The notion of quality in the public health system is becoming increasingly an issue for policymakers and planners in India. The Eighth Five-Year Plan identified the poor quality of family welfare services as one of the factors

DEVELOPMENT is about protection of human rights of the concerned populations. It pre-supposes active participation of the populace in the decisionmaking processes while social justice remains one of the most important and cherished goals of development.

THE United Nations Commission on the Status of Women defines violence against women to include "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women..." [Economic and Social Council 1992].

Legal reforms have been at the centre of the agenda for strategizing gender justice in India. This has been so, right from the time of nine-teenth century social reforms movements, through the period of nationalist struggles, down to the contemporary women's movement.

This report examines the linkages between wife-beating and one health-related consequence for women, their experience of fetal and infant mortality.