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Left Behind?
Women, Politics, and Development inIndia
NIRAJA GoPAL JAYAL
Professor of Law and Governance
Jawaharlal Nehru University

AcRoss AFRICA, EUROPE, AND LATIN America, a number of women have in recent
times been elected heads of government. More than four decades ago, India's Indira
Gandhi was only the third woman in the world to lead a democratic country. Several
decades earlier, tens of thousands of Indian women had participated in the movement
for independence from imperial rule, many of them going to prison for the cause of
freedom. But in the years following India's independence, it was mainly elite women
who were visible in public life. Even today, there are at least three women leading ma-
jor national political parties. But, for the vast majority of women, the triple burdens 91
of gender, class, caste, and religion, overlaid with the power of patriarchy, make the
constitutional promise of gender equality seem more symbolic than substantive.
The Global Gender Gap Report 2007-a composite index of economic participa-
tion, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival-ranks
India 114th out of 128 countries.' A year earlier, India's ranking on this index was
98th out of 115 countries; even counting only those countries, India's position in 2007
slipped 4 places to 102. This composite ranking places India below its South Asian
neighbors Sri Lanka (at 15th place) and even Bangladesh (at 100th), higher only than
Nepal and Pakistan.
The disaggregated scores in this index are significant. On three of the sub-indexes,
India's ranking is even lower than its ranking of 114th on the composite index. On
economic participation and opportunity for women, for example, Indias ranking is
122th; on educational attainment, it is 116th; and on health and survival, it is positively
abysmal-126th-with only two countries, Azerbaijan and Armenia, below it.
But contrast these with India's ranking on the political empowerment of women:
21st out of 128 countries, higher even than Australia, Canada, and the United States.

NIRAJA GoPAL JAYAL is a professor of law and governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi
and is also currently a senior fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi.
Copyright © 2008 by the Brown Journalof Wori Affairs

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 NIRAJA GoPAL JAYAL

Granted, India has had its share of female heads of state, and it could be argued that
the index gives too much consideration to countries with female leadership, since
the presence and even the longevity of elite female leadership is no proof of women's
Despite the emergence of India as amajor political participation being either
widespread or robust. Even so, it
economic player on the world stage, its is the case that there is a wide and

poor record of human development reflects puzzling gap between the political
the persistence of pparticipation of Indian women on
fpoverty and inequality, the one hand, and their human
development indicators-that is, the social and economic opportunities available to
them-on the other. It is this gap that this essay seeks to address.
Despite the emergence of India as a major economic player on the world stage, its
poor record of human development reflects the persistence of poverty and inequality.
These inequalities are accentuated in the case of disadvantaged social groups (caste and
tribal), and especially in the situation of women who belong to such groups. The essay
provides some data to illustrate these inequalities before proceeding to a discussion of
state interventions and the political participation of women.

INEQUALITY, SocIAL EXCLUSION, AND GENDER

92
India's ranks 128th out of 177 countries on the United Nations Development Program
Human Development Index for 2007. This presents a stark and curious contrast to
the reality of India's record of surging economic growth, reminding us of the unequal
distribution of prosperity in a country that is being seen as an emerging economic
powerhouse. Forbesmagazine's list of the world's billionaires includes 36 Indians, three
of whom are in the top 20 (though none of them are female). In addition, companies
owned by Indians-some of which are incorporated in India-have bought large Eu-
ropean corporations like Arcelor and Corus. For some years now, the Indian economy
has maintained an impressively steady 9 percent annual growth rate. Its economic
success and projected potential have also attracted a substantial amount of foreign
direct investment.
Notwithstanding this extraordinary economic success story, approximately 26
percent of India's population subsists below a rather sparely defined poverty line. It is
hardly surprising that such poverty statistics should translate into poor human develop-
ment indicators, which in turn manifest a gender gap. Correlating the data on human
development by social group, we find that there is an overlap between poverty and low
human development on the one hand, and social exclusion on the other. The poorest
sections of India's population belong disproportionately to the most marginalized social

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 Left Behind?
groups, especially the scheduled castes (dalits), the scheduled tribes (adivasis), and the
Muslim minority. Given that these three groups constitute 38 percent of India's popu-
lation, the overlap is both obvious and disturbing. 2 It is certainly not the case that all
members of these groups are poor or that there is no poverty among other social groups,
but there is a higher likelihood of someone who is poor belonging to these groups.
Furthermore, the position of women in these social groups is worse than men.
There can scarcely be a less ambiguous predictor of gender discrimination than
the sex ratio. The sex ratio expresses the preference for sons in South Asian societies,
in which the historical practice of female infanticide has, in contemporary times, been
replaced by that of female feticide, or sex-selective abortions. It is not surprising that
the Global Gender Gap Report 2007 attributes the lowering of India's overall ranking
(as compared to the previous year) to the sex ratio. India's 2001 census documented
a sex ratio of 933 females per 1000 males, which is marginally better than the ratio
of 927 females per 1000 males of the 1991 census, but much lower than the ratios in
European and North American countries.
Maternal mortality in India is estimated at 301 per 100,000 live births, which
puts the average risk of a woman dying each time she becomes pregnant at roughly
1 in 330.3 This in turn means that if a woman gets pregnant three times in her life,
the average chance of her dying is just under 1 in 100.' Not surprisingly, higher rates
of maternal mortality are more characteristic of rural and lower-caste women than of 93
urban and higher-caste women. This points to the poor access women--especially rural
and lower-caste women-have to healthcare services, especially antenatal, natal, and
postnatal medical facilities.
A rich amount of data on women ranging from fertility and age of marriage to
spousal violence and healthcare became available very recently, in September of 2007,
following a 29-state NationalFamily Health Survey conducted in 2005 and 2006. The
NationalFamilyHealth Survey (referred to as NFHS-3) reports on issues related to family
health and is therefore substantially about women and children. However, the survey
does also make comparisons with men-as in the case of anemia or literacy, education,
and employment. When addressing topics such as fertility and neonatal and postnatal
care, however, the survey is chiefly about women. NFHS-3 shows a reassuring decline
in the rates of fertility, birth, and infant mortality. However, anemia, wasting, and
malnutrition continue to rise among both female children and adult women. Between
the last such survey (NFHS-2, 1998-1999) and the present one, anemia in married
women has gone up from 52 to 56 percent, and in pregnant women from 50 to 58
percent. Anemia in men, by contrast, is currently 24 percent.5
Gender inequalities are also reflected in access to education and employment. The
enrollment of girls in school is lower than that of boys, and half of those who enroll

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 NIRAJA GOPAL JAYAL
drop out by middle school. Thus, 41 percent of women between the ages of 15 and
49---compared to 18 percent of men in the same age group-have never been to school.6
Girls are kept home to help with housework or to look after younger siblings. They are
also married off at a fairly young age-- 4 6 percent of women in the 18 to 29 age group
who were surveyed had been married before the legal age of 18, and the median age
for first birth among them is 19.3 years. 7 The NFHS-3 survey also documented spousal
physical or sexual violence and abuse in the case of 37 percent of married women. Of
the women surveyed, 54 percent of the women thought abuse was justified. 8
The survey found that 43 percent of currently married women were employed,
as opposed to 99 percent of married men. Of these women, 25 percent received no
payment for their work, while 12 percent were paid in kind.9 Among married women
who work and are paid in cash, 14 percent decided alone how their earnings would
be spent, while 57 percent decided with their husbands; one in six had no say in how
their earnings were spent.1l The survey also asked who in the housqhold usually made
the decisions relating to major household purchases, purchases for daily household
needs, visiting the wife's family or relatives, and how many children to have. Only 37
percent of married women said they participated in making decisions in all four areas;
43 percent participated in some of these decisions; and 21 percent did not participate
in any of these decisions."X
94 Among disadvantaged social groups-such as the scheduled castes and scheduled
tribes-women are both more disadvantaged than men of the same groups and more
disadvantaged than women in the general population. The differential in wages, work
participation rates, literacy and education, health, and mortality is considerable. Levels
of educational deprivation are highest among rural women of the scheduled castes and
scheduled tribes and lowest among urban males who do not belong to these social
groups. 2 Only a quarter of women belonging to the scheduled castes and scheduled
tribes are literate, as compared to approximately half of women in other social groups.
Similarly, the data for schooling of children between the ages of 7 and 16 shows that
the mean years of schooling for Muslim girls-whether rural or urban-are fewer even
than those for girls belonging to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. While rural
Muslim girls in this age group obtain 2.62 mean years of schooling, scheduled caste
13
and scheduled tribe girls get an average of 2.75 years of schooling.
The fertility rates among Muslim women, as well as women belonging to the
scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, are also higher than the average. Thus, while
the average fertility for women as a whole is 2.7 children in a lifetime, the average for
women belonging to these three groups is 3.1 for scheduled tribes, 2.9 for scheduled
castes, and 3.1 for Muslims. Likewise, anemia is especially high in women without any
14
education and those belonging to the scheduled tribes.

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 Left Behind?
Neither these poor human development indicators for women nor the very
real gender gap can be attributed exclusively to policy neglect or an absence of legal
interventions. Beginning with the constitutional guarantee of gender equality, there
are many laws and policies that have sought to further the objective of bringing about
greater equality in the patriarchal Indian society. There is a range of what could be
broadly described as punitive laws-laws that prescribe severe punishment for rape,
dowry demands, domestic violence, and female feticide. There are also enabling laws
such as the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts (1992) that provide for a
one-third reservation for women in the elected institutions of local governance, both
rural and urban. Why, despite this panoply of punitive as well as enabling laws, does
gender inequality persist on this scale?

LAW, GENDER JUSTICE, AND GENDER EQuALITY

The following are three examples of laws enacted for gender justice and gender equality.

PrenatalDiagnostic Techniques andSex-Selective Abortions

The first example is the punitive law against prenatal diagnostic techniques used for
sex-selective abortion. It is an unfortunate and well-known fact that son preference in
Indian society has encouraged female infanticide for hundreds of years. In recent years, 95
the availability of sophisticated technologies of sex-determination has made possible sex-
selective abortion, or female feticide. The prenatal diagnosis law was intended to combat
this practice. In 1997, a United Nations Population Fund report estimated that India's
"missing women" numbered between 32
and 48 million. 5 In the northern states
of Haryana, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh, has encouraged female in-
there are not even 900 females for every fanticide for hundreds of years.
1000 males, while in the southern state
of Kerala there are 1058-here, females far exceed the male population. It is, moreover,
significant that we find among Christian and Buddhist tribal communities, in which
there is no marked son-preference, a lower deficit of women in rural areas.
Given that the states of Punjab and Haryana are economically prosperous, it is
likely that literacy, education, and the status of women in society are more significant
determinants of the practice of female feticide than economic prosperity. This is borne
out by a recent study of the state of Maharashtra in western India, which established a
correlation between the higher availability of clinics providing ultrasound sonography
and a lower sex ratio. The study showed that close to 80 percent of these clinics are
located in the five richest districts of the state, where the ratio of females to males is
6
also the lowest.'

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 NIRAJA GoPAL JAYAL

In 1971, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act legalized abortion

to safeguard the health of pregnant women. It was only some years later that the in-
troduction of amniocentesis-to detect fetal abnormalities-also made possible sex-
determination. Amniocentesis soon came to be used primarily as a sex pre-selection
test; more and more private clinics began to provide the test, resulting in widespread
misuse of the MTP Act. It was to check this rampant abuse that the Pre-Conception
and Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act was
enacted in 1994, and subsequently amended in 2003. The law banned sex-determina-
tion tests and provided for punishment of up to three years imprisonment and a small
monetary fine for offenders. The ban is believed to have driven the tests underground,
making them more expensive rather than less common. In December 2007, a BBC
Asian Network hidden-camera investigation of a New Delhi gynecologist with a strong
professional reputation demonstrated this pattern. 7
In Punjab, a recent attempt to enforce the law by a police crackdown on clinics
offering sex-determination tests has resulted in a sudden increase in the number of girl
children being either killed or abandoned in garbage dumps and fields. This has provoked
the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (the apex body that administers Sikh
shrines) to put cradles outside the Sikh temples to encourage the parents of unwanted
female infants to leave them there instead of killing them."8 The continuing practice
96 of female feticide-in economically prosperous regions more than in backward ones,
in urban areas more than rural, and even among the Indian diaspora in the United
Kingdom-is testimony to the resilience of patriarchal ideology and culture.
The preference for sons, even among women, is reflected in the NFHS-3 data.
The average ideal family size of children reported by women consists of 1.1 sons, 0.9
daughters, and 0.4 children of either sex.1 9 Despite this, there is a decline in the aver-
age ideal family size reported by women from the previous such survey, and even some
heartening evidence that the women's internalization of these patriarchal values may
be on the wane. The recent NFHS data show that the percentage of women with two
daughters and no sons who do not want any additional children increased from 47
percent in the NFHS-2 to 61 percent in NFHS-3.2 °

GuaranteedPoliticalRepresentationfor Women
The second example of legal provisions for gender equality is of an enabling law provid-
ing for guaranteed political representation for women. Fifteen years ago, in December
1992, a quite revolutionary constitutional amendment was enacted by India's parliament
that mandated the creation of institutions of rural local governance (three tiers at the
sub-state level), with regularly-elected representatives. The amendment also provided
for one-third guaranteed representation for women at every level of these institutions,

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 Left Behind?
or panchayats, including in the post of chairperson at each level. In terms of sheer
numbers, this has yielded breathtaking results, as approximately 1.2 million women
have entered the panchayats.
At the higher levels of the political system, India has had no dearth of strong
women leaders. Its current president is a woman. The president of the ruling Congress
Party is also a woman. Today, three of the Indian federations 28 states have women chief
ministers, and in the last decade there have been times when there were more. Histori-
cally, the participation of women in public life has been strong, as the mass struggle
for independence from British colonial rule brought large numbers of women into the
movement. India had a woman prime minister, Indira Gandhi, for approximately a
quarter of its 60-year history. However, as in other South Asian countries, successful
women political leaders have often been linked by blood or marriage to powerful male
politicians: Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Chandrika Kumaratunga in Sri Lanka, Sheikh
Hasina and Khaleda Zia in Bangladesh, Indira and Sonia Gandhi in India, and Benazir
Bhutto in Pakistan. In India, the acceptability of women for the top political jobs has not
translated into large numbers of women legislators, whether in the federal parliament
or in the state legislatures. In the directly elected lower house of the current parliament,
women make up 8.28 percent of the members, though the average from 1950 to the
present has varied between 6 and 7 percent. A bill providing for one-third representation
for women in parliament and the state legislatures has been pending in parliament for 97
the past 11 years. Despite the fact that there is complete agreement on this bill among
women members, its enactment has been repeatedly obstructed by openly sexist com-
ments in parliamentary The practices of men contesting elections inthe name
debate and even minor of their wives, attending meetings on their behalf, and
violence-as when a
copy of the bill was even signing official papers, have been widespread.
torn by an enraged male member of parliament before the speaker's chair.
The quota for women in institutions of local governance acquires greater signifi-
cance within this context. 21 Early studies of their performance reported tokenism and
surrogate or proxy representation (by fathers, husbands, brothers, etc.) on a massive
scale. The practices of men contesting elections in the name of their wives, attending
meetings on their behalf, and even signing official papers, have been widespread. Over
time, however, it has come to be recognized that there are many exceptions. Many
women have gradually grown into their role as elected representatives, recognizing that
they should do not what their husbands or fathers-in-law want them to do, but what
their constituents expect them to do.
There have been many other obstacles, too. Women representatives have often
been unseated by manipulated motions of no confidence; others have been threatened,

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 NIRAJA GoPAL JAYAL
intimidated, or simply marginalized. Meetings are called without even informing the
woman heading the panchayat and decisions are taken and sent to her home for her
official endorsement. These problems have been particularly acute in the case of dalit and
tribal women. In a famous case, a dalit woman head of a village panchayat in Madhya
Pradesh went to court because she was restrained from hoisting the national flag on
Independence Day, a task that was rightfully hers and an honor that she valued. She
won the case in court, and returned the following year to perform her role.
Notwithstanding these difficulties, the developmental achievements of the women-
headed panchayats and those in which women members are more active have been
impressive. They include schemes for drinking water, playgrounds, and schools. Indeed,
a gender distinction has often been observed between the types of development works
prioritized by women and men. Thus, if male leaders tend to give importance to the
building of roads, electricity, and other infrastructure, women are found to be more
attentive to primary education and health, as well as the conservation and sustainable
use of common property resources like forests and ponds. Even before the constitu-
tional amendment, all-women panchayats in Maharashtra had, in a departure from
traditional politics, adopted need-oriented, ecologically sustainable programs. They
addressed issues of water scarcity, added extra schoolrooms, built community toilets,
and organized smokeless stoves for cooking. More recently, the all-women panchayat
98 of Kultikri in West Bengal pioneered a literacy campaign in the district, brought
about a considerable improvement in the primary health infrastructure, raised money
by leasing common property village ponds for pisciculture, and improved livelihoods
by establishing training-cum-production centers for women. These are considerable
developmental achievements.
However, whether women are empowered by their participation in local gover-
nance is less easy to establish or document. Many women entering panchayats have
given up the veil orpurdah.There is some evidence that relationships within the family,
including the division of labor within the household, are being renegotiated. Women
find that their opinions receive greater respect not only within the household, but also
outside of it. For instance, their influence on decisions regarding when the children
should marry has now increased.
Perhaps most significantly, the importance of being able to read agenda papers or
minutes of meetings has forced women to recognize that illiteracy is a major handicap,
and this in turn has led to a greater awareness of the importance of girls' education
and higher levels of aspirations for girls. The same women who needed to be virtually
coerced to contest elections are today eager to attend panchayat meetings themselves,
and to participate in processes of decision making.
Thus, many women representatives now say that they would like to contest elec-
tions again, some saying that they would like to contest for positions of a higher level

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 Left Behind?
than the ones they currently hold. Such aspirations are even more manifest in the case
of dalit and tribal women, surely a positive sign of empowerment. There are, in fact,
instances of women having served a term on a reserved seat and then having returned
to office through open competition in the election. In the community, women's in-
volvement in panchayat work is perceived They are often satisfied with small
as reducing corruption and favoritism, as when upper-caste people no
encouraging a greater awareness of educa- gains,
tion, and even creating a greater recognition longer expect them to sit on the floor,
of women's rights. Many women representatives perceive a change in the attitude of
people (men and women) belonging to their own as well as other castes. Backward caste
women, for example, see as an indicator of their new status the number of invitations
they now receive to weddings, especially from upper-caste families. Of course, none
of these should encourage us to romanticize the change, for dalit women hardly ever
report a significant shift in the behavior of higher-caste people towards them. They are
often satisfied with small gains, as when upper-caste people no longer expect them to
sit on the floor, but instead offer a seat at the same level as themselves. Nevertheless, a
new sense of self-confidence is perceptible.
It must be noted that the impact of women's participation on institutions of local
governance varies significantly across states and regions. Different states have interpreted
the constitutional mandate differently-some have devolved more powers, functions 99
and finances to the panchayats than others. As such, the same formal institutional
structures operate more effectively in some areas than in others, and accordingly render
more or less difficult the effective participation of women. In the absence of adequate
powers, the impact of panchayats-whether headed by women or by men-is naturally
minimal, but this is clearly not a gender-specific phenomenon.
Apart from the differences in the extent of devolution, there are also important
regional, historical, and cultural factors that account for variations in the performance
of women in panchayats. Thus, in regions such as the northern states of Haryana, Uttar
Pradesh, and Rajasthan, where the structures of caste and patriarchy are more deeply
entrenched, there are more obstructions to the effective participation of women. In
contrast, in regions where the customary status of women is somewhat higher-whether
because of a social reform movement in the nineteenth century, as in Maharashtra, or
male migration in search of employment, as in Uttarakhand-women's quotas have
been relatively more successful.
Despite the many negative trends (such as surrogate representation and tokenism)
observed in the practice of women's participation as elected representatives in pan-
chayats, it is clear that these institutions are performing-slowly, but unmistakably-a
transformative role. To speak of their powerlessness-as some women have done-is

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 NIRAJA GOPAL JAYAL

already to recognize it squarely and for the first time. This recognition may presently be
confined to an awareness of powerlessness in the public sphere, but it cannot be long
before their powerlessness within the home also comes to be recognized.

CriminalLaw, PersonalLaw, and Women

The third and last example is of a law that was amended in a retrogressive manner from
the point of view of gender justice. This is the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on
Divorce) Act of 1986, enacted against the backdrop of the Supreme Court judgment
on one of the landmark cases in Indian legal and political history-the case of Shah
Bano vs. Mohammed Ahmed Khan (1981). The case pertained to a claim for mainte-
nance of a 73-year old divorcee, Shah Bano. The High Court's judgment awarding her
a pittance by way of a maintenance allowance was contested by her former husband,
Mohammed Ahmed Khan, in the Supreme Court, on the grounds that this was in
contravention of his rights under Islamic law. Essentially, the Supreme Court was asked
to pronounce on the relationship between religious personal law (which, for civil mat-
ters, is constitutionally recognized) and the criminal law of the land (which is uniform
for all citizens, irrespective of religion). The courts had, for many years, been invoking
a provision in the criminal law against vagrancy and destitution to make it possible to
award maintenance to Muslim women divorcees. This was the provision under which
100 the award was made by the High Court, and this was the provision that was eventually
amended by the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act.
The Supreme Court ruled that the criminal law of the country overrode all
personal laws, which pertained only to the domain of civil law. The criminal law was
therefore uniformly applicable to all, including Muslim women. This sparked off a
political storm in which the Muslim community leadership protested the judgment,
making a counter-claim couched in the language of the rights of cultural community.
Their argument was that such matters should be decided by the personal law of the
community, rather than by state institutions. The political opportunity this presented
was irresistible to the ruling Congress Party of the time, which hastily piloted through
parliament the incongruously titled Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce)
Act. This legislation excluded Muslim women divorcees from the purview of the hith-
erto uniformly applicable criminal law of the country, thereby rendering them subject
to community dictates in the matter of maintenance upon divorce. As the community
identity of Muslim women was privileged over their gender identity and interest, the
argument of cultural community rights was allowed to trump that of gender justice in
22
a clearly retrograde piece of legislation.

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 Left Behind?
CONCLUSION

All three cases that we have briefly surveyed testify to the power of patriarchy. The Shah
Bano case and the law enacted in its aftermath suggest a convergence between the state
and the cultural community, which both privilege patriarchal norms. Likewise, the
continuing practice of female feticide-notwithstanding a stringent law to curb it-and
the attempts to undermine the political participation of elected women representatives
in the institutions of local governance testify to the powerful role of patriarchal ideology
and culture. This is why the quota for women in panchayat institutions yields relatively
superior outcomes in regions where patriarchy is less entrenched-for instance, in hill
regions where women-headed households are more common because of male migra-
tion to the plains in search of employment. States in which women are more educated
and have greater autonomy, and are consequently less likely to internalize patriarchal
ideology, would seem to be the areas in which female feticide is less frequently practiced.
For women belonging to disadvantaged social groups, the overlap of class, gender, and
social exclusion places on them multiple burdens that accentuate the gender gap.
We know that the political capacities of states depend, at least partially, on the
support and cooperation of societal forces. Scholarship on state-society relations in
the field of industrial development, for instance, has shown that state interventions are
23 101
more likely to work when there is a synergy between political and economic power.
The ineffectual nature of some state interventions that we have surveyed here points
to structural inequalities in society-supported by the entrenchment and resilience of
patriarchal ideology-which resist the project of gender equality. It is clear that neither
legal nor institutional reform by itself can accomplish greater gender justice or equality.
The undermining of patriarchal values would appear to be a necessary condition for
this, which is a project that can only emanate from society rather than the state. This
is a task for the women's movement-to unify women's interests qua women, rather
than as members of this or that identity-group. V

Nomi

1. Ricardo Hausmann, Laura D. Tyson, and Saadia Zahidi, The Global Gender Gap Report2007(Geneva:
World Economic Forum, 2007).
2. Niraja G. Jayal, RepresentingIndia:Ethnic Diversityand the GovernanceofPublicInstitutions (London:
Palgrave MacMillan with UNRISD, 2006), ch. 2.
3. This figure is from a 2006 survey by the Registrar General of India. If we look at the data in the 2007
UNDP HDR, we find two figures for maternal mortality: the higher figure reported and the lower one
adjusted. In the latter, the MMR for India is 450 per 100,000 live births, while the comparable rates for
the United Kingdom and the United States are 8 and 11, respectively. It is worth remembering that, ac-
cording to the UNFPA, 99 percent of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries. (United Nations
Population Fund, State ofthe World Population Report, 2005).

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 NIRAJA GOPAL JAYAL
4. Anjali Radkar and Sulabha Parasuraman, "Maternal Deaths in India: An Exploration," Economic and
PoliticalWeekly 42, no. 31 (2007): 3262.
5. International Institute of Population Sciences and Macro International, NationalFamilyHealth Survey
(NFHS-3) 2005-06: Volume I (Mumbai: lIPS, 2007): 310.
6. Ibid., 55.
7. Ibid., 163.
8. Ibid., 478.
9. Ibid., 450.
10. Ibid., 453.
11. Ibid., 463.
12. Jayal, RepresentingIndia, 35.
13. Prime Minister's High-Level Committee of the Government of India, Social, Economic andEduca-
tional Status of the Muslim Community of India:A Report (2006): 290.
14. lIPS, NFHS-3, 310.
15. K. Srinivasan, et. al., India: Towards Population and Development Goals (New Delhi: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1997).
16. Durga Chandran, "The Richer the District, the Poorer the Sex Ratio," InfoChangeNews &Features,
January 2006, http://www.infochangeindia.org/bookandreportsst94.jsp.
17. BBC World Service, "Doctor Sought Over Illegal Scans," BBCNews, 5 December 2007, http://news.
bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south-asia/7129268.stm/.
18. Chandra S. Dogra, "Girl.. .Interred," Outlook, 28 January 2008.
19. lIPS, NFHS-3,104.
20. lIPS, NFHS-3, 98.
21. Niraja G. Jayal, "Engendering Local Democracy: The Impact of Quotas for Women in India's
Panchayats,"Democratization13, no. 1 (February 2006): 15-35.
22. Niraja G. Jayal, Democracyand the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in India (New Delhi:
102 Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 3.
23. Atul Kohli, State-DirectedDevelopment: PoliticalPowerand Industrializationin the Global Periphery
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 20-23.

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