The case against customary exclusion

The question of whether women can be barred entry to the Sabarimala shrine in Kerala demands a solution that advances the constitutional guarantee of equality, non-discrimination and freedom of religion.

On January 18, the Supreme Court will hear final arguments on the question of whether women can be barred entry to the Sabarimala shrine in Kerala. During the hearing on January 11, Justice Dipak Misra indicated that he was broadly sympathetic to women’s claims to entering and worshipping at the shrine. He is reported to have said, “Unless you [i.e. the governing board of the shrine] have a constitutional right to prohibit women entry, you cannot prevent them from worshipping at the shrine.”

These remarks have caused quite a stir. In particular, Justice Misra’s reference to the Constitution, and his suggestion that its non-discrimination clauses might be applicable to this dispute, raise some complex questions about the relationship between freedom of religion, equality, individual rights, and the extent to which the court can interfere in the management of religious institutions.

Room for state intervention

Gautam Bhatia

The history of the framing of the Constitution is a history of conflicting and clashing philosophies. The Constitution's fundamental rights chapter grants rights to individuals against the state, to individuals against other individuals, to groups and communities against the state, and as a final layer, allows the state to restrict these rights for various reasons of social and public interest. Tension between these various provisions is inevitable, and is perhaps reflected most starkly in the religious freedom clauses: Articles 25 and 26. Article 25(1) guarantees to all persons the right to freely profess, practise, and propagate their religion. Mirroring this, Article 26(b) grants to religious denominations the right to manage their own affairs in the matter of religion. Overriding both these provisions, Article 25(2) allows state intervention in religious practice, if it is for the purpose of “social welfare or reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus”. During the debates in the Constituent Assembly, B.R. Ambedkar — supported, among others, by Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, who expressed specific concerns about the plight of women under religious law — endorsed giving wide, interventionist powers to the state on the ground of the deep and pervasive role that religion played in the lives of Indians. “The religious conceptions in this country are so vast that they cover every aspect of life, from birth to death,” he observed, “I do not think it is possible to accept a position of that sort. There is nothing extraordinary in saying that we ought to strive hereafter to limit the definition of religion in such a manner that we shall not extend beyond beliefs and such rituals as may be connected with ceremonials which are essentially religious.” Over the years, the Supreme Court has itself restricted the scope of the religious protection clause to “essential practices of a religion”. While holding that the state cannot use the reform clause to “reform a religion out of existence”, it has nonetheless held that aspects beyond essential practices have no protection from state intervention.

Why does this matter? It matters because the Sabarimala governing board’s argument is that the prohibition of women is justified by “custom”. They rely upon the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965, which permit prohibiting women from accessing places of worship where “custom” or “usage” requires it. During the January 11 hearing, Justice Misra doubted the existence of any such custom. The court’s previous jurisprudence suggests that the burden upon the board will not merely be to establish the existence of a custom, but also that the custom is “essential” to the practice of the religion.

What if the board fails? If it cannot show that prohibiting women from entry is an essential religious practice, then it can no longer claim absolute immunity under Article 26(b). Conversely, however, the women worshippers can argue that prohibiting them from access violates their right to worship under Article 25(1). It has long been accepted by the Supreme Court that the right to worship, as well as modes of worship, are protected by Article 25(1). While the court, admittedly, has held that the right to worship does not extent to worshipping in any and every place, it has also noted that access to places having a “particular significance for [a particular] religion” is constitutionally protected.

If, therefore, the women worshippers can demonstrate that the Sabarimala shrine has special and unique religious significance, their Article 25(1) right to worship there stands established. The board’s prohibition upon their entry, consequently, impermissibly violates their constitutional right to freedom of religion.

The state and the shrine

That does not, however, entirely resolve the issue. The right to freedom of religion under Article 25(1) is enforceable against the state, and not against other individuals, or corporate bodies. The question that the court must answer therefore is whether the Travancore Devaswom Board, which controls access to the shrine, can be equated to the “state”.

In fact, in an earlier decision, the Kerala High Court already appears to have held that it can. Previously, the Supreme Court has held that corporate bodies that are “functionally, financially and administratively” under the control of the state can be equated to the state for the purposes of fundamental rights. The Travancore Devaswom Board is an autonomous body. While its members are appointed by the State legislature, it derives its main income from the administration of the temple. Therefore, it might be difficult to argue that the board is functionally or financially under the control of the State. And if the board cannot be equated with the State, then the constitutional right under Article 25(1) is not enforceable against it.

That does not yet mean that the case is lost. The Supreme Court has held that if one private party obstructs another private party from exercising her constitutional right, then it is the duty of the state to effectuate her right by restraining the former from continuing with its obstruction. Therefore, the women worshippers may ask the court to direct the state to take all necessary steps to guarantee that they are allowed to access and worship at the Sabarimala shrine.

Finally, there is another route the court might take. The Kerala Hindu Places of Worship Rules speak about “customs” and “usages”. The Supreme Court has held that while personal law is exempt from the application of the Constitution, mere ‘custom’ is not. It might therefore simply strike down the offending rule on the ground that it discriminates on grounds of sex, and therefore violates the Constitution.

The Sabarimala case is not the only case of this sort that is before the judiciary. Last year, a group of women approached the Bombay High Court asking for the recognition of their right to enter and worship at the Haji Ali Dargah shrine. The matter is presently awaiting a decision. It seems clear that the coming months will see the question of gender justice in religious institutions at the forefront of the judicial landscape. It is now the task of the courts to craft a solution that advances the constitutional guarantee of equality, non-discrimination and freedom of religion, while remaining cognisant of the fact that the Constitution also guarantees the right of religious sects and denominations to self-governance.

(Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based lawyer. His book Offend, Shock or Disturb: Freedom of Speech under the Indian Constitution was published in December 2015.)

Keywords: Sabarimala temple, Women's rights, Indian Constitution, Travancore Devaswom Board

Source: The Hindu, 16-01-2016

Faith and Reason

ANURAG





A little girl was to undergo an operation. The surgeon said to her, “Before we can make you well, we must put you to sleep for a little while.“The little girl looked up and smiled, “Oh, if you are going to put me to sleep, I must say my prayers first.“ She knelt down beside the table and prayed, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.“ The surgeon said later that he prayed that night for the first time in 30 years.
Prayer doesn't change things.It changes people, and they change things. So, don't pray for lighter burdens; pray for stronger backs.
Faith as embodied in religion and reason as embodied in science are often but erroneously thought of as being in opposition to each other. Science is not an enemy of religion, only of superstition. Both science and religion are engaged in the search for truth, the difference is in the methodologies used.
Science is an investigation of truth in the finite nature outside, the object. Religion is an investigation into the nature of the infinite, the subject. Science aims for universally verifiable knowledge. Religion aims for individual realisation.
It is true that universal laws operate regardless of one's beliefs and faith. We respect science, because it is premised on reason. Faith is not predicated upon reason; it is beyond reason. But there are many questions to which our faith alone can help us find answers.Selfless faith and prayer can work wonders.

Bennett University, edX Tie up for Online Courses

Mumbai: Our Bureau





edX will be the preferred worldwide provider of massive open online courses to Bennett University

Bennett University, a Times Group initiative, and edX, the non-profit online learning initiative founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), on Friday signed a collaborative agreement under which edX will be the preferred worldwide provider of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to Bennett University . The tie-up was announced during the first meet of the recently formed International Advisory Council, comprising leading global educationists and industry leaders in Mumbai.edX and Bennett University will work to develop a mutually agreeable plan for offering MOOCs to students as part of a blended curriculum through offline and online courses.edX will train the Bennett University faculty to create and host blended courses.
“We are delighted to announce this collaboration with edX and are confident that their expertise and global reach will greatly benefit Bennett University students. This is a milestone in the Indian education forum and I firmly believe the association with edX will assist graduating students to be industryready from day one,“ said Vineet Jain, managing director, Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL), and chancellor, Bennett University .
“At edX, we are committed to offering high quality education around the world and India is an important and growing market for us,“ said Anant Agarwal, CEO, edX, and a professor at MIT. “We are certain that with the linea ge of the Times Group, Bennett University will be instrumental in extending learning opportunities to learners who lack access to education and high quality resources,“ said Agarwal, who is also a member of the International Advisory Council of Bennett University .
Jain and Agarwal stressed on the growing need for innovative and international education standards in the country .
“Bennett University is launched by the Times of India group which is at the forefront of innovation in media business. We are very excited about this partnership because edX is among the best in the world in online education, so we want to continue this practice of innovation even in education,“ said Jain.
Bennett University kicks off in July this year and is located in Greater Noida. The university will initially offer a BTech in engineering and an MBA in management. Over the next few years, it will expand to a comprehensive offering of undergraduate, post graduate and PhD programmes across engineering, media, law, design, architecture, liberal arts and applied sciences.

Source: Economic Times, 16-01-2016

Liberty and the nation state

The relationship between liberty and nationalism is at once close, complex and contradictory

Central to the European Enlightenment, the concepts of liberty and nation state have profoundly shaped the modern world. Beginning with the English, American and French Revolutions in the 17th and 18th centuries, these forces also inspired anti-colonial movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the struggle against authoritarian, communist and fascistic regimes that rages to this day.

That the same concepts should lie behind modern democratic and authoritarian regimes is something of a conundrum. The relationship between liberty and nationalism is at once close, complex and contradictory. It is unsurprisingly widely misunderstood.

These tensions are apparent from the writings of the great political thinkers who shaped modernity, and have not been resolved to this day. Jean Jacques Rousseau drew a distinction between natural liberty, the freedom to pursue one’s own desires, and civil or moral liberty, the freedom to follow the general will.

Does the state exist primarily to protect individual rights or the general will? John Locke and Thomas Hobbes took different positions based on opposing notions of man. For Locke, man was by nature a social animal. In the state of nature, though insecure, men mostly kept their promises, honoured their obligations, and were peaceful and pleasant. Locke’s view was that the state exists to preserve the natural rights of citizens. When governments fail in that task, citizens can withdraw support and even rebel.

John Stuart Mill, one of the most intransigent defenders of individual liberties, went further to argue that such freedoms also needed to be protected from transgressions by the state. The American constitution is informed by this ‘negative’ concept of liberty as it seeks to limit the reach of the state on individual freedoms. Herein lie the roots of modern libertarianism wherein the individual is free to pursue whatever he wants, including offending, but not harming, others. In the words of Voltaire, “I disagree with everything you say but shall defend to the death your right to say it.”

Running counter to this ‘negative’ concept of liberty is the positive concept that flows from Rousseau’s civil or moral liberty. According to Hobbes, man is not by nature a social animal. The state of nature is violent, where life is “nasty, brutish and short”. Human society could not exist except by the power of the state. Rights were conceded to the state in return for life. Whatever the state does is just by definition. Rights are not natural but given to citizens by the state. Society is a direct creation of the state, and the common will a reflection of the will of the ruler.

Till very recently, human societies were intensely local, with most people rarely travelling beyond their village. It was the technological revolution of the industrial era that made possible rapid mass transportation of people, goods and ideas across long distances. This laid the basis of the absolutist state that undermined local state-like autonomies and the birth of civil society, without which the emergence of national identity was difficult.

This led, first, to the decline of the great empires like the Hapsburg, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman, with submerged nationalities forming their own states in the wake of the French Revolution, and subsequently to nationalist movements in the colonies and the decline of European imperial empires, such as the British and French.

Although originally a liberating force, the intellectual roots of the nation state lay in the positive concept of liberty. It did not guarantee greater individual freedoms, which could be subordinated to the common will embodied in the state. The nation state led to the rise of both liberal democracies in Europe on the one hand, and communist and fascist regimes on the other. Most post-colonial nation states were authoritarian dictatorships of the right or left.

Just as the nation state emerged at a particular point in history as a liberating and integrating force, it is currently being undermined by globalizing forces and is now more a constraining force, dividing people and with a mission creep extending far beyond protecting life and natural rights. Technology that once undermined medieval localism through the communications revolution is now undermining the nation state through the digital revolution, empowering people through greater choice in goods, services, ideas and relationships that transcend national boundaries. Macroeconomic policies devised for closed economies are becoming ineffective through increasing cross-border trade, capital and policy spillovers which have made the US dollar the global currency and the US Federal Reserve the global central bank. Post-war institutions of global governance centred on the nation state, such as the United Nations, World Trade Organization and Bretton Woods have become dysfunctional. Conventional war among nations has become irrelevant where there is a vast technological gap between the greatest military power and the rest. Warfare has already acquired a post-nation state form: stateless, global and directed at individual rather than national liberty.

The nation state is also giving the state greater controlling powers reminiscent of the Orwellian classic 1984. Nationalist sentiments are now strongest among rising powers where there are the greatest constraints on individual liberties even as they weaken in freer societies. It may well be the case that individual liberty can now thrive best in a post-nationalist world. Plurilateral arrangements like the European Union and the resurgent G20, disorderly as they might presently appear, and beyond that science fiction like Star Trek, give us a glimpse of what lies beyond the nation state. But the new institutions of global governance are yet to take shape.

Source; http://epaper.livemint.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

What works for women at work

The ministry of labour is to require all establishments with 30 women workers or 50 total workers to provide crèche facilities for their employees, either at the premises or within half a kilometre.

Finally some good news: The Central government has begun to recognise that women workers need adequate maternity protection. Of course, the new measures announced are still quite limited. The ministry of women and child development has decided to increase maternity leave from the current 12 weeks to 26 weeks and extend this to all women workers in both public and private employment. The ministry of labour is to require all establishments with 30 women workers or 50 total workers to provide crèche facilities for their employees, either at the premises or within half a kilometre.

These are definitely welcome measures, apparently a response to low and declining rates of female work participation. India stands out in the world because of shockingly low rates of recognised work participation by women (around 24 per cent) that have even declined over the past decade. This obviously represents a huge economic loss for the country — but it is also a sign of the continuing low status of women and their lack of agency in Indian society.

As it happens, most women in India do indeed work, but they are involved not in paid employment but in unpaid work in their homes or communities. Such work is socially necessary but unsung and unrewarded — everything from cooking and cleaning to looking after the young, the old and the sick, to collecting fuel wood and water for households, to tending gardens and livestock, and so on. Bizarrely, during the recent economic boom in India, official data suggests that more women have moved from paid or recognised employment to doing unpaid work in their households.

There are many factors behind this peculiar tendency. The sheer inadequacy of job creation in the economy makes it hard for women to find suitable jobs. Gender gaps in education also work against them. For less skilled women, available paid jobs tend to be physically arduous and pay much lower wages than for men. The double burden of paid work and unpaid work creates extreme time poverty for working women. So when family incomes improve even slightly (as they did in the previous decade when real wage rates were rising — something that is no longer the case) women may be less inclined to try and do both.

And there are other impediments to women working outside the home: Patriarchal attitudes within families and social restriction on mobility; concerns about commuting time and about security at work and during the commute; and the difficulties of managing domestic responsibilities along with the paid jobs, given the unequal division of household work between men and women within families.

So maternity leave for the actual period of childbirth and the immediate aftermath is only one of the many concerns that working women have — though it is in itself a big one. If the government does succeed in making private employers provide increased maternity leave and in providing crèches at or near workplaces, that will certainly be a step towards somewhat easing the double burden that working mothers face. It would put India (at least legally) in a better position than many other countries like the US, though still far behind more enlightened countries in northern and eastern Europe as well as Central Asia. Some countries like Canada and Australia even provide a year of parental leave, which can be shared between parents.

But Indian working women would be in a better position only if these laws are actually implemented. Unfortunately, most labour laws in India are honoured only in the breach, and there is little or no serious attempt to enforce them, especially among private employers. Indeed, concerns have already been voiced that such laws and rules will only prevent employers from hiring women, or push more women workers into informal contracts where their rights are

not recognised.

In any case, at the moment, only around 10 per cent of the 60 million or so women in India who are recognised as workers have jobs in the organised sector. And even many of those have informal contracts, with little or no social protection. Most of the millions of women working in the unorganised sector, as regular workers in small establishments or in domestic work or as casual workers earning daily wages or as self-employed workers, currently do not get any kind of paid maternal leave.

So this is still just a tiny step towards the larger goals of improving women’s participation in paid work and increasing their economic empowerment. To make a real difference, public intervention has to be wider and more ambitious.

It has to address the huge issue of unpaid work, by taking measures to recognise it (for example through systematic and regular time-use surveys that capture people’s activities); to reduce it (by providing more goods and services that will mitigate the need for such work, such as the provision of basic amenities like piped fuel and water and better quality and affordable healthcare and education services); and to redistribute it both between households and society and within households across males and females. It has to deal with concerns about women’s security in public places and workplaces.

It has to focus on education that reduces the number of female dropouts and improves quality. It has to work towards reducing the huge gender gaps in wages in most activities. Without serious attempts on all these fronts and on enforcement, these newly declared measures will seem like tokenism.

The writer is professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

Source: Indian Express, 14-01-2016

Farm vision statement

We need a national framework to address agricultural problems.

The government must decide that it must do brilliantly with regard to farming. India lacks a focused managerial framework to usher in the transformation that agriculture requires. That framework is what the Sarthak Krishi Yojana advocates (www.rallis.co.in/sarthakkrishiyojana.html).

Common readers may not have used the word “mathiness”. University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler said that economists increasingly suffer from theory-induced blindness, ignoring real-world phenomena; Paul Romer coined “mathiness” to label the misuse of mathematics in economic analyses. Mathiness is a smokescreen of equations that disguises an ideological agenda through unrealistic assumptions.

And what is “truthiness”? “Truthiness” was coined for truth that comes from the guts, not from books. American comedian and talkshow host Stephen Colbert popularised the word truthiness, thanks to the reach of television. Truthiness presents stories which are consistent with the worldview of the person telling the story. When data manipulation becomes dodgy, truthiness steps in.

If there is one subject in India’s economic agenda that is a victim of mathiness, it is farming and agriculture. My sense of truthiness hollers that India lacks a credible and focused managerial framework to usher in the transformation that agriculture requires. That is why Y.S.P. Thorat, former chairman of Nabard, and I wrote the Sarthak Krishi Yojana, meaning mindful agriculture. A 29-page booklet with appendices is indeed brief for agriculture.

India does brilliantly when the government decides to do brilliantly — green revolution, dairy revolution, Param supercomputer, Mars mission. The time has come for the government to decide that it must do brilliantly with regard to farming. India is faced with a serious
crisis in farming. I wonder why our national programmes like Digital India, Skill India and Make in India have so little discourse with respect to farming, considering that over half the working population is employed in agriculture and we have over $40 billion of farm exports.

The Sarthak Krishi Yojana notes the following: One, from 1999 till 2012, India’s farming sector has experienced about the best record of growth, production and farmer income, compared to India’s record in previous comparable periods. Two, India’s “best” records of productivity lag other nations by a large margin. Three, during the last two agricultural seasons, India’s farming (and, therefore, farmers) has been devastated by inclement weather — patchy rains, drought, unseasonal weather, you name it. We, doubtless, have a crisis in a sector that employs more than half of our workforce. Four, India does not lack funds or skills. India needs an integrated, managerial framework for agriculture — state-led entrepreneurial risk-taking with respect to farming (not farmers, please note).

Eleven fine and technically sound players do not make a great cricket team — it requires a great captain, a manager and teamwork. This metaphor illustrates the problem of agriculture.

Notwithstanding the availability of several expert reports, the paper suggests a framework to be populated with expert recommendations.
Unlike industry and telecom, agriculture is a state subject. The solutions as well as actions with regard to agriculture tend to get political and fragmented. They do not lend themselves naturally to a holistic design by a single agency. In this context, it is worth noting what Y.K. Alagh has said: “The future of agriculture is not in the stars, even in a country deeply committed to the inevitability of predictable karmic outcomes… pull together the main analyses and place them in a holistic framework… Indian agriculture responds well to well-thought-out policy stimuli.”

Developing a consensus with the states and executing a national agenda is an urgent option to be exercised by the Central government.

A holistic national framework to address agricultural problems could derive structural lessons from the way India industrialised. There were four pillars on which the industrialisation strategy was based. These played out over 60 years, admittedly with flaws and strengths, but today, India is counted among the top industrial powers in the world.

Putting together a similar set of pillars for agriculture is essential for aggregating the wisdom that already exists and for addressing the development issues that the nation faces. The holistic plan should encompass technology, risk, institutions, policy and skills, and the nation needs a forward-looking Sarthak Krishi Yojana that encompasses five pillars: One, technology incubation — outcome-based technology policy encouraging research, innovation and incubation. Two, risk institutions and financing — banks and financial institutions to help promote technology infusion, insurance and mechanisation. Three, institutions of governance — promote farmer producer organisations to be agri SMEs/ MSMEs. Four, policy for farming — focus on improving human and farm productivity. Five, Skilling — agricultural technical training institutes

To ensure the success of the Sarthak Krishi Yojana, it should be a collaboratively driven project with the states similar to the Jan DhanYojana, Atal Pension Yojana and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. The government must articulate the features and components that would constitute these five pillars, seek consensus with states and implement it as a comprehensive national agricultural mission. This has the chance to instil enthusiasm in the agricultural sector and invite wide participation.

The writer is director, Tata Sons Ltd

Source: Indian Express, 14-01-2016

Adivasis & Health: When new lifestyle diseases 

compound ‘old’ problems 

Twenty-five years ago, when the Gandhian doctor-activist couple Abhay and Rani Bang started working in the forest areas of Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, they found malaria to pose the biggest health concern for its predominantly tribal population. So, regular medical treatment apart, they also sought to impress upon the local adivasis the importance of using insecticide-treated mosquito nets. But malaria being deeply ingrained in the tribal psyche as retribution from “invisible super-natural forces,” not only were the medicines viewed as futile, even the nets soaked in insecticides were seen more useful to catch fish.

25 years later, malaria remains only somewhat less rampant and mosquito nets, too, are used but inadequately. Acceptance of medicines, however, has become widespread indicating a positive change of mindset. But, with many new socio-cultural and economic influences — basically market forces — making inroads, some fresh health problems have crept up. According to the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau, 24 per cent of adivasi adults across India today suffer from hypertension.

As per the 2011 Census, India’s total tribal population stood at 10.43 crore. “That’s bigger than the entire populations of most countries. But while a lot has been written about tribal culture and history, little is known about their health status. We even don’t have data on tribal health separate from that on rural health,” says Abhay Bang.

Bang is chairing a 13-member expert committee set up by Union Health Ministry and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, tasked with coming out with a nationwide status report on tribal health issues along with suggesting possible policy formulations. The panel is due to submit its report in March this year. The Bangs — both doctors and masters in public health — have pioneered the home-based neonatal care or HBNC model that involves training rural women in becoming village-level newborn care providers, who visit mothers and babies in their homes. The HBNC model of reaching the unreached and imparting care — including treatment for life-threatening illnesses — has not only helped reduce infant mortality rates in 39 intervention villages in Gadchiroli from 121 to 30 per 1,000 live births, but also been incorporated into the government’s healthcare programme since 2011. Today, there are over eight lakh accredited social health activists or ASHA community health workers, who have undergone multiple training sessions under National Rural Health Mission. “Till such time public healthcare can reach everybody, HBNC should remain our best bet to keep rural and tribal neonatal health problems under reasonable check,” says Bang, who along with his wife have founded SEARCH (Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health), an NGO 18 km east of Gadchiroli town. While the “old” problems of malaria, malnutrition and mortality persist, Bang emphasises “new” health issues among tribals partly due to outside socio-cultural influences and steady inroads by market forces. “Take diarrhea. A possible reason why it has become rampant among adivasis is because they have quit their traditional, yet more hygienic, cleaning practice after defecation by tree leaves. While they have started using water, shamed by non-tribal taunts of panpusya Gond (leaf-wiping Gond), it is not followed by cleaning hands with soap, thereby spreading diarrhea,” he notes. But what explains the generally poor tribal health, despite their living in seemingly unpolluted natural ambience and with high-protein meats in their diets? Bang attributes this to two things. The first is the Indian Forests Act of 1865 that resulted in adivasis losing their unhindered access to natural resources, which now came under the government’s control. Even the water bodies from where they caught fish suddenly became out of bounds. The second has to do with large infrastructure and industrial projects, which, in the post-Independence period alone, have displaced an estimated two crore adivasis: Over 50 per cent of them in Maharashtra, for example, live outside the so-called Scheduled Areas. Bang suggests that even malnourishment may be a relatively recent addition to tribal health problems: “There are no definitive studies, but it is generally believed that tribal populations were strong and hefty when they had unhindered access to forest resources. An old study of Brazilian aboriginals by the CIBA Foundation does point to this”. The newer health problems are also a reflection of lifestyle changes taking their toll. Tribal women now list alcohol addiction among men as their biggest concern. The same goes with tobacco, with over 60 per cent of adults in Gadchiroli consuming it daily. These, alongside addition of salt in their foods (clearly courtesy outside influence) and stress, are contributing to increased incidence of hypertension, feels Bang. But addressing tribal health problems is also about having more primary health centres (PHCs) and sub-centres. “Tribal areas have one PHC for every 20,000 people, as against 30,000 in non-tribal areas. There is also only one sub-centre for every 3,000 people, whereas it is 1:5,000 in non-adivasi areas. Even an auxiliary nurse midwife is expected to visit 12-15 small and scattered villages, which is impossible. All this has rendered the formal public healthcare system virtually dysfunctional,” he points out. On top of these are problems of language barrier and lack of motivation among healthcare staff, besides vacancies and absenteeism when it comes to working in tribal areas. While the last two are often attributed to left-wing extremist activities, the fact is that “Naxals generally don’t come in the way of health and education work,” says Bang. - 

Source: Indian Express, 14-01-2016