Maternal Mortality..a story i did in AA

Heaps have been written about motherhood — poems, songs, ballads and tales. Nothing seems enough when one comes to relate a mother’s selflessness and illimitable affection. Many a poet have described her warm disposition and adorned it with similes and metaphors. Virtues of love, labour, forgiveness, compassion and humanity are never lost on a mother. But despite all the accolades showered on her, the sad truth is that the number of women who die during birth of her child has not come down. More than half a million women die in pregnancy during childbirth, of which 70,000 are from India (SRS 2006). This comes down to a startling statistic that one woman dies every seven minutes from a pregnancy related cause in our country.

Dr Aparajita Gogoi, the national coordinator of The White Ribbon Alliance,  an international NGO committed towards safe motherhood says, “For a woman to die of pregnancy and childbirth is social injustice. Such deaths are rooted in women’s powerlessness, unequal status in society, lack of decision-making power, absence of basic health care and lack of access to education.”

A country’s mortality rate is considered to be the best indicator of its health system. In India, with a mortality rate touching 300, it is but obvious that serious efforts need to be taken and fast. According to Dr Gogoi, “Making motherhood safer requires more than just good quality health services. Women must be empowered and guaranteed their human rights – including their rights to survive pregnancy and childbirth.”

The tales of women dying during childbirth are heart-wrenching and gruesome. Sushma Yadav, aged 24 years, lost her life while delivering a baby about six months ago. Her husband Santosh now takes care of their two children with the help of his mother and continuously laments his luck. “God has been very unkind to us. Who is going to take care of these two children?” It does not occur to him or his family that Sushma would have been alive today had proper care been taken when she was pregnant. Her blood pressure was never monitored, and although she did take the iron-folic tablets prescribed to her by the dispensary, improper physical checkup led her to her tragic fate.

The fact that nearly 80 per cent of these deaths is easily avoidable points towards the ignorance plaguing the society, especially among the people belonging to the lower strata. Dr Geeta Chadha, senior consultant, obstetrics and gynaecology, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital confirms, “It is true that nearly two-third of cases of maternal mortality are preventable. The basic reasons being haemorrhage (flow of blood from a ruptured blood vessel) in a setting of anaemia, unsupervised infection or high blood pressure. There is a sea of human beings, who need to be made aware of maternal care.” 

Ramsakhi, the wife of Pappu, a migrant labourer working in Hyderabad was expecting her third child when complications arose. The position of the baby was transverse and because of prolonged obstructed labour, her uterus ruptured and she started bleeding internally. Once the doctor saw her condition, it was advised that she be rushed to a hospital. But before they could have done so, Ramsakhi had already lost the baby.

The situation is not only confined to the lower strata of the society. Many a times well-off families also neglect the essential needs of an expecting mother, their basic premise being that a doctor is to be called only when complications set it. Without regular check-ups and physical examination a woman’s health deteriorates and chances of her and the baby’s survival become slimmer.

Unassisted childbirth is another factor that adds to the ignorance factor resulting in an increased maternal risk, that is, the probability of a woman dying or experiencing serious injury during delivery. It is then perhaps an irony that in United States a movement for “free birth” is fast gaining ground. Its advocates suggesting that epidurals (a form of low dose anesthesia) be taken at the time of birth and a woman be given the right to deliver her baby without the assistance of a doctor. While the movement may aim at giving a woman a right to choose whether she wants the pain or not, it is dangerous nonetheless.

Some lessons for pregnant ladies and their families:

1. Understand that every pregnancy faces risk, even if previous ones have been normal.
2. A pregnant woman needs to be attended by a skilled health worker.
3. Families of pregnant women must have fully worked out plans for delivery.
4. A newborn baby’s umbilical cord should be cut and tied and he or she should be kept warm and suckled immediately.

For a blog entry pertaining the same issue albeit non-professional..click HERE

Right to Rape

A string of thoughts that came to my mind after reading a newspaper report got lost somewhere ie. before I read this piece by Aman (Click here for his thought-provoking post) who has written about the same topic in his blog. It is about the new Shia Law in Afghanistan that as good as legalises marital rape and also gives legal connotation the concept of "blood money" ie.. money given to a woman after she has been raped by the rapist so that she can under go medical treatment (how considerate of them). Writing about this disturbs me as much as it is a ridiculous notion. I think it is important to put forth certain points not just about what is happening in Afghanistan in this regard but also its simultaneous legal approach in so-called evolved judicial systems such as our own. But first some background.

Rape has always been considered one of the most detestable acts committed on a woman in all societies. Justice Krishna Iyer in a famous judgment said “When a woman is ravished, what is inflicted is not mere physical injury but the deep sense of some deathless shame… judicial response to Human Rights cannot be blunted by legal bigotry.” This much abhorred topic however got a special mention in International News recently. The Parliament of Afghanistan recently passed a Shia Law (the Shia community in Afghanistan that has its separate Shia Laws) that indirectly decriminalises marital rape giving the power to a husband not to feed her wife, starve her and sustain her if she refuses to copulate with him. It also says that a woman desirous of working can only work at certain institutions that too only with the permission of certain male members in her family.

Sometimes one just sits back at developments like this and hopelessly wonders what kind of senseless insecurity grips people to even begin to think on such lines. What kind of a world do we live in? While in one part of the world we are fighting positive wars, that for liberalism, that for uplifting all kinds of censorship and now also decriminalising homosexuality among consenting adults and in another part of the world we have laws being carved out such as this one. In fact, Muslim clerics are justifying that if a woman has the right to say "no" to her husband’s sexual advances then he also has to right to deny her food and sustenance. As I understand it, Shia population in Afghanistan consist of around 15% of the total population of the country and President Karzai has been quite keen on pleasing the Shia population (read men) before the elections so as to increase his chances in the polls.

This in fact reminds me of Khaled Husseini's A thousand Splendid Suns in which the protagonist tries again and again to run away from the brutalities of her husband but every time someone or the other grabs her only to be mercilessly beaten up by her husband for venturing out without his consent. Such laws, such fundamentalist attitude and such Talibanisation is nothing but a way to make sure that women don't even think of the rights enjoyed by people all across the world. One feels so helpless listening to stories like these. What freedom, what world, what beauty, what brains do we talk about? I may be getting too caught up here but I sincerely hope that International Organisations would create a major stir and pressure the Afghan Government enough to scrap such an abhorrent law.

But this is not where the discussion ends. For we can't just look at one sect and their laws in isolation while living under a delusion of security in our own land. Rape laws in countries like India and USA are also not fundamentally very clear as far as marital rape in concerned. By definitions of rape that approximate the legal standard, a series of surveys have found that about 10-14% of married women in the U.S.have been raped by their husbands. Indian Law, in fact, specifically exempts marital rape as an offence in S 375 IPC. It is presumed that by entering into matrimony a woman lays down all her defences with regard copulation with her husband. The same proposition was strongly supported by Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice in 17th century in England who is widely quoted for saying, “The husband can not be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for their mutual matrimonial consent and contract, the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto the husband which she can not retract.”

Though we do boast of the Domestic Violence Act 2005 but even that calls for a through scrutiny and amendments as it makes marital rape a part of domestic violence, thereby considerably reducing the punishment from what one gets for committing rape otherwise. There is no clear law that makes marital rape a crime equivalent to a non-marital rape. Moreover, there are such lacunas in our legal system that on one hand penalises any sexual intercourse with a girl aged below 16 years (consent is immaterial because a minor's consent is no consent in the eyes of the law) as rape and on the other hand marital intercourse with one's wife above 15 years is completely legal (see S. 375 IPC below) which basically implies that sexual intercourse with an unmarried girl of 16 years is rape, while that with a married 15 year old is clearly exempted from the Section dealing with rape. It is interesting piece of information that Nepal has declared that husbands who force themselves on their wives can be charged with rape. So we see an example of progressive law there. But what do we see here? There is nothing in the Indian Penal Code that defines or talks about marital rape. According to section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, "sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, not being under 15 years of age, is not rape.” Even if it may happen everyday with a woman, in the eyes of law it never happened. The most common justification sought by people defending such laws is that such a rape is most difficult to prove and it would make it far easier for a woman to implicate her husband.

Continuing on the same lines, it is interesting to note that a man can claim divorce on the basis of his wife not consenting to have sexual relations with him (i.e. if she refuses to give him 'access' to her body) but if a wife wants to speak up against a rape committed on her by her husband, the law nowhere is clearly holds it as rape! There is, it seems, nothing that stops a man from expressing his claim to sexual gratification as a matter of right over his wife in a marital relationship. It is thus imperative that we sensitise the younger as well as the present generations about individual rights and how to respect these rights. A rape is a rape, period. And whether it is India or Afghanistan, whether the woman is married to the rapist or not, whether it is most difficult or easiest of jobs to prove or not—it is most essential that our laws endorse our ideology and our ideology match our actions.

Bail for Dr. Binayak

Having remained eclipsed from news for the whole day yesterday, today's newspaper brought definite cheers.  Dr. Binayak Sen has finally been granted bail by the Supreme Court after a period of 2 years during which hoards of protest marches, petitions, discussions and innumerable newspaper articles demanding his bail did the rounds in the country. While many are not aware of who Dr. Binayak Sen is, but among the civil society groups his had become a name that spelled berating yet slowly spiralling anger towards the Chhattisgarh Government. 

For the uninitiated, Dr. Binayak Sen, a paediatrician by profession and a civil rights activist in Naxalism stricken Chhattisgarh, was put to jail on May 14, 2007 on the charges of passing messages on behalf of a jailed Naxalist leader. He was arrested under the Chhattisgarh Public Security Act 2005 and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 after which he had been denied bail on every occasion.

It is further noteworthy that on March 31 the same year, several Adivasis were killed in Santoshpur, Chhattisgarh by police officers who alleged them to be Maoists. Dr Sen had been one of the most prominent faces condemning the attacks and who tried to draw attention towards the ghastly crime that had been committed in the name of duty. The autopsy report of the brutal 'encounter' showed that the dead had been hit on the head with bullets from a point blank range and there were also scars of axe injuries on their bodies. It was exactly a week after the autopsy report had come out that his arrest was made.

I don't propose to claim that I know any more that what daily newspapers feed me about him, but the case was such that any conscious citizen would feel aggravated by the lack of common sense and total arbitrariness with which he was kept in jail for a bailable offence, even though there was no material evidence. It is common knowledge for those who are familiar with even slightest of legal knowledge that bail is a matter of right. This right was not given to a man who is national Vice-President of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).

The seriousness of the matter and the levels the agitation for his release can be judged by the facts that sometime back 22 Nobel laureates from around the world had sent a written petition to the Government of India for Dr Sen’s release. Outstanding opinion leaders like Noam Chomsky and Amritya Sen besides those from the upper echelons of the media have all pushed for his cause. Innumerable campaigns in my own University where young students carrying placards and banners with messages like "Free Dr. Sen", "Grant Bail to Dr. Binayak Sen', took out protest marches and dharnas right from Art Faculty to all around the campus and back again for so many months. No major columnist or news magazine stopped short of voicing the injustice that was being perpetrated in the name of tackling Naxalism, Tehelka ran an entire issue on the same and every now and then the editorials would demand bail for Dr. Sen. But ofcourse the campaign didn't create as much of a furore among the masses the way the Jessica Lal issue or Aarushi case did, but it is definitely a victory for those fighting for civil rights in the country. And also a triumph for activism for one’s cause in the country.