Two million slum children die every year as India booms

Source: The Observer (UK)

India's growing status as an economic superpower is masking a failure to stem a shocking rate of infant deaths among its poorest people.

Nearly two million children under five die every year in India – one every 15 seconds – the highest number anywhere in the world. More than half die in the month after birth and 400,000 in their first 24 hours.

A devastating report by Save the Children, due out on Monday, reveals that the poor are disproportionately affected and the charity accuses the country of failing to provide adequate healthcare for the impoverished majority of its one billion people. While the World Bank predicts that India's economy will be the fastest-growing by next year and the country is an influential force within the G20, World Health Organisation figures show it ranks 171st out of 175 countries for public health spending.

Malnutrition, neonatal diseases, diarrhoea and pneumonia are the major causes of death. Poor rural states are particularly affected by a dearth of health resources. But even in the capital, Delhi, where an estimated 20% of people live in slums, the infant mortality rate is reported to have doubled in a year, though city authorities dispute this.

=snip=

The Save the Children report says nearly nine million children die worldwide every year before the age of five. India has the highest number of deaths, with China fifth. Afghanistan has the dubious distinction of featuring in the top 10 of total child deaths and of child deaths per head of population, a list topped by Sierra Leone.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/04/india-slums-children-death-rate

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Link to video report on this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/oct/04/india-children

Heartbreaking.

After all, he thinks India is the model for everything and the place with the answers to all the problems in the western world.

As if they didn't know.

he's another ideological fanatic

All have huge amts of people suffering in tremendous poverty, while the rich live like emperors.

And yet the G20 and corporatists applaud those countries and call them a success.

Success my arse.

Unlike most countries, it was a democracy and adopted many welfare-state policies before it industrialized. Rajiv Ghandi started the move towards greater capitalism and trade about twenty years ago. It been overwhelmingly good for the country. The poor have not been pauperized by the rich.

I'm sure some of the infant mortality occurs in cities, but India is still 70% rural. The traditional low-tech spartan lifestyle Ghandi championed leads to traditional health patterns as well.

It was even worse than going to Brazil and seeing the zillions of fabelas that the poor live in.

it was poor before the British came, and they tended to make things worse. When they finally got their independence, India discouraged modernization and trade for the first forty years. They allied themselves with the Soviets, even though their language could have created opportunities in Australia and the US (even if they hated the UK). Their government is heavy with red tape, but is ineffectual in strange areas like the lack of eminent domain, which makes it hard to develop a modern infrastructure.

For that reason, it's difficult to compare India to most other countries. My brother spent a summer there a while back in the North, and felt that the extremes of poverty were overstated. Just a different viewpoint.

:thumbsdown:

told that story very well. At the beginning, the slums covered acres in the middle of the city. At the end, most of the slums had been replaced with sky scrapers. Where did the people go? To live in the garbage dumps?

Yes there is poverty and suffering in the US but what is accepted in India is horrendous.

on Friday. It was so horrible it ruined my day.

and yes it's bad, at least compared to other industrialized nations, but I really doubt any other country on earth has the shocking disparity as it is in India. It's just bizarre and almost bipolar in a sense. There you have a country with a huge and growing middle class - a huge consumer culture multinational corporations are salivating over. Their standard of living is overall pretty comfortable: maid servants doing the cleaning, cooking, and just about everything else. They have hired chaufers, flat panel TVs, and many other modern conveniences. They have skilled doctors, which are also accessible. And many of them have a relative abroad that sends a generous remitance. India relies heavily on expatriots for their foreign direct investment. In many cases they are well educated and successful as well.

Then there is the underclass and this a huge portion of the population the middle class and wealthy there simply ignore. To most of them, they just don't even exist. Compared to China, literacy rates are dismal. Their access to health care is terrible, if nonexistant. Various diseases that should be eradicated run rampant. And public education for those people is poor and facilities are terrible. Most of that is rural and they are burdened by heavy debt, though the urban poverty is more visible to most - the slums, and the beggers.

It's a strange and fascinating country with a lot of potential, but economically they have a way to catch up with China as well. They have had some great achievements - an independent functioning court system and democracy with more participation than anywhere else. But corruption is endemic and a way of life.

India needs to desperately spend more on infrastructure and public health, two things the government there just ignores. They have a lot of challenges. They are running very high defecits and face a lot of external and internal security threats as well...making governing there an incredibly difficult challenge.

Not supposed to talk about that.

Don't they?

The article goes into greater detail but I don't think I can add any more than the original parts I've copied and pasted...

One stat. worth mentioning, though... they have "0.7 hospital beds per 1,000 people compared with a global average of 4."

people who have insurance are the only ones that can get adequate care. That's about 40 million people out of 1.2 billion.

Social Darwinism in India is alive and well, as it is in the US.

..........of the disaster capitalism we have been practicing for the last 30 yrs and certain areas of the country (Texas?, Mississippi?, Louisiana?) will look like parts of South America or Mexico. "Change we can believe in" ?

for decades and decades. To date, they've been wrong. Sooner or later it'll be accurate, but trying to predict the future twenty years down the road is a job for fools or SF writers.

.........You only have to use your eyes since 1970 to see this gradual sliding to Fascism. If this keeps going this way under Obama (and it appears that will be the case) then you too can sit back in your easy chair and watch the "wonders of Fascism" unfold.

Do NOT try to ascribe objections that the religious fundamentalists in the US have raised to family planning/birth control here to why other countries are over-populated. Family planning/birth control has been advocated in India since 1952 at least (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Planning_Association_India). And while religious leaders have occasionally objected to it in the earlier years - saying 'children are a gift from God' - since the 1970s at least they have not raised any major objections, and have even given tacit approval. Abortion has been legal in India since about 1970, and there are ads for abortion service providers on commuter trains - and these are usually not defaced. Given the importance of religion in other matters of life in India, this should tell you something.

The birth rate in India is now 2.72 children/woman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India), down from over 4 in the 1970s.

This is not to imply that the country has succeeded in controlling its population growth rate, nor that it does not need to put in more and better efforts. There are several reasons for a woman to give birth to many children - many are social, more are economic (see the video piece of the original post). Regions of the southern part of the country (the state of Kerala, where a matriarchal system provided a higher status to women) hardly have a population problem.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay tried forcible birth control (like China does) in the mid-1970s. This coercion was a major reason why she was voted out in 1977. In a democratic system, Chinese-style population control methods are not possible. Other ways have to be found. And they usually take much longer.