Break out your copy of Hatful Of Hollow, I’m about to depress you with this story from the BBC:
A 12-year-old Indian girl committed suicide after her mother told her she could not afford one rupee – two US cents – for a school meal.
Sania Khatun lived with her mother in a village north of Calcutta under a tarpaulin sheet provided by the state.
Sania usually starved at school; her widowed mother, Jainab Bewar, provided for her by bringing home food from the houses she worked in as a maid. On Friday, Sania
was tempted by the sight of classmates eating puffed rice and oil cakes.
When Sania asked her mother for a rupee, she was rebuked because the family couldn’t spare it:
She and her sons never earn more than $13 a month combined, she says.
Sania’s mother later found her hanging via a sari.
This is all I can think of, when I read stories like this:
India has seen unprecedented economic growth in recent years but many remain untouched by the improvements.
Decades ago, my parents were factually correct when they guilted me into finishing my dinner by reminding me of all the starving children in India:
A recent UN report said half of India’s children were still malnourished.
Tragic. No other word for it.
Communis R writes:
Oh good. You threw the domestic violence angle in. Now let’s just add Hitler, Nazi, caste and we will have a nice stew to boil me in.
Sorry – how is DV even remotely similiar to the case in hand? DV is illegal. Poverty is not. DV has a particular perpetrator – poverty cannot be pointed to a single source. Complaining about DV to the cops actually yields results. The BBC airing these “stories” in their paper yields…?
You forgot my deluded sisters… but never mind.
India is powerful enough as a whole, but these stories appearing at the wrong time can give CM of Bengal a red-face when he is having a presentation in Boston on investment opportunities in Bengal. And this was true twenty years ago, is true today, and will be true twenty years from now.
M. Nam
Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion ?
Comparisons should be done on basis percentage of after-tax income that is not used for necessities like food, water, shelter etc.
Also you have to include any financial support that the income earners provide to their elderly parents and extended family.
“DV is illegal. Poverty is not.”
There is no glamor in poverty – a lot of violence, domestic or not comes through poverty (not always, and has cultural factors too).
Sweeping a problem under the rug is the worst disservice one can do. Therefore, I never complain about a story if its done with careful research. General Musharraf does, though.
Transparency is key to progress.
“Transparency is key to progress.”
i agree.
it’s not “dirty laundry” if it’s true, and it deserves to be told.
re: indians giving back. i agree with epoch, i think that the support system for elderly and young people are compromised in many parts of india, therefore middle-class families expend a lot of that “extra money” on supporting family members who can’t support themselves. even though they have a sense of civic-ness and would give if they could, it’s simply not within reach.
of course, this excludes the super rich who seem happier to donate to PETA than to real live humans, while i was working in lucknow i had a good friend who would never, ever help out at the project i worked on (involving children’s nutrition programs) and instead would spend thousands of rupees feeding cows in a lane by her house. i am also shocked at times in bombay and delhi when i go to fundraisers for HIV/AIDS programs and see a 80% foreigner attendance, and then i go to a fashion show for PETA and it’s packed to the rafters with young hip indians. people are giving money, but the question is to what… maybe people here can help me, how do we get people to think that giving to people is “cool” or “trendy”? i know that getting celebrities involved in america was crucial, but what about india?
sumita said: “but sometimes its better to let nations help themselves rather than “resuce them””
yes, but when the knowledge of how to do that “helping” especially in regards to health care has been largely guarded by the elite in the world then it’s up to those with the knowledge to bring it… i’m sorry but no one is pioneering HIV/AIDS work in India, yet they are in parts of europe and america, so bringing that knowledge in can do a helluva lot for india, africa, china and other places ravaged by HIV epidemics.
some things to think about.
theresa
Data for India is hard to find and you will have to go by what you undersand of the country, such as observing number of institutions etc. which run on endowment. For the USA – about $250 billion was given as charitable contributions in 2004. And 75% of it was given by individuals. And note that this is after the compartively higher taxes (including SS and medicare)paid in the USA.
I think the issue of “voyeurism” (or better wording) exists, but I think it is not important compared to the possible effects of making suffering known.
And I have no doubt Anna has done more than just expressed outrage.
There is a defensiveness in some of the comments through this thread, but rather than seeing it in the comments of those who took offense at charging Anna with “voyeurism,” I see it in comments like these:
No point in nitpicking the particular circumstances of the situation or decrying Western coverage of starvation in India since it actually exists as a major problem. This type of argument only serves to assuage the ego of people who feel defensive about the legitimacy/appearance of their country.
Theresa above makes a good point about NGO’s relying on feelings of sympathy aroused by such articles. I am sure many of us do what we can to help people in many ways.
One does not solve the “starvation problem” in India by blindly accepting false reports in foreign newspapers. If this were true, India’s starvation problems would have been over many moons ago. All we would have to do is to read all the foreign newspapers in the world and viola!
All the real, long lived, tangible changes in india are brought about by those living & working on the inside as members of a given community, not by motivated outsiders.
SM has a number of posts about the wretched state of affairs in the world, so, what’s to stop you from creating a donation-link on the site (similar to what you did for bandwidth-fundraising), that you can highlight in every such post? I know it’s a drop in the bucket, but it’s better than everyone arguing about what is/isn’t being done…
Maybe take a reader-poll regarding the “most preferred” charities, nonprofits, etc., choose three-four and then take donations and make quarterly or biannual contributions in the name of SM (considering the vigorous response to this post and others, I don’t see why people wouldn’t give). Or, have SM-supported fundraising-links for other organizations on the site (however, I think doing it yourself lends more power to the posts and discussions).
Just a thought.