Senior MP officer’s statement on gender bias in breastfeeding raises political hackles

A statement by the additional chief secretary (ACS) of the state women and child development department indicating gender discrimination by mothers in breastfeeding their children has raised political hackles in Madhya Pradesh.

During the launch of ‘Laadli Laxmi 2.0’ scheme programme on Wednesday in the presence of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, ACS Ashok Shah said that all mothers breastfeed their sons, but forget to breastfeed daughters and due to this, girl children remained weaker in every aspect. 

Former chief minister Uma Bharti said that the statement of the officer was ‘anti-daughters, anti-women and that maligning the image of mothers’. She posted a series of tweets citing a newspaper report on the statement by Shah and indicated that she had made a complaint about the matter to the chief minister over telephone.

Opposition Congress also got into attacking mode over the statement, with various spokespersons lashing out at the officer for insulting women and mothers.

Narendra Saluja, media coordinator to ex-chief minister and MP Congress chief Kamal Nath, also posted a video of Shah’s statement. 

In the video, in presence of Chouhan and MP BJP chief Vishnu Dutt Sharma, Shah is heard saying (in Hindi), “Why do girl children lag behind? Why does their mental development remain a bit lesser than boys? This has a reason and the reason starts from the home. I want to share the information that in 2005, in MP only 15 per cent mothers breastfed their daughters. Today we are a bit happy but not completely happy – at present 42 per cent mothers breastfeed their daughters. All of them breastfeed their sons but forget to breastfeed daughters. And these six months, when our daughters do not get mother’s milk, she becomes weak in every aspect. We have to end this.”

Saluja said in his tweet addressed to the chief minister, “how can this senior officer give such a shameful and insulting statement about women in your presence. Please ask him what parameters the department has to know which mother breastfeeds daughters and which doesn’t? Where has he got these figures from?”

Saluja added that the chief minister should apologise for the statement that was “anti-women, anti-mothers and anti-daughters” and which “maligned the image of the state”.

Uma Bharti said in her tweets: “Saw the extremely illogical and ridiculous statement of the senior officer in a programme of the MP government. Our chief minister is very alert and sensitive about honour of women and when I called him up today to inform about this (statement), he was surprised and totally disagreed with the statement (of the officer). The chief minister’s response indicated that he was not able to hear the statement by the officer due to a lot of noise in the function. I have a feeling that he (CM) would find a way to correct the statement.”

She further said that the officers should remain very alert and responsible about their statements. “Whether rich or poor, daughter or son, a mother feeds her child immediately after birth. In one out of lakhs of cases, this might not happen because of different reasons. After all, all the women are daughters and how did they survive?”

Congress spokesperson Sangeeta Sharma called upon CM Chouhan who, she said, always makes big claims about nieces, daughters and Laadli Laxmis, to clarify his policy and attitude towards women. “ACS of Shivraj government, Ashok Shah ji, you have insulted all mothers, daughters and sisters by making a disrespectful statement about mothers. Mothers give equal love, affection and blessings to all her children. The term mother has been considered ever above God,” she said.

ACS Ashok Shah could not be contacted for comments as his cell phone remained out of reach.

Factual position of breastfeeding in MP

Even as the controversy rages, it is interesting to note the worrisome situation about initiation of breastfeeding in Madhya Pradesh.

ACS Shah seemed to cite figures of breastfeeding of children within an hour of their birth as reported in the third and fifth editions of the National Family Health Survey (NHFS), to make his ‘gender-biased’ claim.

However, the officer did not give the complete statistics in this regard.

The NFHS-3 report shows that 14.7 per cent girls and 14.6 per cent boys were breastfed within an hour of birth in 2005-06, while the NFHS-5 report shows that the percentage went up to 42.2 for girls and 40.1 for boys in 2019-21. 

The early initiation of breastfeeding figures (within half an hour, one hour and one day of birth respectively) in the NFHS reports are the only gender-wise figures available on breastfeeding in public domain. 

“The NFHS reports make it clear that there is no gender discrimination between girls and boys, as far as the parameter of early initiation of breastfeeding is concerned. Rather, the percentage of girls getting early breastfeeding is slightly more than the boys,” nutrition and health activist Sachin Jain said.

He further said that the main point of worry, which is overshadowed in the controversy, is the overall low percentage of early breastfeeding in Madhya Pradesh at 41.3 per cent (as per NFHS-5 report). 

“This means that less than half of the kids get the much required early breastfeeding and the reason for this is misconceptions in the society, lack of knowledge as well as poverty that leads to poor nutritional status of mother (and thus affects generation of breast milk). The situation is more worrying because now 90 per cent of the child births are institutional child births. This shows that there is lack of monitoring on whether early breastfeeding is being promoted in government and private childbirth facilities or not,” Jain said.