Crusader Sees Wealth as Cure for Caste Bias
When Chandra Bhan Prasad visits his ancestral village in these feudal badlands of northern India, he dispenses the following advice to his fellow untouchables: Get rid of your cattle, because the care of animals demands children’s labor. Invest in your children’s education instead of in jewelry or land. Cities are good for Dalit outcastes like us, and so is India’s new capitalism.
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States such as Maharshtra, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi and Bihar spend less than two per cent of their Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), he said.
Fifty years into Independence, India's children have little to celebrate: 6.3 crore (63 million) of them are still out of school. This despite the constitutional directive urging all states to provide "free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years". The Constitution envisaged fulfilling this promise by 1960. Yet, if present trends continue, India is still 50 years away from reaching the goal.
India's 17 years of economic change have widened the gap between rich and poor. More than a quarter of the population lives below the official poverty line, subsisting on roughly $US1 ($1.04) a day; one in four city dwellers lives on less than 50 cents a day; and nearly half of all children are malnourished. ->> SMH | Read the Full Story
Asides
- June 19: The largest number of child labourers in the country are from Uttar Pradesh despite anti-child labour schemes in place since the 1980s. And this is not an allegation by activists but the finding of a report released by the UP government ~ The State of Children in Uttar Pradesh. The Statesman | Read the Full Story | #
- 9 May, 2008: Dalits in U.P. Face Hunger Deaths and Suicides: When George Bush is admonishing India for eating too much, Dalits in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh face hunger deaths and suicides. Countercurrents.org | Read the Full Story | #
- April 14th, 2008 School principal accused of abusing Dalit student: In his complaint to the police, Prem Narayan alleged that when he approached the institute for admission on March 28, he was asked to pay Rs.45,000 as donation. On expressing his inability to pay the amount, he was asked to come the next day. When he returned to the institute, the principal humiliated him by allegedly hurling casteist abuses. Thaindian News | Read the Full Story | #
- 13 Mar 2008: Close on the heels of the Patan sex scandal where male teachers ganged raped a hapless girl while subjecting others to shameful treatment, around 50-60 students of Nehru Garden Government Girls Senior Secondary School in Jalandhar have written to the principal saying they were being "sexually exploited" by a sports coach. The Times of India | Read the Full Story | #
- 11 March 2008: In fact, it was established that it is the lower caste—known as Dalits—who suffer from starvation and malnutrition within Uttar Pradesh, due to systemic discrimination. MyNews.in | Read the Full Story | #
Welcome to Buddha’s Smile School
Buddha’s Smile School is a free, privately run, non denominational school exclusively for the poorest children (the Untouchables) from the Varanasi region of Uttar Pradesh, India.
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