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My tweet, I've more reasons to be ashamed of India than to be proud of! attracted a bit of an outrage, with some demanding to know the reasons. I promised to base my next blog post on it, so here we go!

To begin with, I need to point out that, I don't hate India but am just ashamed of it. As a matter of fact my love and patriotism for her may even outshine many of its more vehement supporters. However, I refuse to support anything unless absolutely justified!

In my understanding, a country to fully qualify to be one (and earn my respect) needs to ensure the fundamental human needs of subsistence , the right to equality, freedom from exploitation, educational rights among many others, to an appreciable majority of its inhabitants. These are most basic forms of human rights and every man, woman and child deserve them by the virtue of being born in an independent, sovereign and democratic country. Let us analyze these, one by one, with facts and figures from reliable and credible sources and judge if these basic commitments are being met by India!

1. Fundamental human needs of subsistence: (The source/s is/are drawn from an (more than one) Indian daily/ies. Therefore, there can be differences and anomalies  in spelling)

1.1 Food: Malnutrition accounts for nearly 50% of child deaths in India and every third adult (aged 15-49 years) is reported to be thin (BMI less than 18.5). According to the latest report on the state of food insecurity in rural India, more than 1.5 million children are at risk of becoming malnourished because of rising global food prices. India ranks 94th in the Global Hunger Index of 119 countries, the report said. More than 70% of children (under-5) suffer from anaemia and 80% of them don't get vitamin supplements. The proportion of anaemic children has actually increased by 6% in the past six years with 11 out of 19 states having more than 80% of its children suffering from anaemia.
The proportion of stunted children (under-5) at 48% is again among the highest in the world. Every second child in the country is stunted, according to the health ministry's figures. Around 30% of babies in India are born underweight. 
- Source: India tops world hunger chart - Kounteya Sinha, TNN, Feb 27, 2009, 02.29am IST - The Times of India
The government of India's grain godowns (silos) are bulging with twice as much grain as is required, blocking about Rs4000 crore. More grain rots on Punjab's roadsides waiting for godowns to empty so that new grain can be picked up by the government. Meanwhile, India's hunger levels are back at the level of the 90's.
- Source: Between godowns and chronic hunger in India - Mallika Sarabhai | Sunday, June 27, 2010 IST - DNA

We are completely incapable of feeding all of us. To feed, is the primary duty of a country. It's the most basic service a nation is obliged to provide to every one of its citizen.

1.2 Sanitation and water supply:

According to UNICEF, 46% of urban and as many as 79% of the rural population in India are not covered by even basic sanitation. 

Source: http://www.wssinfo.org/datamining/tables.html

None of the 35 Indian cities with a population of more than one million distribute water for more than a few hours per day, despite generally sufficient infrastructure. Owing to inadequate pressure people struggle to collect water even when it is available. According to the World Bank, none have performance indicators that compare with average international standards.
Source: World Bank

A 2007 study by the Asian Development Bank showed that in 20 cities the average duration of supply was only 4.3 hours per day. No city had continuous supply. The longest duration of supply was 12 hours per day in Chandigarh, and the lowest was 0.3 hours per day in Rajkot.
Source: Asian development bank

In Delhi, the capital of the country and the city hosting the infamous 2010 Commonwealth games (read this link too!), residents receive water only a few hours per day because of inadequate management of the distribution system. This results in contaminated water and forces households to complement a deficient public water service at prohibitive 'coping' costs; the poor suffer most from this situation. For example, according to a 1996 survey households in Delhi spent an average of 2,182 Rupees (US$ 60 at the 1996 exchange rate) per year in time and money to cope with poor service levels.
Source: Marie Helene Zerah: Unreliable supply in Delhi, Delhi 2000

India is so obsessed with it's food and sanitation problems that no one even thinks of other basic human right related issues like homelessness. We have a HUGE population of homeless.

1.3 Healthcare: India pledged along with other WHO member Nations, 'Health for All by the Year 2000' at Alma-Ata in 1978; and in the same year signed the International Covenant for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – Article 12, in which the State is obliged to achieve the highest attainable standard of health. However the health scenario in India is abysmal.
In India, annually 2.2 million infants and children die from preventable illnesses; 1 hundred thousand mothers die during child birth, half a million  people die of Tuberculosis. Diarrhoea and Malaria continue to be killers while 5 million people are suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In context of poverty, access to public health systems is critical. However, since 1990s, the public health system has been collapsing and the private health sector has flourished at the cost of the public health sector.

Health policy in India has shifted its focus from being a comprehensive universal healthcare system as defined by the Bhore Committee (1946) to a selective and targeted programme based healthcare policy with the public domain being confined to family planning, immunization, selected disease surveillance and medical education and research.  The larger outpatient care is almost a private health sector monopoly and the hospital sector is increasingly being surrendered to the market. The decline of public investments and expenditures in the health sector since 1992 has further weakened the public health sector thus adversely affecting the poor and other vulnerable sections of society. Introduction of user fees for public health services in many states has further reduced their access to health services.
Source: REVIEW OF HEALTHCARE IN INDIA - http://www.cehat.org/

 2. Equality: Over 70 per cent of our people live in villages and 40 per cent of them are living below the poverty line. Source: http://www.tribuneindia.com/50yrs/women.htm

2.1 Economic Equality: The Gini coefficient is a measure of the inequality of a distribution, a value of 0 expressing total equality and a value of 1 maximal inequality. It has found application in the study of inequalities in disciplines as diverse as economics, health science, ecology, chemistry and engineering.

India's Gini value is 0.368 and that of Pakistan is 0.306. In other words, a country like Pakistan is better in terms of income equality than India! And why not? We are home for the top few richest men (and women) of the world, who are growing ever richer, on one hand and some of the poorest, growing poorer, on the other!
Source of the numbers: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.html

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic used to rank countries by level of "human development". The statistic is composed from data on life expectancy, education and per-capita GDP (as an indicator of standard of living) collected at the national level. India, proudly stands at number 134 in that global list! Which basically means, all the economic success that you hear about are basically for the rich and the middle class and next to nothing ever reaches the poor!
Source: Human Development Report 2009. Human development index trends: Table G". The United Nations. Retrieved 5 October 2009.

2.2 Social inequality: 

Indian culture teaches us to segregate the society into castes, Varnas and Jatis. Alien to the civilized and developed world, India still adheres to the heinous human rights crime of identifying each other based on the job the forefathers did! For example, if someone was a janitor 1500 years ago his infinite family line thereafter will be branded so. Oh wait! It does not stop there; since the work of a janitor is not particularly "clean" (respectable) compared to that of a religious practitioner (for instance) the family line of the practitioner will not a) not touch anyone from that of the janitor b) not drink water from the same source c) not allow them to pray in the same place and d) disallow them to become anything else! Don't take this for "community"; it's more racism than anything else. If you think I'm bragging about it just to prove my point and it is no more practiced in the "modern" country, read the source!
Source: Untouchability in Rural India - by Radhika Govinda (excerpts from Shah, Ghanshyam, Harsh Mander, Sukhdeo Thorat, Satish Deshpande, Amita Baviskar, 2006. Untouchability in Rural India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. 216 pp. ISBN 978-81-7829-662-3)

I, for one, find this absolutely outrageous and disgusting. If you want to learn more about it, this should be a nice start.

3. Exploitation:
(Government sources, in India, use Queen's/British and Indian English - eg. Labour = Labor, Labourer = Labor)

3.1 Exploitation of labor (adult): The system of debt bondage in India is an outcome of certain categories of indebtedness, which have been prevailing for a long time involving certain economically, exploited, helpless and weaker sections of society. This system originated from the uneven social structure characterised by feudal and semi-feudal conditions. Bonded Labourers constitute perhaps the weakest section of the rural poor. Bonded Labour System is a dynamic problem; it can occur and reoccur at any point of time in any industry or occupation. Freedom from bondage would be meaningful only when the uncertainty and insecurity associated with bondage is removed through productive and income generating schemes. In the absence of poverty eradication measures, the rehabilitated bonded labourers fall back into their original state of bondage.
Source: Ministry of Labor, Government of India 
Wondering what a bonded labor is? It's a polished term for slave! Yes, we enslave our own people. How many races in history have had the distinction of that?
3.2 Exploitation of labor (Child): Child labor is done by any working child who is under the age specified by law (14 years). The word, “work” means full time commercial work to sustain self or add to the family income. The children are sold as bonded labor only to get a handful of coarse grain to keep them alive in return for their labor. Sometimes their period of thrall extends for a life time, and they have to simply toil hard and depend on the mercy of their owners, without any hope of release or redemption. The impoverished parents of the bonded child is usually a poor, uneducated landless laborer and the mortgagee is traditionally some big landlord, money lender or a big business man who thrives on their vulnerability to such exploitation. All efforts to curb this practice are sabotaged by high level government officials covering the fact that children were doing bonded work in factory promises.
Source: Bonded Child labor in India - Child Labor, Non Government Org.

Yes! We even enslave our children! We trade them in the open market! Our rich and middle class employ them as "domestic help"! That is our reality; that is who and what we are! And you want me to be proud of it? Grotesque!

Remember, these are just the highlights of the highlights. There are several other issues too. For example, while an average high ranking executive of a l earns about 3000 USD or more a month, which is about a 100 USD (or more) a day, a typical (non-bonded - bonded labors get nothing) labor will be lucky to earn 2 USD a day in exchange for his work. Did you notice the disproportionate disparity in remuneration? I'm not even mentioning such subjects because they are comparatively so insignificant that they almost merit no mention!

3.3 Exploitation of women: This, in my opinion, is a mark of a rotten society.
(The source/s is/are drawn from an (more than one) Indian daily/ies. Therefore, there can be differences and anomalies  in spelling)

In India, women constitute 90 per cent of the total marginal workers, but in the organised sector, they constitute only 4 per cent. About 30 million women work as agricultural labors. The others work on roads, brick kilns, construction projects etc. In industry, women have been thrown out so that expenses on maternity benefits etc. are saved. Women do not get equal pay for equal work, except in government factories. There is no law for the protection of women who are given work in private sheds and houses. Since Independence, there has been tremendous progress with regard to the status of women, though not all of it is satisfactory. Actually, there has been a contradictory process.

On the other hand, oppression and atrocities against women have been on the increase for some years now. Cases of wife-beating, dowry deaths, kidnappings, molestation, rape and aminocentisis (killing of female foetus in the womb) are common. Everyone knows that a number of cases are not registered with the police due to the social stigma attached to rape cases. Newspapers are full of alarming news about rape cases, including gangrapes of minor girls.
Source: Feudal mindset still dogs women’s struggle - A fair deal, equitable system urgently needed by Vimla Dang; Publisher: The Tribune

Note: I've not even mentioned how both men and women are exploited and even killed by Khaps (extra-judicial, Taliban style, courts in India) and the fact that our "democratically elected government for the people" are far from doing anything about them! Neither did I talk about "culture policing", the way men and women are beaten up for talking to the opposite sex in public, etc. Furthermore, since human trafficking from and into the country is a globally well established fact, I think a mention about it in detail will only increase the length of this blog.

4. Education: 

Definition of "literate", in India: For the purpose of census 2001, a person aged seven and above, who can both read and write with understanding in any language, is treated as literate. A person, who can only read but cannot write, is not literate. Source: http://india.gov.in/knowindia/literacy.php

Census 2001 revealed that 35.16% Indians are illiterate; that's approximately 422 million illiterate people! 46.33% Indian women have got no clue how to read and write! Source: http://india.gov.in/knowindia/literacy.php

Even today, 50,000 villages do not have a primary school. About 440,000 are without any upper primary school. Recently, an alarming trend has emerged in the field of education in Punjab. The number of students in the age group 14-18 belonging to the Scheduled Castes fell from 1.24 lakh in 1992 to 1.22 lakh in 1993 and to 1.18 lakh in 1994. The share of the Scheduled Castes girls in the total enrolment in the age group 14-18 fell from 18.32 per cent in 1993 to 17.36 per cent in 1994 (Economic Survey of Punjab, 1995-96).
Source: http://www.tribuneindia.com/50yrs/women.htm

But to be fair, the parliament passed the Right to Education act, 2010 , recently, and if implemented properly these figures will change. I'll reserve my comments on this subject for another couple of years.

As of today, socio-economically, India is two distinct countries - the fancier half composed of a little over 20% percent of the population, the part that received all the fruits of development and success, the rich and the middle class, the face we present to the rest of the world on one hand and the exploited half which, at the expense of its own growth funded our growth, on the other! If you are an Indian and being able to read this, you most likely belong to the former half because you have access to electricity, internet and could even afford to buy a computer. Consider the disparity between the salary you get and that your driver (chauffeur) or domestic staff earns! The fact that most belonging to the middle class can afford domestic staff and probably even a chauffeur, the fact that your life is better is because the other half of the country has been subsidizing life for you! Think about it!
I can go on! But, things need to end! 

Regards,...