ACHIEVING MATERNAL HEALTH THROUGH JANANI SURAKSHA YOJANA UNDER NRHM:A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER SCHEME IN PUNJAB, NORTH INDIA

Maternal health has emerged as a subject matter of great significance in the age of women empowerment, inclusive growth and is a priority intervention under National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).Under the ambit of NRHM, Janani Suraksha Yojana(JSY)is one of the largest programme in the world which provides conditional cash transfer for institutional deliveries, provides skilled assistance during birth, raises the level of awareness of rural women on maternal health practices, thereby putting a serious effort to reduce the cases of mortality. The study encompasses 232 women from the state of Punjab, India selected on the basis of probability proportionate to size sampling to analyse the proportion of beneficiaries who received the cash incentives, amount of cash incentives disbursed, and difficulties faced by them during the provision of cash incentives. The qualitative observations from the field has been inured to understand the underlying causes of deviations on these grounds. Results exhibited a strong case for alignment for the above categories with the deviation on outcome maximum of the extent of 19% for the provision of cash incentives, around 22% for the provision of correct amount and 27% for the difficulties faced the by beneficiaries. The government policy and action should encompass creation of a digital database for the JSY network, which encapsulates the health centres or institutions, beneficiaries? details, community health workers, their tie-up with the institutions and a matrix relation between all the stakeholders in health, to achieve improvement in the outcomes and better policy monitoring with respect to the cash incentives provision aspects and other areas of service facilitation.