Serious yet untapped

India is a country which is known for its vast diversity and ethnic culture, a country where almost people from every religion lives quite peacefully. India is a superpowernation because of armed forces, a country where one of world’s biggest billionaire lives (Mukesh Ambani) and also world’s second richest actor lives (Shahrukh Khan)but behind that there are many facts and figures which proves  India as third world country where most number of poor people live. Poverty is not only about getting enough wages and food but it creates multiple life threatening diseases like HIV AIDS, and brings social issues like child trafficking, child labour, child marriages, high infant mortality and most important of all lack of education. 

      According to reports India’s two third of population lives in poverty where 60% of population earn less than140 RS per day whereas more shocking fact is 30% percent of those even don’t earn 100 RS per day. More than 800 million people in India lives in poverty.

       Poverty in India is divided in two parts first where people lives in slum in big cities and second is people of villages. Asia’s biggest slum i.e Dharavi (Mumbai) is in India where nearly 7 million live in area of just over 2kilometers, that itself can give headache to people reading this. There are more slums like this where population density is far more than an ideal population density. People living in village die of hunger as they don’t earn enough in a day to feed their kids.

      People living in slums reports highest rate of infant mortality where close to 1.5 million kids die before celebrating their fifth birthday and reasons of that is malaria, dengue, pneumonia etc, because of congestedplace these types of disease are very common in slums and villages. Over 61 million people in India don’t even get 1 bowl of rice per day and in that 7 million are children. By each passing year case of farmers killing themselves with their family is increasing and sole reason of that is poverty and hunger issues.

                  Below 14 years old working is prohibited in India according to a law but it doesn’t count for poor children whom start working as early as possible to help their family and that is on cost of their education, because of lack of education they don’t get a proper work even after they turn 18 or more and that is root of poverty in India without education and proper degree no one hire employee for respected jobs but for survival children usually quit studies and start working in shops as waiter or sell small product on traffic signals, and all this leads to prostitution and child trafficking as children are soft target of goons. In spite of banning minors from marrying in 2006, it is still widespread in many regions of India. The main victims are young girls, who are still children themselves and become mothers too early. Many of them die at birth. Due to poverty, many parents encourage early marriages for their daughters in hopes of better lives for them.

                In slums of growing cities HIV AIDS is a common disease, many children by birth are infected to disease as their parents carry the disease and that is also one of reasons of high infant mortality in nation. Poverty in India is far more serious issue than it is treated by different Governments as people die just dreaming that one day they will get enough food for themselves and their children.

              Government has taken multiple initiatives to eradicate poverty from country by introducing many schemes, facilities for the poor people, but because of corruption in the higher authorities of different departments people don’t enjoy the schemes and are unknown of facilities that government is providing to them. I think this is happening because we are lacking ethics. Secular ethics will definitely help to reduce all kind of social issues. Secular ethics is an inclusive approach to embrace our shared human inner values. As a part of population and responsible citizen of country we all should look into the matter as soon as possible.

Nisha Kumari 

Mjmc - iv