Childhood Poverty in India

I have been attempting to reach early childhood professionals from a variety of countries including Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Singapore, and Myanmar. I have not had a response from any of these people yet, but I am still hoping to hear from someone soon.

Since I have not been able to reach anyone yet, I decided to visit the website of the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/). I chose to study the country of India and how their country is dealing with such a high poverty level.

• 1.03 billion people live in India; 260.2 million of those people live in poverty. This is about 25% of the population living in poverty.

• Almost one half of all children under the age of 5 are malnourished.

• Girls remain having limited life chances: declining sex ratio (there are more males than females, and the gap is widening), neglect of the girl’s childhood, lower school enrollment, and a high maternal mortality rate.

There are some policies and programmes being reformed to respond to changes in the country, but from what I have learned more aggressive techniques are needed. However, the programmes that are listed on the website are all approaches that teach people how to improve their lives instead of the government changing their lives for them. I think this is an excellent approach because people who are given handouts learn to rely on them instead of learning to earn those things themselves. This country may need some more support in order to get all of their citizens on solid ground, but the progress they are making is much better than none at all.