India is Home to World's Largest Population of Poor, Hungry and Illiterates

In yesterday's Times of India piece titled "Our freedom was born with hunger, we're still not free", one of India's Green Revolution leaders Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan says, "Our freedom was born with hunger. It was born in the backdrop of the Bengal famine. If you read the newspapers dated August 15, 1947, one part was about freedom, the other was food shortage".



As India celebrates its 63rd independence anniversary, it is very unfortunate that economically resurgent India still remains home to the world's largest population of poor, hungry and illiterate people. Tragically, hunger remains India's biggest problem, with an estimated 7000 Indians dying of hunger every single day. Over 200 million Indians will go to bed hungry tonight, as they do every night, according to Bhookh.com. Along with chronic hunger, deep poverty and high illiteracy also continue to blight the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians on a daily basis.



India ranks 66th on the 2008 Global Hunger Index of 88 countries while Pakistan is slightly better at 61 and Bangladesh slightly worse at 70. Though the problems of poverty and hunger in Pakistan are a bit less serious than in India, Pakistan also suffers from high illiteracy and low levels of human development that pose a serious threat to its future.



India has the dubious distinction of being among the top ten on two very different lists: It ranks at the top of the nations of the world with its 270 million illiterate adults, the largest in the world, as detailed by a just released UNESCO report on education; India also shows up at number four in military spending in terms of purchasing power parity, behind United States, China and Russia.

Not only is India the lowest among BRIC nations in terms of human development, India is also the only country among the top ten military spenders which, at 134 on a list of 182 nations, ranks near the bottom of the UNDP's human development rankings. Pakistan, at 141, ranks even lower than India.

India also fares badly on the 2009 World Hunger Index, ranking at 65 along with several sub-Saharan nations. Pakistan ranks at 58 on the same index.

A recent Oxford study on multi-dimensional poverty confirmed that Indians are far more deprived than Pakistanis and the poorest of the poor Africans. The study reveals that there are more "MPI poor" people in eight Indian states (421 million in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh , Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal) than in the 26 poorest African countries combined (410 million).



Developed at Oxford University, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) goes beyond income poverty based on $1.25 or $2 a day income levels. It measures a range of "deprivations" at household levels, such as schooling, nutrition, and access to health, clean water, electricity and sanitation. According to Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) country briefings 2010, 55% of Indians and 51% of Pakistanis are poor.

Access to healhcare in South Asia, particularly due to the wide gender gap, presents a huge challenge, and it requires greater focus to ensure improvement in human resources. Though the life expectancy has increased to 66.2 years in Pakistan and 63.4 years in India, it is still low relative to the rest of the world. The infant mortality rate remains stubbornly high, particular in Pakistan, though it has come down down from 76 per 1000 live births in 2003 to 65 in 2009. With 320 mothers dying per 100,000 live births in Pakistan and 450 in India, the maternal mortality rate in South Asia is very high, according to UNICEF.

The health problems in India are compounded by serious lack of sanitation. According to a joint study conducted by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, 665 million Indians, or nearly two-thirds of them defecate in the open. While a mere 14 percent of people in rural areas of the country - that account for 65 percent of its 1.1 billion population - had access to toilets in 1990, the number had gone up to 28 percent in 2006. In comparison, 33 percent rural Pakistanis had access to toilets in 1990 and it went up to an impressive 58 percent in 2006, according to UNICEF officials.

In its issue earlier this year, the harsh reality of hunger and malnutrition in India was described by the Economist magazine as follows:

"India-wide, more than 43% of Indian children under five are malnourished, a third of the world’s total. Over 35% of Indians are illiterate and over 20m children out of school. For all its successes, including six decades of elections and a constitution that introduced the notion of equal rights to an inequitable society, India’s abiding failure is its inability to provide aid and economic opportunity to millions of its impoverished citizens."

The reality of grinding poverty in resurgent India was recently summed up well by a BBC commentator Soutik Biswas as follows:

A sobering thought to keep in mind though. Impressive growth figures are unlikely to stun the poor into mindless optimism about their future. India has long been used to illustrate how extensive poverty coexists with growth. It has a shabby record in pulling people out of poverty - in the last two decades the number of absolutely poor in India has declined by 17 percentage points compared to China, which brought down its absolutely poor by some 45 percentage points. The number of Indian billionaires rose from nine in 2004 to 40 in 2007, says Forbes magazine. That's higher than Japan which had 24, while France and Italy had 14 billionaires each. When one of the world's highest number of billionaires coexist with what one economist calls the world's "largest number of homeless, ill-fed illiterates", something is gravely wrong. This is what rankles many in this happy season of positive thinking.

As India and Pakistan celebrate their 63rd independence day, it is time for both major South Asian nations to reflect and act on the urgent need for careful balancing of their genuine defense requirements against the need to spend more to solve the very serious problems of food, education, health care and human resource development for securing a better future of their peoples.

Here's a video clip showing grinding poverty in resurgent India:



Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Disaster Dampens Spirits on Pakistan's 63rd Independence Day

UNESCO Education For All Report 2010

India's Arms Build-up: Guns Versus Bread

South Asia Slipping in Human Development

World Hunger Index 2009

Challenges of 2010-2020 in South Asia

India and Pakistan Contrasted 2010

Food, Clothing and Shelter in India and Pakistan

Introduction to Defense Economics

Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Here's an opinion piece by Amartya Sen published in The Hindu:

... I managed to resurrect the memory of having said in passing, in a meeting of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) in Delhi in December, that it is silly to be obsessed about overtaking China in the rate of growth of Gross National Product (GNP), while not comparing ourselves with China in other respects, like education, basic health, or life expectancy. Since that one-sentence remark seems to have been interpreted in many different ways (my attention to that fact was drawn by friends who are more web-oriented than I am), I guess I should try to explain what that remark was about.
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Let me look at some numbers, drawing from various sources — national as well as international, in particular World Development Reports of the World Bank and Human Development Reports of the United Nations. Life expectancy at birth in China is 73.5 years; in India it is still 64.4 years. Infant mortality rate is 50 per thousand in India, compared with just 17 in China, and the under-5 mortality rate is 66 for Indians and 19 for the Chinese. China's adult literacy rate is 94 per cent, compared with India's 65 per cent, and mean years of schooling in India is 4.4 years, compared with 7.5 years in China. In our effort to reverse the lack of schooling of girls, India's literacy rate for women between the ages of 15 and 24 has certainly risen, but it is still below 80 per cent, whereas in China it is 99 per cent. Almost half of our children are undernourished compared with a very tiny proportion in China. Only 66 per cent of Indian children are immunised with triple vaccine (DPT), as opposed to 97 per cent in China. Comparing ourselves with China in these really important matters would be a very good perspective, and they can both inspire us and give us illumination about what to do — and what not to do, particularly the glib art of doing nothing.
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Life expectancy in Bangladesh is 66.9 years compared with India's 64.4. The proportion of underweight children in Bangladesh (41.3 per cent) is a little lower than in India (43.5), and its fertility rate (2.3) is also lower than India's (2.7). Mean years of schooling amount to 4.8 years in Bangladesh compared with India's 4.4 years. While India is ahead of Bangladesh in male literacy rate in the youthful age-group of 15-24, the female rate in Bangladesh is higher than in India. Interestingly, the female literacy rate among young Bangladeshis is actually higher than the male rate, whereas young females still do much worse than young males in India. There is much evidence to suggest that Bangladesh's current progress has much to do with the role that liberated Bangladeshi women are beginning to play in the country.

What about health, which interests every human being as much as anything else? Under-5 mortality rate is 66 in India compared with 52 in Bangladesh. In infant mortality, Bangladesh has a similar advantage, since the rate is 50 in India and 41 in Bangladesh. Whereas 94 per cent of Bangladeshi children are immunised with DPT vaccine, only 66 per cent of Indian children are. In each of these respects, Bangladesh does better than India, despite having less than half of India's per-capita income.
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And perhaps more worryingly, this group of relatively privileged and increasingly prosperous Indians can easily fall for the temptation to treat economic growth as an end in itself........
Riaz Haq said…
Here's a Times of India report on illiteracy in Indian Punjab, particularly among Dalits:

CHANDIGARH: As SAD-BJP alliance in Punjab cries itself hoarse over mega development in the state and improving quality of life, there are a staggering number, nearly 31,000 children below 14 years of age, who have never been to a school, owned books or known what it is like to read or write.

A household survey, conducted by the state government in December 2010 has brought out that the worst sufferers are those belonging to the scheduled caste category. Out of 31,000 children below 14 years of age, who are not studying in any school, about 17,000 are SCs.

Ludhiana has the maximum number of such children, 4610, followed by Amritsar , 3313 and Tarn Taran, 3103. The report was tabled in the Punjab assembly on Saturday by the education minister S S Sekhwan , in reply to a question posed by Congress MLA A I S Mofar. Though meauation, the comptroller auditor general's report clearly blamed the state government for failing to provide even basic facilities like a safe building, chairs and desks to the students.

Besides, the schools are riddled with problems of absenteeism among teachers which is having a direct impact on the results of the schools. The pass percentage of Class XII, said the CAG report, is practically stagnant around 72% during the past five years. sures being taken to bring these children to schools were enumerated but the government has not been able to come up with a justification regarding the staggering high dropout rate in schools.

The Economic Survey, 2010-2011, indicates that in 2008, nearly 50% boys in classes I to X and nearly 50% girls dropped-out from government schools. Though Economic Survey and the government's own report has been silent on the factors that had led to such a situation.
Riaz Haq said…
Here's an excerpt from Britain's DFID report on open defecation around the world:

58% of the open defecation in the world takes place in India. It is an absolutely astonishing phenomenon. Even just rural India is more than double the open defecation in the whole of
sub-Saharan Africa. The WSP, the Water and Sanitation Programme at the Bank, have recently done an assessment of the costs of this to India, and every
year they estimate $54 billion, which is $48 per head, which is far higher than any other countries in the
region.

http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/reliefweb_pdf/node-420188.pdf

Sense of public hygiene is worst in India among its neighbours – a recent study revealed that India hosts 58% people of the world of open defecation compare to 5% for china, Indonesia and 4.8% for Pakistan. Economic growth is not reflecting improvement in public hygiene.

http://esa.un.org/iys/docs/san_lib_docs/Scaling%20Up%20Rural%20Saniltation.pdf

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2494536.ece

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/monitoring/jmpfinal.pdf
Riaz Haq said…
India fares worst in terms of low birth weight and underweight children, and under-five infant mortality compared to Brazil, Russia and all South Asian neighbors, says BBC's Soutik Biswas:

Will the proposed law to provide cheap food to more than half of India's people eliminate hunger, the most shameful scourge of an aspiring superpower?

The jury is still out on how the $19bn (£12bn) scheme will work, as is the case with similar big-ticket welfare schemes launched by what many believe is an endemically weak and corrupt state.

But there is little doubt that India needs to fight malnutrition on a war footing, and the food security scheme may well be its last chance to redeem itself.

Many believe that it does not behove a country which never tires of gloating about its red hot economic growth to have millions of malnourished and starving people.

The facts on the ground are startling. India has the largest number of malnourished children in the world, a rate worse than the average in Africa.

Nearly half of India's children under three are malnourished. More than half of the tribes' children are underweight and stunted.

India fares worst in terms of low birth weight and underweight children, and under-five infant mortality compared to Brazil, Russia and all South Asian neighbours.

India also has the highest number of Vitamin A deficient children in the world: nearly 6% of the children suffer from eye problems related to the deficiency. Of the 37m people in the world who are blind, about 15m are from India. More than 320,000 children suffer from avoidable blindness.
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Then there are India's notoriously fickle public distribution system shops aimed at providing food security to people. Over 500m people are supposed to benefit through a gigantic distribution network of half a million fair-price shops supplying cheap food grains.

Here too, the results are mixed and contested. In many states, it has failed to make cheap food grains available to the poor. Theft of supplies, fraudulent beneficiaries and hoarding by the shop-owners is not uncommon.
Cart before horse?

So will the latest food security scheme aimed at providing subsidised food grains to 75% of the rural population and half of the urban households work?

There are many economists who wonder how India will cough up the funds to finance the scheme which will see the country's food subsidy bill climb to $19bn from $13bn. The government insists money will not be a problem.

There are also questions about how beneficiaries will be identified and targeted in a transparent manner in a country where there are different official estimates of the poorest of the poor - from 37% to 77% of the people, depending on whom you believe.

India's state-run cold storage system is shambolic, so where is the guarantee that some 65m tonnes of food grains procured from farmers for distribution for the scheme - up from 55m tonnes presently - will not rot before reaching the beneficiary? How can the food grains be distributed through the leaky public distribution system shops without reforming them?

So is India again putting the cart before the horse? Without reforming its laws and public institutions, welfare schemes with the best intentions run the risk of floundering.

For the scheme to work, the government will need to target beneficiaries properly and revamp the distribution system. The public distribution system, for example, could be made accountable by issuing smart cards to beneficiaries to eliminate bogus cards and fraudulent withdrawal.

If the food security scheme does not work, economists believe, India is doomed to remain a hungry republic. It is already one of the fast-growing economies with the hungriest people in the world. And it can get worse.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16291300
Riaz Haq said…
Here are some excerpts of BBC's Soutik Biswas's review of Pulitzer-winning New Yorker reporter Katherine Boo's "Beautiful Forevers":

"We try so many things," a girl in Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai tells Katherine Boo, "but the world doesn't move in our favour".

Annawadi is a "sumpy plug of slum" in the biggest city - "a place of festering grievance and ambient envy" - of a country which holds a third of the world's poor. It is where the Pulitzer prize winning New Yorker journalist Boo's first book Behind the Beautiful Forevers is located.

Annawadi is where more than 3,000 people have squatted on land belonging to the local airport and live "packed into, or on top of" 335 huts. It is a place "magnificently positioned for a trafficker in rich's people's garbage", where the New India collides with the Old.

Nobody in Annawadi is considered poor by India's official benchmarks. The residents are among the 100 million Indians freed from poverty since 1991, when India embarked on liberalising its economy.
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She used more than 3,000 public records, many obtained using India's right to information law, to validate her narrative, written in assured reported speech. The account of the hours leading to the self-immolation of Fatima Sheikh derives from repeated interviews of 168 people as well as police, hospital, morgue and court records. Mindful of the risk of over interpretation, the books wears its enormous research lightly.
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The local councillor runs fake schools, doctors at free government hospitals and policemen extort the poor with faint promise of life and justice, and self-help groups operate as loan sharks for the poorest. The young in Annawadi drop dead like flies - run over by traffic, knifed by rival gangs, laid low by disease; while the elders - not much older - die anyway. Girls prefer a certain brand of rat poison to end their lives.
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Boo has an interesting take on corruption, rife in societies like India's. Corruption is seen as blocking India's global ambitions. But, she writes, for the "poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained".

On the other hand, Boo believes, corruption stymies our moral universe more than economic possibility. Suffering, she writes, "can sabotage innate capacities for moral action". In a capricious world of corrupt governments and ruthless markets the idea of a mutually supportive community is a myth: it is "blisteringly hard", she writes, to be good in such conditions. "If the house is crooked and crumbling", Boo writes, "and the land on which it sits uneven, is it possible to make anything lie straight?


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-17038326
Riaz Haq said…
Is India losing its mojo because of bad politics? asks BBC's Soutik Biswas. Here's an excerpt:

It's an obvious question to ask at a time when powerful - and populist - regional parties are again flexing their muscles at a fickle federal government, key economic reforms are seemingly stuck in the bog of messy coalition politics, and the government is struggling under an avalanche of corruption charges. Economic growth and investment have cooled and inflation remains high.

So is it surprising that The Economist magazine, in its latest issue, says the politics is "preventing India from fulfilling its vast economic potential"?

Or when Fareed Zakaria, editor-at-large with Time magazine, tells an audience in Delhi this week that India's politicians are "out of touch… they try to portray India as a victim, not the victor".

With uncharacteristic exaggeration, The Economist even invokes a return to the stifling days of the controlled economy.

"Lately, like a Bollywood villain who just refuses to die, the old India has made a terrifying reappearance," says the magazine. It blames a "nastily divisive political climate" for the crisis and believes that India requires "energetic, active leaders, plus politicians who are ready to compromise".
'Corrupt and corroded'

Both the magazine and the pundit are right and wrong.
“Start Quote

Reformers need to be patient; there are no shortcuts in India”

The quality of India's politicians, many argue, has declined drastically, as in many parts of the world. Most of them seem to be out of sync with modern day realities - expectations have fallen so ridiculously low that an iPad carrying politician is described by the media as a modern one!

Most are also seen as greedy, corrupt and disinterested in serious reform. The increasing number of politicians with criminal records and the brazen use of money to buy party tickets and bribe voters erodes India's ailing democratic process.

It is not a happy picture. "Today the Centre is corrupt and corroded," historian Ramachandra Guha wrote recently. "There are allegedly 'democratic' politicians who abuse their oath of office and work only to enrich themselves; as well as self-described 'revolutionaries' who seek to settle arguments by the point of the gun." Only serious electoral reform can ensure a better breed of politician.
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Public consensus is harder to come by in an awfully unequal society where the middle class and the rich root for further opening up of the economy, while the poor want the state to invest in health and education and check corruption. The elitist biases in public policy is made easier by a poorly-informed and often unlettered electorate with low expectations.

Many would argue that India never got any magic going, so there is no question of losing it.

Consensus is painfully slow in such a society, and sometimes only a crisis can provoke the government - and the people - to bite the bullet. Reformers need to be patient; there are no shortcuts in India.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-17537615
Riaz Haq said…
Here's a Reuters' blog post on lack of hygiene in India:

My Indian friends and I joke around a lot about me as the typical white American guy visiting India. Cows! Con men! Colors! Most people I’ve met in India have restricted their reactions to my westerner-in-the-east experiences to gentle teasing. When I stuck a picture of a man urinating in public on my Facebook page, calling it one more picture of what you see everywhere you go in India, people weren’t as patient. What was I doing? Insulting the nation? Focusing on the ugly because it’s what all the westerners do when they visit India? Why does India provoke such visceral reactions in visitors?

Public urination, public defecation, dirt, garbage, filth, the poor living on the street — talking about these things, even acknowledging that they’re in front of your face, risks making your hosts unhappy, and possibly angry. It’s the third rail of India, and the voltage can be lethal. That’s why I was surprised when B.S. Raghavan decided to touch it with all 10 fingers.

Raghavan’s column in The Hindu Business Line newspaper begins with this headline: Are Indians by nature unhygienic?

Consider these excerpts:

From time to time, in their unguarded moments, highly placed persons in advanced industrial countries have burst out against Indians for being filthy and dirty in their ways of life. A majority of visitors to India from those countries complain of “Delhi belly” within a few hours of arrival, and some fall seriously ill.

There is no point in getting infuriated or defensive about this. The general lack of cleanliness and hygiene hits the eye wherever one goes in India — hotels, hospitals, households, work places, railway trains, airplanes and, yes, temples. Indians think nothing of spitting whenever they like and wherever they choose, and living in surroundings which they themselves make unliveable by their dirty habits. …

Open defecation has become so rooted in India that even when toilet facilities are provided, the spaces round temple complexes, temple tanks, beaches, parks, pavements, and indeed, any open area are covered with faecal matter. …

Even as Indians, we are forced to recoil with horror at the infinite tolerance of fellow Indians to pile-ups of garbage, overflowing sewage, open drains and generally foul-smelling environs.

There’s plenty more that you can read in that story, but I’ll direct you to the article. I’ll also ask you some questions:

Some people say you shouldn’t point out these problems, and that every country has problems. Do you agree with this statement? Why?
Does anyone disagree with Raghavan’s descriptions of these sights and smells?
Is this even a problem? Or should people get used to it?
Should visitors, especially ones from countries where people are generally wealthier, say nothing, and pretend that they don’t see unpleasant things?
As for me, I can say this: I got used to it, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t notice it. Indians notice it too. Otherwise, people wouldn’t suggest public shaming campaigns against people urinating in public, they wouldn’t threaten fines for doing it, and they wouldn’t respond with relief to plans to finally make sure that toilets on India’s trains don’t open directly onto the tracks. Of course, these are people in India. It’s a family, taking care of business the family way.

As for me, the message usually seems to be: “If you don’t love it, leave it.” It would be nice if there were some other answer. Acknowledging problems, even ones that are almost impossible to solve, makes them easier to confront.


http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2012/11/17/indians-inherently-unhygienic-indian-writer-touches-third-rail/
Riaz Haq said…
Here are some findings of UNICEF's Child Survival Report 2013:

1. Pakistan's infant mortality rate is ranked 26th worst in the world.

2. Pakistan remains high though it has been coming down from 138 per 100,000 in 1990 to 112 in 2000 to 86 in 2012.

3. Pakistan is among the five countries (India 22%, Nigeria 13%, Democratic Republic of Congo 6%, Pakistan 6% and China 4% in that order) across the world where half of all under-five deaths occur.

4. The report recommends exclusively breastfeeding all newborns till six months of age, immunizing children and newborns with all recommended vaccines, and eliminating all harmful traditions and violence against children. To ensure children grow up in a safe and protective environment. Besides this feed children with proper nutritional foods and micronutrient supplements, where available, and de-worm children; give oral rehydration salts (ORS) and daily zinc supplements for 10-14 days to all children suffering from diarrhea.

http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/APR_Progress_Report_2013_9_Sept_2013.pdf
Riaz Haq said…
In the first 25 days of 2014 (in Delhi), 197 thumbnail images have gone up in the gallery of nameless dead.

Everyday, an average of seven people are dying unidentified and unclaimed in Delhi's winter. But what may be even more heart-rending is that such deaths are not limited to this season. As police data shows, they are an all-weather phenomenon. Around 2,900 died unidentified in Delhi last year. 241 perished in January; 225 in April; 279 in July; and, 238 in October.

The highest deaths, 323, took place in May. Data for last three years shows that unidentified deaths peaked in summer and monsoon. A majority of such deaths were of able-bodied men. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/The-everyday-tableau-of-Delhis-nameless-dead/articleshow/29430667.cms
Riaz Haq said…
TOI on UNESCO EFA report:

India has by far the largest population of illiterate adults — 287 million or 37 per cent of the global total, said a report released on Wednesday.

The "EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2013-14: Teaching and Learning: Achieving quality for All", commissioned by the Unesco, said 10 countries (including India) account for 557 million or 72 per cent of the global population of illiterate adults.

"India's literacy rate rose from 48 per cent in 1991 to 63 per cent in 2006, (the latest year for which data was available), but population growth cancelled the gains. So there was no change in the number of illiterate adults," the report said.

Stressing the importance of "quality education", Unesco's New Delhi director Shigeru Aoyagi said India was facing a challenge of quality education.

"Though we have more than 99 per cent children in schools because of the Right to Education Act, the quality of education being imparted is a big challenge that should be addressed," he said.

"The most crucial agents of quality education and learning are teachers and students. Teachers are the most important element that can improve the quality of education," he said.

The report said that without attracting and adequately training enough teachers, the learning crisis will "last for several generations and hit the disadvantaged the hardest".

The report also said that a global learning crisis was costing governments $129 billion a year, and that 10 per cent of global spending on primary education was being lost on poor quality education that was failing to ensure that children learn.

"It leaves one in four young people in poor countries unable to read a single sentence, affecting one-third of young women in South and West Asia," it said.

The countries include Bhutan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

At the report launch, Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia said it was essential to change the content in our textbooks, so that the "future generation is more aware" about the various issues prevalent in society.

"The country will not change with IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) and IAS. It will only change from the classrooms," Sisodia said.

"There is no other option but to spend quality money on education, and make it a priority," he added.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2014-01-29/india/46781019_1_quality-education-global-monitoring-report-learning-crisis
Anonymous said…
Please bear in mind tha my comment says... NOT ALL FIVE FINGERS ARE THE SAME...

" I will not be surprised how Indian workers here are as follows:

1. Backfighter - these people who whisper poison to pull down some expatriates, very nice to the bosses but with hidden agenda...

2. Stealing - taking office supplies to their homes...

3. Loves to eat for free...
Riaz Haq said…
Why witches are still being beheaded in "Shining" #India. Over 2097 killed since 2000. http://usat.ly/1I3Mf96 via @usatoday

NEW DELHI, India — Three hundred years after the hysteria in Salem, in some places witch hunts are still terrifyingly real.

Last week, a mob of 200 people in the Indian state of Assam dragged a 65-year-old woman out of her house, stripped her and beheaded her with a machete. They did so because a self-proclaimed “goddess,” who asked them to gather at a local temple, proclaimed that the woman was a witch and would bring bad luck and illness to the village.

In a country teeming with IT graduates and higher-education institutes, such attacks are sadly and strangely common. Ninety people in Assam, a majority of them of them women, lost their lives in the last six years because they were branded as witches. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 2,097 murders between 2000 and 2012 were committed when the victims were accused of practicing witchcraft.

With a more active regional media, horrific instances have come to light. Earlier this year, a woman in the state of Odisha was force-fed human excrement for practicing witchcraft. Last October in Assam, hundreds tied up an athlete in a fishing net and tortured her for being a witch. She had represented Assam in several national meets, and won a gold medal for javelin. In 2011, a mother and daughter in Assam were accused of witchcraft, and raped as punishment.

Superstitions like the wearing of gemstones and rings to bring good luck, or marrying on an auspicious day are common across India, and many are not violently harmful. Even in Assam, “good” witches were once socially accepted because of their purported ability to heal maladies. “Even today in many villages, because of the lack of medical facilities, people would go to a witch or a village doctor who can perform some magic to cure you,” said Chandan Kumar Sharma, a sociology professor at Tezpur University, which is located in the district where last week’s beheading took place.

“Modern society is not a monolith. Although we are modern, many segments of our society are still very backward, where education and a scientific temperament have still not reached,” said Sharma, who studies the social and ethnic practices of the Indian northeast. “Everybody knows law enforcement is very weak, and they also play on the ignorance and superstitions of the villagers,” he said of the “goddesses.” Some who practice “white magic” are believed to have the ability not only to cure people, but also to detect witches who practice black magic.

According to Sharma, witch-hunting is most common in the economically and socially marginal tea tribal communities, called so because their ancestors were brought to Assam by the British in the 19th century to cultivate the plantations. At least four other communities in Assam also believe in witchcraft, and their isolation in remote, mountainous areas has allowed these superstitions to persist even after mainstream society has abandoned them.

Because of the uneven terrain and heavy rainfall in the region, many villages are entirely cut off from more developed parts of the state. Healthcare and law enforcement are hours away, and education even more remote. “Until we make these areas accessible, literate and conscious, these kinds of things will keep happening,” says Sharma.

Non-governmental and social organizations, some founded by victims of witch-hunting themselves, have been working on raising awareness against these beliefs. Brothers, an organization that promotes development in Assam, has worked on in areas where such superstitions are rampant, and has assisted in rescuing and providing medical services to victims. Over the last few years, the organization has also initiated its own awareness campaigns against beliefs in witchcraft.
Riaz Haq said…
Myth of #India as an Upcoming Asian #Economic Powerhouse. Rising #Poverty and Social Inequality. #Modi https://shar.es/18TzGH via @grtvnews

India is no doubt one of the biggest democracy in the world; because it has the highest population, Simple! (China highly populist, and officially “communist”). India is the second biggest nation in the world in terms of population and seventh largest in terms of area. According to the IMF as of 2015, the Indian economically nominally worth US$ 2.182 trillion, it, it’s the eleventh largest economy in terms of market exchange rates at US$ 8.027 trillion, third largest by PPP, with an annual GDP growth of last decade’s 5.8%.[1]

These numbers in retrospect are nonsense which feed the illusion to the general public so they can keep on living like they are in a hope that their life will get better.

These numbers do not represent the true picture of the country, not only India`s but any country. Like GDP can be a good indicator, but the real measure is GDP per capita. Which measures how a single person achieves the share of income among its citizens. When it comes to India the GDP is $2.182 trillion, but per capita income is only $1581 which is not much higher than Bangladesh`s $1086 and Pakistan’s $1316 per capita, but less among many African countries, like Nigeria $3203, South Africa $6,482, Zambia $1721, Sudan $1875, Namibia $5408, Ghana $1441, Djibouti $1813, Botswana $7123 and many more to mention here.[2] In fact, India is like “ticking time bomb” by 2026 the world population will be 1.5 billion largest in the world and the economy is not growing enough to meet the demands to create 20 million jobs per year.[3]

Yes, I know India is part of BRICS and they have announced in creating their own kind of bank but then what? India still owes money to the IMF; their public debt to GDP is nearly 70%,[4] Likewise, India is worst in terms of BRIC countries when it comes to GDP per capita, human development, education, poverty and so forth. India is lagging behind in BRIC countries. And Yes, then there is IT, the huge investments in India by the foreign companies just because those corporation can have cheap labor rather than paying their people in home countries with high wages. The beauty of globalization which no body mentions and no one talks all they care to show people the random numbers and apathy of people to consent without barely eliciting a yawn.

One of the main hurdles in the progress of India is poverty, poverty which should have been brought under control, but in India it is more or less same ratios of poverty post-independence.

The figure shows the total population every decade with poverty in percentage and how much the poverty has declined in India, the percentage may have decreased, but the total number of people living under the poverty line has been more or less same.
Riaz Haq said…
#NBA’s #KevinDurant on #India"Cows, Stray Dogs" "Bunch of Underprivileged People" "20 years behind" #Poverty #Filth
https://www.thequint.com/sports/2017/08/11/nba-star-kevin-durant-on-india

NBA champion Kevin Durant of the Golden State Warriors had visited India in July to help the NBA make inroads into the nation of 1.3 billion.
Durant took part in a camp in New Delhi, where he helped set a Guinness World Record for the largest basketball lesson – 3,459 people participated in it across multiple venues.
The NBA finals MVP met young players at the NBA Academy, with many more joining via satellite from four other cities across the country.
However, after returning to the United States, he said in an interview to The Athletic that India is 20 years behind in terms of knowledge and experience.

I went with no expectation, no view on what it’s supposed to be like. I usually go to places where I at least have a view in my head. India, I’m thinking I’m going to be around palaces and royalty and gold — basically thought I was going to Dubai. Then when I landed there, I saw the culture and how they live and it was rough. It’s a country that’s 20 years behind in terms of knowledge and experience.
Kevin Durant
Durant added that there are “just a bunch of underprivileged people living in India”.
You see cows on the street, monkeys running around everywhere, hundreds of people on the side of the road, a million cars and no traffic violations. Just a bunch of underprivileged people there and they want to learn how to play basketball. That was really, really dope to me.

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