Budget 2017 Disappoints, Maternity Benefit Programme Underfunded, Excludes Those Who Need It The Most -Dipa Sinha

-NDTV

According to the World Health Statistics (2016), nearly 5 women die every hour in India due to pregnancy and delivery related complications. 17 per cent of maternal deaths in the world occur in India. Based on the data from the Rapid Survey on Children (2013), only 65 per cent of children are exclusively breastfed up to six months of age. Infant and child mortality rates are high as well. Child malnutrition in India continues to be amongst the highest in the world (38% children under five are stunted). Provision of maternity entitlements is one of the many interventions that are needed to improving maternal child health and nutrition.

The National Food Security Act (NFSA) provides Rs 6000 as maternity entitlement for all pregnant women. In spite of it being over three years since the passage of the NFSA, the central government is yet to implement a universal scheme for the implementation of this entitlement. A Maternity Benefit Programme (MBP) providing Rs 6000 to pregnant women was one of the announcements in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on  December 31. However the MBP, like its predecessor – the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY), imposes conditionalities such as benefits only up to the first two births and for women who “undergo institutional delivery and vaccinate their children”.

Budget 2017 allocated only Rs 2,700 crores for Maternity Benefit Programme which is less than 30 per cent of what is required for universal coverage. It is estimated that about 2.7 crore births take place in India, each year requiring about Rs 16,000 crores (central share Rs 9,700 crores). In fact, it is not even sufficient to cover the women who will be eligible having met the conditionalities.

Assuming centre-state cost sharing ratio of 60:40, the current allocation would cover about 75 lakh women. By the estimates presented below, even with the conditionalities of two-child, institutional delivery and full immunisation, 103 lakh women would be eligible for Maternity Benefit Programme requiring a central budget of over Rs 3,600 crores.

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