India’s Bogging Poverty
India has been facing the problem of poverty since 1947. It’s true that despite vast physical and cultural resources, Indian masses, both in rural and urban areas, have been reeling under poverty and unemployment for centuries. Despite India’s Five-Year Plans, developing economy, mechanical advance, commercial growth and scientific development, poverty persists with a bull dog tenacity. The demon of poverty has spread its tentacles all around the urban and rural areas.
The World Bank has revised its international poverty line norm from US$1.25 a day to US$1.90 a day. According to the World Bank’s poverty line norm, India has the highest number of people living below poverty line with 30% of its population under the US$1.90 a day poverty measure. Poverty has a grip on a much larger proportion of India’s people in regards to education, health care and basic infrastructure.
It’s estimated that 14 million children in India work in the fields, in factories, brothels and in the homes of families – often without pay. Most of them are often illiterate and not aware of their rights and sold by their parents or guardians due to grinding poverty. Aid organizations estimate that three-quarters of all domestic servants in India are children, and 90% of those are girls. This is a pity. In the context of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No. 182, India tops the list when it comes to the number of children still living and working in bonded labour and slave conditions.
In India, young women are bought and sold like slaves. Many of them have children who live in constant danger of also being sold or sexually abused. According to a Human Rights Watch report, there are more than 20 million prostitutes in India and as many as 35% of them enter at an age less than 18. Poverty is one of the main causes which bring helpless women to the doors of prostitution.
Thousands of families in India do not find enough to feed themselves and in a moment of complete dejection, they commit suicides collectively. There are millions of people, who sleep with empty stomachs most of the times. There are people who do not have much money to spend on their food and clothing. There’s a life-and-death struggle on the railroad tracks as there are many people who live dangerously near railway tracks. They also want good food to eat, good clothes to wear, good place to live in, but they are helpless as they don’t have any kind of support. This is the dark side of poverty.
“India lives in villages” were the golden words of Mahatma Gandhi many decades ago. Ironically after 70 years of India’s independence, the data do not seem to disagree. Still, almost 70% of the population lives in rural areas. And the truth is that rural India is far behind urban India in every indicator of progress. More than half the rural households do not own land and more than half of them are casual labourers. Around 65% of rural households have no sanitation facility, while the corresponding figure for urban areas is 11%.
Rural poverty is further compounded by India’s enormous health burden; India accounts for more than one quarter of the world’s TB cases and deaths. In India, most villages don’t possess even a small hospital. Unfortunately, in India’s noisy political democracy, politicians are not too interested in intervening.