Deprivation in India-Are the latest census figures realistic?

India is always considered a country of paradoxes. This is reinforced further by the census figures released recently highlighting the contradictions inherent in the growth of the country. It is unbelievable that more than two thirds of the rural households possess cell phones while the government wants to give heavily subsidized cereals at throw way price to 3 out of the 4 households under its National Food Security Act! If the figures trotted out are really true all the development programs to uplift the poor from poverty were wasted with no significant impact! Can this be true? It is hard to believe that really poor people would spend their precious resources for a cell phone which costs at least a few hundred rupees, in stead of on essential things in life. With government schemes like MNREGA income earning opportunities do exist in rural areas and according to some reports in many states there are few takers for this earning scheme. It is really hard to believe that rural population is languishing from lack of money for buying their essential needs to such an extent. If planning is based on these figures more subsidies can be expected from the government to address "poverty". Read further to get some idea about the implications emerging out of the set of figures put out by the government agency. 

Over two out of every three rural households own a mobile phone, the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 has found. At the same time, 36 per cent of rural Indians are illiterate, only 10 per cent households have someone with a salaried job and only 8 per cent households earn Rs 10,000 or more every month. The SECC findings, released last Friday, bring out statistics reflecting the state of poverty and deprivation in rural India as well as crucial social trends such as ownership of assets, gender dynamics, marital status, educational and employment. The mobile phone statistics contrast sharply with those for landlines. While only one per cent of rural households own a landline phone without a mobile, a whopping 68.35 per cent have mobiles as their only phone(s). In Uttar Pradesh, as many as 86 per cent rural households own no phone but mobiles. Households with both landline and mobiles constitute an additional 2.72 per cent of the rural population, with Kerala the highest among the states at 28.33 per cent. That leaves nearly 28 per cent rural households without any phone. In Chhattisgarh, this is particularly high at 71 per cent, mainly due to lack of connectivity and mobile towers, a reflection of the lack of development in the state, which has witnessed large-scale Naxal violence. The average size of a rural Indian household is nearly five members — 4.93 — the highest being in Uttar Pradesh at 6.26 and the lowest in Andhra Pradesh at 3.86. An overwhelming majority of households is predictably male-headed, but nearly 13 per cent do have a female head. In Rajasthan, around 91 per cent households in rural areas are headed by men, while in Kerala 26 per cent households are women-headed, the highest among the states. While divorces are a relatively common phenomenon in urban India, they remain almost rare in the rural landscape. Only 0.12 per cent of the rural population have been divorced, the highest in Mizoram at 1.08 percent. The findings list 41.64 per cent rural people as never married (the highest being in Nagaland at 56 per cent) but do not spell out the age group of these unmarried people. Educational levels remain dismal, with over a third of rural India illiterate. The proportion of those passing through the primary, secondary, senior secondary and higher secondary stages drops at each successive level, from nearly 18 per cent to 5 per cent, while only 3.45 per cent are graduates or above. The highest proportion for graduates is in the National Capital Territory and Delhi, at 9.6 per cent; among the states, Kerala tops at 8 per cent. Rural India remains largely dependent on self-employment or the unorganised sector. Less than 10 per cent households are dependent on salaried jobs, of which the majority are in government jobs. Also, 0.09 per cent of rural households are houseless, compared to 0.15 per cent in the urban areas.

There is no doubt that poverty does exist in pockets, if the term means inability to buy essential needs like food, medicine and others out of one's own earnings. Farmers' suicides which are happening in the country with sickening regularity have often been cited as the manifestation of poverty but these are happenings because of indebtedness caused by crop failures and other reasons. It is an established fact that what is needed is providing employment and earning opportunities in stead of handing out doles year after year as being practiced to day in modern India. The bundle of figures contained in the report does tell a story which highlights the uneven distribution of wealth in the country due to government's ineffective policies during the last 7 decades. Unless the agricultural sector is made dynamic through large scale injection of modern technologies and integration of nonviable fragmented land holdings, nothing much dramatic can be expected to improve the present situation in our rural landscape.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

MOBILE PHONES-A MAJOR SOURCE OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES?

After the computer key board, it is the turn of mobile phones now to receive critical attention from the pathologist community and if they are to be believed the ubiquitous mobile phone can be a serious source of microbiological hazard to users. It is understandable that the hand held mobile phone which is more or less a personal item of inventory can have accumulation of microorganisms derived mostly from the owner of the phone. The type of microbes and their density on the phone will depend on the personal hygiene and sanitation of the user and same can vary enormously. As this electronic gadget cannot be cleaned regularly except by wiping to remove dust, over a period of time there can be considerable accumulation of micro organisms on different parts on the surface. Touch phones are marginally better because they do not have the regular number buttons as seen in normal phones which can harbor considerable number of microbes. Therefore the recent report by a survey study in the UK highlighting the microbiological status of mobile phones should not come as a surprise.

"The findings from a sample of dozens of phones by Which? magazine suggest 14.7 million of the 63 million mobiles in use in Britain today could be potential health hazards, reports the Daily Mail. Hygiene expert Jim Francis, who carried out the tests, said: "The levels of potentially harmful bacteria on one mobile were off the scale. That phone needs sterilising." The most unhygienic phone also had 39 times the safe level of enterobacteria, a group of bacteria that live in the lower intestines of humans and animals and include bugs such as salmonella. It boasted 170 times the acceptable level of faecal coliforms, which are associated with human waste. Other bacteria including food poisoning bugs e.coli and staphylococcus aureus were found on the phones but at safe levels. Which? researcher Ceri Stanaway said: "The bugs can end up on your hands which is a breeding ground and be passed back to your phone. They can be transferred back and forth and eventually you could catch something nasty. "What this shows is how easy it is to come into contact with bacteria. People see toilet flushes as being something dirty to touch but they have less bacteria than phones. "People need to be mindful of that by observing good hygiene themselves and among others who they pass the phone to when looking at photos, for example." Which? has previously found that some computer keyboards carry more harmful bacteria than a lavatory seat".

While no one would have any quarrel with the scientific data generated by the study, there does not appear to be any reason for undue alarm because mobile phones are used more or less exclusively as a personal possession, not shared with others. Whatever microorganisms detected on each phone are from the person who owned it and therefore they are unlikely to pose any risk to that person who could be immune to them. Probably thousands of phone booths and cyber kiosks that work in India are more dangerous as more than 100 persons, on an average, with different health conditions use the telephone instruments daily and possibilities of spread of infection are far greater under such environments. Studies like the one cited above will have to be viewed in right perspective without causing alarm to the general public.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

TOILETS VS MOBILE PHONES-AN IRRELEVANT ISSUE

India is a favorite whipping boy when it comes to comparing its stature in the comity of nations, with China always scoring over it. While criticism, if based on logic and reality, must be taken in right spirit, those made with ulterior motives deserve condemnation. Similarly defending the existing situation with lame excuses for inefficiency, backwardness, poverty, corruption, malnutrition etc also cannot be condoned. Some time back there was an international report indicting India for the tremendous achievements in the field of wireless telephony while ignoring the basic need of toilet facilities to some of its impoverished population. The incongruity of such "off the cuff" remarks can be best understood when the facts are checked.

"One wonders why multilateral bodies like the UN come out with these incongruous factoids when it relates to the Third World only. This statistics must be true for the developed world also. You do not need common sense to ascertain the veracity of this since in a family unit of four there could at the most be four mobile phones while there could be only two toilets. So the question is why India should be any different. However, there are many who take such reports in our country as the ultimate truth and agonise on how backward we are or how uncivilised we are. While in actual fact we may not be. Thus in rural India people defecate in the open, mostly in their own fields, which ensures a cleaner, simpler and cheaper way to not allow pollution to build up. However, when we come to the urban areas where slums proliferated the same practice is not healthy and that is where the public toilets are being implemented as we see in cities like Mumbai. Also our hygiene habits are probably the best in world since we wash up after we defecate and not use toilet paper which may not clean well. Similarly, after we blow our nose we do not put the offending mucous polluted tissue or handkerchief in our pockets as most of the Westerners do. Thus in most things what we do and how we do is sometimes much better than what the West does. Therefore let us not look down upon ourselves or denigrate our people and their habits".

The above rebuttal should not detract from the reality that a substantial number of more than half a million villages in the country does not have protected toilets in majority of the houses with open defalcation the established practice. Hundreds of years of traditional practice cannot be expected to change in short time and universal protected toileting habit can be inculcated only through universal education. Many public and voluntary agencies are doing yeomen work in this area and when the recently enacted "Right to Education Act" implemented earnestly, some progress can be expected in this front.

V.H.POTTY

http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com