India land of abject poverty

[karan.1970]

So when I saw this thread "India Land of abject Poverty" in the Latest Posts list, I thought to my self.. Here's another one by the amusing Blogger.. To my wonder the click opened up a thread from Sep 2009 started by some one other than Haq.. Feeling a little bad about my preconcieved notions about the blogger in question, I turned to the last page and realized how right I was.. Mr Haq, makes a post in a 3 month old dormant thread with an article he wrote over an year back.. All this while he was posting fake and old figures in another thread about Pakistan's financial stability and how Pakistan is a good bet for someone wanting to invest in developing economies

 

[idune]

India's left behind: Millions in Mumbai still live in desperate poverty


By Dai Sugano
Mercury News

Posted: 01/03/2009 10:12:17 PM PST
Updated: 04/15/2009 09:30:46 AM PDT

Mercury News Staff Writer John Boudreau and I spent nearly a month in India last year working on a series of articles about that country's economic boom and extensive ties to Silicon Valley.

India's rising prosperity is a remarkable story. Millions of people have been lifted from poverty in recent years. But the new glitter of India's cities can't hide the grim reality that remains daily life for hundreds of millions of its citizens.

About one-third of the world's poor people live in India. More than 450 million Indians exist on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank.


More than 6 million of those desperately poor Indians live in Mumbai, representing about half the residents of the nation's financial hub. They dwell in gigantic slums and roadside shanties that press up against the shimmering high-rises that serve as the most conspicuous symbols of India's new affluence.

These photos show what that other Mumbai — the one still waiting for prosperity — looks like up close.

Inside Dharavi, one of the city's mega-slums, I watched a child play with a kite on a windy day. The scene looked normal, except that his playground was an enormous pile of garbage.

At another slum, I watched mothers and children with grimy hands pick through wet mounds of rubbish. They fended off starvation by recycling scraps of metal and plastic, earning less than a dollar a day.

Some of the most poignant moments of my tour of the slums escaped capture by my camera lens and exist only in my memory.

As I sat in the back of my hired car at a busy traffic light one morning, a little girl — probably 5 or 6, just a few years older than my son — approached and put her hand to her mouth over and over, pleading in a tiny voice for money to buy food. I quickly gave her some change but felt too overwhelmed by her misery to point my camera at her face.

As I sit in the newsroom writing these words, some of my memories from India already have started to fade. But the image of that little girl is seared into my mind. It remains as sharp as the gritty details in these photos of her world.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11345908?nclick_check=1

 

[Hulk]

So when I saw this thread "India Land of abject Poverty" in the Latest Posts list, I thought to my self.. Here's another one by the amusing Blogger.. To my wonder the click opened up a thread from Sep 2009 started by some one other than Haq.. Feeling a little bad about my preconcieved notions about the blogger in question, I turned to the last page and realized how right I was.. Mr Haq, makes a post in a 3 month old dormant thread with an article he wrote over an year back.. All this while he was posting fake and old figures in another thread about Pakistan's financial stability and how Pakistan is a good bet for someone wanting to invest in developing economies

@Karan
Please ignore these people, giving them importance is not good for people like you.

Anyone who has just a single minded negative approach about people/religion/country are good for nothing but looser in life who can contribute nothing to society.

There is no country in this world which does not have any good thing, every country has something good to offer to the world.

You are good poster just ignore such people they are not worth spending time upon.

 

[desiman]

just one question to the thread starter - are you Riaz Haq brother by any chance lol

 

[jinxeD_girl]

Drought-hit Indian farmers sell wives to pay debts

Thats so sad idune.

 

[idune]

The India you may not know

1. 71% or 770 million people are below 35 years of age. Indians
are young.

2. 29 million people are born every year, 10 million die per
year, population increase 1.8% per year.

3. 90% to 94% drop out rate of children (including those who
never went to school) between kindergarten and class
10+2. India has 95 lac schools, China has 180 lacs.

4. 6% are the ones that cross the 10+2 stage, (Educational
‘Line of Control’) which is our so called educated youth, go
in for a regular college degree which may not be very
relevant in today’s context for the sake of employment
generation and National GDP enhancement.

5. 72% of all graduates from the 15,600 colleges are Arts
graduates. Balance 28% in Science, Commerce,
Engineering, I.T., Medical, Law, Management and special
subjects. India has 372 universities, China has 900.

6. While 95% of the world youth between 15 to 35 years of age
learn a vocation, a skill or a trade, with a choice of 2,500
vocational education and training (VET) programs, we in
India have only identified about 71 trades, after 58 years of
Independence and hardly 2% of the population goes for
formal VET training! India has 11,000 ITI's and VET schools,
China has 500,000 Sr. Sec. VET schools.

7. We can get engineers and MBA’s in India but no carpenters,
plumbers, drivers, repairmen and other skilled personnel as
per international standards!

8. Information Technology, Software or I.T. is the only
exception, possibly due to 50,000 or more private I.T.
training centers spread across the country.

9. I.T. & Software is only 1.5% of the world’s GDP. India’s
present share is about 5%. For rapid economic growth and
employment generation we need to concentrate on the
balance 95% of the Economy & Enterprise and make it
world class.

10. 300* million unemployed / employable age* and only 45
million have actually registered with employment offices with
little or no hope of getting employment (our estimates)*.

11. Of all new employment generated, 1% are Government jobs,
2% are in the ‘organized sector’ and the balance 97% in the
‘unorganized sector’

12. Out of our 430 million workforce, 94% work in the
‘unorganized sector’ and about 6% in the ‘organized sector’.

13. 1.7% of the entire population, viz. 18 million people work for
the Central & State Government; another 9 million work in
the ‘private organized sector’, a total of 2.6% of the
population.

14. All the Labour Laws are made to protect, at any cost, the
above 2.6% of the Indian population. Article 311 of the Indian
constitution needs revision since it over-protects employees
of the Government even at a cost to the Nation.

15. While MP’s, MLA’s and Municipal Councilors and the village
Panchayats, can only be elected for a maximum of 5 years,
the officials, babus, and government employees enjoy life
long benefits of employment, in spite of their performance.

16. 600 million illiterate people, based on the international
definition of the 3R's (reading, writing and arithmetic,
education up to primary level or Class 5th). (our esitimates)
as per Goverment of India is 63% literate. China is 93%
literate.

17. The Indian definition of literacy is based on survey of
people—“If you can write your name, you are literate”;
nobody has seriously ever challenged this definition!

18. 260 million live below the Government of India’s definition of
the Poverty Line of Rs.11(Rural) to Rs 14(Urban) per day!
(based on being able to buy enough rice and wheat from the
Public Distribution System / Ration Shops, which has food
value of 2,200 K calories per day).

19. Nobody has ever challenged this definition of ‘Poverty
Line’. How can one expect people to live with a few kilos of
raw uncooked wheat or rice? As human beings don’t we
need more? How about one set of clothes to cover our
bodies, a set of chappals for our feet, some vegetables, milk
and fruit, in our diet? How will we cook without any energy
and fuel?

This is my India !

20. 450 million* live below the poverty line definition of the
World Bank’s old definition of @ US$ 1 per day per person,
or US$ 365 per year. 700 million* people below the poverty
line definition of the World Bank’s new definition of @ US$
2 per day per person, or US$ 730 per year. (our estimates)*

21. Average Per Capita of an Indian is about US$ 600 per year
per person (1.07 billion people and a GDP of US$ 648
billion). The average earning of an Indian is US$ 1.65 per
day.

22. India has only 1.72% of the World GDP and has 17% of the
world population. Demands are high but buying power is low.
Hence we will need to increase our export related activities
by 10 times, as the foreign markets are 60 times bigger
than the Indian market. Our share of world markets or foreign
trade is 0.8%, down from 33% 1,000 years ago, down from
27% when the British landed in India and down from 3% in
1947.

23. Only 5% of Indians understand English, yet most of the
websites of the Government of India, State Governments and
Public Institutions are in English!

24. While English is a language used in countries which account
for about 40% of the world GDP, viz., USA + UK + old British
Colonies, yet in India while we talk of Globalization, we are
not serious to learn the other languages of the world, eg.,
Japanese, German etc, unlike the Chinese youth who are
doing otherwise.

25. India is probably at the bottom of the heap, as far as the
human development index is concerned such as infant
mortality, child care, malnutrition, women’s health, disease,
health, clean water, etc.

26. Democracy is, to the people, for the people, by the people. If
we have to succeed, the Citizen has to get involved and
participate in Governance.

27. Unlike other countries, we have 18 official languages,
4,000 dialects, all the religions of the world, and because of
low human and economic development, emphasis on SC,
ST, Dalits, caste, religion, sect, minorities, region, ethnic
groups, etc.

28. Employment generation is restricted due to existing
Policies which do not encourage ‘Labour Intensive’
enterprises. Relevant Labour Reforms in line with prevailing
practices in other countries of Asia are required for a level
playing field for Indian organizations.

29. The size of Enterprises cannot be decided by officials in the
Central Government. They are decided by technology,
process, international market forces and competitive
pressures. Reservation for Small Scale Industry, SSI, needs
to be scrapped and SME's should be encouraged. SSI’s are
7% of the Indian GDP. 99.7% of all organizations in the
world are SME’s. 90% of the Indian GDP are SME’s. We
need to understand the meaning of ‘E’ in SME (small &
medium enterprise).

30. As per :: Lok Satta Party - New Politics for a New Generation ::, about Rs. 2200 crores are spent
every day, at the Centre and State level, both on revenue as
well as capital account in order to Govern INDIA. To improve
Governance we need to insure +95% of Literacy, a large
number of active Citizen Groups and maximum use of The
Right to Information Act!

Under the above circumstances how can we run an efficient country
with Good Governance and Effective Administration? We need to first put ‘Our House in Order’, with suitable Action Plans, as explained in our 48 page booklet, Transforming INDIA. The rest will fall into place. Transforming INDIA is available at Rs. 50 per copy. Please send demand drafts payable at Mumbai, to i Watch, at the address mentioned below.

Please also see our website at India Watch :: Wakeup call for India for more details.
Copies of The India you may not know are available in English, Hindi,
Gujurati, Marathi, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Tamil, Telegu, Kannada,
Punjabi, Urdu and Malayalam.

You may download a sample of the contents of our 48 page booklet,
Transforming INDIA, from the website in English, Hindi, Marathi,
Gujarati, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Punjabi,
Urdu and Malayalam.

We also interact with Central Government ministries such as HRD,
Finance, Planning, Labour, nearly 10 State governments and business
associations such as CII, FICCI, ASSOCHAM, PHDCC&I and other
chambers of commerce. Compiled, printed and published by Krishan Khanna for i Watch, 211, Olympus, Altamount Road, Bombay 400026. Email: krishan@vwakeupcall.org Site: India Watch :: Wakeup call for India Fax: +91 22 2385 6782

http://superindian.net/Articles/SI/The India you may not know.pdf

 

[Omar1984]

Now, 410 million Indians living below poverty line

New Delhi: While India's economy is slowly recovering from the global recession with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 7.2 percent, millions of poor in rural India are finding it difficult to cope with around 17 percent food price inflation.

India now has 100 million people living below the poverty line than in 2004, reveals the official estimates. The poverty rate has risen to 37.2 percent of the population from 27.5 percent in 2004.


"The Planning Commission has accepted the report on poverty figures," said Abhijit Sen, a member of the Planning Commission, referring to the new poverty estimate report submitted by a government panel last December.

India now has 410 million people living below the U.N. estimated poverty line of $1.25 a day, 100 million more than was estimated earlier, officials said. India calculates how much of its population is living below the poverty line by checking whether families can afford one square meal a day that meets minimum nutrition needs.

It was not immediately clear how much more the federal government would have to spend on the poor, as that would depend on the Food Security Bill when it is presented to the government after the necessary changes, officials said.

India's Planning Commission will meet the food and expenditure secretaries next week to estimate the cost aspects of the bill, government officials said.

A third of the world's poor are believed to be in India, living on less than $2 per day, worse than in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, experts said.

The new estimate comes weeks after Sonia Gandhi, head of the Congress party, asked the government to revise a Food Security Bill to include more women, children and destitutes.


Now, 410 million Indians living below poverty line - General news

 

[Omar1984]

India 'diverts funds for poor to pay for Delhi games'

More than 100,000 poor families have already been evicted, the report says


Tens of millions of dollars have been diverted in India from schemes to fight poverty and used to fund Delhi's Commonwealth Games, a report says.

The Housing and Land Rights Network pressure group says its report is based on official documents obtained under India's right to information act.

The group says there should be an independent inquiry into how this was allowed to happen.

Government officials in Delhi say they are looking into the allegations.

'Clear evidence'

This report is a damning indictment of the way the Commonwealth Games have been financed and planned by the central and state governments.

It says tens of millions of dollars have been diverted from funds which are supposed to help raise underprivileged low caste communities out of poverty.

The report also says spending on the Games has spiralled out of control: expenditure on sports infrastructure alone is more than 2,000% of the initial projected budget.

In addition, more than 100,000 poor families have already been evicted due to projects connected with the Games, and up to 40,000 families are likely to be displaced before the Games begin in October, the document says.

The report's author, Miloon Kothari, a former UN human rights rapporteur, told the BBC that the evidence was clear.

The determination, he said, to portray Delhi as a world-class city and an international sports destination, had led the government to lose sight of its legal and moral commitments to its people.



BBC News - India 'diverts funds for poor to pay for Delhi games'

 

[IND151]

Bangladesh has world's highest malnutrition rate

24 November 2008

A new Unicef report says millions of children and women in Bangladesh are suffering from more than one form of malnutrition. The severity of the problem can be gauged from the fact of its chronic nature whereby undernourishment passes from one generation to the next.

Dhaka: Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child and maternal malnutrition in the world, say health experts.

According to the State of the World's Children (SOWC) Report 2008, issued by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), eight million or 48% of all children under-five are underweight.


Malnutrition among children and women in Bangladesh is rampant/ Photo credit: IRIN
Millions of children and women suffer from one or more forms of malnutrition, including low birth weight, stunting, underweight, Vitamin A deficiency, iodine deficiency disorders and anaemia.

Malnutrition passes from one generation to the next because malnourished mothers give birth to malnourished infants. If they are girls, these children often become malnourished mothers themselves, and the vicious cycle continues.

Malnutrition contributes to about half of all child deaths, often by weakening immunity. Survivors are left vulnerable to illness, stunted or intellectually impaired.

Newborn deaths make up nearly half of all under-five deaths (57%) and 71% of infant mortality. One neonate dies in Bangladesh every three to four minutes; 120,000 neonates die every year, according to UNICEF.

MDGs on track

However, Bangladesh is on track to achieve several Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including reducing by 2015 the under-five mortality rate to 50 per 1,000 live births from 65, the UNICEF report claims.

Matching achievements of only five other countries, Bangladesh has halved the child mortality rate since 1990.

"Bangladesh has made good progress in the past decade towards achieving MDG-1, the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger," the UNICEF report said.

Between 1996 and 2005, the prevalence of underweight children fell from 56% to 45%, while stunting fell from 55% to 40%.

"If we can keep the price of essentials within the reach of the common people, we will be able to achieve the MDG goals of child survival and maternal health," said AKM Zafarullah, secretary of the Ministry of Health.

"Silent emergency"

Abdul Faiz, director-general of health services, is confident Bangladesh will achieve the MDG-5 of reducing maternal mortality to 147 per 100,000 live births by 2015 from the present official rate of 320 per 100,000.

According to Christine Jaulmes, chief of communication and information of UNICEF Bangladesh, achieving the MDG would mean about 30 million children and two million mothers would be saved by 2015.

"But, as urban slums, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, coastal regions and other ecologically vulnerable areas are falling behind, their distinct problems need to be addressed carefully," Faiz added.

Natural disasters compound malnutrition, which is often considered a "silent emergency", even in normal times, stated UNICEF. Every five to 10 years there is a major disaster that causes widespread damage, wiping out crops, houses, safe water sources, livelihoods and wreaking havoc on nutrition.

"Although the situation is improving in some sectors, the overall situation is quite serious and therefore not acceptable," said Mohammad Mohsin Ali, a UNICEF nutrition specialist.

"The protein energy deficiency (PED) which is expressed through underweight, stunting and retarded physical growth of children, is still unacceptably high," he added.

"Iodine and vitamin-A supplementation are showing very positive outcomes, but iron deficiency anaemia among children and women is very high. Nearly 85% of children under one year of age and almost 50% of pregnant women suffer from iron deficiency anaemia. This needs to be addressed."

"A national strategy for anaemia prevention and control has also been put in place. Both strategies aim at preventing and controlling the issues of malnutrition of children and mothers," Mohsin said.

Progress achieved

According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2006, more than 89% of children aged nine to 59 months have been given Vitamin-A supplements, saving more than 30,000 children each year.

Eighty-four percent of all edible salt in Bangladesh is now iodised, helping reduce the toll of iodine deficiency disorders. The prevalence of goitres in school-children has fallen from 50% to 6% in the past decade because of salt iodisation.

Community Nutrition Promoters (CNPs) work in 24,000 community nutrition centres throughout the country providing information, advice and counselling to improve the nutritional status of children, adolescent girls and women.

Seventy-five percent of all under-fives were fully immunised against all preventable childhood diseases in 2007, up from 64% in 2005. Immunisation has helped to prevent infectious diseases that cause malnutrition.



---------- Post added at 04:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:22 PM ----------

Bangladesh has world's highest malnutrition rate

 

[ardent]

The purpose of this thread is to spew HATE.

The starter of this thread is forgetting that he comes from dirt-poor country himself........

It not as if he come from USA or Europe.......he comes from nation which has its vast majority wallowing in wretched poverty.

Unlike India , his country does not even have the economic growth rate to give hope for the future of his people ........at least India has some growth rate.

 

[amigo]

India's left behind: Millions in Mumbai still live in desperate poverty


By Dai Sugano
Mercury News

Posted: 01/03/2009 10:12:17 PM PST
Updated: 04/15/2009 09:30:46 AM PDT

Mercury News Staff Writer John Boudreau and I spent nearly a month in India last year working on a series of articles about that country's economic boom and extensive ties to Silicon Valley.

India's rising prosperity is a remarkable story. Millions of people have been lifted from poverty in recent years. But the new glitter of India's cities can't hide the grim reality that remains daily life for hundreds of millions of its citizens.

About one-third of the world's poor people live in India. More than 450 million Indians exist on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank.


More than 6 million of those desperately poor Indians live in Mumbai, representing about half the residents of the nation's financial hub. They dwell in gigantic slums and roadside shanties that press up against the shimmering high-rises that serve as the most conspicuous symbols of India's new affluence.

These photos show what that other Mumbai — the one still waiting for prosperity — looks like up close.

Inside Dharavi, one of the city's mega-slums, I watched a child play with a kite on a windy day. The scene looked normal, except that his playground was an enormous pile of garbage.

At another slum, I watched mothers and children with grimy hands pick through wet mounds of rubbish. They fended off starvation by recycling scraps of metal and plastic, earning less than a dollar a day.

Some of the most poignant moments of my tour of the slums escaped capture by my camera lens and exist only in my memory.

As I sat in the back of my hired car at a busy traffic light one morning, a little girl — probably 5 or 6, just a few years older than my son — approached and put her hand to her mouth over and over, pleading in a tiny voice for money to buy food. I quickly gave her some change but felt too overwhelmed by her misery to point my camera at her face.

As I sit in the newsroom writing these words, some of my memories from India already have started to fade. But the image of that little girl is seared into my mind. It remains as sharp as the gritty details in these photos of her world.

India's left behind: Millions in Mumbai still live in desperate poverty - San Jose Mercury News

& bangladesh is world most developed nation, u can will hardly find a poor in that country

 

[IND151]

India Makes Progress on Poverty Reduction: UN
BETWA SHARMA/UNITED NATIONS | JUN 24, 2010
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India has made significant progress in poverty reduction and the number of poor people in the country is expected to half of the 1990 level by 2015, a UN report said today.

According to the 2010 report of the United Nations on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), While India is expected to reduce its poverty rate from 51 per cent in 1990 to 24 per cent in 2015, reducing its number of extremely poor by 188 million.

"India, too, has contributed to the large reduction in global poverty," the report said.

But the rest of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are falling behind in meeting the target of reducing poverty by half by 2015.

The overall poverty rate is expected to fall to 15 per cent by 2015, which translates into around 920 million people living under international poverty line- half the number in 1990.

Poverty rates in China are also expected to fall by 5 per cent.

But the report highlights that financial crisis brought on by the developed world has negatively impacted growth in developing countries and will leave an additional 64 million people in extreme poverty by the end of 2010.

"It is clear the the improvements in the lives of the poor have been unacceptably slow and some hard won gains are being eroded by the climate food and economic crises," Ban said.

"Billions of people are looking for the international community to realise the great vision embodied in the Millennium Development Goals. Let us keep that promise," he added.

The eight MDGs include eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and ensuring environmental sustainability.

The report also indicated progress on tree plantation in India.

On the issue of environmental sustainability, the UN found that the world has already missed the 2010 deadline for biodiversity conservation with potentially grave consequences and the number of species facing extinction is growing by the day especially in developing countries.

While South America and Africa continue to show the largest net losses of forests, the report said that Asia had registered a net gain of some 2.2 million hectares annually in the last decade, mainly because of large-scale afforestation programmes in China, India and Viet Nam.[/COLOR]

"These three countries have expanded their forest area by a total of nearly 4 million hectares annually in the last five years," the report said.

"However, rapid conversion of forested lands to other uses continued in many other countries in the region."

The report also found that during the last decade, expanded activity in agriculture and manufacturing had led to the pollution of surface and ground water.

Water contamination with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic and fluoride have affected the safety of water supplies in India, China and Bangladesh.
FILED ON: JUN 24, 2010 05:11 IST

 

[ardent]

Now, 410 million Indians living below poverty line

yeah , i know how far your nation has gone ahead in poverty allievation !!

 

[IND151]

Redirect Notice

 

[ardent]

i have been to other defence forums ,all of them discuss defence issues in a serious manner.

with this kind of hate being spewed here, this forum is in serious danger of losing its credibility