NAGPUR: While it may be called the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the issues relating to an important constituent of a family, men, are left out of it. Pointing to this fact, several men's rights organizations from all over the country have demanded inclusion of men's issues in the NFHS-4, to be started later this year.

NFHS is conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with the help of many national and international organizations. It helps the government collect information related to key trends in the population, especially with regard to various health and nutrition parameters. The data would be utilized by the government as well as the international monitoring agencies to formulate, change and evaluate policies.

US-based NGO INSAAF (Indian Social Awareness and Activism Forum) and Save India Family Foundation (SIFF) have demanded inclusion of issues specific to men, like domestic violence, physical and emotional well-being of men in marital relationships, in the survey. The NGOs have also formulated a memorandum to be sent to the ministry. They have demanded the survey of spousal violence, instead of violence on married men or women, in order to make it less biased.

"As they account for 50% of the country's population, men are obviously key to family health. Every year, an increasingly large number of men commit suicide or face abuse in their marriages. Despite being an important factor in the mental health, there is no social acceptance of harassed and victimized men," said Arnab Ganguly, president of INSAAF. He adds that if the men's issues are included in the survey, the government can make adequate provisions to protect them from abuse in marriages.

"While studies conducted by international NGOs deduce that Indian men are at higher risk of facing abuse in marriages, the Domestic Violence Module of NFHS-3 measured physical and sexual violence only among married women," informed SIFF Central India president Rajesh Vakharia . He said for this reason alone, the findings of NFHS-3 regarding domestic violence can be termed unscientific and biased. He added that if the subject is kept out of the purview of NFHS-4 too it would be a gross neglect of a serious issue.

Vakharia, who supports several men who have suffered from abusive marriages, believes that the social and mental conditioning that it is only women who need protection seeps into the laws of the land, making them biased too. "Whether it is domestic violence act, rape laws or others, they all presume the victims to be females. In the absence of a legal system to protect men from physical violence, the male victims get little or no medical attention. Often, they are even unable to speak of their physical wounds due to the unavailability of a law to protect them from abuse," he said.

WHAT NGOs WANT

*Include separate sections to survey men in an unbiased manner if they have faced any kind or instances of abuse ever in their lifetime

*Survey judges to gain information regarding falsification in cases of rape, molestation, 498 A and domestic violence to measure the magnitude of misuse of gender legislations

*Include NGO's and organizations working for the welfare of men in the survey to understand and measure the risks that men face in area of marriages, health care, education, workplace risks, accidents and violent crimes

*Abuses can be divided into various forms like physical, emotional, verbal, legal, economic and sexual

