Although life expectancy has improved remarkably with wide availability of curative medicines, health (besides education) is still a highly neglected sector in the development process of India. Particularly neglected area of health is the provision of maternal and child health care services. The neglect covers the areas of infrastructure and skills development and quality of care. Consequently, levels of health care services utililization for mothers and children are among the lowest even by the standards of developing world, although there are vast amounts of regional ...