World Children’s Day (20.9): 3000 children die every day in India of under-nourishment – the victims are for the most part original inhabitants

On the occasion of the World Children’s Day (20.9) the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) has appealed to the government of India to do more for the protection and health of children of the Adivasi original inhabitants. „It is a scandal that in one of the most important industrial nations of Asia every day some 3000 children of impoverished original inhabitants or Dalit (untouchables) die of malnutrition”, said the GfbV Asia consultant, Ulrich Delius, on Friday in Göttingen. A study published in September by the renowned British Institute of Development Studies came to the conclusion that 46 percent of all children in India under the age of three suffer from malnutrition.

„In view of the threat of a famine more children of native people in India, like the Adivasi, will die in the coming months”, warned Delius. Some 280 districts in eleven federal states are affected by the drought and 45 percent of all districts of the country have announced serious crop failures. Impoverished native inhabitants of the Medak district (federal state of Andhra Pradesh) in utter despair asked the authorities in August for permission to sell their children to allow the family to survive. Adivasi women are forced into prostitution on account of abject poverty. A farmer near the town of Jhansi in the federal state of Uttar Pradesh admitted having sold his wife to pay his debts.

It is true that the gross national product in India rose in the period 1980 to 2006 by four percent per annum, but the percentage of underweight children fell in this period only slightly, from 52 to 46 percent. About 54 percent of all Adivasi children are seen by the Indian health authorities to be under-developed. Even India’s deputy president, Mohammad Hamid Ansari, admitted on 27th August 2009 that the social situation of the Adivasi native peoples is disastrous. „If there is one group in India which is badly treated, then it is the Adivasi”, said Ansari. „They have been treated disgracefully and they have been neglected in the past 6,000 years.”

The Adivasi native people, who number some 85 million, are together with the Dalit the poorest group in the population of India. By the theft of land many communities of native inhabitants have lost the basis of their existence. Since 1960 more than 400 indigenous languages in India have disappeared. The number of languages now threatened with extinction is 196, and this means the threat of destruction of the indigenous cultures – something to be found in no other country in the world, reported the UNESCO in February 2009.

Ulrich Delius can also be reached at u.delius@gfbv.de