Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel has questioned Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministry Maneka Gandhi over the delay in publishing the entire report of the Rapid Survey of Children (RSOC) 2013-14. Also, Patel lashed out at the Government questioning how the report was leaked to an international agency and not shared with any domestic agency working in this area.
In a letter addressed to Gandhi, Patel said he was surprised that in October 2014, the WCD Ministry chose to publish only a part of the report but excluded States such as Gujarat, which has a chronic problem of malnutrition and child immunisation.
“lack of reliable and relevant data is one of the major constraints in formulating policies pertaining to public health. The last available data on health and nutrition is more than eight years old,” Patel, who is also a Rajya Sabha member, said in his letter.
Also, he pointed out that the release of the report will affect deliberations on matters such as malnutrition and infant mortality and thus requested Gandhi to take necessary action to make the report public.
“While the Government may have its reasons for not releasing the report to national audience, it remains inexplicable as to how foreign agencies such as the US based IFPRI got access to this data and not any of our agencies working in this area,” Patel said in a vibrant democracy like India public data shouldn’t be held hostage to political compulsions.
RSOC was commissioned by the Women and Child Development Ministry in association with the UNICEF.