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India has gender discrimination embedded in its social fabric. It shows up in most spheres such as access to education, to social and economic
opportunities. The reliance on a legal system to offer gender equality and justice, has not been built in a time dimension in the dispensation of justice. Further, dependence on schemes and programmes with inadequate coverage, outlays, inefficiencies and leakages in the delivery mechanism, the social, economic and legal condition of women shows inadequate improvement in terms of several indicators. We find gender discrimination in India at multiple levels—
(i) right from the womb with sex determination tests and abortion of the female foetuses,
(ii) discrimination in terms of nutrition offered to the girl child,
(iii) the length and type of schooling the girl child avails of vis-à-vis her male siblings,
(iv) inadequate or lack of access to higher education,
(v) discrimination in opportunities of employment and wages paid, and
(vi) unequal share in inheritance.
Society and the Government has relied on the legal route to address each of these discriminations, without matching changes in the social fabric or role model set by leaders in society from all spheres. The legal route suffers from several shortcomings, especially in terms of time taken for dispensation of justice. For each of the above discrimination, there is a law so all acts of discrimination are illegal, however, compliance requires a lot more to be done.
Women and girls in India carry disproportionate burden9 of sanitation deficiencies in comparison to their male counterparts—which compromises with their fundamental right to privacy. This can take several forms—threat to life and safety while going out for open defecation, reduction in food and water intake practices to minimize the need to exit the home to use toilets, polluted water leading to women and children dying from childbirth-related infections, among others. Personal hygiene of women is for better health outcomes there is no doubt in it. But it is also needed to enjoy the freedom of having control on their bodies—the right to privacy. In absence, it may create
‘gender-based sanitation insecurity’.
The Census 2011 reported a widespread lack of sanitation—more than half of the country’s population defecated in the open. Recent data shows that about 60 per cent of rural households (Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation-2017; up from 45 per cent NSS 2015) and 89 per cent of urban households (NSSO 2016) have access to toilets—an improved situation over the Census. A ‘rapid study’ (by WASH Institute and Sambodhi in 2016), specially done for the Economic Survey 2016-17 presents some new insight
—
(i) Some worrisome trends were found for the majority of households without toilets—
76 per cent of women had to travel a considerable distance to use these facilities while 33 per cent of the women reported facing privacy concerns and assault while going out in the open. Due to these risks, the number of women who reduced consumption of food and water are 33 per cent and 28 per cent, respectively. While in short-term it creates problems like illness, disruptions, and deficiencies; in the long-term it compromises with overall health and cognitive development of infants and specially girls. Other studies have highlighted the concerns such as exposure to natural elements, snakebites, etc. also.
(ii) In households with toilets, women reported far greater use—showing greater need. Studies have found preference for households to defecate in the open because of a variety of factors (caste and soak pit latrines, especially). As per the ‘rapid study’, patterns of toilet usage are better for women than men (this was also confirmed by the NSSO Survey of 2016).
(iii) Women and girls use toilet more than their male counterparts—across rural and urban households. This pattern of toilet usage suggests a very important thing—women and girl-children could play a key leadership role in Swachh Bharat’s objective of creating defecation free communities (by nudging men and boys of the household to change their own defecation behaviours).
(iv) Women did show positive behavioural patterns after getting access to sanitation services. Again, if these services are denied, they face
considerable insecurity and nutritional risks.
For the reason cited above, ensuring safe and adequate sanitation—the objectives of Swachh Bharat—is becoming a serious policy issue—after all it is linked to the ‘fundamental right to privacy’.
The Fallouts of Population Policy
The negative fallouts of pursuing a population policy that largely focuses on birth control also contributes to declining child sex ratios—if every family is to have fewer children, there is a greater anxiety that at least one of them should be male. In this instance, there may be a case for the government to undo as much as to do for example, by not setting targets expected levels of achievement (ELA), withdrawing incentives for female sterilisation and for mass camps. In addition, the Economic Survey 2014–15 suggested the following actions to the government:
(i) Review the family planning program and re-orient it in such a way that it is aligned with reproductive health rights of women, and needs of India’s population.
(ii) Increase budgets for quality services, static family planning clinics and quality monitoring and supervision.
(iii) Address youth needs, induct more counsellors for sexual health, more youth-friendly services, and adequate supply of spacing methods.