On a hot summer’s day in 1982, while walking through a jungle path in Bankura, West Bengal, anthropologist Naraya

Breast-feeding is the most important form of infant nutrition. Unfortunately there has been a steady decline in breast-feeding practices in the post industrialized era. Breast milk substitutes, a major threat to breast-feeding, are indeed a big business.

Undernourished women tend to deliver low birth weight babies (Karmer, 1987) and to have pregnancy complications (Baird, 1947). Perinatal mortality and prematurity rates were found to be high among short statured women (Barros, 1987).

In the absence of a basic questioning of women's status and role in society, birth control, abortions-and even maternal health care end up merely replacing an old set of traditions with new ones.