For India’s ‘rat catchers,’ stigmatization undermines the self-esteem vital to learning.

‘The higher-caste students tell us that we smell bad,’ one girl said. Another added: ‘The ridicule we face prevents us from coming to school and sitting with higher-caste children.’ These girls from the hamlet of Khalispur, near the city of Varanasi, belong to the Mushara or ‘rat catcher’ community of eastern Uttar Pradesh, India.

Despite an entitlement to receive a stipend, midday meals and uniforms, few Mushara girls attend Khalispur’s government primary school. ‘We are forced to sit on the floor,’ one girl said. ‘The desks and benches in the classroom are meant for the children from the higher castes.’

Source: Global March against Child Labour

Education systems in many of the world’s poorest countries are now experiencing the aftershock of the global economic downturn.

The 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, released on 19 January, argues that the crisis could create a lost generation of children whose life chances will have been irreparably damaged by a failure to protect their right to education.

A woman holds her malnourished granddaughter in this file photo taken in Mumbai July 25, 2007.REUTERS/Sima Dubey

NEW DELHI (AlertNet) – South Asian nations must promote breastfeeding and focus on better nutrition for under two-year-olds in order to reverse the worst rates of chronically undernourished children in the world, the U.N. said on Wednesday.

According to a new report by the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), more than half of the world’s 155 million chronically undernourished under fives are in South Asia.

The report, “Improving Child and Maternal Nutrition”, said Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan topped the list with 83 million children being fed enough or poorly fed in those five countries.

Daniel Toole, regional director for UNICEF South Asia, said in an interview traditional beliefs and practices as well as the shortage of protein-rich food for infants were mostly to blame.

“Low birth weight babies from young mothers who are forced into early marriages, women who do not exclusively breastfeed and a poor choice of food given to children from the age of six months are all factors,” said Toole by phone from Kathmandu.

Infants are often given contaminated water as a supplement to breast milk or have it mixed in their food, say experts, making them more susceptible to illnesses like diarrhoea which prevents the absorption of nutrients.

According to the report, more than 40 percent of children from each of the five countries in South Asia show signs of nutritional deficiencies such as stunting, which is linked to child mortality and chronic disease in adult life.

Toole said most South Asian governments had good nutrition policies in place, but these had not filtered down to the grassroots level.

Mobile School for Sundel selling Children at Marina Beach by Chennai Corporation scheme Education for all Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) Photo S. Thanthoni

The Hindu: India still has the largest number of illiterate adults in the world, but has made “rapid advances” in cutting down the numbers of school drop outs, a new UN report on education has said.

The Education For All-Global Monitoring Report, released here on Wednesday finds that out of the total 759 million illiterate adults in the world, India still has the highest number.

“Over half of the illiterate adults live in just four countries: Bangladesh, China, India and Pakistan,” the report said, adding the progress has been “painfully slow” and threatens to obstruct the Millennium Development Goals.

It said about 72 million primary school age children and another 71 million adolescents are not at school, and on current trends, 56 million primary school age children will still be out of school in 2015, it said.

UNESCO’s top official Irina Bokova said the world body was apprehensive that the financial crisis would cause governments to scale back funding on education.

“With the world’s largest illiterate population, India has been making progress,” the report said.

While in 1985 -1994 just about half of the adults in the country were literate, now the number has gone up to two-thirds. “Since the adult population increased by 45 per cent, this marks a real advance,” it said.

Gender disparities remain deeply engrained, with 28 nations across the developing world having nine or fewer girls in school for every 10 boys.

The report said two-thirds of the total illiterate people are women.
On a positive note, it says that out-of-school numbers have fallen “driven by rapid advances in India”. In the three years to 2007, out-of-school population fell by 8 million.

“Much of the decline took place in India, which reported a fall of almost 15 million in out-of-school numbers in the two years after the 2001 launch of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (universal primary education) programme,” the report said.

It finds that with the exception of China, progress towards halving illiteracy has been “painfully slow,” which will make meeting MDG targets difficult.

“On current trends, the world will be less than halfway towards this goal by 2015. India alone will have a shortfall of some 81 million literate people,” it said.

Ms. Bokova, Executive Director of the UN body for education, warned that the present financial crisis would cause parents and governments to scale back on educating their children.

The Education For All Monitoring Global Report comes out in the backdrop of a financial crisis that is driving millions into extreme poverty. “In short it would create a lost generation… a tremendous cost to society,” she added.

“It could force governments to cut their spending on education and parents to pull their children out of school or simply not to send them,” Ms. Bokova said, at the launch of the report here at the UN headquarters.

The report also finds that low-income countries provide poor quality education and caste system obstructs education in South Asia.

Article from The Hindu | Link

Almost half of India’s children are malnourished. 1000 die every day from diahorrea and hundreds of millions have no access to proper sanitation. These figures provide a grim counterpoint to the glitzy high-rises and designer shopping malls that have sprung up throughout the country’s major cities.

Mr. Prasad was born into the Pasi community, once considered untouchable on the ancient Hindu caste order. Today, a chain-smoking, irrepressible didact, he is the rare outcaste columnist in the English language press and a professional provocateur. His latest crusade is to argue that India’s economic liberalization is about to do the unthinkable: destroy the caste system. The last 17 years of new capitalism have already allowed his people, or Dalits, as they call themselves, to “escape hunger and humiliation,” he says, if not residual prejudice.

At a time of tremendous upheaval in India, Mr. Prasad is a lightning rod for one of the country’s most wrenching debates: Has India’s embrace of economic reforms really uplifted those who were consigned for centuries to the bottom of the social ladder? Mr. Prasad, who guesses himself to be in his late 40s because his birthday was never recorded, is an anomaly, often the lone Dalit in Delhi gatherings of high-born intelligentsia.

He has the zeal of an ideological convert: he used to be a Maoist revolutionary who, by his own admission, dressed badly, carried a pistol and recruited his people to kill their upper-caste landlords. He claims to have failed in that mission.

Read the Full Story | NY-Times

As the expenditure by States declines, it affects the target to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) which has been abysmal in the country. The expenditure on education currently remains at 3.54 per cent of GDP against the target to increase it to s ix per cent, Higher Education Secretary, Mr R P Agrawal said at a conference of State ministers here.

“We find the States’ contribution to education sector has been dwindling. Unless they increase their share, we cannot achieve the target of six per cent GDP expenditure on education. This may affect quality and our target to increase the GER, that shows the percentage of youths in the age group of 18 to 24 years enrolled in higher education,” he said.

The secretary said in the 3.54 per cent of GDP being spent on education, the Centre’s contribution is about 0.79 per cent while the states put 2.75 per cent. However, the share of the states was over four per cent in 1999.

The States’ share started declining from 2001 onwards. 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.

“The Centre has made significant increase in the spending on education in the 11th plan. The States have to at least increase their spending by three times,” Mr Agrawal said.

The HRD Minister Mr Arjun Singh also asked the States to cooperate the Union government in achieving the targets in education. – PTI

Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications | Link

The children who are in age group of 6-14 years must not roam on roads and streets but they must be seen in the school premises. A school going child should not work as porter on railway stations, as domestic servants in houses, as servants in hotels and shops, the girl child should not remain in houses to look after the siblings, helping parents in house chores and lending help in agriculture fields. In fact, a school going age child should remain in the school with cheerful mind and should study and play.

The children of disadvantaged groups and disabled children must be given special care in sending them to schools. Various studies have revealed that poverty can be reduced by sending the children to schools instead of sending them to work on wages. If a child is in the school then certainly, adults of his/her family will get work from where the child used to work. Thus adults will get employment and comparatively more wages than the children. It is also found that when the child of family goes for work then, adults of that family generally sit idle and the wages earned by the children are ill spent by their family. The employers prefer to engage children on work rather than adults so that they have to pay less wages to children. In this way, the children are exploited by the employers.

So, it becomes the duty of parents, teachers, educational administrators and society at large that school going age child should not remain at work site or out of school for any other reason but in neat and clean atmosphere of the schools. The Child herself/himself cannot ensure this environment. It needs to be watched by parents, teachers, community and educational administrators that child should not leave the school in between due to any reason. The child once admitted in school should remain, there till he/she completes the schooling. Thereafter, quality education becomes right of the child. To ensure this, every stakeholder should participate in the mission as detailed below :

Teacher should ensure enrolment and retention of the child in the school through quality education and enriched environment.

Community /Parents should cooperate at each stage in learning processes of the child.

Educational Administrators should develop, design and ensure implementation of the strategies specifically: teacher availability, teacher competence and teacher motivation shall be ensured so that they impart quality education to children.

Meanwhile, the absolute number of illiterate people in the population is steadily rising year after year. At about 50 crore (500 million), the number of illiterates in today’s India is larger than the total population of the country 30 years ago.

Even in the younger age groups, illiteracy remains endemic. About half of all adolescent girls, for instance, are unable to read and write.

The low priority given to education by this nation is apparent from the mean years of schooling, the average period spent in school by a citizen. Indians spend a little over two years in the classroom. The Chinese spend five, the Sri Lankans over seven and the South Koreans nine.

That so many children are out of school is a profound tragedy. Education is a basic tool for self-defence in modern society. The feeling of powerlessness that goes with being illiterate comes through loud and clear in any conversation with ordinary people. As Shankar Lal of Gadaula village in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, put it, “Anpadh aadmee jeevanbhar kasht mein rahta hai (An illiterate person is handicapped all his life).”

Lal was one among 1,221 Indian parents who were interviewed in a recent survey planned by a group of researchers based at the Delhi School of Economics and the Indian Social Institute. The survey covered all the schooling facilities in a randomly selected sample of 188 villages in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The survey’s findings will be released soon as part of the Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE).

The probe findings provide a startling picture of the schooling situation in India’s villages. To begin with, they shatter two myths that are often invoked to “explain” the slow progress of elementary education: one, a supposed lack of parental motivation; two, that work keeps children from going to school. The survey gives an eye-opening account of the appalling condition of elementary education in rural India — and of the government’s apathy. It makes it clear that the battle against ignorance is a grim one.

INDIA TODAY presents an exclusive preview of the PROBE findings. | Link

Local leaders have sought an inquiry into the incident as the police appear to be siding with the upper caste girl’s family and the teacher.

MeriNews | Read the Full Story

Hamilton Court is a gated community for the moneyed middle classes. Within its stone walled boundary are a private school, health clinic and fitness club. A small army of security guards patrols its groomed lawns, ensuring the outside world does not intrude.

India has always had its upper classes, as well as legions of the world’s very poor. But today a landscape dotted with Hamilton Courts, pressed up against the slums that serve them, has underscored more than ever the stark gulf between those worlds, raising uncomfortable questions for a democratically elected government about whether India can enable all its citizens to scale the golden ladders of the new economy.

“Things have gotten better for the lucky class,” Dr Chand, 36, said as she made lunch in her apartment overlooking the shanty town.

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.

At the same time, the ranks of dollar millionaires have swelled to 100,000, and the Indian middle class – though notoriously hard to define and still small – is expanding.

SMH | Read the Full Story

Two-year-old Sahabuddin died of starvation on May 31, 2008, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The state is India’s second most backward, with corruption undermining its pledge to eradicate poverty and provide healthcare for its people. (Photo/PVCHR-India)

The government of Uttar Pradesh in India has a clear mandate and vision to protect its children. With more than 100 projects commissioned by the State’s child development agency and a few million dollars spent each year, one would expect the State’s children do be as healthy as well cared-for children elsewhere in the world. At least they must not die from acute malnutrition.

Yet, in reality, children do die from malnutrition in Uttar Pradesh. The latest was two-year-old Sahabuddin, who died May 31, 2008. He lived with his parents in Dhannipur village in Varanasi district of Uttar Pradesh. His parents were too poor to feed Sahabuddin – he weighed only six kilograms when he died. This is Grade III malnutrition, a condition that the world hears of in places like Somalia.

In the Somali Democratic Republic, however, there is no functioning government, there is a high rate of inflation and the country has faced a series of civil wars followed by a war with neighboring Ethiopia that has destroyed whatever little infrastructure that country had. In these conditions – coupled with the harsh African weather that bakes the land as strong as concrete making it unfit for cultivation – starvation, malnutrition and death from starvation are inevitable.

The state of Uttar Pradesh is not so. It has a democratically elected government. It has ministers and secretaries who travel around the state in the name of governance in expensive air-conditioned vehicles. The state government has a woman chief minister at its helm, who has vowed to eradicate discrimination and poverty in the state.

UPI AsiaOnline | Bijo Francis | Link