Health and education
Meanwhile failures (some created by the misinformed planting of genetically modified crops) and hardship in agricultural regions, which still support around 72 percent of the population whilst accounting for only 21 percent of GDP, have led to an unprecedented number of suicides by farmers. On other indicators of public well-being, India is also faring badly. Public spending is declining, particularly on health, as tax cuts are given to the better off. According to the UN, less than 50 percent of the population have access to essential drugs and there is a chronic shortage of health facilities (in rural India there are only 44 hospital beds per 100,000 people; in the UK there are around 470).
The list of statistics goes on to point out that in a country with one of the lowest levels of health spending as a percentage of GDP, only 30 percent of people have access to adequate sanitation and some 66 percent of children under the age of three suffer from malnutrition. It is not only on health that India faces difficulties; education also has a lot of catching up to do. One in three of the world’s illiterate people lives in India. This is a staggering number and a trend that looks set to continue. Only around 50 percent of girls are enrolled in primary education, and for this there is a 10 percent drop-out rate.
Child labor also continues. Based on government figures (which nearly all NGOs and independent commentators consider to be wildly overoptimistic) UNICEF has reported that at least 35 million children (14 percent of those of school age) work as, overwhelmingly rural, laborers (some breaking stones in quarries to provide for European patios). A huge amount of these are “bonded”, effectively a form of slavery.
In a further blow to the poor, the government has embarked on creating a series of “special economic zones” (SEZs), effectively tax havens for rich multinational companies as an incentive for their inward investment. This has entailed a huge land grab, with millions being displaced with little or no compensation. The promise is that these SEZs will bring employment and prosperity. However, the Indian Ministry of Finance said that there would be a net loss on these projects of around US$36.5 billion by 2010.
Evidence for the great divide between haves and have-nots can be seen all over the country. In
Gurgaon, middle-class enclave extraordinaire, house prices start at Rps 10 billion, about 270 times the average annual income. Close by in Delhi, 32 percent of the population live in jhuggis (slums), although the city has a Bentley showroom. Meanwhile, poverty-stricken survivors of the 2004 tsunami in Tamil Nadu have resorted to selling their kidneys in order to survive.
