Week 3 Blog Assignment - EDUC - 6162 - 7

 

Getting To Know Your International Contacts - Part 1

 

Joanne E. Lynch

 

Date: Saturday 23rdrd March, 2013

 

            For the past weeks, I was trying to establish contacts with two early childhood professionals outside the United States of America, but it was futile. However, I went to the website of the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Center's page (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/), and chose the country of India to complete my assignment.

           India is only second to that of China when comes to comparison of population, and poverty is one of the biggest problems that plague the country of India. Almost one third of India's population which is more than 1.1 billion are still living below the line of poverty, especially people from the rural areas. There are many factors that have led to the endemic deprivation in these areas. For example: Over population, where the inhabitants cannot be fed properly, due to a scarcity of resources; low production of agriculture, because the country is not producing the amount of food to feed its people; there is no proper capital investment nor appropriate irrigation facilities in agriculture, because of the old fashion technique being used; underutilized resources where many of the land working Indians and well qualified ones are not getting the suitable jobs, therefore they migrate to foreign countries; the low rate    of economic development of Indians as compared to other nations; rise in the prices of goods which are the basic needs of human;  unemployment which is constantly on the increase, while job opportunities remain the same, thus resulting in poverty in India; shortage of capital and able entrepreneurship; social factors; high levels of illiteracy; inadequate health care; extremely limited access to social services  corruption; and political factors. All these circumstances limit the Indians' possibilities of benefiting from economic growth.

          Undoubtedly, the poorest areas in India that are on the poverty map are: Rajasthan, Madhya, Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jhackhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal. Likewise, in the semiarid tropical regions of India, live a large number of the poorest people, where there are persistent droughts and shortages of water, which obstruct the transformation of agriculture. Also, in flood prove areas from eastern Uttar Pradesh to northern Bihar, there is a high incidence of poverty. Furthermore, poverty affects tribal people in forest areas, owing to the lost of ownership to resources, which made them even poorer.

           However, the percentage of the population below the line of poverty between 1973 and 2000 has reduced relentlessly from 56.4 percent to an approximation of 26 percent. There was a reported declined in rural poverty from 56.4 percent to 27.1 percent around the same time. During this time, the poverty reduction pace varied considerably; by the second half of the 1990s, there was a contentious reported 10 percent decline in poverty. On the other hand, around the same time (1990s), a substantial fluctuation occurred with a huge increase of 13 million, then later that time, an enormous decrease. On the contrary, the absolute numbers in poverty continued to be very high.

           Many children in India have a very hard life, since about half of them (about 62 million) are under the age of five are malnourished, while 34 percent of newborns are considerably overweight. An immense task persists in getting 33 million children from poor families into primary schools. The retention rate has been increased, so that more children can complete primary schools, because India has a large percentage of out of school children (20 percent). This is due to nearly one third of the children who are under the age of sixteen, and have already been working: - the largest number of children is working in the world.

         Communicable disease such as malnutrition, maternal and prenatal illness, continued to be very high, pre-dominantly among poor people. Also, there are growing rates of non-communicable diseases. Generally speaking, the most disadvantage people in the Indian Society are women, although their social and ethnic background varied considerably.

         Because of poverty, the central government in India has put programs in place, giving a bigger role to rural local government for the implementation and beneficiary selection and monitoring. Children in the age group of 0-6 years are targeted particularly in the largest programs for the Integrated Child Development Services Program (ICDS).

 

References

Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Center - Country overviews.

Retrieved from     http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/index.php?action=countryo.

Rural Poverty in India

Retrieved from     http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/country/home/tags/india.