Is the Indian economy truly booming?

[suchandra]

Is the Indian economy truly booming?

 

By Tavleen Singh | Friday, January 05, 2007 11:12:15 IST

As this year it was the lower middle class tourists who partied the night away. They lit fires on the beach and danced to Bollywood music in makeshift beach nightclubs that sparkled with fairy lights.

 

On New Year’s Eve at sunset, I went for a walk on the beach in the Maharashtrian village by the sea in which I have spent most New Year holidays in the past four years. Usually the beach is deserted but for a few glamorous visitors from Mumbai who own weekend homes in the village. This year was different. There were hundreds of tourists on the beach to watch the last sunset of the year. Young boys played cricket with tennis balls, small children played in the sand and ladies in saris and men in their underclothes waded into the sea to watch the sun go down. What interested me was that nearly all the visitors were lower middle class tourists, the kind of people who do not usually indulge in the frivolity of New Year holidays by the sea. You do not need to be told that the Indian economy is growing at more than 9% a year when you witness a scene like this. You know.

 

A middle class New Year

 

In past years, the New Year’s Eve parties in my village have been confined to Santa Barbara style villas that rich businessmen from Mumbai have built by the sea. Their guests are page 3 people who arrive in fancy SUVs to swill French champagne, watch fireworks on the beach at midnight and dance till dawn. This year it was the lower middle class tourists who partied the night away. They lit fires on the beach and danced to Bollywood music in makeshift beach nightclubs that sparkled with fairy lights. Noisy as they were it warmed my heart to see such obvious signs of prosperity. Tourism has brought change for the better. When I first came here four years ago, the village wallowed in a sense of genteel decay. The little cottages with their tiled roofs and wide verandahs looked as if they had seen better days and there was that torpor that comes from economic stagnation and under-employment.

This year nearly every house in the village looked freshly painted and nearly all offered rooms for rent to visiting tourists. Some converted their gardens into impromptu, open-air restaurants and new shops selling cold drinks, consumer goods and offering telephone services suddenly appeared. I do not need government statistics to tell me that there is an economic boom underway I can see it happening but what I do need to know from the government is why with so much money around Indian children continue to have their childhood snatched from them on account of failed government policies.

The National Family Health Survey released just before the last year ended tells us that one in three Indian children under the age of three is clinically underweight. The Survey shows that despite the economic boom the number of underweight (read malnourished) children fell a meagre two percentage points from 35 to 33 percent since the last survey seven years ago.

In Uttar Pradesh 47% of children under the age of three are malnourished and in Madhya Pradesh the figure goes up to a sickening 60%. These are not the sort of statistics you expect from a country that is experiencing an economic boom. They represent a monumental failure of the government’s anti-poverty measures and a total failure of its grandiose child welfare programmes. What compounds the tragedy of so many millions of India’s children growing up permanently handicapped because of malnourished childhoods is that if government were sincere in its efforts to do something about this shaming problem it would be so easy to rectify. All we need is a serious attempt to implement an Akshay Patra type midday meal scheme in the states where the problem is acute and with so much public-private partnership around these days this can be easily done.

 

The best anti-poverty programme

 

Akshay Patra is a program that evolved in the kitchens of the ISKCON temple in Bangalore with the financial backing of Infosys. I have written before in this column that it is among the most impressive anti-poverty programmes I have seen. It works on the simple principle that if children can be given at least one nutritious meal a day they will not grow up with stunted brains and permanent physical damage. Outside Tamil Nadu, where the concept began, midday meal schemes have largely failed because of governmental neglect and corruptionwhen it comes to programmes of this kind. Akshay Patra works because it is run by ISKCON with money provided through the philanthropy of private companies like Infosys. In rural Rajasthan the programme works through the efforts of village women who are given charge of cooking and feeding the children instead of this vital task being left in the hands of government employees who are notorious for using anti-poverty programmes to increase their own wealth.

At the end of my walk on the beach I found myself making the New Year wish that someone up there in those corridors of power realizes this year that the simplest measures are all we need for every Indian to participate in the economic boom. As long as India’s children live in semi-starvation it will remain ephemeral and meaningless.

[krishnadasa]

Good post, fact is know though

[Guest guest]

Though this ISKCON temple that runs Akshay patra is a ritvik temple (so technically, not ISKCON!), they have to be commended for this program. There is no reason why kids should starve and this temple is making sure many kids get at least 1 nutritious meal/day. I hope they can cover the whole state of Karnataka. Difficult, but with the support of companies like Infosys, it's possible.

 

 

Is the Indian economy truly booming?

 

[section=fromthepress&subsection=editorials&xfile=January2007_onthespot_standard192&child=onthespot"]By Tavleen Singh]| Friday, January 05, 2007 11:12:15 IST

As this year it was the lower middle class tourists who partied the night away. They lit fires on the beach and danced to Bollywood music in makeshift beach nightclubs that sparkled with fairy lights.

 

On New Year’s Eve at sunset, I went for a walk on the beach in the Maharashtrian village by the sea in which I have spent most New Year holidays in the past four years. Usually the beach is deserted but for a few glamorous visitors from Mumbai who own weekend homes in the village. This year was different. There were hundreds of tourists on the beach to watch the last sunset of the year. Young boys played cricket with tennis balls, small children played in the sand and ladies in saris and men in their underclothes waded into the sea to watch the sun go down. What interested me was that nearly all the visitors were lower middle class tourists, the kind of people who do not usually indulge in the frivolity of New Year holidays by the sea. You do not need to be told that the Indian economy is growing at more than 9% a year when you witness a scene like this. You know.

 

A middle class New Year

 

In past years, the New Year’s Eve parties in my village have been confined to Santa Barbara style villas that rich businessmen from Mumbai have built by the sea. Their guests are page 3 people who arrive in fancy SUVs to swill French champagne, watch fireworks on the beach at midnight and dance till dawn. This year it was the lower middle class tourists who partied the night away. They lit fires on the beach and danced to Bollywood music in makeshift beach nightclubs that sparkled with fairy lights. Noisy as they were it warmed my heart to see such obvious signs of prosperity. Tourism has brought change for the better. When I first came here four years ago, the village wallowed in a sense of genteel decay. The little cottages with their tiled roofs and wide verandahs looked as if they had seen better days and there was that torpor that comes from economic stagnation and under-employment.

This year nearly every house in the village looked freshly painted and nearly all offered rooms for rent to visiting tourists. Some converted their gardens into impromptu, open-air restaurants and new shops selling cold drinks, consumer goods and offering telephone services suddenly appeared. I do not need government statistics to tell me that there is an economic boom underway I can see it happening but what I do need to know from the government is why with so much money around Indian children continue to have their childhood snatched from them on account of failed government policies.

The National Family Health Survey released just before the last year ended tells us that one in three Indian children under the age of three is clinically underweight. The Survey shows that despite the economic boom the number of underweight (read malnourished) children fell a meagre two percentage points from 35 to 33 percent since the last survey seven years ago.

In Uttar Pradesh 47% of children under the age of three are malnourished and in Madhya Pradesh the figure goes up to a sickening 60%. These are not the sort of statistics you expect from a country that is experiencing an economic boom. They represent a monumental failure of the government’s anti-poverty measures and a total failure of its grandiose child welfare programmes. What compounds the tragedy of so many millions of India’s children growing up permanently handicapped because of malnourished childhoods is that if government were sincere in its efforts to do something about this shaming problem it would be so easy to rectify. All we need is a serious attempt to implement an Akshay Patra type midday meal scheme in the states where the problem is acute and with so much public-private partnership around these days this can be easily done.

 

The best anti-poverty programme

 

Akshay Patra is a program that evolved in the kitchens of the ISKCON temple in Bangalore with the financial backing of Infosys. I have written before in this column that it is among the most impressive anti-poverty programmes I have seen. It works on the simple principle that if children can be given at least one nutritious meal a day they will not grow up with stunted brains and permanent physical damage. Outside Tamil Nadu, where the concept began, midday meal schemes have largely failed because of governmental neglect and corruptionwhen it comes to programmes of this kind. Akshay Patra works because it is run by ISKCON with money provided through the philanthropy of private companies like Infosys. In rural Rajasthan the programme works through the efforts of village women who are given charge of cooking and feeding the children instead of this vital task being left in the hands of government employees who are notorious for using anti-poverty programmes to increase their own wealth.

At the end of my walk on the beach I found myself making the New Year wish that someone up there in those corridors of power realizes this year that the simplest measures are all we need for every Indian to participate in the economic boom. As long as India’s children live in semi-starvation it will remain ephemeral and meaningless.