From: Xavier William <varekatx@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 6:50 AM
Subject: Re: [india-unity] More hungry in India than in Sudan TOI
To: india-unity@yahoogroups.com, indiathinkersnet@yahoogroups.com, KeralaDD@yahoogroups.co.uk, Mahajanapada@yahoogroups.com
Bhasker,
It is mostly in the urban areas that we have something to crow about. The middle class in India is growing and going places. But poverty is there. Most states are supplying rice/wheat at very heavily subsidized rates to BPL. Had it not been for this most of India would be starving.
We have a long long way to go before we can crow about our success. Our apparent success comes from our huge population. Because of this we probably have a English speaking population which is higher than Australia or Canada. That does not mean we are all English speaking. It is the same with our boasts of higher standards of life. Because of our high population we probably have a middle class which is higher in numbers than many other nations. That does not mean that all is well. Unless and until our per-capita income increases compared to other naitons, all our boasts are merely illusionary.
In spite of all the apparant success we have the biggest population BPL, we have the highest rates of illiteracy, we account for more deceases than any other nation, atrocities agaisnt women and lower castes .. the list can go on. To top it all we are one of the most corrupt nations on earth.
So were it not for our large population we have to go a long long way on every front.
As for there not being divisive forces, even as recently as last week a Shiv Shainik was claiming thaat Bombay belongs to Marathis. Recently Rajni Kanth went and paid homages to Bal Thackeray. Rajni though a Marathi by birth owes all he has to TN and yet when paying homages to the hooligan he forgets that they were the Tamils whom Bal Thackeray targeted and murdered when he started his campaign for the sons of the soil.
This also proves that our acts are based more on rhetoric and emotions than on reason and as long as rationale does not come to the fore in politics we will be going 4 steps forward and slipping three steps backward.
This was bothering me but going deeper into this, looks like we are making some remarkable progress here. The silly point about India breaking up is frankly silly so wont touch it at all.
But here's the basic question which one asks. We have been showing a significant improvement over the past 20 years. So obviously we are doing something right in the first place. The places where we have touched relate to agriculture, nutrition, education, women's empowerment, income generation. These and other aspects helped us to improve this much. The report does not go into too much depth for Indian operations so had to go elsewhere to look deeper. Across all the dependent factors, we are showing strong and steady improvement in terms of agricultural productivity, increase in nutrition, increase in education, women's empowerment, income levels in the rural and urban areas, etc. etc.
Here's my point, there is nothing that we arent doing that we need to be doing. We just have to keep on doing what we have been doing and doing it better and perhaps more. We are on the right path.
The alarmist headlines and silly sod comments do not help at all because these are just whines, no basic understanding of the underlying issue, no analysis of what has been done or what needs to be done. So until and unless one gets some specific point of improvement, we dont need to get that much excited.
Lage raho munnabhai.
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Bhaskar Dasgupta
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On 13 October 2010 18:50, Bhaskar Dasgupta <bdasgupta@gmail.com> wrote:Here's an experiment you can do. Go check out the gini coefficients of the world and see where we are in terms of inequality. You will be surprised.---------Sent via iPhone. Apologies for formatting and typo errors
India with largest population of 800 mil poor in the world including 85 mil world's largest Child labor Army; it is shining for few only. It is the only country in the world where filthy rich and filthy poor live side by side and 667 mil Indians defecate openly every day on the face of those who are calling India is shining.
India is in the top ten nations with the widest socio-economic gap. It is an economically, socially and politically failed state for majority of its 1.2 billion citizens; who can not solve its socio-economic, religious and political problems including its Land dispute with Pakistan since 1948 over Kashmir. To-day out of the 600 districts in India, 450 are disturbed by the activities of rebels or extremist belonging to various groups like; Moist, Nexalites, ULFA, Islamic militants, BODO, Naga's, Khalistan movement, Hindu Rashtra movement etc. Surprisingly majority of these rebels or extremist belong to the majority community Hindus of India.
Indian Democracy is a fractured multi religious and multi regional democracy working for the benefit of few chosen Rich Indians. India lacks an identity that supersedes caste, ethnicity, religion and region, which can unify all its citizens as equal members of a shared Nation with a shared destiny reached through common goals. The multi-fractured nature of Indian society goes beyond the healthy human disagreement and debate inherent to a healthy democracy, instead prompting the question whether India's 1.2 billion citizens; Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Christian further sub-divided into more factions are actually want to be "Indians'.
Lack of Indian identity, acute poverty among 80% of its citizens and rampant corruption is tearing the country apart and it is a matter of few years only that it will break into tiny countries like Soviet Union.
Dave Makkar
More hungry in India than in Sudan
Rukmini Shrinivasan, TNN, Oct 12, 2010, 03.30am IST
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/More-hungry-in-India-than-in-Sudan/articleshow/6733033.cms
NEW DELHI: India dropped two ranks to 67th among 84 developing countries in the International Food Policy Research Institute's annual " Global Hunger Index" for 2010. Even Sudan, North Korea and Pakistan rank higher than India.
While the report, released on Monday, shows that the proportion of undernourished in India is decreasing, the worsening ranking indicates that other developing countries have done better in tackling hunger. India is home to 42% of the underweight children under the age of five in the world.
The policymakers in India, who are are still fighting over the need to have an expansive National Food Security Act, should look at the following data more closely: in 2005-06, about 44% of Indian children — below five years — were underweight, and nearly half — 48% — were stunted.
The food insecurity is so rampant across the country that India is clubbed with minor economies like Bangladesh, Timor-Leste and Yemen, recording the highest prevalence of underweight in children under five.
At the beginning of the liberalization era in the early 90s, 24% of the population was undernourished. The situation marginally improved to 22% between 2004 and 2006. Almost 60% of children below five were recorded as underweight in 1988-92. The condition has remained dismal as the latest figure shows 43.5% between 2003-08.
The GHI ranks countries on a scale of 100, with 0 being the best score (no hunger) and 100 the worst. It is composed of three equally weighted indicators: the proportion of undernourished in the population, the prevalence of those underweight in children under five and the under-five mortality rate.
The figures for India are 22% (as of 2004-6), 43.5% (2003-8) and 6.9% as of 2008, respectively. These give India a composite GHI of 24.1, which is classified as alarming in terms of the food security situation.
The strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo ranks at the bottom of the list of 84 countries with significant levels of hunger. The data has been compiled for 122 countries in all; the remaining 38 countries have a GHI of less than 5 and are not included in the rankings. No data has been recorded for highly developed countries.
South Asia has the highest GHI for any region in the world, at 22.9. The region has, however, made greater progress since 1990 than sub-Saharan Africa, the report adds. India is ranked below all other major South Asian countries — Sri Lanka is ranked 39th, Pakistan 52nd and Nepal 56th.
India's hunger is not purely a product of its middle-income status. While economic progress and hunger levels tend to be inversely correlated (countries with higher gross national income typically have lower GHI scores), some countries are exceptions to the norm. China has lower hunger levels than its GNI per capita would suggest, while India has higher hunger levels than would be expected from its income per capita, calculations made by the report's authors show.
The 2010 report focuses on child malnutrition, which is the biggest component of hunger worldwide. In India, high 2010 GHI scores are driven by high levels of underweight children, resulting from the low nutritional and social status of women in the country, the report says.
FORWARDED BY
Dave Makkar
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