Change is happening but needs to cover a lot.

May 10, 2022 
Tuesday

Any developing nation has to overcome a lot of challenges and, effectively if it wants to pave its way in the world of leadership. So is my country which has been overcoming sundry challenges afront. Literacy rate, poverty, communal clashes, sanitation, potable water facility, various education programs for the disadvantaged sections of the society, social evils like honor killing, dowries, and patriarchal mindset. These are some of the obstacles that a developing country needs to tackle both for the upliftment of society and the economy.

There are other things that need to be improved like sexual violence which accounts for 30% of women physically and sexually violated. Out of this physical violence tops the list followed by emotional violence and then sexual violence. And 4/5th of these cases involve the husband and this basically arises due to ill-schooling of the people. And the major breakthrough needed is about reports of sexual and physical violence as according to the survey there are only 14 % of cases reported by women who are physically and sexually violated.

I have been witnessing many of the developments in our country. India has launched the world's largest government healthcare scheme covering around 500 million poor people across the country, country aimed to provide a "pucca house" for each family who does not have thus bringing all the people to sleep peacefully under a roof, clean India campaign, sanitation and hygiene program, skill India program, 'Har Ghar Nal yojana' program (every home with tap water), providing tablets or smartphones to the young minds who cannot afford for education purpose only, 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' ('save girls educate girls'), and many other programs to ensure the women coming up ahead and walking at parallelly with the men.

Today, I am shedding light on some of the changes India witnessed in recent years due to its various programs proposed and implemented in the past. In India, we have a census every 10 years the last one was completed in 2011 and due to the pandemic this year it couldn't take place rather there was a "National Family Health Survey" NFHS through which we are updated with some of the data.

• First, I want to mention that India has recorded a marvelous sex ratio. Now the sex ratio is 1020 for the country which means for every 1000 males there are 1020 females in the country and this is one of the pieces of evidence that people have overcome an ill mindset that some ancestors used to hold "Girl child is persona non grata in the family".

• Underage marriages have been recorded as a downfall both in the case of men and women. From 26.8% which was in NFHS-4 to 23.3 in NFHS -5 for women, and for men it has declined to 17.7% from 20.3% for NFHS-4. Though some states of the country recorded an increased number of underage marriages. Recently, there was a debate ongoing in India about raising the age of women to 21 for marriage which is also the legal age for men to be married in India but, if we see a downside to this proposal then the country will record a lot of illegal marriages i.e. pre-legal age marriages and that is another term for an increase in crime rate. Everyone knows underage marriage hampers the health of the woman in many ways.

• Teenage pregnancies have decreased from 7.9% to 6.8%.

• The most astounding fact that I get to know is that the modern contraceptive method is almost universal in India. About 99% of women aged between 15-49 are aware of at least one of the modern contraceptive methods and its awareness means better family planning. I would also mention that government programs also cover spreading awareness among people about these knowledge.

• Domestic violence has been decreased but the country still needs to work a lot on this front.

• The total fertility rate has been improved i.e. declined to 2.1.

• The enrolment ratio for women has been improved.

Last but not least I would only like to say that mostly the awareness lacks in the rural areas, the administration runs programs to educate and aware people on a wide scale but the audience participation is required. The administration needs to convey how important these awareness programs are and which it does but what else it could find a way to increase the audience's participation in these programs not just by some considerable percentage but by making it a universal percentage. This awareness knowledge must be checked by some activity or other ways to find if the people are truly aware. And we will witness a shining and emerging INDIA.

Thank you.

republished: fairaffairs.wordpress.com