Jai Hind! (Long Live India)

I spent many hours trying to figure out how to express what I felt and thought last week when I visited the Learning Centers that Pratham runs in urban slums of New Delhi. After several attempts, I decided to let someone else do it: the children I met and a famous Irish poet.

 “Jai Hind! Good morning, Madame”, the boys and girls said as I entered to their classrooms. An Indian intern explained me that “Jai Hindi” translates to “Victory to India” or “Long Live India” and it is a battle cry of the Indian Army.  At first I thought that the kids were just repeating a quote without understanding the meaning. However, in one of the classes one of the teachers asked them to draw “something they like”. Several of them drew the Indian flag:

I realized that these children love their country.  And it is not fair for them that their country doesn't give them the opportunities to develop. But "who" is their country? "Who" can make something for them? Of course, anyone with the intentions and commitment to do it. 

However, working as a public servant in my country, I became a strong believer that from the public service it is possible to significantly change these children's lives,  to scale-up effective initiatives that positively affect their well-being. For example, to multiply by a hundred the number of Learning Centers that Pratham created.

(Trying to understand the hindi lessons.)

For this, we  need public servants that love their country and their future. These children are the future of India; we need public servants that love these kids. Public servants that are aware of the the huge responsibility they have with these children. Because, as in the poem of Butler Yeats,  these children spread their dreams under the country -under their feet-.

  

“…

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dream.”

“Cloths of Heaven”, William Butler Yeats.

Colorful India

Why India and Peru are similar?

I feel that India is very similar to my country. In the last decades, international community has shown enthusiasm about their future perspectives due to their outstanding economic performance. Nevertheless, their governments still are not able to transform that economic success in better opportunities for their citizens. For example, Peru is considered the “Latin America’s rising star” due to the fact that in the last eight years the economy has grown at an average rate of about 7%, the highest rate in the region (after Panama which is a much smaller country). However, in rural areas, more than a third of the children suffer chronic malnutrition and scarcely five percent of the students attending public schools achieve the expected results in mathematics.

In a similar way, with the conformation of the BRICS (the association of the five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), India was under the "spotlight" and expectations regarding it's role in global affairs were raised. Nowadays, the enthusiasm about India’s economic growth has declined. But what really worries is that –in comparison to China- India has not made significant reforms to improve the quality of basic services.  The Nobel Prize Amartya Sen is better than me to explain this point: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/opinion/why-india-trails-china.html?_r=0

For me, high economic performance -due to natural resources or innovation- and low living conditions for the people (or poverty) is a puzzle. In fact, when I travel around my country, I feel that the famous Italian-born Peruvian scientist Antonio Raimondi was right when he said –more than a century ago- that “Peru was a beggar sitting on a bench of gold”. It took me just two trips to figure out that India is also a beggar sitting on a bench of gold. I will try to show you my point through some pictures of my trips to Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

What can be do to transform the "gold" in better living conditions?

White: Taj Mahal

Green: Ranthambore National Park

Orange: Resting tiger at Ranthambore

 (Photo credit: Jaime Archundia)

Yellow: "Snake charmer". Amber Fort, Jaipur.

Rainbow: Worshipers walking towards the Ganesh Temple 

  (Photo credit: Jaime Archundia)

Son's preference

As kids, my sister and I always complained that my brother was our “parent’s favorite”. We had some material “signals” of this. While my sister and I shared a room, he had a room for himself and all the benefits from that: a TV for himself, a bigger bed and a bigger closet (of course in that time we didn’t understand that it is completely natural that same gender siblings share the room). In the first week of my internship at Pratham I have realized that I will never say again that he is the favorite, after all my parents gave us the same opportunities.

There is strong evidence in rural India that a girl would pursue more education if she is “born again as a boy”. As a 2010 Pratham report suggests: “in rural India, over 15% of children in the age group 15-16 are out of school, with more girls out of school than boys. In educationally backward states like Rajasthan, almost one out of every three girls in this age group is not in school. Similar patterns are visible in industrialized states like Gujarat as well, where the overall proportion of out of school children in the age group 15-16 is 23.5% but the fraction of girls in this age group who are not enrolled in school is 29%. Putting the pieces of the picture together for the current Indian context, we can see that a substantial fraction of children, especially girls, are not in school after age 14 and a significant proportion of this age group is still struggling through upper primary grades.”

Numerous studies have been developed to identify possible explanations for the gender gap in rural India. Among the most common explanations is that parents treat daughters and sons in a different way, commonly known as the “son’s preference” argument. Parents may prefer to invest in sons because they act as old-age security, while girls leave the parent’s house after marriage and thus, the returns to a daughter’s investment are reaped by her in-laws’ family. Some papers suggest that this attitude is also exhibited by mothers; they invest in their sons to win them as allies and insurance against an uncertain future in a patriarchal world. The result is less investment in health, nutrition and education of the girls.

In the next posts I will discuss other explanations for the gender gap. Sadly, most of the studies argue that the discrimination against girls is difficult to explain. However, what I can argue strongly is that, even thought my complaints, my parent's do not have a "son's preference". In fact, my siblings and I studied at high quality schools and colleges and even had the chance to study a master's degree (as the youngest sibling, I am the only one that have not completed it yet). I hope my siblings read this post and never say again that my parent's prefer one of us!

(My siblings and I)