Clean water is everything

marley says:

07:30am | 08/11/12

@Mahrat - there is more than one India.  The jugghis are pretty much as the author describes - basically mud brick shanty towns with nothing much in the way of facilities. Lower middle class India is concrete block apartment housing with power and running water (albeit not clean water).  And upper middle class India is bungalows with small yards and perhaps several generations of the family living in some comfort, with a cook and a gardener and a household guard all at their beck and call. 

The thing is, the people in the jugghis generally want better for their kids, and try to get them educated.  A job in a call center for a kid out of the slums is probably unattainable because of the language requirements, but it’s an aspiration for the kids in the concrete apartment blocks.  I have less of a problem than some with giving them that chance.

XT says:

08:29am | 08/11/12

@Marley - what is this conspiracy theory nonsense you are going on about?  Paranoid much?

Mahhrat says:

10:18am | 08/11/12

@marley:  Agreed, though there’s some caste issues there that need to be overcome.  (Strangely, I think the same thing applies in Australia, though we call them bogans instead).

My point is that clean water, health and sanitation are things every human should enjoy.  This shouldn’t even be a thing.  It’s not about money - there are cheap solutions, such as the communal water and taps.  It all doesn’t have to be suburban Australia, but holy shit clean water, basic schooling and somewhere warm to sleep at night should be givens in 2012.

marley says:

12:22pm | 08/11/12

@Mahrat - don’t forget, it’s a country of a billion people - we can’t keep up with infrastructure here, so you can imagine what it’s like there, especially given the low level of industrial development and the limited tax base available to fund public development.  Still, they’re getting a handle on their birth rate, and the transfer of jobs to India has been good news for a lot of people.  They’ve got a huge way to go, though.

marley says:

07:52am | 08/11/12

@pete - they’re getting there.  India still has a fairly high birth rate, but it’s half what it was a generation ago, and dropping.  The more education those slum kids get, the better chance they have at a decent job and the fewer kids they’re going to have.

Jay2 says:

04:59pm | 08/11/12

Yes michael j, since most of Australia appears to be covered by multi national mining company’s exploratory licence and both sides of levels of government are against a moratorium (but are so keen to have a Carbon Tax to save planet earth lol), let’s just wonder for a moment how many precious artesian water sources (etc) are going to cop it in the neck.
I’m just wondering where all the HUGE amount of byproducts are going to be dumped. Oh THAT’s right, this is the CLEAN energy source, there won’t be any massive amounts of salt and other chemicals.

marley says:

01:40pm | 08/11/12

@Neslihan - I gather your knowledge of India is restricted to your uncle’s opinions from 40 years ago.  Things have changed a bit since then.

India has made huge advances since the “Green revolution” - to the extent that its population is better fed, less likely to be famine-affected, and has an improved life expectancy compared with a generation ago. It is industrialising, albeit unevenly, and as it does so, incomes and living standards are improving.  It’s nowhere near western standards of development, and enormous pockets of poverty remain, especially in rural India, but it’s on the road to development, not slipping backwards as Pakistan seems to be.

The caste system, while an enormous social problem, is under threat – first, from the government, second from the fast growing Muslim population, and third from better-educated younger Indians.  Oddly enough, Indian society today is more progressive than the Indian diaspora in the west.

As for contraception, the Indian birth rate has more than halved in 50 years, and is still dropping.

On the other hand, it’s simply not true that “most Indians speak perfect English.”  Urban, upper-middle class Indians do speak English; however, the rural villagers and peasants, the slum dwellers and fishermen and street cleaners, do not.  The best estimate is that about 1/10th of the population speaks some level of English.  Language is in fact a problem there, since there is no common language:  even Hindi is spoken by less than half the population.