Government wants coal, people want forests: GreenPeace

 "Jungle toh munshi ka hain." These words stayed with me throughout and even after my stay in Singrauli, the so called energy capital of the country. We travelled to Singrauli, deep inside the Mahan forest to bear witness to the critical issues in the region such as displacement, poverty, and injustice, related to coal mining.   

Being rich in mineral resources has become the biggest problem for this region. The administration and the companies have been hovering around to extract everything out of them. Our mission was to promote awareness and to aid in the implementation of the 2006 Community Forests Right Act which was talked about in the public meeting held on 6th May 2012.

We had about 300-350 villagers assembled from different villages for the meeting. This meeting enabled the villagers to voice their opinion, worries and problems. Anil Nimbhorkar from NIWCYD's and Member of Parliament , CPI (M) M.B. Rajesh spoke about the critical issues concerning displacement, forest rights, which was a huge success in creating awareness among the villagers.

Almost the entire population of Mahan depends on the forest for their livelihood. The Mahua and Tendu forest, which covers half the region, is a major source of income. It is sad that this region, so rich in mineral resources, is very poor in all other aspects, suffering from exploitation, development and displacement. Singrauli the energy capital of the country does not have proper power supply in its villages. This is the reality of Singrauli.

Imagine a scenario where the forest gets clearance for coal mining. The villagers who are so used to living in big plots of lands will be displaced to a 30/40 plot apartment and will have to live in sub-human conditions. They will be lured with the promise of jobs, health centres, schools, and electricity, to give away their lands and will be forced to live in these conditions while the promises will remain unfulfilled.

Raising awareness about environmental issues also includes changing the mindset, which is quite a task in a region where the minds have already been shaped by the lies of the companies, administrations, munshis and dalals. They have been silenced by those who have a higher power.

It was as if we were up to something bad, and all we did was distribute pamphlets, talk to people about their rights and our main aim being to bring the villagers to the meeting. All this was perceived as a threat to the companies. Strangely 'the good is the new bad' for the people in power.

Being in Mahan for just few days opened my eyes to things which I had never imagined. It is a dirty world created by the corporate greed; you have to be there to experience it. It wouldn't be fair to rank Singrauli as a wasted place.

It is not that these people are hopeless. The young generation has a lot of thoughts and questions which can be used as an instrument to bring about mobilisation. This is a ray of hope, the young generation and anybody with a heart to help can bring about change in this region.

Source: Nambie

Child malnutrition in India: From School to Community

Charity, they say, begins at home.  In the village of Tareipatpur, Orissa, every social change howsoever small, every development plan howsoever daunting, began in the school first.

It all started nine years ago with UNICEF introducing the School Sanitation and Hygiene Education program among the students of Tareipatpur primary school, a non-descript village of Ganjam,  where UNICEF sowed the idea of school sanitation and health in 1998. It germinated and grew under the care of one man - Raghunath Das, one of the two teachers of Anandamaya Primary School at the village.

Initially when UNICEF selected 14 schools from as many blocks for implementing its health and sanitation programme, Taraipatpur was left out but made it to the list later. It was Das who took up the cause and started talking to the parents on the benefits of sanitation.

He knew improving the sanitation and hygiene practices of the students would require participation of their mothers. He attended the meetings of the women’s self help groups and started talking about it.

The two toilets – separate ones for boys and girls – built at a cost of Rs 9,000 each with UNICEF assistance soon became the starting point. Das constituted the School Sanitation Committee comprising himself, five students and two parents. They came up with indicators relating to personal health of students, safe drinking water, and cleanliness of school campus and maintenance of the toilets which were regularly monitored. Responsibilities were handed out to the students and soon the word spread. The school even started maintaining a log of ailments of the students and the sanitation practices adopted in their homes.

“We geared discussions of village committees towards issues of sanitation, hygiene, thereby raising the awareness of people. Villagers were aware of the needs of their children and wanted improvement in the scheme of things. When UNICEF decided to extend a financial assistance of Rs 12,000 for building a hand-wash platform at the school under the DWSM, villagers contributed a sum of Rs 18,000 for the facility,’’ Das says.

One thing led to another and soon the community started managing the show. Besides contributing labour, they started utilizing the village development fund for school maintenance. The community has mobilized more than Rs 80,000 for the school so far.

Much to the surprise of the administration, the villagers even removed a temple which stood next to the school since the latter needed expansion.

A year back, a team of three leaders from the nearby village of Koturu visited Taraipatpur and they returned with a resolve; to ensure the participation of community in matters of the school. The sanitation and hygiene programme was such a hit at Koturu that villagers of neighboring Bipulingi and Kuaratali have started to adopt the same.Das, who has been recognized with President’s Award for his efforts, recalls proudly. “Such was the motivation that 68 out of 113 families now have latrines at their homes. They even contributed from the village fund to lay a pipeline to get water supply from the main supply line.”

The Upper Primary School in Koturu today stands out amidst rows of tiled-roof houses. Grand by the village’s standards, it presents a picture of elegance. It’s colourful to say the least and as one enters the premises - its compound walls painted with personal health and sanitation tips for the children - the school virtually starts to speak to its visitors.

The Ganjam District Administration saw an opportunity in the making. It decided to identify 10 schools which could become role models in the Chhatrapur block.

Says Assistant Collector Rajesh Prabhakar Patil, “We want each school to create an area of influence. It took Taraipatpur more than eight years to leave its mark but Koturu took the cue. We are keen to experiment with this and keep the competition alive,” he says.

At Bipulingi, the villagers have started preparing a list of those native Oriyans who work overseas, so that funds can be sourced from them for school development.

Source: UNICEF

Malnourished Millions: Understanding malnutrition in India

Malnutrition is one of the largest factors supressing India's spectacular growth. In a country of lunar missions, billionaires, and nuclear power, a staggering 46% of all India children under 5 years old are still underweight. In India, where everything is on a large scale, malnutrition is daunting - an estimated 200 million children are underweight at any given time, with more than 6 million of those children suffering from the worst form of malnutrition, severe acute malnutrition. Experts estimate that malnutrition constitutes over 22% of India's disease burden, making malnutrition one of the nation's largest health threats.

The causes of malnutrition and therefore the solutions to the problem vary as much as the Indian people. To understand and solve malnutrition requires patience, nuance, flexibility, and above all determination.

SARAIYA, INDIA — Sitting in the basket of a hanging scale, 20-month-old Deep Kumar epitomizes the silent but monumental crisis gripping this country: The needle stops at 14 pounds.


A healthy child his age ought to weigh nearly twice as much. But very little about Deep is healthy. Whereas a normal toddler would run around, the boy seems to struggle to keep his stunted frame sitting upright. His limbs are pitifully thin, the bones within as fragile as glass.


These are classic signs of severe malnutrition, and they are branded on the wasted bodies of millions of youngsters across India.

Astonishingly, an estimated 40% of all the world's severely malnourished children younger than 5 live in this country, a dark stain on the record of a nation that touts its high rate of economic growth and fancies itself a rising power.


Soaring food prices and ineffectual government threaten to push that figure even higher. Officials are beginning to wake up to the magnitude of the emergency, as experts warn of grave consequences for the future of India's economic boom if the state fails to improve the well-being of its youngest citizens.


Already, the proportion of malnourished children is several times greater than in China, Asia's other developing giant, and double the rate found in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa.


"This is a stunning fact," said Abhijit Banerjee, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied the problem.


To its credit, India has in the last several decades succeeded in warding off the specter of famine that regularly haunted the subcontinent well into the 20th century. As a result of better farming techniques and food-security policies, mass starvation is no longer the dread concern it once was.


But that achievement, as well as the recent euphoria over India's rapid economic expansion, has obscured the government's failure to help provide its people, particularly the young, with the nutrients needed to build healthy, productive lives.


Many officials were shocked when a 2005-06 government study revealed hardly any progress in reducing child malnutrition over the last decade and a half -- exactly when the Indian economy was exploding and attracting international attention.


"This has not been a policy priority for this country for the last 40 years," said Victor M. Aguayo, chief of child nutrition and development at the United Nations Children's Fund office in New Delhi. "There was an underlying assumption that as soon as economic growth takes place, this will vanish. So let's focus on economic growth; let's focus on getting rich."


Instead, India's performance in combating child malnutrition has been worse than that of other countries with similar economic conditions. Close to half of all young children in India -- or a staggering 60 million -- are malnourished. Only Bangladesh and Nepal have a higher percentage of underweight children.


In a speech last year, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged the gravity of the situation, calling it a "national shame."

"We cannot deny that it is a crisis," said Loveleen Kacker, a senior official at the central Ministry for Women and Child Development. "Maybe we didn't treat it like a crisis earlier, which we should have. Then we would have taken corrective steps much earlier than now. And what we're thinking of doing now we should've started 10 years back."


The World Bank estimates that malnutrition and its negative effects on health and productivity cost India as much as 3% of GDP a year. Beyond the economic fallout is the damage to India's image and credibility as it tries to assert itself as an important player on the world stage.


"It's not nice to want to have an international role and then find that you're having to defend such an indefensible position," Kacker said.


Just why malnutrition remains such a stubborn problem here is due to a constellation of causes that tend to reinforce and aggravate each other, creating "the perfect storm of risk factors," as Aguayo put it.


At root is the abject poverty so pervasive in India, where one-third of the population of 1.1 billion squeaks by on less than $1 a day. Another third makes do with $2 a day.


That deprivation can stack the cards against a child before he or she is even born. Too many women here are underweight and undernourished themselves, the major reason why 30% of Indian babies enter the world weighing less than 5 1/2 pounds. Afterward, in the crucial first two years of life, many children are fed sugary water, animal milk, rice and other foods lacking the fat, protein and vitamins necessary for proper physical and mental growth.


"Women too thin and anemic, giving birth to tiny babies, who are poorly fed in the first two years of life: That's the synopsis of the tragedy," Aguayo said. "India needs to break this intergenerational cycle of malnutrition."


That cycle is plainly evident with 20-month-old Deep and his mother, Bachiya Devi, here in the dirt-poor eastern state of Bihar, where the proportion of malnourished children younger than 3 has actually risen, not dropped, in recent years, from 54% to 58%.


Like her son's, Devi's arms are stick-thin, the bangles adorning them sliding up and down with no resistance. The sinews of her neck protrude, while her chest seems lost far below the folds of her canary-yellow sari. Her careworn face suggests an age much older than her 45 years.


With a blind husband who is unable to work, Devi depends on her parents to help out with buying food. She reckons that 100 rupees a day would be enough to guarantee two square meals for her husband, herself and the three of their five children who live at home. But from her modest vegetable stall she earns an average of 30 rupees a day, the equivalent of 70 cents.


"There are four or five days a month when the pot doesn't boil and we go hungry," Devi said. At home, little Deep, her youngest child and only son, eats one roti, or piece of flatbread, a day, plus some rice and occasionally some vegetables.


"I'm a poor woman," Devi said.


"What more can I afford?"


As she spoke, her sleeping son twitched fitfully on a bed in a "nutrition rehabilitation center" here in Saraiya sponsored by UNICEF, which in effect provides triage for the worst-hit.


The ward is a study in cheated childhood. Mumta, at 22 months, looks less than half her age; her rib cage can be easily felt beneath her clothes. Muskan, 1 1/2 , lies still under her mother's watchful gaze, a blue hand towel covering nearly her entire body. Vikas, almost 4 and suffering from cerebral palsy, can barely sit up without help from his gaunt mother, who is 45 and pregnant with her fifth child.


There are flickers of hope. After 10 days of eating nutrient-laden eggs and other foods not available at home, Deep has gained almost a pound and a bit more energy. Other children in the ward also exhibit small signs of improvement.


All the youngsters are so chronically malnourished that they belong to a category known as "severely wasted." India is home to 8 million such cases needing immediate therapeutic feeding and treatment.


However, the government accepts no foreign food aid and has not imported any of the high-energy, ready-to-eat food packets on the market that can be administered to badly malnourished youngsters to jump-start their recovery, Aguayo said. None of the country's biotechnology firms -- among the most advanced in the world -- manufactures them, though the cost would probably be only about a dollar a pound.


These triage packets would help the worst-off cases. But if India fails to cut its overall rate of child malnutrition, experts warn, it faces a future dragged down by an underproductive workforce and ballooning numbers of malnourished youngsters.


As Farhat Saiyed, a nutritionist here in Bihar state, put it: "We are entering a dangerous world."