The Comeback Kid?

Impact India Foundation – Day 5

To every Cinderella story, we always admire the combat kid, but let’s just say if there is no combat kid to every Cinderella story?

In India, to be born into the Tribe population is to be forgotten by society. The Tribe population is a disenfranchised group that for centuries has existed and falls outside the Indian caste system.

The social inequality that is faced by the Tribe population is similar to the social injustices that are faced by the Native Americans in the United States. Aside from poverty, the health issues that plague the Tribe population range from maternal and infant mortality, malnutrition, anemia, and alcoholism.

For the Tribe population, the rural area of the Thane District is home and is located three hours from Mumbai. Our social entrepreneurship group had the privilege to meet with the general director of IMPACT India Foundation, Neelam Kshirsagar, who has been working with the Tribe population for seven years. The organization has provided a community health initiative that has provided the baseline in basic health care to the Tribe population from breast-feeding lessons for new mothers and their newborns, regular check-ups for anemia, and an array of other services such as the Lifeline train and medical mobiles.

We were able to see Impact’s work in progress when we visited a residential school that houses an estimated 500 children at the primary school grade-level. We had the opportunity to meet a group of young girls that where being checked by a doctor for any health aliments. Among the group of young girls, four girls are given the honor and responsibility of being called health monitors. As health monitors, the young girls are trained to pinpoint classmates for eye and ear infections, colds, and other aliments common among young children. It has provided the opportunity for children to become aware and understand how to prevent diseases by being hygienic and it has also allowed parents to learn from their children for the overall health and welfare of their families.

As I observed the girls, I noticed that the girls took pride in helping their classmates. A part of me eventually began to wonder if one of these days a child from the Tribe population will eventually leave this poverty and become someone in life. When a member of our group asked if these children will eventually receive vocational training after the primary and secondary-level, Neelam was blunt and responded that be a member of the Tribe population, one is only destine to be just a field laborer. Neelam was brutally honest that a member of the Tribe population will never be destine to become a doctor, a lawyer, or even a Bollywood star due to hundreds of years of total oppression.

For some members of my group they walked away disappointed. I walked away understanding the unfairness of our classicism society. I am not denying my idealism in changing the world, but I did not walk away with a white flag.

I am a realist and where I come from, you will always have the people that make it out of their communities to never return or the ones that leave, but do return. For the ones that stay behind, it is the usual story of the individual that fall between the cracks of society to be found a dysfunctional penal system, lost in the abyss of drug addiction, or never given the aspiration to be beyond meagerness. For the ones that do make it out and return, I call them the comeback kid. Those are the Jay-Z’s and Sonia Sotomayor's that are able to overcome the oppressive obstacles of poverty.

Maybe in my lifetime there will be no Jay-Z emerging from the Tribe population, but I am hopeful that the mother of a child that does give birth to a future Jay-Z is provided with the basic health care to thrive and raise her family with the inalienable right and access to health.