, which can be the document used to make her automatically eligible for the payment of a maternity benefit.
While the amended Maternity Benefit Act as well as the Code specify that establishments that have 50 employees shall have a creche facility, the draft rules dilute this provision by stating that “in every establishment where fifty or more women employees are ordinarily employed”. This not only reduces the availability of these facilities of children, but it is likely to make employers reluctant about employing more women. In reality, what was required was expanding the creche provision to all children with a locality-based arrangement that permit the mother to go and breastfeed close to the workplace.
Given the fragile nature of social protection for these working women, all provision of maternity protection should be universally applicable to all working women regardless of the consistency or duration of work and independent of their current status of employment. If we recognise that maternity protection is essential to ensure that women have enough to eat, can rest and breastfeed the baby, and to improving the nutrition indicators, India must make it a universal entitlement.
The coverage of the maternity should neither be establishment-specific nor should it depend on the number of children. In fact, we would be penalising women for no fault of theirs, since during the pandemic and lockdown, lakhs of women went through unwanted pregnancy with no access to contraception or abortion services. Maternity benefits should be a right of all workers regardless of their employment status, or the number of children.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.