You need political will, not huge funds, to fix social sector problems like maternal mortality, says a new report from the World Bank. This should serve as a timely reminder for the Manmohan Singh government that seems to consider the GDP growth as panacea to all developmental hiccups.

The Bank has cited the examples of Malaysia and Sri Lanka, where political will and not shooting GDP has brought down the incidence maternal mortality.

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

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

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

It further says, “India and Bangladesh have maternal mortality ratios comparable to Sweden’s around 1900.

“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 report sees the skewed sex ratio in the country as an indicator of extreme gender disparity. “In 1990, 21 percent girls died while in 2008 it was 30 percent,” according to the report. However, there is improvement in the category of girls under 5 and women of 15-49 age category,” says 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 World Bank report is based on the National Sample Survey (NSS) data of 2004-05 and National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data from 2008 and 2005.

Clarifying on the use of old data in the report, Maitreyi B Das, social development specialist with the World 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 highlights the low female participation in jobs. “Female labour force participation rate stagnates at below 35 percent from 1983 to 2009-10, which is lowest in the developing nations," it said.

“Similarly, over a fifth of the women in the poorest 20 percent of the population in India have no say over the use of their own incomes,” the report notes.

The Bank lauded Goa, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim for achieving fertility decline records better than the US while Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh have shown an ignominiously high decline in fertility.

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

Read the report