Poverty in India: a problem on a huge scale

Almost half of India’s children are malnourished; 1000 die every day from diarrhoea; hundreds of millions have no access to proper sanitation. These figures provide a grim counterpoint to the glitzy high-rises and designer shopping malls that have sprung up throughout the country’s major cities.

BSS Students Write Poems for Peace

Poems for Peace is a cultural exchange between youth worldwide.

The aim is for people to gain compassion for other ways of living and thinking and to transcend racial, religious, socioeconomic, physical and intellectual differences.

Participants are encouraged to contemplate the meaning of peace, where it abides, how it’s attained, how it’s destroyed and how as “peacemakers” they can contribute to world peace. The notion is that the poem is in the heart and can be expressed as a traditional poem, prayer, letter, story or illustration.

Crusader Sees Wealth as Cure for Caste Bias

When Chandra Bhan Prasad visits his ancestral village in these feudal badlands of northern India, he dispenses the following advice to his fellow untouchables: Get rid of your cattle, because the care of animals demands children’s labor. Invest in your children’s education instead of in jewelry or land. Cities are good for Dalit outcastes like us, and so is India’s new capitalism.

Helga Frech: My Story

Not that all the other previous impressions were special, but one did really stand out. This was special. Never do I believe I will see such a thing again. Two children from one of the lower grades were crying. Not because they had fought. But because they did not want leave.

Photos from Helga Frech

You can see more photos in our Gallery | Link

Dwindling states’ share in education worries Govt

States such as Maharshtra, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi and Bihar spend less than two per cent of their Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), he said.

Photos from Dana Kornberg

The performance by the kids on Sunday was awesome! The kids were so thrilled to be dressed up and performing on stage, and once they were done, were just BEAMING with pride.

Underprivilaged Children must be given Special Care

Various studies have revealed that poverty can be reduced by sending children from India’s disadvantaged groups to schools instead of sending them to work. If a child is in school, adults of his/her family will get work from where the child used to work. When the child of family goes for work then, adults of that family generally sit idle and the wages earned by the children are ill spent by their family. The employers prefer to engage children on work rather than adults so that they have to pay less wages to children. In this way children are exploited.

India’s children and the Class Struggle

Fifty years into Independence, India’s children have little to celebrate: 6.3 crore (63 million) of them are still out of school. This despite the constitutional directive urging all states to provide “free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years”. The Constitution envisaged fulfilling this promise by 1960. Yet, if present trends continue, India is still 50 years away from reaching the goal.

Dalit boy killed for writing poem to upper caste girl

In a recent example of India’s horrific caste system, a 16-year-old Dalit school boy died after he was thrashed almost unconscious in front of other students by an upper caste teacher for writing a poem to an upper caste girl. He was also beaten by family members of the girl the next day, found semi-conscious and taken to hospital where he later died. Local leaders have sought an inquiry into the incident as the police appear to be siding with the upper caste girl’s family and the teacher. ->> MeriNews | Read the Full Story

The class ceiling

India’s 17 years of economic change have widened the gap between rich and poor. More than a quarter of the population lives below the official poverty line, subsisting on roughly $US1 ($1.04) a day; one in four city dwellers lives on less than 50 cents a day; and nearly half of all children are malnourished. ->> SMH | Read the Full Story

Uttar Pradesh is not Somalia – or is it?

Children do die from malnutrition in Uttar Pradesh. The latest was two-year-old Sahabuddin, who died May 31, 2008. He lived with his parents in Dhannipur village in Varanasi district of Uttar Pradesh. His parents were too poor to feed Sahabuddin – he weighed only six kilograms when he died. This is Grade III malnutrition, a condition that the world hears of in places like Somalia.

Children of a lesser God

June 19: The largest number of child labourers in the country are from Uttar Pradesh despite anti-child labour schemes in place since the 1980s. And this is not an allegation by activists but the finding of a report released by the UP government ~ The State of Children in Uttar Pradesh. The Statesman | [...]

L’Arche de Dolanji funds 220 meals daily

Toward the end of 2007 we were extremely worried that the children’s food funding was ending in February 2008 and that we hadn’t been able to find a sponsor. Then a miracle occurred:

Dalits in U.P. Face Hunger Deaths and Suicides

9 May, 2008: Dalits in U.P. Face Hunger Deaths and Suicides: When George Bush is admonishing India for eating too much, Dalits in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh face hunger deaths and suicides. Countercurrents.org | Read the Full Story |