Monday, September 2, 2013

Government Healthcare in India; 'The Sterilization Season'

Bloomberg reports:

When it comes to family planning, women are on the front lines in India, which has carried out about 37 percent of the world’s female sterilizations. Government-imposed quotas and financial incentives for doctors mean 4.6 million women were sterilized last year, many for cash payments and many in the unsanitary and rudimentary conditions that greeted Devi. Vasectomies, by contrast, accounted for just 4 percent of all sterilizations[...]

A majority of those attending sterilization camps in India are lured by incentives such as payments or improved welfare benefits, offered by provincial officials under pressure to meet targets each year, said Abhijit Das, director of the Center for Health and Social Justice in New Delhi, an advocacy group. He isn’t related to the clinic doctor.

“India has the most coercive birth control methods in the world after China,” he said in an interview. “Family planning has become a system of quotas and human beings are the targets.”
While the federal government formally abandoned numerical targets for sterilizations in 1996, that hasn’t filtered down to all states. Most of the operations are performed in the first few months of the year -- a period dubbed “sterilization season” -- so as to fill quotas before the end of the financial year on March 31[...]

Health workers in Gujarat were threatened with salary cuts or dismissal if they failed to meet targets, Human Rights Watch said in July. Women are pressured to undergo sterilization surgery without being told they will never again be able to have children, the group said after interviewing 50 health workers.

7 comments:

  1. One comment there already covers this:

    The word "coerced" entails force or a threat.
    Being PAID to do something does not constitute coercion.
    What ever happened to objectivity being a pillar of journalism?


    Robert, India is going through an economic crisis these days. Why don't you cover that instead.

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    Replies
    1. Has it not occurred to you that the coercion starts with the taking of money from others to fund such activity?

      Holy cow, keeping reading EPJ and hopefully it will expand your thought processes.

      Also, he's covered the crisis in India, go back and search his posts.

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    2. If you are poor, and someone offers you money or improved welfare benefits, then YES, that is coercion.

      You can't comprehend what it is to be poor in India so let me just put it this way: How many jobs have you had? How many of them would you have gladly continued if someone weren't paying you money to do so?

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    3. No one is saying you should not offer money to whoever you want. We are saying it is wrong to take money from someone else by force, no matter what you do with it. You believe it helps poor people if you force other people to give them money. It really just makes you a thief. And since the money given is being borrowed, you are forcing your children and grand children to pay for your generosity. Your actions are not as noble as your mind would have you believe.

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    4. "Has it not occurred to you that the coercion starts with the taking of money from others to fund such activity?"

      Is that what the article is about now? Taking money from others? Are those the bits Robert chose to quote here? Looks like your thought process has expanded so much that it is now rarefied.

      "If you are poor, and someone offers you money or improved welfare benefits, then YES, that is coercion."

      No. Try again.

      "You can't comprehend what it is to be poor in India so let me just put it this way: How many jobs have you had? How many of them would you have gladly continued if someone weren't paying you money to do so?"

      What??? Try again.

      Delete
  2. This is what socialism is (and it is coming to America). It is the great intersection of biology, ecology, economics and politics.

    ReplyDelete