Poverty in India has a female face

If I were a painter I would have depicted the poverty of India with the face of a woman. The poverty in India has a female face. Be it hunger, education, child health, maternal health, diseases including HIV and AIDS and even environmental sustainability, the brunt of poverty falls greatly on women.

First and foremost a woman should have the Right to Live, as enshrined under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. Female feoticide is rampant in this country. States like Haryana have a sex ratio of 1000:860. And families are importing women from Kerala to get their men married. How long can we continue like this?

Accountability is at stake. Is there anybody responsible for the lives of 5000 children who die every day (most of whom are girls) and the 78000 women who die every year? They die like stray dogs on the streets and nobody bothers. We need to have a strict system of social audit and accountability for all the child deaths and maternal deaths taking place in this country.

One of the primary reasons for children and women dying during child birth is Early Marriage. Girls as young as sixteen are forced to have children, sometimes even eight to ten, till they have a male child.

Once the family has eight to ten children, it is again the girl who bears the brunt. The elder girls are dropped from school to take care of their siblings at home. Thus the girls, apart from being deprived of their right to education and play, are also burdened with the heavy responsibility of cooking and taking care of babies in the family.

Words like 'Sovereign' and 'Socialist' in the preamble of the Indian constitution seems like only an ornamental decoration for the poor masses in this country, where food grains rot in the food storages and people live without food or die of hunger.

Where is equity in this country? If a poor child or a woman dies nobody bothers and if it is a rich and upper caste child or woman it is extensively and most times overly reported and debated in the media.

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, "You educate a man, you educate an individual. You educate a woman, you educate an entire family." Women have a natural ability to multiply and spread what they receive.

Educating girls, empowering women and ensuring that women have access to quality health care will go a long way in the overall sustainable development of the country. And the face of Poverty in India will surely change!


Reni Jacob is the Director of Advocacy at World Vision India