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 Bangalore’s 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 India’s 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.