There are an estimated 1.03 billion citizens in India as of 2001; 260.2 million people living in there are in poverty as of 1999-2000. India is home to the majority of poor people in South Asia, and deprivation is considered an epidemic, especially in rural areas, people do not have enough food to eat and not enough productive land to grow enough food to live on. Of the people living in poverty in India, an estimated 400 million of the population are between 0-18 years of age. Almost half of all children under the age of five are malnourished and 34% of newborns are significantly underweight, due to malnourishment. (CHIP, 2003)
Infant mortality is a problem that many different organizations have been working in for decades. The positive thing that has come from the intervention of these organizations is the infant mortality rate has declined from 80 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 69 in 2000. (CHIP, 2003) Having the child mortality rate go down is a positive in many ways but the one problem is that the children raised in poor areas of India are continuing the cycle.
Another thing I learned about the conditions in India is the fact that children do not have the proper schooling opportunities they need to change the vicious cycle of supporting themselves and their families. The enrolment of primary school-aged children rose from 68 percent in 1992/1993 to 82 percent at the end of the decade. However, India still accounts for 20 per cent of the world's out-of-school children. It has the largest numbers of working children in the world, with nearly a third of children below 16 years working (CHIP, 2003).
