For months, health workers in Shahdol could reach only eight of every ten pregnant women on their call lists. 

The other two were the ones most likely to be in danger, women in remote, forested pockets of the Madhya Pradesh district, often skipping their iron and calcium tablets, missing check-ups, and unaware that a headache or swollen feet could be an early warning of pregnancy-induced hypertension.

When IAS officer Shivam Prajapati, CEO of Zila Panchayat, Shahdol, and his team spent nearly two months speaking with villagers in early 2026, they expected to find gaps in medicine supply or staff numbers. Instead, they found something more basic. 

"Our own people were not reaching them on time," Prajapati says. The schemes existed; the follow-up did not.

The problem was never the medicine

Shahdol, a tribal-majority district known for its dense forests and monsoon-cut roads, has long struggled with anemia and hypertension in pregnancy. Villagers told Prajapati's team they had never really been counselled about why any of it mattered. 

"If we know, we will take the medicines," one woman said, echoing what health workers elsewhere have found when they finally sit down with pregnant women in isolated tribal villages and simply listen.

So the district built a doorstep monitoring system instead of a new scheme, calling it ‘Maa Ka Haal – Swasthya Ka Khayal’. 

Launched in January 2026, it began with a village-by-village survey to identify........

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