WAH '07 Updates

WAH '07 was centered around Child labor. Eleven projects were showcased & over $140,000.00 were raised during the campaign. A list of the projects can be found in the link below.

http://www.ashanet.org/workanhour/2007/projects.php

Where are they now?...

The intention of this post is to collate updates from all the eleven projects as they become available during the course of WAH '08.

Statistics and Rural India

Statistics are to be interpreted with the right eyes to make some meaningful sense. We earlier saw the story of two India's -- the India shining and the tottering India; the India of credit cards and the India of farmer suicides; the thriving business India and the collapsing agrarian India. To really understand the problems of India from a statistical viewpoint, particularly of rural India, one needs to look beyond narrow definitions, and look at holistic pictures.

Human Development is measured by the eponymous index Human Development Index (HDI) and is annually reported by UNDP's Human Development Report. HDI goes beyond GDP and calculates human development as a measure of three chief charactersitics (the last of which is the GDP per capita).

• living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy),
  
• being educated (measured by adult literacy and enrollment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level), and
  
• having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income).

According to the UNDP website,

The index is not in any sense a comprehensive measure of human development. It does not, for example, include important indicators such as gender or income inequality and more difficult to measure indicators like respect for human rights and political freedoms. What it does provide is a broadened prism for viewing human progress and the complex relationship between income and well-being.

Under this (slightly more) comprehensive measurement (than just GDP), where does India rank?

1. India ranks 128 (out of 177) countries in overall HDI, just below Morocco and Equatorial Guinea. Sierra Leone is bottom at 177.
   
2. Life expectancy at birth: India ranks 125, just below Pakistan and Comoros.
   
3. Adult literacy rate (ages 15+): India ranks 114, just below Rwanda and Malawi.
   
4. Combined primary/secondary/tertiary education enrollment: India ranks 122, just below Namibia and Vietnam.
5. GDP per capita (PPP US$): India ranks 114, just below Syria and Nicaragua.

In all these categories, India seems to be ranked well below sub-Saharan Africa. (This is not to generalize a stereotype of sub-Saharan Africa. India deserves to be ranked at what she has been. And, many sub-Saharan African countries have really been improving over the years. However, due to governmental policies, and gains for the elite of powerful countries, India, in all forms of press, is portrayed as an emerging super-power, whereas, the other countries ranked around us are treated with much disdain on their development curves in the same media.) The much talked about 9% growth rate of GDP is just that, a growth rate, indicating the growth of the elite in India. By absolute numbers per capita, even by GDP count India ranks in the bottom third of all countries in the world, even below war ravaged Nicaragua. None of these countries that are around our rank are "potential super powers", or "software power houses", or "next-gen nuclear power". So who in India is benefited by this 9% growth?

1. India is 4th in the list of most US$ billionaires in the country (behind US, Germany, Russia).
   
2. 50 countries on either side (together) of us on the HDI rating put together have lesser US$ billionaires than us.
3. According to Times of India, in a period of 3 months between July and Oct in 2007, the collective wealth of the top 10 billionaires of India increased by 27% -- which translates to collectively Rs.2 crores per minute.

Now, think about rural india and the farmer. The farmer has not had a Rs 20 increase in wage in that whole period, forget about per minute.

That portrays a rather grim and bleak picture of rural India. Where then is the hope? At this crucial juncture in our political history when every elected people's representative is wondering about what will happen to the Indo-US Nuclear deal, Asha for Education and Work an Hour 2008 have chosen to run a campaign focusing on rural India and are showcasing 15 such hopes. These projects are all over India, and each in their own way are addressing the problems leading to the appalling statistics we just recounted. Do read about them, donate, and discuss means and methods to mitigate these problems here on this post and in the comments section.

P.Sainath said it right after this March's Union Budget:

"As Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate, said, 'Faster growth rate is essential for faster reduction in poverty. There is no other trick to it'." So said P. Chidambaram in his budget speech. Drawing on his words must have seemed a politically correct thing to do. Mr. Chidambaram might want to add another quote to his cupboard. This one from the late Edward Abbey, environmental activist and writer. "Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Few things grow as relentlessly as a cancer cell. Its up to us to demand for change; to demand for justice, equality and fraternity, promised by the preamble of the constitution; and to demand that we stop marginalizing our rural brethren and to stop making self-indulgent and thoroughly meaningless attempts grown out of a guilty conscience to ameliorate the lot of the under-privileged, and instead build an egalitarian future where dignity of the individual is honored above his/her net economic worth.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed." -- MLK.

References:
[1] UNDP's HDR report on Human Development Index, India Fact Sheet. http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_IND.html
[2] Sainath's article in India Together after P.Chidambaram's Union Budget of March 2008. "Growth Idealogy of the Cancer Cell". http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/mar/psa-cancer.htm
[3] Sainath's article based on the HDI fact sheet for India. "India 2007: High growth, low development". http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/dec/psa-i2007.htm
[4] UNDP's Human Development Report's Statistics page. http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/

Sustainability

When we start getting involved in organizations like Asha, an early question we have is, “Will we have to support this project forever? How can we help more and more children in India if we have to keep supporting this project forever?” This brings us to the question of sustainability, and what we can do to help the project generate their own financial resources – perhaps by developing a handicraft business, by also admitting wealthier students who can pay a fee, by helping them get corpus funds grants from other organizations, and so on.

Financial sustainability is important, but there are many other aspects to sustainability as well. One key aspect is the people. NGOs in rural areas are often run by middle class people from urban areas who sometimes have given up lucrative careers to focus on the development of the community in remote rural areas. The efforts of these people are highly laudable, but the question does arise – what after them? What should be done for a school or educational effort to run after the time of the people who have temporarily moved to the area? SVYM says, “Our goal is to leave the area entirely in the long run, and have the tribals themselves run everything – run the hospitals and the schools and become doctors and nurses and teachers themselves so that they can work at these institutions. Finally SVYM has to be completely run by the tribals themselves.” This is an insight that few NGOs have. Often NGOs do not even have a second line of leadership and they tragically fold after the initiators no longer work in the area. The goal should go beyond having a second line of leadership; it should also focus on building into the community a capacity to run the school on their own.

It is with this philosophy that SVYM created a teacher training institute in the area, got recognition for it for the government of Karnataka, and are working towards ensuring a substantial number of tribal students get trained. Their initial efforts had been focused on getting the tribal youth interested in education careers to Mysore and Bangalore to get training there and then come back to the area. As the number of tribal youth with the interest and eagerness to become educationists themselves grew, they came up with the teacher training institute in the area with a focus on training tribal youth to be teachers (this also meant that the tribals need not go to the nearest big city if they did not want to, which had led to some other challenges). Eventually these youth will be able to take over teaching positions at the Viveka Tribal Center for Learning (the school run by SVYM), and at government schools in the area. Having tribal youth teach tribal children will have an impact at multiple levels – the tribal children will have a role model from their own community, tribal teachers would understand much better the challenges faced by tribal children, tribal teachers will be able to teach very young children in the tribal language or dialect (this has been a problem with non-tribal teachers in government schools – since they do not know the tribal language they have trouble communicating with tribal children in elementary school, contributing to a faulty foundation laid for learning in later years), and the social distance perceived by tribal children between themselves and the teacher becomes non-existent. Best of all, these youth represent a significant step towards the tribals taking control of their own education, a step towards a school by the community for the community. This is true sustainability, and is essential for a permanent impact on education in the area. This is critical for sustained change in rural areas in the long run - they should not have to depend on people from urban areas coming in to bring about change.

Agrarian Crisis of India Shining!

India is rapidly developing.
Services sector is booming.
Our GDP is increasing at 9%.
We are cutting nuclear deals with USA.
Our youth have the credit to buy German and Japanese cars and motorcycles.

Our farmers do not have the credit to buy seeds.
We are cutting deals with Monsanto and undercutting our farmers.
Over 60% of our economy is reliant on agriculture.
Agriculture sector is in a serious crisis.
India is ready for a massive collapse.

That is the story of two different Indias. If you really think about it, everything about India is pluralistic. Agriculture is fundamentally unsustainable. Like education, the country needs to subsidize and support its agrarian sector. Particularly a country who's excess of 50% economy is agrarian and excess of 70% of the population are farmers. However, as the policies of the past decade unfold, we are seeing a continued spread of farmer suicides across the country.

P.Sainath, the journalist, has written extensively about the agrarian crisis in India. The India Together website chronicles the analysis, essays, reports and interviews.

The suicides of thousands of farmers around the country tell poignant and revealing tales of our country, and the desperation that marks the lives of so many millions. Disastrous policies, woeful access to affordable credit, greedy and corrupt middlemen, and indifferent administrations are among the factors that have pushed farmers to their breaking point.

The problems are numerous. Genetically modified seeds, inorganic fertilizers, mono-culture, PDS selectively favouring some crops like rice and therefore marginalizing other crops like millets, etc. The solutions are not obvious. In the case of solutions like organic farming, multi-cultures etc. how to scale the solution nationwide is not clear.

Please use this blog post and comments to discuss these solutions. Looking forward to your inputs.

WAH 2008 launched: Empowering Rural India- One child at a time.

So, if you didn't know, WAH 2008 has been launched. If you are here, then you are in the right page for the right reason and for those who don't know much about WAH, here is the short hand note on it.

Work an hour (WAH) is a campaign from Asha for Education that connects donors with children in India. As it stand, work an hour requests donors to donate one hour of your pay towards the cause. The theme changes every year, but always revolves around education, the core mandate of Asha. So whether you are working on minimum wage of (what ever that is in your country) $6.75 an hour or sending satellites into space and making $1000 a hour, your change can make change to these children in India.

So that's the deal on it. If you are already sold on it, go here to donate , but if you are that tough one who needs more info, lets continue our journey....

This year's, theme is Rural India- one child at a time. Very simple, isn't it, but a very powerful dream too and it can not be achieved with out the support of people like you. This year there are 15 projects, 18 schools impacting 3000 children. As a donor you can select which project you want to support or donate in general. Our goal for 2008 is $200,000 and check who has donated so far (so that you can give a dollar more than your friends ;). So far about 113 people have donated $10,462 which is a good start, but we still have a long way to go.

The motivation for me to support the cause is very simple. It is only one hour of pay of my life, it is going towards a great cause of helping our children in rural India who don't need our sympathy, but a little support to stand on their own and most importantly it is through a very reputable organization Asha for Education that has been given the highest four star rating by Charity Navigator, the charity watch dog.

100% fo your donation to Work an Hour go directly towards the selected projects. Keeping with Asha's long-standing policy, Asha volunteers bear all administrative and operational expenses.

So there you go, all the right reasons to spare some change, that will bring change in the lives of children in rural India. Wah, wah kya bath hai, now donate to WAH by credit card online or cheque by mail. Canada residents donate here and UK residents donate here for your convenience.

What else, if you are still not convinced, send me an email and I will personally talk to you and clarify your doubts, no matter which part of the planet you are! hey, that's my commitment to the project.

Cheers!

Vijay Sappani

on behalf of WAH 2008 and

the loving rural kids from India