A number of positive changes were seen in 2017 in several key issues affecting India, which might gain further momentum in the new year. The following are some of most anticipated changes :
Government dedicates More Resources To Fight TB
The government introduced a new program the National Strategic Plan for Elimination of Tuberculosis to tackle the menace of tuberculosis (TB) which is a preventable airborne infectious disease that took the lives of 423,000 Indians in 2016.
The aim is to reduce the incidence from 217 new cases per 100,000 as recorded in 2015 to fewer than 44 new cases before 2025. To help achieve this goal, funding for TB prevention and care has been doubled from $280 million in 2016 to $525 million in 2017.
Other measures taken by the government
- The TB treatment drug regimen has been changed from multiple drugs to a single daily dose in a fixed dose combination which are seen as being more effective
- The introduction of flavoured fixed dose medicines for children under a pilot program
- An universal drug sensitivity testing has been introduced for all TB patients so as to detect any drug resistance present to rifampicin, the main anti-TB drug,
India still has however a lot of ground to cover. New cases of TB has reduced only marginally going from 2.8 million in 2015, to 2.7 million in 2016, according to WHO data .
The government must involve the private sector which handles nearly half of the TB cases in the country. It must also enhance treatment completion and cure rates via counselling, and offer social support to TB patients, along with identifying patients in high-risk communities.
Continued Drop in infant, maternal mortality
According to latest data, In the year 2016, infant death dropped by 90,000 over 2015 with the infant mortality rate too declining by 8 percent in the same period .
The gender disparity in infant deaths is also reducing. The infant mortality rate was 33 per 1,000 for boys while it was 36 per 1,000 for girl in 2016. In 2015, the figures were 35 and 39 respectively .
At 167 per 100,000 live births in 2013 Maternal mortality in India has also dropped lower than global average of 179. India has also succeeded in preventing 1 million deaths among children aged five years and below between 2005 and 2015.
According to experts the improvement has come about due to timely interventions such as vaccinations, and correct treatment of diarrhoea along with an increase in hospital births.
The next challenge is meeting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals on child and neonatal mortality, under which child mortality rates is to be reduced to 25 per 1,000 live births while neonatal mortality is to be at 12 per 1,000 live births.
Achieving this would need an average annual decline of 4.1 percent in child mortality while in neonatal mortality the reduction must be 5.3 percent from 2015 onwards.
This can be done by improving antenatal care and nutrition and education, along with reducing maternal anaemia and tobacco consumption.
First-ever manual scavenger count planned
In the year 2017 about 102 workers were reported to have died while cleaning sewer lines manually.
The government has finally initiated efforts to gather for the first time an official count of the number people who are engaged in clearing sewer lines in violation of laws that ban such practices.
The practice had been banned in 1993 by the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act.
A not-for-profit body under the social justice ministry the National Safai Karmacharis Finance and Development Corporation intends to survey 15 of the largest states over six months in order to determine how many people are still trapped in scavenging.
According to Bezwada Wilson of Safai Karmachari Andolan a body fighting the practice, around 180,000 people still manually clean latrines, of whom 1,470 have died since 2010
Data provided by States to Social Justice Minister Thaawar Chand Gehlot claim the presence of around 13,000 manual scavengers , of whom 270 have died.
As per a Supreme Court order state governments must pay Rs 10 lakh to families of persons who die while sewers. The government is expected to mandate that all contractors or private individuals involved must pay an additional Rs 10 lakh each to such families.
Verdict on right to privacy could impact many personal freedoms
A nine-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court passed a historic judgement in August which ruled that the right to privacy is a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution.
Justice JS Khehar, then chief justice of India (CJI), who headed the constitution bench said that the right to privacy was “an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 “ and also “a part of the freedoms guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution.”
This ruling could influence the future of Aadhaar, the government’s 12-digit biometric identification programme.
The Supreme Court is however yet to rule on a bunch of petitions that have challenged the Aadhaar bill.
Chief Justice Dipak Misra has stated that the court’s earlier orders had been passed on evaluation of the government’s executive decisions. These will be tested again against the Aadhaar Act. The apex court is scheduled start hearing the final arguments on the programme’s legality on 17 January, 2017.
It has however extended the deadline for the mandatory linking of Aadhar to a range of services including mobile connections, bank accounts and welfare schemes to March 31, 2018.
Several sections of the society have opposed the Aadhaar programme over concern of privacy and security concerns.
In addition to the Aadhaar programme, the right to privacy ruling is likely to impact several other areas such as cases that deal with to the right to eat, freedom of sexual orientation, right to medically terminate a pregnancy, and freedom to criticise the government among several others.
