What to Read in The Hindu Editorial( Topic and Syllabus wise)

Editorial 1: A leap backward for maternity entitlements

Context

All pregnant women in India are entitled to maternity benefits, but most of them have not got a single rupee in recent years.

 

Introduction

Even as State after State is splurging on cash transfers for women, the most vulnerable among them, pregnant women, continue to be deprived of their legal right to maternity benefits. Worse, whatever little used to be paid to them seems to be shrinking. The main responsibility for this lies with the central government.

 

Maternity Benefits Under NFSA 2013

• Entitlements Under NFSA: All pregnant women (except those already covered in the formal sector) are entitled to maternity benefits of ₹6,000 a child.
  1. At today’s prices, this would mean ₹12,000 at the very least.
  2. Even that, of course, is a pittance.
  3. Still, affirming the principle of universal maternity entitlements was a groundbreaking feature of the NFSA.
• Importance of Maternity Benefits: Even in relatively well-off households, pregnant women are often deprived of nutritious food, health care, or rest time.
  1. Maternity benefits can help them to look after themselves and the newborn child.
• Implementation Issues: Meagre as they are, maternity benefits under the NFSA are yet to be delivered.
  1. The central government is making a pretence of doing so under the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY).
• Shortcomings of PMMVY: The PMMVY’s benefits are restricted to one child a family, recently extended to a second child if it is a girl.
  1. This restriction is a blatant violation of the Act.
  2. Further, the benefits have been arbitrarily reduced to ₹5,000 for the first child.

 

Scant information

• Denial of Benefits: Even these restricted and reduced benefits are being denied to large numbers of entitled women.
  1. This failure is well hidden, because the Ministry of Women and Child Development discloses very little information on the PMMVY.
• Lack of Transparency: The Ministry seems unaware of Section 4 of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which calls for pro-active disclosure of basic information.
  1. Even the simplest of the PMMVY’s statistics are not in the public domain.
• RTI Findings on PMMVY: The Ministry, however, did respond to our RTI queries, on the PMMVY.
  1. Based on this information, we have estimated the PMMVY’s effective coverage, defined as the proportion of pregnant women who receive at least one instalment of PMMVY benefits.
  2. This is a broad definition: the first instalment is just ₹3,000, and strict conditionalities apply to the second instalment (front-loaded for second-child girls).
• Decline in PMMVY Coverage: The estimates are sobering: effective coverage peaked at an unimpressive 36% in 2019-20 and declined sharply after that, except for a partial revival in 2022-23.
  1. In 2023-24, effective coverage crashed to just 9% (see graph).
• Budget Shortfall: This crash is also visible in the Budget’s figures.
  1. Central government spending on the PMMVY was at an all-time low of ₹870 crore in 2023-24 — barely one third of the corresponding figure five years earlier, that too in money terms.
  2. To cover 90% of all births at just ₹6,000 a birth, the PMMVY would require a total budget of at least ₹12,000 crore.

The official line

• Acknowledgment of Standstill: We discussed these figures with the officials concerned in the Department of Women and Child Development, at the central and State levels.
  1. They did not deny that the PMMVY had come to a virtual standstill in 2023-24.
  2. They blamed this on major changes in software and implementation processes that were introduced in late 2023.
• Disbursement Issues: Further scrutiny of the data suggests that the main problem was not a reduction in applications, but a reduced disbursement rate.
  1. According to one official, there were software problems “every day”.
• Long-standing Issues with PMMVY: The problem, however, did not begin in 2023-24.
  1. The PMMVY, launched in 2017, has been plagued with complications all along.
  2. More than a few of them are related to Aadhaar-based payments and digital tyranny.
• Ignored Warnings and Exclusionary Effects: There have been numerous reports that have drawn attention to these complications and their exclusionary effects.
  1. Instead of responding to these ground reports, however, the central government created more complications in 2023-24, with disastrous consequences for Indian women.
• Possible Intent Behind Hurdles: For the government, of course, the reduction in PMMVY expenditure is a good deal.
  1. Could this be one reason why the tendency to create hurdles is so resilient?

 

The examples of Tamil Nadu and Odisha

• Effective State Schemes: Meanwhile, States such as Tamil Nadu and Odisha have shown the possibility of designing simple and effective maternity-benefit schemes, from 1987 and 2009 onwards, respectively.
  1. The monetary support offered by them is more substantial than under the PMMVY — ₹10,000 a child in Odisha and ₹18,000 a child in Tamil Nadu.
  2. In Odisha, the amount was doubled ahead of the 2024 general election.
  3. In Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) promised to increase it to ₹24,000 in its 2021 election manifesto, and the party appears to be waiting for the next election to implement this promise.
  4. The PMMVY benefits, for their part, have never been raised, despite being lower than NFSA norms in the first place.
• Higher Coverage and Better Implementation:Not only are the amounts higher in Odisha and Tamil Nadu, but their implementation is also much better.
  1. Figures reported in Odisha’s Economic Survey suggest that maternity benefits covered about 64% of all births there in 2021-22 (the latest year for which data are available).
  2. In Tamil Nadu, coverage was 84% in 2023-24, when the all-India coverage under the PMMVY was below 10%.
  3. The contrast could hardly be sharper.
• Stark Double Standards: In the formal sector, Indian women enjoy a full 26 weeks of paid maternity leave (based on a 2017 amendment of the Maternity Benefits Act 1961), compared with a World Health Organization norm of 14 weeks.
  1. In the unorganised sector, they get a flat ₹5,000 if they are lucky enough to survive all the hoops they have to jump through for PMMVY benefits.
  2. These double standards are mind-boggling.

 

Conclusion

The time has come to admit that the PMMVY is a flop show. The central government seems to be more concerned with saving money than with helping pregnant women. As a result, it has ruined a programme that could have proved very useful and popular. It also stands in flagrant violation of the NFSA. The entire programme needs to be revamped in line with the letter and spirit of the Act. The benefits should also be raised and indexed to the price level. The entire society stands to gain from better public support for pregnant women.

 

Editorial 2: The bigger tragedy is the Railways and its systemic inertia

Context

Tragedies such as the stampede in Delhi will continue to be written off as unfortunate inevitabilities rather than preventable failures.

 

Introduction

In the cacophony of religious fervour for a holy dip at the Kumbh, amidst bustling railway stations, jostling crowds, and ceaseless proclamations by Indian Railways about the number of train services and the passengers ferried to Prayagraj, lies an inconvenient truth: the approach to passenger safety and convenience is at best tragically outdated, and at worst, a harbinger of disaster. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it we must, for the recent tragedy — the stampede at New Delhi railway station on February 15 — has once again exposed the chinks in the armour of the Indian Railways. It has laid bare systemic failures born not of resource constraints but of an indifference to basic needs.

 

The half-truths

The Unavoidable Question: Was the Stampede Avoidable?

• The Answer: Yes, It Was: Amidst all the noise and shifting of blame, there are certain half-truths that demand scrutiny.
  1. A stampede is averted by ensuring smooth, unidirectional movement, eliminating bottlenecks, and implementing robust barricading with adequate security personnel.
  2. All these fundamental principles were glaringly ignored.
• Platform Chaos and Poor Crowd Management: Railway representatives have repeatedly asserted that no platform changes were made.
  1. However, the last-minute announcement of a special unreserved train to Prayagraj on platform 12, when a massive crowd of unreserved passengers was already on platform 14 for the Prayagraj Express, created chaotic, conflicting movements.
  2. This was tantamount to a platform change, triggering a surge.
  3. Control Room and Security Lapses: It is also learnt — although not verified yet — that the control room, equipped with CCTV coverage, failed to stop the escalators, which are notorious for becoming bottlenecks in such situations.
  4. Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel were inadequate, and security arrangements and barricading were also insufficient.
• Foreseeable Crowd Surge: The claim that such a massive crowd was unforeseen defies logic.
  1. The Ministry of Railways proudly announced that over 15 lakh passengers travelled in nearly 350 trains to Prayagraj in February.
  2. A simple calculation shows this translates to nearly 300 unreserved passengers in a coach, packed like sardines.
  3. New Delhi is a focal point for travellers from North India, and the magnitude of the crowd could have been anticipated based on recent significant ‘bathing days’ at the Kumbh.
  4. The Indian Railways' assertion that it was caught off-guard by a sudden surge in ticket sales towards the evening is a weak line of defence.

 

Shifting the Blame onto Travellers

• The blame has been subtly shifted onto travellers — that they congregated in huge numbers, that they bought large numbers of tickets, and that they did not heed announcements.
• Yet, none of this was unprecedented.
• Festival times always draw huge crowds, and special trains are routinely run to ferry passengers, primarily to the eastern parts of the country.
• Unreserved tickets are typically sold in large numbers, and there are established protocols to handle this.
• All that the Delhi division of the Indian Railways had to do was to replicate the tried-and-tested Chhath arrangements that have been implemented for decades.

 

Conflicting statements

• Certain crowd control measures introduced after the tragedy — such as additional security personnel, holding areas, better CCTV monitoring, and stopping platform ticket sales — are hardly rocket science.
• Were it not for the grief of the victims’ families, this tragedy could be seen as a comeuppance for the Railwaysamidst its grandiose proclamations.
• On one hand, it reveals the Railways’ hollow attempt to sell a commodity it does not possess: ensuring dignified travel for devotees.
• On the other, it exposes the Railways’ failure to implement basic crowd control measures well within its capability.

 

Railways' Narrative and Blame Game

• For almost a day, the Railways kept changing its narrative — from denial to dilution to obfuscation and staggering insensitivity.
• Conflicting statements by various spokespersons culminated in the grotesque spectacle of distributing ex gratia payments even before confirming the death toll.
• Irresponsible statements from government quarters suggested a probe into alleged conspiratorial “fake news”triggering the stampede.
• This blame game, marked by cynicism, echoes the Railways’ habit of prematurely attributing mishaps to sabotage — despite not a single case having been proven.

 

Failure to Learn from Past Tragedies

• History is replete with warnings, yet the Railways regime behaves like a student who refuses to learn.
• Similar tragedies have occurred before, including:
  1. Stampede at Elphinstone Road railway station, Mumbai (2017)
  2. Stampede at Allahabad station during Kumbh Mela (2013)
• The past, as they say, is prologue—but only if one is willing to learn from it.

 

Another flaw

• First step towards accountability is already a misstep.
• The “high-level” inquiry is to be conducted by senior railway executives, overseeing the very departments that may be culpable.
• In stark contrast, even a single fatality in a train accident warrants an investigation by the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS)—an entity independent of the Ministry of Railways.
• Although technically not categorised as a train accident, an independent inquiry (whether by the CRS or another external agency) would have demonstrated the Railways' commitment to transparency.
• Yet, as it stands, the Railways is both the accused and the judge.

 

Conclusion

The heart of the issue runs even deeper. Is there an ingrained malaise within the Railways, the supposed lifeline of the nation, that the more things should change, the more they stubbornly remain the same? Until the Railways confronts its own systemic inertia, tragedies such as these will continue to be written off as unfortunate inevitabilities rather than preventable failures.