Review India's country profile at: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2007/06/india_street_chlinks.html
Select one of the human rights topics to investigate below. Read and or/ view sources on PBS' Frontline website.
Summarize the issue being sure to explain why it is a human rights issue. Explain how India's government is responding to this crisis and evaluate the role and effectiveness of Parlaiment in managing this issue. Propose your own action plan for resolving this problem.
Poverty and the Organ Selling Industry
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2006/07/india_a_pound_o.html
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2006/07/india_a_pound_o.html
Sexwork, Human Trafficking and HIV/ AIDS
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india304/aronson.html
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india304/aronson.html
Education, poverty and the "digital divide"/ access to technology
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/india/
Due Wednsday, January 7. Minimum 250 words. Remember that all video elements must be submitted by Tuesday January 6 for in-school editing.
15 comments:
Ama Kwakye
January 1, 2008
Street Children
One third of the world’s poor children are in India. India has a strong majority of children who live on the streets. I-India has stated that most homeless children don’t have homes because of Poverty, Homelessness, Health, Abuse, Child Labor and Gender Discrimination. Children living on the street are defiantly a human rights issue.3, 000 children now living on the streets of Vijayawada. I feel it is a responsibility of India to make sure their people especially children has some sort of shelter which is what Father Thomas Koshy is trying to do. He has already started working on shelter homes since 1989. The children of India make the best out of there little shelter and some even work. It’s sad to see how many children live in poverty. If you look at pictures you see how unhealthy the children look it reminds me of walking down the street in Manhattan and seeing the homeless except this is worse because its younger children as small as 5 and younger. Thomas said his past experiences have been quite disturbing. Some children are so attached to the streets that they don’t want to move into the Homeless shelter. There have been studies that show that children who live on the streets are permanently damaged and scared for life. Some children get so adapted to hustling and prostitution because there’s nothing else for them to do. India’s government is responding to this crisis for example making food banks and trying to get children of the streets. But in order to stop the whole community needs to come together because India is too much divided among the poor and the rich. But for right now this is most likely not India's main concern. What can I do to help out the Children on the Streets? I would make an organization where people can donate things for children and try to build basic homes and get basic feelings. It doesn’t feel good to grow up without a family; it does affect you in the long run.
India has come a long way since it gained her independence from Britain. Though it has become home to terrorist attacks, poverty and conflicts; it is home to pacifist spiritual leader Barack Obama and is the world's largest democracy. Not to mention, it is also one of the world's biggest investments. In 2007, India had the highest economic growth and the highest gain. Though India is economically fortunate; its low capita income builds the relationship between India's wealthy and her's poor. Most Indians make about 2 dollars a day. India's government is very similar to the United States'; it has a constitution and is divided up into three branches (legislative, executive and judicial). India's conflicts are mostly due to border conflict between religious groups. India is a huge terrorist attraction because of its culture and monuments. Not even the 2008 terrorist attack can stop foreigners from visiting.
The FRONTLINE WORLD video has helped put forth to the world the troubles that India is facing. 3/4 of India's population has access to clean water; while a half of the population is illiterate. To condemn this fact, an Indian Technology company named MIIT has placed a computer in a slum in India. As soon as the wall was placed; curiosity had aroused the homeless children. In a day, the children had taught themselves how to use a computer as well as use the internet. One of the first people to teach themselves how to use the computer was Rogener. Rogener is a young Indian boy probably about 7 to 10 years old. Though Rogener mainly stays on the Disney Channel site, he also secludes himself with world news like the war on terror and the Taliban between America and Afghanistan. Rogener’s knowledge on computers has built up his confidence. Rogner’s definition of the internet is “that of you can do anything”. This computer program in India has also helped Indian woman. In India 1/3 woman can read. The program can teach girls things unable to obtain in school or home.
Illiteracy is probably the last thing on the Indian’s government mind at this point. The big business in India who have the financial power should step in and help cure illiteracy like MIIT. The people of India should try to help each other since the government is failing to do their part. MIIT has accessed internet in 5 cities since 2003. I feel that if MIIT continues to donate high speed computers; the children will prosper. Also, libraries can better the situation; widening the children’s vocabulary span.
Internet access is so important and credential because of the information it disperses. This can cause a division between people who have internet access and those who do not. To keep the peace and the equality; internet access should be available to everyone. It can teach a person about a decade in one day. It truly is powerful.
Khadijat Olagoke
Cherricka
Samantha Grant, a documentary filmmaker from San Francisco, set out to Chennai, India to find out more about the Kidney trade. She knew this documentary was going to be hard, until she arrived in India where someone was willing to give up their kidney on the spot. This is shocking; however, 35% of India’s population earns a $1 a day, or less. These people are struggling and will do anything to help themselves at this point. Grant spoke to many people, receiving mixed views on the issue. Some say kidney trade should be legal because people with a kidney disease can be saved, and the poor person giving up their kidney can make money. This seems like a win to win situation to me. Others feel like the poor should not be giving their kidneys to anyone. They are more likely to receive infections due to lack of health care. This is also true. If a poor person donates a kidney and gets an infection afterwards, they are most likely to die.
The kidney trade in India is a human rights issue because a person should have the choice of whether or not they want to give up their kidney. Selling kidneys are illegal, which violates human rights. If someone wants to save someone’s life for a few dollars they should be able to do so. In the United States people are allowed to give blood for money. If this was not legal, our rights as humans mean nothing.
Poverty and the Organ Selling industry in India is a controversial issue among doctors and the citizens. Organs can be sold for larger amounts of money and kidneys are usually the organ of choice, since everyone starts out with two kidneys and can live off of one. Twelve years ago India passed a law making organ sellling illegal, but people continue to sell them, they are pratically lined up waiting to have their kidneys removed. Many people that do sell their organs are living in poverty and benfit from selling their kidneys.
An article in the New York Times Magazine posed the question asking what the big deal about making organ selling legal. If a person chooses to sell an organ and a person can benefit from taking the organ, whats the harm? It's a valid point, but later in the article it is mentioned that people are given two kidneys for a reason and removing one for a reason other than medical reasoning isnt the way things are intended to be, and they mention that the people who are living on the poorer side of the line are the ones selling their kidneys, yet they are the ones who are suffering more from the diseases and they are puttign themself at risk for death, only having one kidey to fail ratehr than having a backup kidney to take over.
Rachel Geissler
Samantha Grant’s “India: A Pound of Flesh” is about Grant’s investigations of kidney sales in India. In the slums, many Indians are willing to have transplant surgery in order to sell their kidneys for a price, typically in the low hundreds. With diabetes on the rise as a result of the increase of obesity in India, many people need their kidneys more than ever. Thus, it is hazardous to their health if they give up a kidney for a small wage. However, economic analysts view the current predicament of kidney sales as an opportunity to further stimulate India’s economy. The Indian government took precautions against the kidney sales by outlawing it. Despite the legal ban, many Indian citizens in need of money continue to illegally sell kidneys. Thus, the Indian government’s precautions taken thus far are ineffective and becoming more futile by the day. In cohesion with Indian doctor Dr. Ajit Huilgol’s opinion on the matter, I think that with the elimination of the middleman, kidney sales should be legalized. It could help to decrease the poverty rate. Furthermore, sales of kidneys could also decrease the death rate in India, as well as in other countries. Rather than having to be placed on a waiting list for a kidney donation, lives would be saved because simply purchasing the organ would speed of the process. Perhaps the Indian government should formulate health requirements that donors must physically meet in order to be healthy enough to give up a kidney. That way, perhaps faulty kidneys wouldn’t be sold and people with weak bodies wouldn’t be able to give up their kidneys
Ian Murphy
January 6, 2008
India is an unfortunate home to several human rights violations, though one that has caught my attention is the fact that there are children living on the streets. According to an article on the PBS website, roughly 3,000 children live on the streets of Vijayawada in southern India out of the million that live in that city alone. Evidently, there is an ever-increasing gap between the poor and the rich in terms of social status, as explicitly stated in the article itself, possibly as big as the 190-mile gap between Vijayawada and high-tech center Hyderabad. Father Thomas Koshy has made it his priority to develop a homeless shelter for these children who generally inhabit any nook and cranny they can come across. As believable and understandable as the issue of homeless children is, it is still very disturbing and pitiful that these children are denied good health care, protection from abuse and discrimination, and anything and everything a child needs to make a living in this world. Of course, these children to manage to get by through work, though just barely. But what is really depressing is that some children would actually grow so attached and so used to the streets that they would deny the opportunity to live in a shelter. Now the government is trying to fix this crisis by organizing food drives and getting them off the streets, which is very simple in terms of concept, and certainly easier said than done. But if they really want to fix this problem, the Indian government, I believe, should also focus on keeping more children from living, or at least growing attached to living, on the streets. To accomplish this, the Indian community as a whole, with all its vast resources and wealth, must really pull together on this one.
Within the streets and government of modern-day India, many consider their human rights laws, regulations and ideals to be rocky to say the least. Many reporters have said that because of these poorly made laws and because of many bad actions made by the Indian Government shows that the reason why children, women and men that are homeless due to health, Child labor, Gender Discrimination and even verbal and physical abuse! However there is a cure, not a viable and successful but a solution to say the most. Father Thomas Koshy has been helping to make homes and shelters for these homeless people since the early 1990's.
However, it is not just the homeless that bring India to the core issue. I notice a pattern of more economic and industrial growth and no privatizing within the community itself! Almost all of india has a source of clean water, however half the country is illiterate. Energy is not a problem, but education and real estate is? So what is the violation?
I find that these Human Rights Violations are being over shadowed by big business outsourcing and leaving the government blind to see the true issues that need to be accounted for!
As we see this pattern, India is heading into the future with poor ideals in mind, and their government is not prioritizing the right issues at hand to better suit the nation.
For the most part, in Mumbai many women are sold into prostitution as young girls; they are not there by choice. Most girls are sold into prostitution. Also most brothels in Mumbai are controlled by the Indian mafia, leaving no way for advocacy groups to aid prostitutes in HIV education. In Kolkata, many of the girls are born into it. Even though they too have no choice, they are given more respect. Some men don’t believe a condom will prevent HIV/AIDS so they see no point in wearing one. Prostitution is not legal in India. Though, some advocacy groups want prostitution to be legalized, because it will give sex workers more power, and rights. The sex worker unions have given workers the authority to say no when a client wants to have sex without a condom. It seems that the most popular area for red-light districts is the country's commercial centers. These cities are essentially temporary homes for countless men who are alone in the big city. This brings high risk that they'll spread disease to their communities when they go back home. When asked how someone could possible sell their daughters in a sex trade, he answered, “no one can understand unless you're in a situation facing the starvation of your entire family: your wife, your sons, your other daughters." Advocacy groups are improving the working conditions somewhat but prostitution is a billion dollar a year business. Poverty plays a big rule in the problem, as well as a lack of education about HIV/AIDS. The Indian government needs to take action. There should be punishment for people who violate the prostitution law. Also there should be more programs that assist the poor, so that the underprivileged don’t have to turn to prostitution to feed there families.
Ama - E-: Detailed summary. Your action plan is thoughtful but I bet organizations like these already exist. How can they become more successful in raising aid for needy Indian children?
Khadijat- E: Thoughtful and informed post.I'm wondering how you propose India fund such an expensive program.
Cherrika - G: You take a unique position on this issue. Most other students thought the organ trade needs to stop, you seem to be saying it is a person's right to determine if selling a kidney is worth the personal costs. Interesting work.
Samantha- S: You read and understood the sources but didn't pose an action plan, which was a requirement of this assignment.
Rachel- G+:Legalizing organ sales is a unique and practical idea. I do wonder how this would affect public health.
Ian- G: Thoughtful summary of the articles, your action plan could use more development. Overall, good work!
Wayne - G+: Interesting questions you pose about national priorities india and elsewhere. Is there a way to get big business involved in public education?
Paige- G+: Passionate and thoughtful post.
Veronica Geager
Street Children
Children living on the streets of India is a very human rights issue. The amount of children living on the streets in India is appalling. In such a economically diverse country, you would think the government would do more to combat this problem, before it get any worse. It is the responsibility of the government to supply housing for these children, because they are minors, who do not know what to do with themselves. Most of the children leave their homes due to physical or mental abuse, poor living conditions, or lack of support from the family. However, many are forced to live on the streets due to poverty, which is a horrible situation in itself. These children need some form of guidance, to help them navigate their lives and help them to obtain jobs or other forms of stability. Usually, these children are warped from something in their lives, and many turn to the streets because they have no where else to go. It is truly a heart breaking situation for these children, and I think it is the responsibility of the Indian government to help these children. If I were living in India, I would run for Parliament, and hopefully win the election so I could pass a law that creates housing for the homeless. I would want these children, and anyone else who were living on the streets to have a place to go and rest their tired feet.
Veronica -S: while your post is sensetive and solution-oriented, it doesn't include enough fact or references to demonstrate that you learned new information from the sources provided. Be sure to include references from the required readings. You're a capable analytical writer and capable of more thorough work.
Anam Baig, G Block
Children’s education is a big issue in India. With nearly 1.1 billion people inhabiting the nation, it is difficult to ensure the education of each child. Many parts of India are stricken with poverty, and many adults are illiterate. However, India is also home to a booming economy and advanced technology. In order to lessen the deepening divide between the two groups, a scientist named Sugata Mitra started a project called “The hole in the wall” experiment, where he gave poor Indian children unlimited access to a computer, equipped with the Internet. Now these Indian children have the world at their fingertips. They learned to use the computers themselves, and they applied their newfound knowledge to their every day lives. Allowing them to access the internet and to learn how to use a computer on their own teaches them the ability to think for themselves and to comprehend world issues. One of the children featured in the video became more passionate about education and became more self confident. Girls are encouraged to learn from the computer, which is a great leap, considering that a vast majority of the females in India is illiterate.
It seems like the government does not have much time to please the entire populace. The company that Sugata Mitra works with must be quite wealthy to install these computers in such rural and destitute areas. India’s per capita income is ranked 124th in the world, so it is obvious that not many families in India can afford a working computer equipped with a high speed internet. Also, there are many homeless children who are vulnerable to the dangers of India’s streets. Although the government has tried certain acts to ensure the safety of the children, the homelessness rate continues to be overwhelming as many of India’s kids continue to dwell in the streets.
In an effort to save the children, India’s government should invest in schools build for homeless children. These schools can be recreational centers meant to keep children off the streets. Computers are a big part of India’s tech boom, so these children should be taught the fundamentals. Since outsourcing is popular, older destitute and homeless people should be trained in a profession to earn money and live a better life.
***I just have to add a few things to my entry.
This lack of education is certainly a human rights issue. Although India's constitution states that each child should recieve an education, it is hard to ensure the right level of education for each child. The population is so vast that it is difficult for the government to give a proper education to each India child. I propose that the provinces in India should be divided further, and educational departments should be set up in each province to ensure each child recieves a primary education. Each province should also be equipped with basic technology necessary for these children to keep up with India's modern society.
Jeremy Smith
Block G
When I originally thought of India, with some of the greatest minds in the world, I would’ve also thought that the education system was well played out into each state or commune inside the great country. However, with the caste system, education is very limited to those who fall within that situation. The caste system is an organized hierarchy, showing the Untouchables, those who are not eligible to perform any deed or carry out any help, at the bottom of the chart. The difficulty of this is the fact that many children are forced into this religious poverty, leaving them in a sense of not understanding the world around them. Even in a non-secular government, India places its citizens in a dire place of increased poverty, inflating economy, and poorer education standards. In the article by FRONTLINE, “Hole in the Wall”, an Indian computer scientist, Dr. Sugata Mitra, placed a computer on a wall that faced the slums on his office building. The children who lived in that area were very curious as to what it was, and if it was on their “side”, they can use the computer. Within days, the children had started clicking and browsing the Internet. Regardless of one’s place in society, one should be able to have the access towards information, especially in India’s new reservation system, where everyone is entitled to a job, with or without competency. Today, Dr. Mitra continues his campaign of spreading knowledge to children who are suffering from poverty and the caste system. If this were to continue, more and more children would want to help the country due to their experiences of living in poor areas.
Astonn De Felice
G Block
India is the seventh largest country in the world and the second most populous, with an estimated 1.1 billion people. Many are forced to live on the streets and do whatever they can for money. For example, Mumbai is the center of commerce, as well as prostitution; most of them young girls and not there by choice. Many of the brothels in Mumbai are run by local Indian mafia, so HIV prevention is hard to teach throughout. However, Calcutta is different: HIV/AIDS awareness is common and there is even a sex workers’ union. The two cities are so different it's hard to compare them, but many say that the major difference is that while Calcutta also has mafia-run brothels, they are more independent than those in Mumbai, and the sex worker unions have actually been able to make an impact. There's also a very different structure in terms of the sex industry. In Mumbai, most girls are sold into prostitution and are essentially slaves to the brothels. In Calcutta, many of the girls are born into it, and while they have no choice but to be sex workers, there's a different level of respect. Also, most of the prostitution exists in the cities with the highest number of migrant workers. Red-light districts are booming in the country's commercial centers such as Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta and Chennai. These cities are the temporary homes for millions of men who are far away from home and their wives. Although men from all classes and lines of work visit prostitutes, migrant workers make up most of the red-light areas clients.
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