Married women happier than live-in counterparts: RSS study

By Anindya Banerjee

New Delhi, Sep 24 (IANS) Women who practice spirituality, eat less, and are married are happier than those who are in live-in relationships are some of the findings of a RSS-backed study released by organisation chief Mohan Bhagwat on Tuesday.

RSS-linked Drishti Stree Adhyayan Prabodhan Kendra (DSAPK), better known as DRISHTI, has conducted a large survey on women across India, interviewing 43,255 women above 18 years of age across 465 districts of India, including 70 in border areas. But the overarching theme of the study seems to be the women who practice spirituality and making a comparison between them and the others.

For instance, the study finds that "illiteracy is observed more among Scheduled Tribe women followed by Scheduled Caste and Special Backward Caste". But here comes the catch. The same study reports that the percentage of illiteracy is less "among the women from spiritual field".

That's not all. Anjali Deshpande of DRISHTI cites statistics from this exhaustive study to stress that women from field of spirituality appear to be better off, as they are happier and more literate. But the only dampener is that merely 6,000 women out of 43,255 women surveyed were into spirituality.

The study that DRISHTI calls "India's largest Survey on Indian Women by the Indian Women" doesn't focus on only one religion but Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Jain and Sikhs alike.

Different parameters like employment, food habits, and marital status were used during the course of this survey, which went into minute details of the surveyed women. For instance, the survey finds only 4.57 per cent of the respondents having a full non vegetarian meal, while a larger proportion - 33.95 per cent - of women say that their meal comprises rice, dal, vegetables and roti.

The study also finds that nearly half of the women have their meals twice a day while 3.73 per cent women take meal only once every day.

The fact this survey findings are released by the RSS chief, with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also present in the packed auditorium suggest the seriousness with which both the Sangh and the BJP take it.