Walking up sand dunes – Telegraph Blogs

Tuesday 3 March 2015 | Blog Feed | All feeds

Peter Foster


Walking up sand dunes

Busy today writing a story on the Maldives which I hope will appear in the print edition this week. It's an absolute cracker which has taken a fair amount of spade work.

A malnourished girl treated by UNICEF

However, I did find time this morning to go to a UNICEF 'round table' briefing on child health which pin-pointed some of the great disparities in development across India.

It also reaffirmed the growing north-south divide in India as the populous northern states lose most of their best people to the south which has better levels of literacy, higher wages and correspondingly better healthcare.

In the worst districts of the worst states Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan – immunisation and birth registration rates are in some cases below five per cent.

These problems are well known. As is their chief cause weak and corrupt local government that fails to deliver adequate services to the people. The difficulty is finding a solution.

The thrust of this meeting seemed to be that such data would be used to identify I hesitate to use the phrase 'name and shame' – the culprits and then employ a carrot and stick approach to assist them to improve and, if necessary, punish them by withholding Federal government funds.

Overall, we were told that India isn't doing 'too badly' in water provision and education but is struggling to meet Millennium Development Goals for nutrition, health and sanitation.

The task is shoulder-slumpingly immense. The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh makes wonderful, thoughtful speeches (I mean that, he really does) but everyone knows that when he pulls on the strings of government he discovers they aren't attached to a great deal.

Among the big new theories is to strengthen the Panchayati Raj to decentralise and empower people to demand to know why their children are not being inoculated, why their hand-pumps have run dry, why the teachers don't turn up to teachÂ…

This is a sound idea, but somehow I fear it doesn't recognise the fundamental impotence of India's vast, illiterate poor. Even if you know your rights, demanding entitlements can be a risky business. Often better to settle for crumbs than nothing at all.

PSÂ… in that vein, I had a depressing conversation with a UNICEF official. Some readers might remember a piece I wrote from a UNICEF emergency feeding camp earlier this year in which babies (mostly girls) who had been starved to half their birth-weight were being nursed back to life.

Sadly, for all the valiant efforts of that scheme to nourish and educate, whenever the children are returned to their village too many of them just go straight back downhill. What do you do? Stand outside the door with a gun? It's like walking up sand dunes.

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