Nandurbar: Several schemes on paper for women, but benefits yet to reach thousands

Nandurbar, one of Maharashtra’s most backward districts, ranked the second lowest in per capita income in 2020-21, which was Rs 95,532 in comparison with Mumbai’s Rs 3,13,852, as per the data provided by the Collector’s office.

To push up the Human Development Index in districts like Nandurbar, in 2006, the state launched a new scheme, the Manav Vikas Mission. Under this scheme, pregnant women from Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) of below poverty line (BPL) category receive Rs 2,000 in the ninth month of pregnancy and Rs 2,000 within 30 days of the delivery. However, this scheme does not cover the first delivery as women get Rs 5,000 separately under the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana in their first pregnancy. “The compensation money is given to all women, whether it is a home delivery or institutional delivery. The main objective is to prevent women from working during pre and post-natal care,” said Nandurbar District Collector Manisha Khatri.

But Tagali is among those women who didn’t get the benefit of these schemes.

Tagali’s husband earns Rs150 per day, which isn’t enough to support the family that has six mouths to feed, including two teenage children. “I got the Rs 5,000 only for my first birth. Now, we don’t even expect to get the money,” she said. Her husband also spent Rs 600 to visit the sub-district officer in Dhadgaon, 20 km from his village, to inquire about the amount under Manav Vikas Mission, but to no avail.

Data accessed by The Indian Express show that from 2020-21 to 2021-22, over 6,000 mothers were yet to get the benefits. In 2020-21, 2,659 women and in 2021-22, 3,553 women did not receive the benefits under the scheme. But the pending cases might be higher, as a large number of pregnant women who deliver at home don’t get registered with the government to claim the benefits.

As per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2019-20, the district recorded nearly 24 per cent home births – the highest among the 36 districts. The survey also showed that nearly 32 percent of the live births were not registered, leaving children without birth certificates.

“We are still collecting the data. Considering the inaccessible hilly terrain of the district, it is a challenging task to connect with the mothers who are eligible for the scheme,” said Dr Govind Chaudhari, district health officer, Nandurbar.

The state administration, however, cited migration of the pregnant and lactating women as the reason behind the long pending list of beneficiaries.

“Our ASHA and anganwadi workers enlist each pregnancy and delivery in the centralised online system, according to which we release the fund. But when the mothers migrate to another area, the enrollment gets disrupted. There is no shortfall of funds but migration is the main hurdle in its implementation,” said Collector Manisha Khatri.

But it is dire financial constraints which push pregnant mothers towards migration, and they end up missing essential ante-natal checkups. Data available with The Indian Express show that only 54 per cent of pregnant women registered with the district had undergone four compulsory ante-natal checkups. Failure to receive ante-natal checkups may have severe health repercussions such as higher incidence of low birth-weight infants, preterm births, stillbirths, neonatal, perinatal and maternal mortality. The data also showed that as many as 956 stillbirths were recorded in Nandurbar within five years — between 2017 to 2021 — with 1,698 infant deaths in the same period.

In 2021-22, a total of 37 maternal deaths were recorded in the district. Of this, 13 were witnessed during ante-natal care and 24 in post-natal care. Seventeen of them died of excessive bleeding, four due to anemia and three from sepsis, among other causes.

Latika Rajputa, a member of the government-appointed core committee, blamed the failure of the state to provide the Rs 4,000 to the mother, which forces them to migrate for work. “The scheme was initiated to stop the migration of pregnant and lactating mothers. So, the problem isn’t migration, it is the faulty system which forces these women to migrate for work as they don’t get the installments on time,” said Rajputa.

There is another scheme under the Centre’s National Health Mission — Janani Suraksha Yojana, or safe-motherhood programme — aimed to raise institutional delivery by paying Rs 700 for delivering in a public hospital. For home deliveries, the mothers get Rs 500. But again, though the intention is noble, many tribal mothers aren’t getting its benefits.

For instance, in 2020-21, the district recorded 30,949 births, of which 21,810 got the benefits. As many as 3,568 were home deliveries and 15,348 institutional deliveries in rural areas. During the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, 2021-22, the coverage of the scheme dropped to 16,183. One of the biggest hurdles of the implementations of the schemes is digitalisation, as Aadhaar linkage has been made compulsory for availing monetary benefits.

Aka Dilip (24) from Khadkya village, who has given birth to two babies, hasn’t been able to avail any of the government maternity schemes as she hasn’t changed her name on the Aadhaar card after her marriage. “To change the name on the Aadhaar card, we need to procure a marriage certificate issued by the marriage register, which we don’t have. So, I can’t claim the benefits,” she said as she cradled her infant in her lap inside her hut.