Poverty And Wealth

United Nations Organizations (UNO) has long back reported as, “The absence of income is not the only reason for poverty, but non-availability of facilities such as education, health, proper employment, absence of peoples’ participation in politics is also poverty.” But in India caste is also one of the undeniable reasons for poverty.

The World Bank did research in various countries considering the peoples earning of 1.5 dollars per day as norm for the study of poverty, but in the past only 1 dollar was considered as criterion but later it was revised to 1.5 Dollars. The estimation of Indian poverty data is based on this study. There are 140 crores of people world wide, whose daily earnings are less than 1.2 dollars (approximately 55 rupees). Wherein, Indian population is more than 100 crores, 45 crores 60 lakhs of these kinds of people are found in India. According to Arjun Sen Gupta committee, 80% of the people live depending on Rs. 20 per day. Due to the drastic increase in the rates of essential commodities from 2005 onwards, the life has become burden to the lower middle class and middle class people as well. 20 crores of people sleep with empty stomach everyday because they do not have anything to eat. To eradicate hunger, India is in the 94th position, and is backward than the neighboring countries such as China and Pakistan.

In India out of 100 new born infants, 67 of them die within a year, 93 of them die within 5 years. One of the reasons according to 2004 report is, out of Gross national Income, only a small percentage is spent on peoples health.

Another thing is out of 194 countries, only 4 countries are spending less than us on health. We are not even in the position of spending 2% of GDP on health.

One, out of five children dying world wide, within five years of age is from our country. According to UNICEF report, ten lakhs of children die every year. In our country 5 lakhs of infants die within 28 days, 60% of women deliver at homes; 78 thousand of women die during pregnancy and delivery.

India is in top position in the case of child labour. 12.6 million Children’s childhood is being destroyed, who are working in various sectors. Poverty is seed bed for child labour. Among them children of rural areas are working as agricultural labour and bonded labour. In urban areas 58% of children are working in hazardous industries. In the education field, among the 100 children admitted in 1st class, only 53% of them reach till 10th class, and 38% reach till degree level. Only 7% of the students are studying higher education (IIM, IIT, MBA).

In fact where did the development and wealth go which was achieved in 60 years? What happened to the efforts, resources and wealth earned by crores of people? A new group of upper middle class emerged in India, which is in 2nd position among the developing countries. Multi storied buildings appeared in big number. Salaries are increasing, therefore consumerism also increased.

IT, BPO sectors created jobs on big scale. The things seen such as resorts, hotels, corporate hospitals, shopping malls, international schools, foreign tours, modern cars, mobiles are only the assets.

The biggest exploitation known in the Human history which got publicity during the time of 2009 elections is of the black money hidden in Swiss bank. 1,50,000 crores dollars i.e. Rs.75,00,000 (seventy five lakhs of crores) of Indian black money is in Swiss bank. This lakhs of crores of money, which is earned in illegal ways by political leaders, corporate, business sectors and corrupted higher officials, is hidden in Swiss bank since many years. Apart from this, still thousands of crores of black money is in our country itself. Our foreign loan is more than 12,50,000 crores, which means the black money in Swiss bank is 5 times more than that of the Indian foreign loan. In this lakhs of crores of money more than 100 crores is of Indians. It was pretended that the efforts are being done to bring back money from Swiss bank. But it seems the UPA government is not interested in doing so.

Our constitution builders clearly stated that the wealth should be decentralized; if wealth is consolidated then the rights provided by the state will be violated. Contrary to this, all the money went into the hands of few people. According to the Forbes Magazine, (Millionaires list) in this list not only Indians names got place but their number as millionaires also increased.
Ours is a starvation country, where more than six lakhs of farmers and weavers attempted suicide and died country wide, who is responsible for these deaths? Who is responsible for this poverty? The statistics clearly visible to us are in the form of declining faith of people on electoral political system. The reason for all this is, if The World Bank, American policies are one aspect; in the matter of destructive development, all the parties possess same type of political acceptance in our country. Party agenda are different, faces are different, but the policies are the same. There is an urgent need to make people aware of their rights and to make people conscious of the importance of the constitutional values and benefits.

A. Srinivas is  Human Rights Activist.

Courtsey: Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee India