Despite India's impressive economic growth over recent decades, the country continues to face challenges of poverty, illiteracy, corruption, malnutrition and terrorism. Approximately 70% of the country lives on less than U.S. $2.00 a day. Yet, India is a home to over 3 million NGOs. Many of these leaders are working tirelessly to improve the social conditions of the country.

"Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of India" will challenge students to confront more advanced issues faced by today's social entrepreneurs. The field experience of the course will take students to Mumbai and India. Students will meet Social Entrepreneurs and NGOs working at all societal levels to understand grassroots' needs as well as the overall public health infrastructure in India.

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Corruption


A consistent theme I can’t always help think about in India is corruption. It was scary traveling by myself the first time in India and realizing that if something goes wrong I have no 911 to call or whatever Indian authority I did call wouldn’t care about my situation. This might have been scary for me in theory for the three months I was here, but it is a horrific truth that Indian women live with everyday. This saddens and infuriates me to no end. The women here are not able to feel any protection because the police can be paid off or are the same people committing the crimes against women. On the plane ride over to India this Indian man was taking to Jackie and me about the dangers of India and the one thing he kept coming back to was the corruption of the police. He was saying that if you run into trouble or need help in Mumbai that you can’t go to the police because they will give you a harder time than the issue you were having in the first place. It is unnerving to know that the corruption in the police force is so ramped that a stranger on a plane feels the need to warn us about it. I just keep thinking why isn’t someone doing something about this? Why is corruption being allowed to be so open here? While sharing these thoughts with my group, I was told that there is a whole "corruption movement" happening in India and that the youth is becoming very engaged in this issue. Hearing this made me relieved but left with so many other questions...

I was told that in India a wealthy man killed three people from drunk driving and he was able to walk away by paying a fine. Killing someone should never just be finable offense. It is injustices like this that have to be fought alongside health issues, because if people know their life isn’t valued what is their incentive to stay healthy? Or why keep India healthy when chances are their children aren’t going to have a better life than they have had? Health is all about syndemics. Every issue in life is so interconnected with health and I think that is the biggest lesson in public health.

In India I get overwhelmed thinking about how we, as public health professionals, can better the health of a country with such grave infrastructure issues. How do you begin to pick one problem to solve when they are all so interconnected? I discussed this all with Dr. Vyas and she gave me probably the most realistic advice, “you just have to pick one thing and go with it”. I appreciated the frankness because I do feel it is important to not get so overwhelmed that it makes you not want to try to change things. That just because I can’t solve a history of corruption in India doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try to at least impact its health, and hopefully when we can solve one issue it will align things to make solving the rest possible.

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1 comment:

  1. swati8/08/2012 2:17 pm

    Hey, though I loved most of the stuff printed out here-the last one is a little unreal and far from the truth. Yes, there is corruption, yes lots of things are like they should not be, but it is not as bleak as you make it out. And one disgruntled person's comments should not cloud impressions of an entire country.
    Even here, there are outrages if a rich guy commits a crime(Please read our newspapers of the past few months to see how many influential people have been in jail on charges of corruption). 'Killing someone is not only finable here'- it has more to do with the ways in which laws are interpreted in particular cases and it happen I'm sure, in most places.
    The very poor and the very rich are two groups which are very different from the rest of the population everywhere-they are not country specific at all.If a prime minister was killed here , so was JFK in US and so have many other important leaders elsewhere-the reason why all important people pay so much for security all over the world.
    Since my youth, I have travelled in trains, mostly on my own- I haver never felt unsafe.I am a mother of two young kids( and one of them is a girl) and I wouldn't want to bring them up anywhere else! You never will hear of school shoot-outs in India.

    I have been practising Public Health in India for the last 10 years. There is every reason for children to have better health, that they can be better educated, that they can have a better future. And that is what millions of people are doing- each of us doing our bit, in making the country healthier and better for tomorrow
    Dr Swati Jha
    (Pediatrician, Public Health Expert , mother of two and a very happy-and-upbeat-about-future Indian)

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