Kaveri and S Irudaya Rajan
Arif Nizam, P. Sivakumar, and S. Irudaya Rajan
S Irudaya Rajan, Balasubramanyam Pattath First Published August 15, 2022
T.Muhammad C.V.Irshad S. Irudaya Rajan
Highlights
•A proportion of 32.70% and 14.23% of older adults in this study were diagnosed with hypertension and diabetes, respectively.
•A proportion of 19.48% and 14.69% of older adults had a family history of hypertension and diabetes, respectively.
•Respondents with family history of both diseases had higher odds of reporting them than those with no such family history.
•Association of family medical history and reporting hypertension or diabetes was significantly mediated by body mass index.
India has one of the largest youth populations in the world. Migrant youth in the urban informal economy are a distinctly vulnerable group. They fall outside the purview of most of the labour legislations, including those related to rights-based social security. The draft National Youth Policy 2021 has recognised this. However, in the absence of a robust strategy, and timely and targeted intervention plan, the policy vision of “unlocking the potential of the youth” will remain on paper only.
Kuldeepsingh Rajput, Manoj Jatav
The abuse of senior citizens in their family is a major social issue that usually goes unnoticed. One of the most prominent form of abuse that the elderly population is forced to endure is financial abuse at the hands of close relatives like children and partners. This chapter attempts to throw some light on various forms of financial abuses that senior citizens face in domestic settings, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Kerala, with its significant population of the elderly was chosen for the study. It is based on a case study among 40 senior citizens, who narrated various types of financial and psychological abuses they were subjected to at the hands of their own kith and kin. The study reveals that most of the financial abuses occur in the form of usurping property through fraudulent means, denying pensions and other monetary benefits. In the absence of a national database recording the abuses on the elderly population, this chapter calls for a nationwide database recording the instances of financial as well as other forms of abuse that the senior citizens are subjected to. The authors also call for a concerted action to ensure that the senior citizens are taken care of in their family settings.
S. Irudaya Rajan The International Institute of Migration and Development,
Kerala, India.
Pooja Batra Christ (deemed to be) University, Pune Lavasa, India.
R Sai Shiva Jayanth Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, Kerala, India.
Corresponding author.
T. M. Sivadasan Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, Kerala, India.
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Kerala, the southernmost state in India, much researched for its high standard of living and a model of development, largely dependent on international remittances, experienced one of its worst floods in 2018. The state also experiences a peculiar type of labour crisis; where the local population migrates internationally, attracting interstate migrants to compensate for the labour deficit. However, in times of calamities like floods, these unorganized labourers are the worst hit and still the last priority. The media widely reported their mass exodus, unhygienic living conditions, and mistreatment in relief camps during the floods, though the policy responses have been unsatisfactory to date. The paper tries to evaluate the role of inter-state migrants in the socio-economic profile of Kerala and comments on the necessity to include them as a priority in the migration policy discussions, particularly in light of the state’s extreme proneness to natural disasters.
Economics and Political Weekly Vol. 56, Issue No. 49, 04 Dec, 2021
The NFHS-5 hides more than it reveals on the demographic and health indicators.
Views expressed are personal and do not represent those of the institution/employer of the authors.
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 is the fifth in a row to offer population and health indicators for Indian states and districts. Having commenced in the early 1990s, over the three decades of periodic enquiry, the NFHS has not only facilitated gauging the trends in population and health parameters, but also many other programme-related performance indicators. In fact, the most recently held monitoring exercise of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the assessment of the Multidimensional Poverty Indices for the Indian states and its districts has been largely facilitated by the indicators offered by the latest NFHS. Given the significance and credibility of the indicators offered by consecutive rounds of the NFHS in monitoring the progress on the population and health fronts, the recently released NFHS-5 findings have brought out surprises on the attainment of various targets as well as the progress made on varied domains. Although a range of 131 indicators is offered by this survey, the indicators that received attention relate to the female population sex ratio, the attainment of replacement-level of fertility and the future of the population control policy.
Though age–sex composition of population along with other information collected from the households form the fundamental basis of the NFHS-5, the basic indicators like sex ratio and age composition based on this survey may not be the best alternative to the census enumeration. The NFHS-5 (2019–21) findings highlight a feminine population sex ratio of 1,020 when compared to the 991 obtained in the NFHS-4 (2015–16)—a 29 points improvement in just five years. In the absence of a 2021 Census, the 2011 Census reported 940 females per 1,000 males—an 80 points improvement in 10 years. This improvement once acknowledged can have its own interpretation in the improved status of women to gendered advantage. However, before jumping to conclusions on this improved sex ratio shifting from a masculine to a feminine one, we should revisit the results from varied perspectives. The main objective of the earlier four rounds of the NFHS as well the current one is to provide high-quality data on reproductive health and family welfare indicators and not on the population sex ratio. The overall sex ratio of the NFHS-5 need not necessarily be taken on its face value. Further, the recent experience of fertility transition has implication for the number of children with a skewed sex composition and the skewed presence of elderly individuals in the surveyed households. Given these complexities, a survey-based population sex ratio being feminine need not be highlighted to comment on its popular derivatives. We have to wait for the 2022 Census to examine the overall sex ratio.
The second most important highlight has been the attainment of a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.0, implying a below replacement level of fertility for the Indian population. While the TFR is a marker of fertility decline and the success of long-standing antenatal policies, its implication for population replacement has a lag given the momentum of population growth on the one hand and the characteristic differential on the other. The aggregate low fertility may well be a reality, but its distribution represents infertility on one extreme and fertility level above this norm on the other. Though Kerala achieved a replacement level of fertility as early as 1987, it is expected to stabilise around 2030. Hence, the attainment of below replacement level of fertility would perhaps have its implication for population growth and composition in terms of attaining stabilisation following a sustained low fertility for a while. Apart from celebrating this success, it is pertinent to recognise strategies to mitigate consequences of low fertility as well. With low fertility, the experience of infertility is on a rise and needs attention, and at the same time, the implication of low fertility on the emergence of future inequality (particularly owing to differential endowments among children and families) should also be a matter of concern. Given the economic gradient of fertility differential and clusters of fertility above the low fertility normative, its inequality derivatives are imminent.
Apart from these two indicators, a host of indicators concerning maternal and child health, nutrition, women’s autonomy, gender-based violence along with the use of tobacco and alcohol are also obtained. A significant share of these indicators display an improvement over the last survey figures offering optimism regarding the success of government programmes as well as the changing population health environment at large. Many of these indicators as defined are simple headcount ratios for varying denominators, making their comparison across situations questionable, given the magnitude of the phenomenon on the one hand and the attained level of success on the other. Besides the national-level comparison of trends, the same across states and districts would perhaps require greater caution to comment on improvement/deterioration overlooking the raised concern mentioned above. Further, these indicators may also have a compositional structure in terms of various characteristics with a range of vulnerability differences that would be masked in these aggregates and may have a bearing on their progress towards their betterment. Such cautions are necessary, given the tendency of using this information base for the assessment of progress towards betterment.
On the whole, the generation of the host of indicators at a disaggregated level with characteristic differences is quite encouraging in terms of gauging performances and progress, but many of these indicators will have the limitation of being defined in a dichotomous construct with their characteristics and compositional differences that will compromise their robust comparison.
Rajan, S. I., Sivadasan, T. M., Jayanth, R. S. S., & Batra, P. (2021). Household Pandemic Response: The Socioeconomic Impact of COVID-19 on Migrant Households in India. Asian Economics Letters, 3(Early View). https://doi.org/10.46557/001c.25382