PM calls upon CMs to work as ‘Team India’

• Prime Minister, while addressing the eighth Governing Council meeting of NITI Aayog on Saturday, said the Centre and the States would have to work as “Team India” to realise the objective of a “Viksit Bharat (Developed India)” in 2047.
• He urged the States and Union Territories to work with the NITI Aayog so that the country could take a quantum leap towards achieving its vision for “Amritkaal”.
• PM said NITI Aayog was taking up multiple initiatives for strengthening cooperative and competitive federalism like the Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP) and Aspirational Blocks Programme (ABP). Both the programmes showcased the power of working together as Centre, States and districts, and the impact of data-driven governance in improving the lives of common citizens at the grassroots.

NITI Aayog’s Governing Council

• It is the premier body trusted with developing a shared vision of national priorities and strategies with the active involvement of States and Union Territories.
• It is a platform to discuss inter-sectoral, inter-departmental and federal issues.
• It comprises:
  • The Prime Minister of India.
  • Chief Ministers of all the states and union territories with the legislature.
  • Lt Governors of other UTs.
  • Ex-Officio Members, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, Full-Time Members, NITI Aayog.
  • Special Invitees.

Telangana’s gongadi shawls refashioned into shoes

• For generations, the rough wool of the sturdy Deccani sheep has been handcrafted by the Kuruma and Kuruba — pastoral communities spread across the Deccan plateau — into a tough, all-weather shawl called a gongadi in Telangana.
• Now, this resilient fabric has been repurposed into all-weather shoes for farmers by three alumni of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

Kuruma community

• The Kuruma community having indigenous knowledge of shepherding, blanket weaving and narrating Oggu Kathalu (traditional stories).
• Kuruma community is a pastoral nomad community in India whose traditional caste occupation is sheep rearing and blanket weaving with sheep wool. Shepherd communities in India hails from different tribal communities and castes. For example, Gaddi tribe from Himachal Pradesh, Bharwad from Gujarat, Kuruba from Karnataka, Kurumbar from Tamil Nadu etc., are shepherd communities in India. Kuruma is a shepherd community in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
• They have their own indigenous knowledge in sheep rearing, blanket weaving and telling Oggu (traditional) stories.
• Kuruma community livelihood depends on forest and natural resources as they are rearing sheep. Sheep rearing activity is semi-nomadic in nature. This paper describes the indigenous knowledge of shepherding, blanket weaving with sheep wool and Oggu Kathalu (traditional stories) ethnographically.

Rights groups demand questions on disability should remain in NFHS-6

National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6), due to commence in July, could be dropping questions on disability from its survey questionnaire, disability rights activists are demanding immediate correction and inclusion.

The Disability Rights India Foundation (DRIF), a non-profit organisation working in the area of disabilities rights, in its communication, said that “disability disaggregated data is the cornerstone for disability relevant services” in any country.

Countries world over and the United Nations and other international bodies, are now developing toolkits and strategies to broaden their disability database.

“In India, we can use our existing mechanisms and the NFHS is well placed to collect disability-related data. However, it will be an opportunity lost by not including disability in its forthcoming NFHS-6 survey, which is scheduled to commence from July 2023. While NFHS-5 had disability related questions and collected data on disabilities, information from reliable sources confirm that NFHS-6 has dropped questions on disability from its survey questionnaire,’’ the DRIF said.

The group added that going forward, the NFHS needs to sharpen its questionnaire on the disability front and make it more relevant by consulting people with disabilities, but it has reversed the process by removing disability-related questions altogether.

‘Against principle’

Seeking the immediate intervention of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, and NITI Aayog to facilitate the inclusion of questions on disability in the NFHS-6 in consultation with persons with disabilities, the group has said that at the national level, the decision to remove disability-related questions from its survey contradicted its principle of “leave no one behind” under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.

“It is particularly regressive given that India is also a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” it noted.

Satendra Singh, disability rights activist and doctor at the University College of Medical Sciences and Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital, Delhi, said that people with disabilities in India experience an average loss of 10-17 years in life expectancy, according to the 2022 Missing Billion Report on ‘Reimagining Health Systems’.

“So closing the life expectancy gap for the world’s largest minority group requires access to comprehensive health data. The recent World Health Organization global report on health equity for persons with disabilities also emphasises the importance of monitoring indicators to promote health equity for our community. It is crucial to ensure that our needs and experiences are acknowledged and accounted for. We must bridge the disconnect between data collection and the effective design of policies,” Dr. Singh said.

National Family Health Survey (NFHS):

• The NFHS is a large-scale, multi-round survey conducted in a representative sample of households throughout India.
• Conducted By:
  • The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has designated the International Institute for Population Sciences(IIPS) Mumbai, as the nodal agency for providing coordination and technical guidance for the survey.
  • IIPS collaborates with a number of Field Organizations (FO) for survey implementation.
• Goals:
  • Each successive round of the NFHS has had two specific goals:
    • To provide essential data on health and family welfare needed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and other agencies for policy and programme purposes.
    • To provide information on important emerging health and family welfare issues.
  • The survey provides state and national information for India on:
    • Fertility
    • Infant and child mortality
    • The practice of family planning
    • Maternal and child health
    • Reproductive health
    • Nutrition
    • Anaemia
    • Utilization and quality of health and family planning services.
• Funding:
  • The funding for different rounds of NFHS has been provided by USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, UNFPA, and MoHFW (Government of India).