DENTAL CHECKUPS FOR MIGRANT CHILDREN

One of the services Asha-Kiran provides for the children of construction workers is Dental checkup and treatment Camps. For the second year in a row, we offered this service at the construction sites we are associated with, where our Day Care Centers also provide daytime shelter, informal schooling and nutrition for children who would otherwise have no access to medical care.

The objective of the camps is to improve the oral health of the children and adults who live in construction communities by providing quality dental care services.

Our one-day dental camps were set up in collaboration with D.Y. Patil Hospital Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, for children aged 3-18, as well as for the parents who work and live at the sites. We covered 186 children and adults at Marvel Bounty, Marvel Arco, Marvel Citrin, Cerise, and Cascada developments. All the patients were screened and treated in a well-equipped Mobile Dental Clinic. Depending on each case, treatment consisted of fillings, extractions, or a course of specific medication.

WHAT IS POVERTY?

What is poverty? In India, poverty is not having even three basic meals a day. It is living in the streets; it is being ill and not having medical care; it is sending your children to beg instead of sending them to school. Poverty is living one day at a time; it is watching your child die from malnutrition. It is powerlessness, lack of representation and lack of freedom.

In the game of figures and percentages, someone has been left out: the faceless person at the bottom of economy – the starving Adivasi, the suicidal weaver’s widow, the desperate ‘untouchable’.

Planners bypass the fact that almost three fourths of Indian population depends on farming. That multi national corporations employ fewer people than they displace is also disregarded. Displacement causes endless problems; it leaves rural populations unemployed and forces them to migrate to cities where the street side dwellings and slums they live in are considered a flaw on the urban landscape.

When they cannot migrate along with their husbands, village women stay behind to look after the children and old people, while their husbands often take to drinking and gambling, and sometimes end up abandoning their families. The case of families migrating together is not much better: their children grow up illiterate and devoid of basic services such as schooling and healthcare.

Despite the economic growth of the last decades, there has been no consistent drop in poverty. The reason is that efforts have gone into building up heavy industry and public enterprises rather than micro industry, which constitutes the main source of work for the poor. MNCs promised growth and work opportunities, but they make profits by downsizing labor force in a country where a large labor force needs employment.

There are enormous gaps between the theory and practice. For example, the Green Revolution did not benefit the poor because abundance did not imply equitable distribution of foodstuffs. Farmer suicides in many states have mounted to proportions than can no longer be ignored. India is a rural-based country, highly dependent on agriculture, yet successive governments neglect the rural sector while they regard foreign investment and the corporate sector as the only way forward.

India has pro-poor policies spelt out in the most moving rhetoric. Yet, implementation of these strategies has been circumvented over and over. There has to be the will to eradicate poverty. India needs to address the enormous exploitation of the poor that takes place aided by caste and class, as well as the problems of vast numbers of landless, exploited people without means of subsistence.

Source: infochangeindia.org

POOJA AND KISHOR

Pooja and Kishor are siblings who lived at Yashodhara Shelter Home for two years. At the time of their admission to the Shelter, their mother's health (HIV positive) was not good, but thanks to the medical care she has been getting, she thinks she is ready to perform her duties as a full-time mother again.

Now, the siblings are attending a school at some distance from their shack. Although their ​​grandmother contributes to the household economy, we consider it necessary to support the family externally and continue paying them monthly visits.

Just like Kishor and Pooja, some children who have live or live at Yashodhara return home when their parent/s have the means or availability to provide appropriate care for them. In these cases, we follow up on the re-united families to ensure that the reintegration of children to their household has been successful and that they will go on having opportunities for development.

We wish them a happy life together.

THE DOWNSIDE OF GLOBALIZATION

Almost all the things we own are the final result of a complex process known as globalization. Globalization has the potential to bring a higher standard of living to millions of people, but when left unchecked, it can fuel the ugliest trade known to man – modern slavery. There are presently almost 21 million people working in conditions of slavery. Many suppliers are exploiting the system - and people - to obtain monetary profit. 

It is said that “development must be above politics”. This may seem self-evident when the political questions have already been resolved in one’s favor, but to the people who are excluded by the process of modern development, this is far from true. 

In general, people’s opinions are not consulted in matters concerning their own development. The very idea of asking people their opinion on a certain project in their neighborhood sounds a bit absurd. In India, neither growth nor development is democratically regulated. Inputs by the supposed “beneficiaries” are conspicuously absent.

If development were genuinely participatory, it would represent real political choices of communities. Adivasi women, for instance, who must suffer the strain of longer walks to water-sources every year, have no say in water policies. No social group of laborers is consulted before policies of globalization are imposed on their lives and livelihoods, even though they have not asked to be globalized.

The transit from “machinofacture” to “manufacture” and “ecofacture” is an interesting challenge. Given the enormous (and growing) manpower in India, development needs to be employment-led instead of inequality- or export-driven, and led by the rural communities that are the heart of the country. Village councils would have to take decisions pertaining to local welfare and ecology in a sane, consensual manner.

Thanks to its unmatched diversity, resilient traditions and enormous size, India is one of the countries in the world where an alternative to self-destructive industrialization can still be forged. In finding solutions to the deleterious effects of globalization, India could serve as a pioneer, but in failing to remain true to itself, it will merely follow the West and the rest of the world into an easily predictable abyss. 

Sources: infochangeindia

             walk free

EMPOWERMENT: tailoring classes in Hadapsar slum

We wish to share the steps we are taking next to our-your beneficiaries with you, so that you will also feel the satisfaction of watching them move towards a better way of living.

Thirty women have been regularly attending the tailoring classes given to two groups of fifteen women each. The response to the classes was so overwhelming that a week after they began, thirty more women wanted to sign up, but due to time and staff constraints, we told them they would be enrolled in the second course that is about to begin. Our collaborating agency has provided five sewing machines for the classes.

These courses, like others we will inform you about, are the tools the people of this community need to become more able and self-sufficient individuals, which will have a beneficial effect on their lives and those of their families.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Human trafficking is extremely common in India. Young women are sold daily as pieces of flesh in the market and forced to accept their ‘fate’.

Sony wanted to start a new life away from the abuse of her alcoholic husband. The wages she got from working at the farm were not enough to feed her children, husband and in-laws. Though she gave her husband all of her daily earnings, he would often beat her and she didn’t dare complain.

 “City agents” -actually sex trafficking agents- found out about her situation and convinced her to work in the city. Without an inkling of what was in store for her, Sony left her old life behind with only her three children in tow. She dreamt of having a whole new life that would bring independence and happiness to her and her children.

At the train station, she overheard a phone conversation where one of the agents was being told where and how they should bring her. Train tickets in hand, they told her “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it; you’re pretty and will make a lot of money”. They added that her daughter would also be in the “market”, but would not start working until she was old enough.

Sony asked to go to the bathroom, took her five-year-old daughter Payal with her, and told her: “Where I’m going I don’t want you to come, now sleep here… I’ll come back for you”. Sony had to go back with the agents, as she couldn’t bear the thought of them handling her children. The train was about to leave and the agents hurried in with Sony and her two sons. They did not have time to think about Payal.

Five days later, Payal was found by in the train station by Hope of Glory Foundation. She was saved from sex trafficking thanks to her mother’s sacrifice and quick-thinking. Sadly, her mother had been trapped and probably sold afterwards. Payal’s relatives in the village were contacted, but no one wanted her back. Perhaps it was best for her not to go back to a family which was likely to offer her a lifetime of abuse and deprivation.

There are far too many women and girl children in Sony’s and Payal’s situation. Laws exist, but corruption runs rampant. Hope for them lies in the people who will put their hands, minds and hearts to work so that women can dare to envision a different way of living and have the tools to make their dream come true.

It’s time to get to work.

Source: hogfindia

WOMEN: THEIR PLIGHT

Recently sparked by the death of Amanat, a student raped on a bus in New Delhi, outrage over violence against women has spread to Pakistan, where a nine year old girl remains in critical condition after being kidnapped and raped by three men. 

The girl's mother found her daughter outside their home, covered with blood stains and semi-conscious. As the mother headed to the police station, one of the rapists stopped her and threatened to kill her if she said anything. After returning home, the woman went back to the police station and reported the incident to the police, which has formed a team to arrest the suspects, so far without success.

Meanwhile, in India, authorities have begun to respond to the wave of outrage sparked by the rape and murder of Amanat, and are pushing to pass new laws to punish sex crimes and gender-based killings. They have also announced other measures such as increasing the number of female police officers to handle these cases and having a specific hotline for these cases.

But the problems of women in India and several countries that surround it, rests on a patriarchal mindset which approves and justifies violence against women. It starts with selective abortions, because in general, families prefer male offspring. When a girl is born, poor families sometimes throw them in the garbage of bury them alive. Both phoeticide and female infanticide result in an unbalanced and unnatural male/female population ratio.

The reason for the preference for male over female children is that a bride's family has to pay a dowry to the groom's family at the time of marriage, and that the ties between a girl and her biological family are usually severed once she marries. Thus, it is common for family resources to be destined to rearing boys, especially among lower social classes. Boys do not only get a better education, but are better fed and cared for.

Opportunities for women are also cut short when they are made to marry young. “Over 40% of the world's child marriages occur in India”, according to a recent UN document. Marriage denies girls their childhood, deprives them of education and makes them more vulnerable to abuse at the hands of their husbands, moreover condoned by the women themselves. In its report on teens in India of 2012, UNICEF found that more than half of teens (57% of boys and 53% of girls) find it justifiable for a husband to beat his wife.

While the need to protect women and female children is painfully obvious, the right kind of education is absolutely essential. Deep-rooted changes in social attitudes are needed to make life safer for women and girls, and for them to feel integrated into society as valid and self-sufficient individuals. Cultural changes come slowly, so the sooner egalitarian values are sowed in children, the sooner will Indian society reap the benefits of equality. 

Sources: BBC News

              El País