With the government hedging its bets with GDP growth turning around the state of the social sector in India, a World Bank rejoinder comes as a wake-up call. Focusing on the issue of maternal mortality, the Bank cited the examples of Malaysia and Sri Lanka, where political will and not shooting GDP has brought down the incidence of this plague of social sector wellness.

“What is striking in the case of Sri Lanka and Malaysia, they did it at an early stage of development. Malaysia was not a middle-income country, when they reduced maternal mortality. The country did not need 10 percent growth of gross domestic product (GDP) to bring down maternal mortality. There are some lessons to be drawn,” said Sudhir Shetty, co-director, gender equality and development, 2012 World Development Report. He was speaking at the release of the World Bank gender equality and development report on Wednesday in New Delhi.

“Malaysia did it without a large amount of money. Though you need money, a country also needs other things – political will and making sure that medical services are actually provided. The hospitals should be equipped with medical equipments,” he told Governance Now.

The report said, “Economic development is not enough to shrink all gender disparities – corrective policies that focus on persisting gender gaps are essential.”

The World Bank report says, “India and Bangladesh have maternal mortality ratios comparable to Sweden’s around 1900.”

It said, “Almost one million of excess deaths (referring to missing women) are in India – evenly distributed across the three periods in the lifecycle – before birth; in infancy and early childhood; and in the reproductive years.”

The skewed sex ratio of the country has also been noted in the report as an indicator of extreme gender disparity. “In 1990, 21 percent girls died while in 2008 it was 30 percent,” it said.  "However, there is improvement in the category of girls under 5 and women of 15-49 age category,” said the report titled ‘Gender Equality: the Right and Smart Thing to do’.

“A quarter of girls from the poorest 40 percent of the population in India are married before the age of 18,” it added. The report is based on National Sample Survey (NSS) data from 2004-05 and national family health survey (NFHS) data from 2008 and 2005. Clarifying on the old data taken in report, Maitreyi B. Das, social development specialist at the Bank, said, “The latest NSS data came out after our survey was completed. We are in the process of doing analysis with the current data. However, in some category the bank has taken the updated data.”

The report also highlighted the low female participation in jobs. “Female labour force participation rates stagnates at below 35 percent from 1983 to 2009-10, which is lowest in the developing nations," it said.

“Similarly, over a fifth of women in the poorest 20 percent of the population in India have no say over the use of their own incomes,” the report noted.
The Bank also lauded some states for the improving their fertility ratio. It said Goa, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim have done better to check fertility decline than even the  United States while Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh have ingnominously high decline in fertility.

“Development partners can support domestic policies in many ways -- more funding, greater innovation and better partnerships,” said Shetty.