6. Social Failures

1. India’s maternal mortality rate in 1998 was 407 per 100,000 live births. These levels are more than 100 times the levels found in the West.

2. Some 53 per cent children (almost 60 million) under five remain malnour-ished-nearly twice the levels reported in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

3. The proportion of low birth weight babies born in India is 33 per cent. It is only 9 per cent in China and South Korea, 6 per cent in Thailand and 8 per cent in Indonesia.

4. India was a signatory to the Alma Ata Declaration in 1978 that assured 'health for all’ by the year 2000. Only 42 per cent of the children between 12-23 months are fully immunized - 37 per cent in rural areas and 61 per cent in urban areas. The coverage is shockingly low in Bihar - 11 per cent and in Rajasthan - 17 per cent.

5. While per capita daily consumption of cereals has improved only marginally from 400 gms in 1950 to about 440 gms in 2000, the per capita pulses (protein intake) have over the 50 years decreased.

6. The promise of social revolution has remained unredeemed. There are 270 million Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and the measures for their welfare and uplift have not been implemented with sincerity.

7. There are 380 million children below the age of 14. Almost 100 million of them are Dalit children. No effective steps are

taken to bring them to the level of the "core-mainstream”.

8. Population control measures in the northern States have not succeeded. Fertility rates in Uttar Pradesh indicate that the State is almost a century behind Kerala.