v.saisriniwasan
Sai Vadlamani
There are many social issues in India that are being ignored to a certain extent, resulting in these serious problems becoming rather dominant ones that threaten the peaceful existence of our country. One of the most serious one among these is the problem of HIV and drug abuse. Owing to the increased awareness regarding substitute drugs for conventional ones like cannabis and heroin. The most popular prescription drug that has been doing the rounds these days is opiate pethidine. Most of the youngsters who are drug addicts, and can't find a regular supply of the conventional drugs start with cannabis and then move on to such prescription drugs due to the easy availability of the latter. This social cause is increasingly becoming an alarming area of concern.
In the north eastern states, sharing syringes is the new 'weapon' for infections. Close to 1.7% of the country's HIV infections are caused due to sharing these needles, up from 0.9% some time back. Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh have also joined the ranks as the new sources for injecting drugs, and are thus potentially life threatening areas as far as HIV being one of the social problems in India is concerned. As per the UNAIDS 2009 report, HIV prevalence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia can be as high as 70% among those who inject drugs. This has resulted in public health experts asking the government to lift the bans on drugs like methadone and buprenorphine, which are used as vital ingredients of the substitution maintenance therapy at de addiction centres, so as to save the maximum number of lives that can be saved.
The next area of concern in terms of social issues is gender bias in health. Over the past decade, the government has launched the National Rural Health Mission with the sole intention of rectifying rural inequality in terms of health. A majority of these schemes and programmes are exceptionally planned and meticulously detailed out at the initial stage, but fall flat at the execution level. Local communities are supposedly empowered regarding public health, and health plans are required to be drawn by each village by health committees within their respective Panchayats. However, the Panchayati Raj, the fountain-head of grass roots democracy, is one of the chief sources of the social problems in India, and has a reputation of manipulating the authority given to it and putting it to wrong use. Even though the caste and religion biases have been considerably done away with in recent times, the bias against women across all castes and religion is still prevalent. Right from the figures of the sex ratio in India, once can see that right from the infant stage, a female is considered as some kind of a stigma on the family, and this thinking continues till adulthood and old age. Also, women are conditioned to silently put up with this kind of behaviour because there seems no reprieve in the society in which they live. Even in terms of diseases, when a woman and man suffer from the same predicament, and the treatment is an expensive one, the man would always get preference over the latter.
In order to evolve as a developed country, it is necessary that we take care of these social problems and resolve them at the earliest, so that the society can indeed be a fair and impartial one.
In the north eastern states, sharing syringes is the new 'weapon' for infections. Close to 1.7% of the country's HIV infections are caused due to sharing these needles, up from 0.9% some time back. Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh have also joined the ranks as the new sources for injecting drugs, and are thus potentially life threatening areas as far as HIV being one of the social problems in India is concerned. As per the UNAIDS 2009 report, HIV prevalence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia can be as high as 70% among those who inject drugs. This has resulted in public health experts asking the government to lift the bans on drugs like methadone and buprenorphine, which are used as vital ingredients of the substitution maintenance therapy at de addiction centres, so as to save the maximum number of lives that can be saved.
The next area of concern in terms of social issues is gender bias in health. Over the past decade, the government has launched the National Rural Health Mission with the sole intention of rectifying rural inequality in terms of health. A majority of these schemes and programmes are exceptionally planned and meticulously detailed out at the initial stage, but fall flat at the execution level. Local communities are supposedly empowered regarding public health, and health plans are required to be drawn by each village by health committees within their respective Panchayats. However, the Panchayati Raj, the fountain-head of grass roots democracy, is one of the chief sources of the social problems in India, and has a reputation of manipulating the authority given to it and putting it to wrong use. Even though the caste and religion biases have been considerably done away with in recent times, the bias against women across all castes and religion is still prevalent. Right from the figures of the sex ratio in India, once can see that right from the infant stage, a female is considered as some kind of a stigma on the family, and this thinking continues till adulthood and old age. Also, women are conditioned to silently put up with this kind of behaviour because there seems no reprieve in the society in which they live. Even in terms of diseases, when a woman and man suffer from the same predicament, and the treatment is an expensive one, the man would always get preference over the latter.
In order to evolve as a developed country, it is necessary that we take care of these social problems and resolve them at the earliest, so that the society can indeed be a fair and impartial one.