Re: [Assam] From Tehelka

[Barua25]

>A country that has ....

>320 million people going to bed without food and 10,000 dying of hunger-related pangs every day, as experts point out.
>Ninety-nine percent of adivasi families in Jharkhand and Rajasthan
are facing chronic hunger this year.

>At least 250 farmers committed suicide in Yavatmal in
Vidarbha, Maharashtra this year alone.

>In the past five years the region has seen 850 suicides by farmers. Ninety-three percent of the
suicides reported were due to overriding debts.

> Since 1997, 25,000 farmers have committed suicides across India - 4,500 in Andhra
Pradesh alone, while thousands of children have died in
Melghat/Nandurbar in Maharashtra due to malnutrition and absence of
administrative support.

 

The above gloomy picture for rest of India, actually draws a rosy picture for Assam.

Hey Assam, what is your problem?

RB

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Chan Mahanta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Ram Sarangapani" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Cc: <assam@assamnet.org>

Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 9:17 PM

Subject: Re: [Assam] From Tehelka

> Try this for growth Ram.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 5 ISSUES THAT REMAINED BURIED ( Tehelka)
>
> 1 } RIGHT TO FOOD
>
> The republic of hunger
>
> A country that has 70 percent of the population depending upon
> agriculture for its livelihood and where rats eat a major portion of
> the foodgrain in its overflowing godowns (60 million tonnes last
> year), has 320 million people going to bed without food and 10,000
> dying of hunger-related pangs every day, as experts point out.
> Ninety-nine percent of adivasi families in Jharkhand and Rajasthan
> are facing chronic hunger this year. Also, 2005 hasn't been good for
> the farmer, ironically, under the upa regime that claims to stand for
> the aam aadmi. At least 250 farmers committed suicide in Yavatmal in
> Vidarbha, Maharashtra this year alone. In the past five years the
> region has seen 850 suicides by farmers. Ninety-three percent of the
> suicides reported were due to overriding debts. Since 1997, 25,000
> farmers have committed suicides across India - 4,500 in Andhra
> Pradesh alone, while thousands of children have died in
> Melghat/Nandurbar in Maharashtra due to malnutrition and absence of
> administrative support. The right to food remains elusive for
> millions of Indians but the establishment remains as cold-blooded as
> ever.
>  
>
> 2 } UNORGANISED WORKERS
>
> One Gurgaon too many
>
> They constitute 90 percent of the labour force in India, but they
> have no unions, no rights, no social safety nets, no provident fund,
> no pension, no job security, no schools or health centres for their
> children, no future or hope. Instead, they are the eternal victims of
> the latest profit-making ventures of the Indian and mnc fat cats:
> retrenchment, contract labour, ad hoc and low wages, mass sacking.
> And if they protest, they are brutally assaulted, as the cops did
> with the workers in Gurgaon: globalisation's latest glam doll.
>  
>
> 3 } STREET KIDS
>
> Death of a newspaper boy
>
> They have black eyes and smiles which spread like sunshine: but their
> hands have shrivelled, and so have their bodies, and they are out
> there in the cold, homeless, imagined communities of an imagined
> homeland. Street kids: they work at the traffic crossings, as child
> labourers, ragpickers, hounded by the police, brutalised, packed in
> ugly, perverse juvenile homes, even adult prisons, left to die in a
> democracy where President Kalam says that the children are the future
> of the nation. Which children? Of which country?
>  
>
> 4 } FEMALE FOETICIDE
>
> One by one they went away
>
> The longing for the male child and scorn for the girl in India has
> drastically increased in the last decade, more so in prosperous parts
> of the country. Rich states like Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat, among
> others, witnessed a drastic decline in the child sex ratio from 900
> girls for every 1000 boys in 1991 to less than 8oo girls in 2001.
> Fatehgarh Sahib, a district in Punjab, has the lowest child sex ratio
> with 754 girls for every 1,000 boys. In Haryana's Kurukshetra
> district, the child sex ratio has fallen from 860 girls to just 770.
> In Rajkot, the decline was from 914 in 1991 to 844 in 2001. Posh
> southwest Delhi shows an abysmal child sex ratio of less than 845
> girls.
>
>   In the last 10 years, 70 districts in 16 states and union
> territories have recorded a 50-point plus decline in the sex ratio.
> The ratio has gone down to 800 girls for every 1,000 boys.
> Amniocentesis, originally intended as a prenatal test, is now widely
> used, illegally, to determine the sex of the foetus and abort it if
> it happens to be female. But the medical and political apparatus
> doesn't care.
>  
>
> 5 } RIGHT TO SHELTER
>
> It's a rich man's world
>
> When the Congress-ncp government in Maharashtra tied its laces for
> the ridiculously ambitious plan of turning Mumbai into Shanghai,
> slums were the first casualty: 90,000 people marooned and their homes
> bulldozed. The poor found shelter under the open sky in graveyards
> and garbage dumps. When they protested, led by Medha Patkar, they
> were brutally crushed. Whenever the question of encroachment on
> public land was raised, the poor were targeted, as also in Delhi and
> other metros. Hundreds of homes razed overnight, thousands rendered
> homeless in a flash. For the hard working, honest, poor people who
> run the unorganised sector of India's neo-liberalised cities, and
> serve elite households as domestic and skilled workers, it was yet
> another signal that this democracy does not belong to them. Compare
> their tragedy with the massive media and political attention for the
> 18,000 swanky, illegal structures being demolished in Delhi!
>
> _______________________________________________
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> assam@assamnet.org
> http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
>

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