Gender experts, academicians, demographers and development practitioners gathered under one roof---State Institute of Health and Family Welfare in Jaipur to sensitise panchayats on gender issues, reports The Hindu.  The occasion was inauguration of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) supported programme on strengthening gender response of panchayats in Rajasthan.

The panchayat bodies were asked to optimally utilise their mandates and institutional resources to address the issues of maternal health and sex selection. The experts and the academicians said, the socio-cultural and economic barriers “undervaluing women” should be removed to prevent female foeticide and check the declining sex ratio in population. The three-year long project, to be implemented in 1000 village panchayats of 21 districts across the state, aims at making the elected representatives of Panchayati Raj institutions sensitive to the gender issues with the intervention of civil society organisations. UNFPA’s partner for executing the programme is the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA).

Inaugurating the project, noted economist and Prime Minister’s economic advisory council member professor VS Vyas said, all indicators had suggested that the healthcare situation was deteriorating in the state, resulting in an increase in the maternal and infant mortality ratios and a decline in the sex ratio.