Mr.Budd Man you just asked us to solve the country's problems with out even being in PMO... here's my 2 cents....
>>>we are still seen as a third world country
I'm sure we all know that "third world" is a definition by the west.... of the countries that are neither developed (like the western countries - First world) nor communist (Soviet Block - second world) to be more specific its basically non-industrialsed nations... so by that definition yes we are 3rd world.
It is for us.... if we accept this definiton or not... but the world has very much accepted this definition. Our Govt. mostly refers to us as a "Developing Nation" which is fine too... it says the same thing... we are not developed yet....
there are many parameters that define whether we are developed or not... if you read any of the UN documents on human development index etc. or just general statistics.... you'll get an idea of what they mean by a develped nation... I know there may be many of us who don't necessarily agree with the highly biased UN stuff... for lack of better information, we might have to rely on UN statistics for the time-being.
Now, your question was...."what does the "First world country" have that we dont...." I don't know if you mean let's compare with them or if you mean we are better than them... whether we are better or worse is a matter of perception/opinion... but assuming the questions is about the development of India....
I've been trying to understand the problem for a long time now... :-(
and this is the way I tried to understand the problem...
What is it that we want when we say we want a developed nation? I think its for us to decide.... any society will progress only if there's new ideas and concepts evolving for the betterment of humanity and like Swami Vivekanada said, this can only happen if we are self sufficient at the individual level... and the human mind can do its best only if its healthy and Free.
how do we become healthy and Free... if a person has enough to eat and has a decent place to live I think thats a good starting point... Then, how much of it is the Govt.'s duty towards this.... if you look at societies since the days of the invention of democracy by Cleisthenes, the idea of democracy itself evolved so much... There will be arguments and counter arguments on how much the govt.. should do... but in general, the govt. should take care of the Health (Food, sanitation etc come under this), Education (All forms of education from Primary to Nuclear/Rocket), Defense (Both internal & external)...... to begin with, (We can argue on how much of each of these is important) the rest of it will follow... commerce (Economy) is the next most important thing....because when the population has the basics.... they will work (They need work) and make the rest of the economy move...
Now if we take a look at some statistcs with regards to the development indicators.... we'll understand the Past and Present of our problem then may be we'll understand the future of the problem
for deepu's sake let me start on a positive note....
Health is something that has a lot to with present than the past because when people die they don't pass on their health....
everything else has a lot to do with the past. I mean we don't have to focus much on the historical reasons beyond the last 50 years...
So, let me focus on my understanding of the situation
Health:
At the time of Independence India has:
Approx 325Million People
Total urban Population - 14.5%
Total Rural Population - 85.5%
We had 4.7 Million Lepers, 12.5 Million TB Patients and about 10 Million Indians died each year because of malnutrition & Under nourishment
These are the latest stats and stories
The general condition of India's population has improved since the 1970s. Average life expectancy at birth has increased from 50 years to 63 today,
mortality rate has fallen by half to about 7%, and the birthrate has fallen by half to about thee children per woman.
There are 497,000 leprosy patients in India (March,2000)
Each year 450,000 people die of TB alone (2003 Research)
12.7 million people efetcted with TB out of a total world TB population of 16 million
Each year 1.25 million kids die because of malnourishment and under-nourishment (2003)
Each year 1.5 million infants die because of Diarrhoea alone
over 19 million children contract acute respiratory illnesses including pneumonia every 14 days
80% of India's health related problems and several millions of fatalities happen because of water borne illnesses but India receives funds from several foreign countries for totally unrelated health issues.
USAID gave $335 million to India each year till the early 90s (2004 USAID budget allocates $135 million for India) almost all of it is used for population control - this has its own implications which don't show up in the stats.... hazardous contraceptives and other medicines such as Norplant are pushed on rural illiterate women..... basically testing the medcines on mass population... (some side effects of Norplant include: Serious liver disease, Serious depression, seizures etc... )
With only 60 percent of births attended by skilled assistants, India suffers one-quarter of the world's maternal deaths 350 deaths for every 100,000 live births.
42% of the Asia and Near East's deaths of children under five are in India.
every 4th person that dies on the planet because of waterborne illnesses is an Indian. Inspite of 10s of millions dying each year because of mal-nutrition the total expenditure on nutrition is 1.3% of GDP..... in yesterday's (July 7th 04) budget speech FM didn't even touch the topic of nutrition, and the focus on improving general health...his main focus was on Health insurance scheme....
for a comparision take a look at other developing / developed countries... (as % of GDP)
Nicaragua - 6.7
Brazil - 2.8
China - 2.1
Sweden - 7.6
USA - 5.9
only 20% of the hospital beds are in the rural areas where 75% of India still lives.... you don't want to know the state of the govt. run PHCs in rural areas....
To top it all... India produces more doctors than nurses. In the early 90s there were 381,978 registered allopathic doctors to 111,235 nurses... every year 14000 doctors graduate compared to 8000 nurses.... I'm still trying to find how many of these doctors each year settle abroad after having been trained at the expense of the poorest people in the world.
I guess its the communists that are doing it right... Kerala is the only state in the country that has more nurses than doctors...
with the latest revision of BPL (below poverty line) definition, any family with an income of more than Rs12000 per year (Rs 1000 a month) is above poverty line.... so a family of 5 with an income of Rs12000 is not in the statistic when they say there are 300 Million Indians below poverty line.... how can such a family afford the cost of health care in an urban area.... the only place where it seems you get some decent medical care.....
to be continued.....
-keshav
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