Plight of Gidhdha village

A cold winter morning of 2007, about 30 kms from Patna, I was in
Gidhdha, a village of Moosahari's, a 35-lakh strong community spread
across Bihar, known for eating even rats in dire circumstances of
poverty & survival.

We were with people who often dig a hole in the nights to make their
kids sleep and cover them with dry grass to save them from the cold.
This is a place where women tell you that they don't use ANYTHING
during menses, and they can't take a bath because there is NOTHING to
change

We felt criminal, wearing sweaters and jackets. For every person who
dies because of cold and for every woman who goes through a bad phase
without a piece of cloth, we found ourselves answerable…not because
it's our doing but because we are not doing enough.

I remembered a radio channel holding hundreds of sweaters because they
wanted a celebrity to hand it over to us and they were not getting
dates. I remembered corporates who didn't send material to us because
after collection they were waiting for the right moment to organize an
event to do it. I also thought of millions of individuals who keep the
material with them in search of a real needy or waiting for a
disaster…

Don't you agree that for people who roam around naked in peak winters
or die because of cold, winters are a much bigger annual disaster than
earthquake or floods? For millions of women, even menses is a monthly
disaster if they are forced to roam around even without a piece of
cloth to use as a napkin.

We have decided to do something; every year in addition to our present
role, we will take up 100 villages and ensure that no one in these
villages remains without clothes. That means generating over 1,00,000
kgs of extra material every year. In 2007, we will do this for 100
such villages of Bihar and it has already started from Gidhha, the
village I mentioned earlier.

If you understand the seriousness of this issue then I'm sure we will
able to go way beyond this commitment. By simply giving us any
unwanted cloth you have in your wardrobe, you can change the realities
for these people.

Your immediate support is needed:
(All donations to GOONJ are exempted u/s 80 G of IT act.)
Do visit http://www.goonj.info/clothincentive.php
Anshu K. Gupta ( Ashoka Fellow )
Founder -Director
GOONJ..
Tel.- (m)-98681-46978, (o)-011-26972351
Add-J-93, Sarita Vihar, New Delhi-76
E-mail- anshu_goonj1@yahoo.co.in,anshugoonj24@gmail.com

Indian children suffer more malnutrition than in Ethiopia

India has higher rates of malnourished children than sub-Saharan Africa, despite having the money to tackle the problem, according to a survey that raises grave questions about the country's economic rise.

Almost 46 per cent of Indian children under the age of 3 suffer from malnutrition, according to the survey by the Indian Health Ministry in conjunction with Unicef, the United Nations children's agency. That compares with about 35 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa and only 8 per cent in China, whose economic growth India strives to emulate. It also represents only a slight decrease since the last National Family Health Survey in India seven years ago showed that 47 per cent of its children were mal-nourished.

The results provide a shocking illustration of how India's recent economic gains, while enriching the social elite and middle classes, have failed to benefit almost half of its 1.1 billion people.

India's economy has grown by more than 8 per cent annually since 2003 and hit $4 trillion (based on purchasing power parity) by the end of last year — more than double that of the whole of Africa. The country now has the sort of budget, foreign exchange reserves, transport infrastructure, human resources and stable political environment that are the envy of most sub-Saharan countries.

Yet its child malnourishment levels are worse than Ethiopia's and on a par with those of Eritrea and Burkina Faso.

Werner Schultink, chief of child development and nutrition for Unicef in India, said that the country's failure to address malnourishment and other health problems compromised the world's ability to reach the millennium development goals of halving global poverty and hunger by 2015. It also threatened to wipe out the "demographic dividend" of having a relatively young population by creating a generation of underdeveloped and, in some cases, mentally retarded workers, he said.

The survey found that anaemia levels had risen compared with those of seven years ago, with about 56 per cent of women and 79 per cent of children below the age of 3 suffering from the disorder. It showed only negligible progress in child immunisation levels, at 44 per cent compared with 42 per cent. In Gujarat, one of India's richest and most developed states, the proportion of underweight children had risen to 47 per cent from 45 per cent.

The problem, according to Dr Schultink and other experts, is not that India lacks the money to tackle these problems. They pointed out that child malnourishment levels in India were above 70 per cent in the 1970s and that Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, had called recently for urgent action to address the problem. His Government needed to spend far more than the current 1 per cent of GDP allocated to healthcare, they said.

It also needed to raise awareness about health issues among poor women and needed to focus more on children under three rather than the school-age children currently covered in a state scheme to provide 120 million hot, nutritious and free meals on every school day.

"The survey confirms that India has done little for its children," said Shiv Kumar, a development economist and government adviser, who described the survey as "a matter of national priority and shame".

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1421393.ece