Four Episodes of Satyamev Jayate

Satyamev Jayate has now completed four episodes on female foeticide,  child sexual abuse, dowry and medical malpractice and each of them had four haunting songs. I still keep humming O Ri Chiraiya from the first episode, and then you have Dheere Dheere, Haule Haule from the second, Rupaiyya! from the third and Naav from the fourth. Some of the lyrics are beautiful - would like them to be available without the video link. 

All these are very touching and relevant social issues. Some social scientists may say that these are known to us, but one should appreciate the fact that despite the knowledge of those working in related themes there are deep-rooted myths among people about our understanding of society and ourselves and hopefully the programme is able to address this to a larger section of the society. Hats off to Aamir Khan!

I would like to state a couple of things about the fourth episode on medical malpractice. What was shocking to me was that the current head of the Medical Council of India was unaware that a medical student has to pay 60 lakh rupees in cash to get a seat. If policy makers and decision makers are unaware of facts that are common knowledge then it is high time that they get out of their cocoon - a creation of the system that believes in protocols and hierarchies and umpteen bureaucratic layers so that the information that you have is anything, but the truth.

While the programme was discussing on some negative aspects, particularly linked with private care givers (and also because of the absence of adequate public care facilities), I thought that the programme should highlight some positive examples set by private practitioners like Dr Devi Shetty's Narayana Hrudaayalaya; lo and behold Dr Shetty was himself there.  Need I say more.

Some related blogposts of mine are:

Public Health in India

Why Girls Grow up with Girls?

Detecting Cervical Cancer

Women Power

Emergence of a New Antibiotic Resistance

Daughters are Precious: First Episode of Satyamev Jayate

 

   

Why Girls grow up with Girls?

In discussions about the problem of dowry leading to indebtedness and adverse social consequences one hears the remark “Why do people take dowry for their sons and then give it to their daughters? Or, is it that they have given it for their daughters and want to take it for their sons.”

While discussing gender in many a public forums/lectures when given a proposition that from those present if one takes all the females and males separately and then aggregates the total number of sisters and brothers including themselves then there would be more number of sisters among the females and more number of brothers among males the overwhelming response is that the proposition cannot be true.

Unfortunately, the proposition is true and the households of net dowry givers are different from net dowry takers. To prove the point, one gives a simple example. In single-child households the divide is complete – either it is a daughter or a son; in two-child households they are either both sisters or both brothers or a sister and a brother; it is only when one comes to three-child households that one observes that there could be a brother with two sisters or a sister with two brothers if they are not either all sisters or all brothers.

This gender divide in society, to begin with, is a statistical generality and it is unfortunate that common sense understanding as also public policy discourse misses this basic point. This gets further aggravated under son-preference.