Friday Factly 31 December 2021

GENERAL STUDIES 1

Women

• The National Family Health Survey found that 23.3 percent of women in the age group of 20 to 24 years were married before they turned 18. About 6.8 per cent of women in the age group of 15-19 years were already mothers or pregnant at the time of the survey. Just 41 per cent of them have had more than ten years of schooling as against 50.2 per cent of men. Even in terms of economic empowerment, such as owning a mobile phone, just 54 per cent of women own a mobile phone that they use.

Waste

• Between 1.5 and 4 million waste pickers in India work without social security, health insurance, minimum wages or basic protective gear.

NFHS data

• The Total Fertility Rate — the average number of children born per woman — has declined from 2.2 to 2.0 at the national level. A total of 31 States and Union Territories (constituting 69.7% of the country’s population) have achieved fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1. The main reasons for decline in fertility include: Increase in adoption of modern family planning methods (from 47.8% in 2015-16 to 56.5% in 2019-21) and a reduction in unmet need for family planning by 4% points over the same period.
• Significant improvements in female literacy, with 41% women having received 10 or more years of schooling (compared to 36% in 2015-16)
• Increased reach of the health system to more non-user couples with information about family planning (from 18% in 2015-16 to 24% in 2019-21). Further, 62% of current users have received information about the side-effects of contraceptives — a crucial indicator of the improved quality of family planning services. Significant improvements in female literacy, with 41% women having received 10 or more years of schooling (compared to 36% in 2015-16)
• The prevalence of child marriage has gone down marginally from 26.8% in 2015-16 to 23.3% in 2019-21. Similarly, sex ratio at birth has shown slight improvement (from 919 to 929 over the same time period).

GENERAL STUDIES 2

Criminalization:

According to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), 24% of the winners in the 2004 Lok Sabha election had a criminal background; it rose to 30% in the 2009 general election, 34% in the 2014 elections, and 43% in the 2019 elections. Worse, 29% of those elected in 2019 had reported serious crimes including rape, murder, and culpable homicide. Between the two national parties, out of 303 winners from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2019 election, 116 (39%) had a criminal record as against 29 (56%) out of 52 winners from the Indian National Congress (INC).

GENERAL STUDIES 3

Inequality

• The top 1% took 38% of all additional wealth accumulated since the mid-1990s, whereas the bottom 50% captured just 2% of it. ”Five Year plans contributed” to reducing the share of the top 10% who had 50% of the income under colonial rule, to 35%- 40% in the early decades after Independence. However, since the mid-1980s, deregulation