Garibi hatao

1
Mera bharat mahan ?
India shining ?!!?
Garibi hatao ?
2
To begin with

• The GDP is allegedly 7, but industrial growth
  has dropped from 13 in 1995 to 6.3 in 2003-2004
• Foreign exchange reserves are more than 100
  billion USD but liberalisation measures allow
  Indians individually to invest 100mn USD overseas
  which could lead to capital flight in times of
  financial panic .another SE Asian crisis!
• Stockmarkets are booming!!...in a country where
  65 of households do not have a bank account
• The fastest growing sector in India is
  inequality- Ambani earns Rs 9 crore per yr,
  30,000 times more than the annual wages of a
  landless labourer in Kalahandi which is Rs 3000

3
Some more

• On the whole about 54 women and 75 men are
  literate in our country
• Out of approximately 200 million children in the
  age group 6-14 years, only 120 million are
  enrolled and the net attendance figures is just
  over 60
• Every year lakhs of rural migrants enter cities
  and work on construction sites, etc for pittance
• The lowest 10 per cent of the urban population in
  India, 37.49 per cent are engaged in casual
  labour and 41.34 per cent are self-employed,
  suggesting that a vast majority of the urban poor
  are vulnerable to uncertain incomes
• 860 million Indians still go to sleep hungry very
  night

4
And still more..
Contribution of various sectors to Air Quality
in major cities
72 - Vehicular Traffic 8 Domestic 20 -
Industrial

• Obviously vehicular traffic (72) is playing
  havoc with the environment and as a result, with
  the health of people
• Most of the vehicles in question here are
  private. In a city like Bangalore out of 18 lakh
  vehicles only 4000 form the public bus transport.
  14 lakh are two wheelers while ----- are four
  wheelers.
• Incidentally the 3000 odd buses service 56
  of Bangalores population, while the remaining
  population use private vehicles.

5
It is not yet over

• Female foeticide on the rise over the past 6
  years
• Infant mortality rate is as high as 70 per 1000
  births (83 and 84.22 for SC and ST respectively)
• Percentage allocation of GDP for health dropped
  by 35 in the last decade
• India is one of the only 3 countries where
  maternal mortality rates are on the rise
• More than 21 of India's urban population live in
  slums, 23 of urban households do not have access
  to toilet facilities and nearly 8 of urban
  households are unable to find safe drinking water

6
The Brains of the Globe

• India's information technology sector accounts
  for about 2 of the GDP. By contrast, trade and
  hospitality alone account for 15 of GDP
• In external sector accounts, software exports
  (7.2 billion) still contribute less than
  remittances, mainly from poor workers in the Gulf
  (8.1 billion).
• Even if the ITES/BPO business grows five or
  eight-fold over the coming five years, as
  optimistic projections estimate, its contribution
  to India's GDP will remain relatively small
• Of about 3.5 lakh workers in IT services and
  outsourcing in India, 1.85 lakh people are in
  Karnataka - mostly in Bangalore, the city where
  largest number of jobs were lost in the
  industrial sector (more than 3 lakhs)
• While the average earnings are pretty high,
  compare this with the earnings of 8000
  pourakarmikas, those who keep the city clean,
  earn between 1000 and 1800 per month
  contd...

7

• Indian companies have developed very few
  finished, marketable software products, instead
  they develop components or sub-packages/assemblies
  /programmes that go into the final products made
  and marketed by US companies.
• Thus, a good proportion of the sub-programmes in
  Windows 95 and 98 were developed by Indian
  engineers. But it's Bill Gates who skimmed off
  the profits!
• The ITES like call centres, medical transcription
  and BPOs, which are now growing at twice the
  speed of software exports, employ young women and
  men who work long hours, practising cultivated
  foreign accents to sell products they have never
  seen or give invisible customers information they
  don't remotely comprehend (eg about a
  restaurant's location in Memphis, Tennessee).
• This alienating work, and low levels of acquired
  skills and wages (compared to their counterparts
  abroad) are turning college graduates and
  enthusiastic youngsters into mindless
  cyber-coolies

8
Still more

• Country with the largest number of malnourished
  children
• India one of 17 countries where number of
  undernourished increased substantially in the
  late 1990s
• 1/5th of Indias population suffers from chronic
  hunger
• In the past few years the Supreme Court has more
  than once pulled up six states over starvation
  deaths
• Last five years has seen a slide-back to levels
  of hunger in rural areas not seen for over 50
  years
• 17 million tonnes of surplus food is exported at
  below poverty prices every year. And the rest is
  fed on by rats in Food Corporation of India
  godowns.
• Farmer suicides over the past years has become a
  regular occurrence 3000 farmers annually in
  Punjab, over 2000 farmers in a single district
  Anantpur in AP in 2002, 478 farmers in Karnataka
  in 2003 (between April to November)

9
On a different level

• In the past few years India has slipped from rank
  124 to 127 on HDI (human development index)
  ladder. Israel occupied Palestine would be a
  better place to live in for some Indians.

Ofcourse the sky is the limit if we dare to dream
but then who dare not dream today persecuted
religious groups, sexuality minorities, adivasis,
farmers crunched by globalisation, people in
slums
10

• References
• Photograph taken by Claire Arni from Dreams and
  Discontents, Water in the cities of Bangalore
• Understanding Persistent Poverty in India, Hivos
• The Poverty of Fiction P. Sainath
• Vehicular Pollution Control in India, Technical
  Non-Technical Measure Policy, Dr. B. Sengupta,
  Member Secretary, Central Pollution Control
  Board, Ministry of Environment Forests,
  Government of India.
• Facts Speak Siddharth Narrain
• Meeting the Challenge Parvathi Menon
• Closing Factories, Losing Jobs Parvathi Menon
• Trade Union of contract powrakarmikas
• The Feel Good Factory P. Sainath
• Rural India in Ruins Utsa Patnaik
• Please forward and make additions. Copy left,
  right and centre.