Parents, students and international organisations alike are voicing the pressing need to reopen schools after the two-year long hiatus due to Covid-19. Various reports both at the national and international level have already talked about the damage levied on Indian education due to the abrupt shift to digital education when only some portion of the population has access to electricity let alone technology and internet.

The simmering unrest can now be felt in certain regions of Haryana where parents have started sending children to school despite institutions working at half their strength. According to the Tribune India on January 25, 2022 residents of Dhani Sanchla and Dhani Bhojraj villages sent their children to Government Secondary School, Fatehabad that followed government directions and refused to take physical classes.

Villagers had resolved since Monday to send their children to the village school despite Covid restrictions as per the Disaster Management Act-2005 that were extended until Republic Day. They even submitted a memorandum to the district administration but to no avail. The villages have had to deal with online education despite there being a government school and three private schools.

Similarly, Economically Weaker Section (EWS) parents still await private school admission for their children as per Section 134A of the Haryana School Education Rules. The Tribune reported that parents finally conducted a “class” of students on the campus of the mini secretariat. Tired of waiting for the administration to act, students sat for two hours demanding that their enrollment be completed.

Many schools demanded that the government clear dues before enrolling students in their schools. According to authorities, schools have been issued show-cause notices for not adhering to the government orders. However, such instances indicate that families are growing impatient and the need for classrooms and physical classes is more dire than ever.

Already the ASER 2020 Wave 1 phone survey for rural Haryana showed that the percentage of children not enrolled in schools had risen from 2.3 percent in 2018 to 4.4 percent between 6-16 years. In the report, smartphones were the most popular medium of education during the beginning of the pandemic, effectively cutting off a large group of children from education. Of these, most of the education was imparted through WhatsApp. Due to this, 40.6 percent of children said they could not access learning material because they had no smartphone. 42.2 percent said the school did not send any material, while 11.5 percent and 2.3 percent said they did not have internet or proper connectivity respectively.

GEEAP 2022 report

On Republic Day, the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP) released the ‘Prioritizing Learning During Covid-19’ report with the latest data on the impact of school closures on children. Globally, it said that a Grade 3 child, who has lost one year of schooling during the pandemic, could lose up to three years’ worth of learning in the long run if urgent action is not taken.

In the case of India, it said that ASER Centre’s 2021 Karnataka report showed decreases in both literacy and numeracy at the primary level, equivalent to one year of schooling.

“India and Pakistan suggests a slowdown in learning progress relative to pre-Covid cohorts. The World Bank, UNESCO, and UNICEF (2021) estimate that school closures of one year map on average to one year of lost learning,” said the report.

Learning losses due to school closures has become one of the biggest global threats to medium- and long-term recovery from Covid-19. According to GEEAP Co-Chair Abhijit Banerjee, the evidence tells us that schools need to reopen and be kept open as far as possible and steps need to be taken in bringing children back into the school system. Banerjee shared the 2019 economics Nobel Prize in part for his work in education and is one of the 15 international education experts, who produced the second annual GEAAP report.

The loss of learning will also result in a severe economic cost. A recent estimation predicts a USD $17 trillion loss in lifetime earnings among today’s generation of schoolchildren if corrective action is not taken.

“While many other sectors have rebounded when lockdowns ease, the damage to children’s education is likely to reduce children’s wellbeing, including mental health, and productivity for decades, making education disruption one of the biggest threats to medium- and long-term recovery from Covid-19 unless governments act swiftly,” said Panel Co-Chair Kwame Akyeampong.

Low- and middle-income countries and socio-economically disadvantaged children suffered the most in this time, said the report.

Recommendations

To address this growing global concern, the report made four recommendations to prevent further loss and recover children’s education. It called upon countries to prioritize the full and constant opening of schools and preschools. Citing the educational, economic, social, and mental health costs of school closures, it said that shutting educational institutions must be treated as a last resort.

The report also called upon countries to prioritize teachers for the Covid-19 vaccination, provide and use masks were assessed as appropriate, and improve ventilation. Accordingly, instructions should be adjusted to support children’s needs and focus on important foundational skills.

“It is critical to assess students’ learning levels as schools reopen. Targeting instruction tailored to a child’s learning level has been shown to be cost-effective at helping students catch up, including grouping children by level all day or part of the day,” said the report.

Lastly, it said that governments must ensure teachers have adequate support to help children. Interventions that provide teachers with carefully structured and simple pedagogy programs cost-effectively increase literacy and numeracy, particularly when combined with accountability, feedback, and monitoring mechanisms.

Related:

Hijab controversy takes an ugly turn in Karnataka
Haryana: Why are 40,000 teachers’ posts lying vacant?
Kashmir: Educationist Sabbah Haji released on bail
Why does the Karnataka government not want children to eat eggs at mid day meals?

The post UNICEF and parents worry about India’s future generations in the aftermath of Covid-19 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Gujarat High Court on December 18, took suo motu cognisance of a survey conducted by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) and the UNICEF Gujarat, which revealed that among the households which had children enrolled in the Government schools, 85 percent of the parents reported that they were not able to access anything in lieu of the mid-day meals since March, when the schools were closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Bench of Justice J. B. Pardiwala and Justice Ilesh J. Vora said, “The Indian Express News Service, Ahmedabad, in its article dated December 18, 2020, has reported something very serious, which calls for the immediate attention of the State Government.”

The court also directed the registry to register a writ petition by giving a ‘pucca’ number and issue notice to the Principal Secretary, Education Department and the Commissioner, Mid-day Meal Schemes.

The study conducted by the KMIC-Knowledge Management and Innovations for Change, an IIMA and UNICEF initiative launched in 2015, to understand the accessibility to remote learning and challenges faced by the students and their parents, revealed that about 15 per cent of the parents received rice, wheat and/or pulses in lieu of the mid-day meals.

Further, around 30 percent of the children had not engaged in any formal learning activities since March 2020. This was highest for those attending the private schools (33 per cent), followed by the Government schools (26 per cent), and those attending the private schools through the RTE mandate (22 per cent). The average income of the sample was around Rs.1,190 per month and more than 95 per cent of the households had monthly income less than Rs.4,400.

The court also took note of the alarming rate of dropouts in the State. “The inability to pay the fees has led some parents to consider an alternate option of transfers to other schools or even dropping their children out of the school for the year. This is something very serious,” said the Bench.

Also, only 54 per cent of the families said that they have a functioning television with cable/DTH. Less than 2 per cent had access to a laptop and a Wi-Fi connection and email was used by less than 12 per cent of the families.

In this backdrop the court said, “The attention of the State Government should be immediately drawn to the aforesaid, and in such circumstances, we deem fit to take suo motu cognizance of the above in public interest.”

The matter will now be heard on January 5, 2021.

The order may be read here:

Related:

No Mid-day meals disbursed in Goa during lockdown: Education Ministry
Broken Slates and Blank Screens: PUCL’s report on Education amidst the lockdown
Covid-19: Schools terminate contractual services, reduce teaching staff during lockdown

The post Gujarat HC takes suo motu cognisance of mid-day meal survey appeared first on SabrangIndia.

According to a new WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission report called ‘A future for the world’s children?’ India ranks 131st among 180 countries in the category of child survival.

The report states that no country in the world is adequately protecting children’s health, their environment and their futures. It also stated that the health and future of every child is under “immediate threat” from ecological degradation, climate change and exploitative marketing practices that push heavily processed fast food, sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco at children.

The report also says that children must be put at the centre of every country’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, even though it has been five years since these goals were adopted, “few countries have recorded much progress towards achieving them”.

Health Issues India states that though the country has improved on many counts – it recorded a 30 percent decrease in newborn mortality rates – it still continues to face an evident socioeconomic crisis. While the report states that there are positive examples of how policy changes have worked and how change can be driven through citizen action, India still has a long way to go.

The infant mortality rate in India currently stands at 33 per 1,000 live births, meaning nearly 800,000 to 850,000 infants die every year in India, the average daily number standing at 2,350. Speaking to IE, Lu Gram, India Index developer at the Institute for Global Health, UCL, said, “In terms of basic survival, one-fifth of Indian households still live in extreme poverty, nearly half do not have access to improved sanitation, and over a quarter do not have access to a skilled birth attendant. The government has launched initiatives such as Swachh Bharat, Janani Suraksha Yojana and MNREGA, etc. to deal with these issues, but it remains to be seen whether they will successfully tackle them or not. In terms of children’s ability to thrive, India displays some of the worst indicators on child nutrition in the world, as 28 per cent of children are low birth weight and 42 per cent are stunted. It also has some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence, with 39 per cent of women having experienced IPV in the past (compared to 11-15 per cent seen in high-income countries). Another issue is the high youth suicide rate, as suicide is the most common cause of death for the 15-29 age group.”

India is also riddled with problems of malnutrition, 69 percent of deaths of children below the age of five were caused due to it. Not just this, a contradictory issue of obesity is also on the rise among Indian youth. By 2030, the country is set to be home to 27 million obese children, becoming a major driver of childhood obesity.

The report highlights how children have been adversely hit by marketing, especially through internet and mobile targeting. A public survey conducted between September 2018 and December 2018 showed that 88.8 percent of youth started drinking before the legal drinking age and could procure alcohol without any age check.

A report by the Tobacco Atlas stated that 625,000 children in India ranging from 10 – 14 years of age continue to use tobacco each day. It states that though 0.64 percent boys – a number fewer than other countries smoke tobacco in India each day, the number is still pegged at more than 429,500 boys making the issue a dire public health threat.

Even climate change and environmental pollution – challenge that the country’s government has pledged to overcome still stands to daunt it today.

The report reads, “Children and young people are full of energy, ideas and hope for the future. They are also angry about the state of the world.”

India deals with vast amounts of air and water pollution. In the past, India stood 177th out of 180 countries which were ranked for their environmental performance. Air pollution, the report stated, caused 1.1 million deaths in the country each year and more than 5 cities in India stood in the top 10 list of the world’s most polluted cities.

Anthony Costello, a co-author of the Lancet report said that India faced manifold challenges related to climate change in the near future. “We don’t want to bequeath our children an unsafe world, with increasing heatwaves, proliferation of diseases like malaria and dengue, water shortages, population migration and malnutrition. India faces all of these challenges in the near future,” he told Health Issues India, adding that “the Indian government should recognise that every effort to tackle climate change will be good for the health of children and all families: clean air, clean water, better play areas, safer roads, better nutrition, and population stability.”

Citing a National Rural Health Mission (NHRM) case study from India, the WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission report states that state officials and communities have increased public awareness of their rights and empowerment to demand these rights. However it says that more focus needs to be given to data collection as the use of data can effectively contribute to monitoring and planning health policies and programmes, including those relevant to children’s health and wellbeing, and their potential for wider scale-up.

It is the duty of Prime Ministers and cabinets to think across all ministries about the impact on the health of the children and their future, Costello says. The report too emphasizes – “Since threats to child health and wellbeing originate in all sectors, a deliberately multi-sectoral approach is needed to ensure children and adolescents survive and thrive form the ages of 0-18 years, today and in the future. Citizen participation and more importantly, soliciting the inputs of children and adolescents themselves, apart from the contribution of the government is imperative to grant the children the future they deserve.

Related:

India ranks first in child deaths under 5 years of age: UNICEF report               
Children living in extreme poverty are most vulnerable to effects of climate change
Our children’s future

The post India 131st out of 180 countries on child survival rankings: WHO-UNICEF-Lancet report appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In the first week of the ongoing Lok Sabha session, a few questions were asked about child health and the central theme of these questions centred around malnutrition. A recent UNICEF report has found that India ranks highest in annual number of deaths of children under the age of 5. Here’s a brief look at the findings of the report that also examines how India’s heath care policies have been able to cope with the issue of malnutrition, which is the cause of 68.2% deathsof children under 5 years of age.

About the report

The UNICEF report titled “The State of World’s Children 2019-Children Food and Nutrition” is being annually published by the UNICEF since 1980. The aim of publishing this report is to spread awareness and knowledge about issues affecting children and it advocates solutions that can improve children’s lives. This report is one of the many initiatives of the UNICEF. The report states that the triple burden of malnutrition – under nutrition, hidden hunger and overweight – threatens the survival, growth and development of children, young people, economies and nations. The overall findings of the report are that, at least 1 in 3 children under 5 is undernourished or overweight and 1 in 2 suffers from hidden hunger, undermining the capacity of millions of children to grow and develop to their full potential.

The UNICEF report may be read here:

India findings

According to UNICEF, 38% of children under the age of 5 in India suffer from stunting. In the worst affected state, almost 50% children suffer from stunting: in the least affected state 1/5th of the children suffer from stunting. Stunting is a clear sign that children in a country are not developing well – is both a symptom of past deprivation and a predictor of future poverty. The report also explains the triple burden of malnutrition, being – under nutrition, hidden hunger and overweight – which undermines children’s health and physical and cognitive development. Analysis of 2011-12 data suggest that in India 5% of rural and 8% of urban population bears the triple burden of malnutrition.

The report states that although India stands a chance of a good demographic dividend in the coming years, the same can only be realized with improvement in human capital, by investing in people’s education, training, skills and health and malnutrition stands as a hurdle in the path of a good demographic dividend in the future.

The report also mentioned that India’s health system provides curative care and foster positive family practices such as breast-feeding. In India, national and state governments implemented a multi-pronged strategy to support breastfeeding, including large-scale programmes, effective capacity-building initiatives, strong partnerships, community-based action, and communications campaigns. As a result, early initiation of breastfeeding rose from 24.5 per cent in 2006 to 44.6 per cent in 2014.

There was also a detailed mention of how India’s Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS), which ran from 2016 to 2018 across all states captured the nutritional status of pre-school, school going children and adolescents up to 19 years of age.

Yet, India topped the list of countries with highest annual number of under-5 deaths in 2018, at 8,82,000 such deaths.

Malnutrition

India’s struggle with the malnutrition among children under the age of 5 (U-5) has been a long one. Malnutrition refers to a pathological state of deficiency or excess of nutrients. Under nutrition is known to be one of the most common causes of morbidity and mortality among children <5 years of age.

India’s policies tackling malnutrition

India has multiple health schemes many of which promote maternal care and nutrition as well child care and nutrition and there is a lot of awareness about the same among the masses that need it the most, i.e. the poor (urban as well as rural) and the rural population at large. One of the most successful models of child health and nutrition is the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) which was originally launched in 1975 but gained traction much later. ICDS was providing ineffective in tackling the issue of malnutrition as providing primary health care and nutrition is not the only provision in the scheme.

The government later launched Nutrition Rehabilitation Centres (NRCs) at public health centres to treat Severely Acute Malnutrition (SAM) cases. A recent study of these NRCs revealed that shortage of human resources was one of the major issues faced by them. The study was carried out in 4 NRCs and it was observed that only 70% of doctors, 7.4% of nursing staff, and 30% of attendants and cleaners were available across the four NRCs. NRCs provide life-saving care for children with SAM; however, the protocols and therapeutic foods currently used need to be improved to ensure the full recovery of all children admitted. To sustain the benefits and prevent relapse, there is a need to integrate the services at NRC with the community-based therapeutic care to deliver a continuum of care from facility to doorstep and vice versa.[1]

By the insertion of Article 21A in the Constitution, the right to education, hitherto an obligation on the State under the Directive Principles of State Policy became a justiciable right: through this, the 86th amendment to the Constitution in 2002, the State must provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age 6 to 14 years. The 86^th amendement also went further. It replaced Article 45 that comes under the Directive Principles of State Policy and was previously the only provision related to the right to education with a renewed pledge to read (amended Article 45): “The State shall endeavour to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years.”

CNNS (Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey)

In the data provided on the Lok Sabha recently mentioned that CNNS results highlighted improvement in the U-5 category stating that in comparison to NFHS -4 (National Family Health Survey) which was carried out in 2015-16 there was reduction in cases of stunting from 38.4% to 34.7%, in cases of wasting from 21% to 17.3% and in cases of underweight children from 35.7% to 33.4%.

POSHAN (Prime Minister Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nourishment)

Under POSHAN, the government aims to attain a malnutrition free India by 2022. It was launched in 201 by Prime Minister Modi and it targets to tackle malnutrition by ensuring convergence of various nutrition related schemes. Its large component involves gradual scaling-up of interventions supported by on-going World Bank assisted Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Systems Strengthening and Nutrition Improvement Project (ISSNIP) to all districts in the country by 2022.

Since POSHAN is the foremost policy for tackling malnutrition and has such an ambitious target of eliminating completely, the menace of malnutrition that has plagued India’s health care for years now, it is important to study how well and effectively has this ambitious policy been implemented.

The government had planned to release a “Status of India Nutrition” report in March 2019 to rank states according tot heir performance under the POSHAN Abhiyaan. The report however, has not yet been released.

An opinion piece in Livemint argued that Anganwadi centres are supposed to be the point of delivery of all health related schemes and these centres are themselves struggling with infrastructure problems. Around 24% of them lacked their own building and operated from small rented premises, and around 14% lacked pucca buildings. Only 86%, 67% and 68% of AWCs had drinking water facilities, electricity connections and toilets respectively, some of which are either dysfunctional or could not be used due to conditions imposed by landlords. There is also lot of room for improvement in terms of achieving universalization of coverage and advanced service delivery in health care. When the cogs that POSHAN scheme depends are only not functioning at their best output, how can a scheme like POSHAN with such a behemoth task achieve its target completely.

It was reported in September 2019 that a recent study conducted by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) estimated that many Indian states are running behind and may not be able to reach their targets under the POSHAN Abhiyaan.

Way forward

This indicates that India has still a long way to go in achieving its goal of eradicating malnutrition and thus malnutrition related deaths. What India needs is one integrated health plan for children below the age of 6 where all current elements of health care are firstly provided with the infrastructure they need and ensuring maintenance and periodic monitoring of records and data (for ease of assessment of performance) and regular and timely follow-ups. While awareness already exists, multiplicity of schemes makes the task convoluted.

Related:

Most states won’t meet Poshan Abhiyaan targets to curb child malnutrition: Study

Karnataka gov’t delays malnutrition alleviation report, HC warns of contempt proceedings

Gates Foundation study: Child malnutrition reduction targets impossible to achieve

38% Of Indian Children Under 4–Poor And Rich Alike–Are Stunted: Study

Mini Anganwadis Could Help The Poorest And Most Disadvantaged

Why India Is Likely To Miss Its Nutrition Targets For 2022

Budget for Children in #NewIndia in 2018-19

The post India ranks first in child deaths under 5 years of age: UNICEF report appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Stunting is caused by malnutrition and both rich and poor children in India are eating badly for different reasons, said experts. “Awareness about healthy diets is low in India, even among the economically well-off segment,” said Shweta Khandelwal, additional professor and head of nutrition research at the Public Health Foundation of India.

India also has the world’s third worst (after Djibouti and South Sudan) wasting rate: 21% of its children are underweight for their height, according to the SOWC report.

Low weight and height in early childhood are a consequence of undernutrition, and their effects may be irreversible: Children who eat insufficient food lacking in the required nutrients fall sick more often and earn less as adults, effectively keeping them trapped in poverty.

India was ranked 102 on the Global Hunger Index 2019 (GHI), below Pakistan (94), Bangladesh (88) and Nepal (73). The index is a weighted average of stunting and wasting rate, and the GHI estimates that the percentage of wasted children in India increased from 16.5% to 20.8% between 2008-12 and 2014-18.

Inadequate food intake in first 1,000 days of life
Poor nutrition in early life leads to stunting and loss of IQ, which has consequences for the economy, said Mumbai-based pediatrician Rupal Dalal, adjunct professor at the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and director of health at the Shrimati Malati Dahanukar Trust.

Stunting and impaired brain development are common among those who received inadequate food in the first 1,000 days of their life, said Khandelwal. “The adverse effects are difficult to reverse,” she added.

Early childhood malnutrition increases the risk of developing non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and heart disease in adult life, the experts concurred. In addition, stunted mothers face complications during pregnancy and this affects their children as well.

Children who were stunted in the first two years of their life go on to spend less time in school and earn up to $1,440 (equivalent to Rs 1 lakh) less over their life than their peers of average height, said the SOWC report.

Poor children do not get enough protein: Study
The role of income is most apparent in the consumption of protein-rich foods such as milk products and eggs, according to the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS). While 82.7% of children from the richest households aged 2-4 years consume dairy products, half that number (41.3%) from poorest households do. Similarly, 8.2% of children from the poorest households ate eggs compared to 20% from the richest households.

Overall, few children aged 2-4 years consumed protein-rich foods, said the CNNS study: 62% consumed dairy products, 15.6% ate eggs and 31.6% ate pulses and nuts, indicating few children get the required amount of proteins regardless of household income.

Children under the age of two, breastfed or not, also do not get required nourishment irrespective of household income. Only 6.4% of children in this age group had enough intake of essential nutrients, found the CNNS.

Consumption of proteins was low among children from the poorer states in the eastern and central parts of India, the study found.

Source: Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey

“Poor diets like one having inadequate quantity and quality of carbohydrates and proteins are adversely associated with child’s growth and development and may result in stunting and/or wasting,” said Khandelwal. “Failure to provide key nutrients during the first 1,000 days, a critical period of brain development, may result in lifelong irreversible deficits in brain function.”

Growing children require nutrient-dense foods, especially proteins from eggs, milk, beans, nuts and seeds, fish and meat, and good fats, Dalal said. “Lack of protein, good fats and micronutrient-dense foods which are replaced by empty calories will cause growth failure, frequent infections, lack of concentration in school, tiredness and so on,” she said.

Rice and wheat dominate, fruits and vegetable rare
Around 55% of children aged 6-23 months who were surveyed consumed no fruit or vegetable, according to the SOWC report. But almost all children, across age groups, consumed cereals and (starch-rich) tubers such as potatoes, according to the CNNS.

Traditionally, Indian diets were rich in nutrient-rich foods such as millets and pulses. However, in a bid to ensure food security, the Indian government enacted policies that led to farmers favouring rice and wheat over fruits, vegetables and livestock products, according to Transforming Food Systems for a Rising India, a 2019 book by Cornell University researcher Prabhu Pingali.

The result is that fruits and vegetables are too expensive for many families: Only 25.4% of the poorest children aged 2-4 years ate fruits and 54% vegetables, according to the CNNS.

Children from the relatively richer households did slightly better–56.7% of the richest children ate fruits and 61% vegetables. But the low numbers indicate that nutritious food is not consumed even by children whose parents can afford it.

“Most studies say that children may be considered to have adequately diversified dietary intake if they had food items from at least four of the seven food groups,” said Khandelwal. The seven food groups, as per the WHO’s infant and young child feeding practices guidelines, are grains, roots, and tubers, legumes and nuts, dairy products, flesh foods, eggs, vitamin A rich fruits and vegetables and “other fruits and vegetables”.

Source: Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey

“Lack of (food) diversity is a serious threat gradually pushing us towards hidden hunger,” said Khandelwal. “Several micronutrients, vitamins and minerals have vanished from our diets because we have substantially cut down variety in our daily meals. Most households, due to time and resource (money, education, access, availability) paucity, are moving away from traditional local recipes, vegetables and fruits to a quicker, more accessible market version of takeaway or home-delivered meals.”

It is important to emphasise balanced healthy diets with micro- and macronutrients as a public health policy, she added.

Anaemia, obesity and stunting/wasting
As many as 38% of Indian children below four years of age, as we said, are stunted–including those belonging to the richest households. Obesity is less prevalent–2% of all children of that age are overweight or obese, according to the SOWC report. Over 40% of children aged 1-4 years are anaemic, as per the CNNS.

In addition to being stunted, children from the richest households–who can afford iron-rich vegetables, fruits and meat–also reported being anaemic. Over one-third (34.2%) of such children and just under half (46%) of the poorest children reported some form of anaemia.

This simultaneous existence of anaemia, obesity and stunting/wasting is what nutrition experts call the “triple burden of malnutrition”.

Inadequate protein and good fats in mother’s diet is also a reason for stunting, according to Dalal. A significant reason for faltering growth in the first few months of a child’s life is the lack of awareness about right breastfeeding techniques, said Dalal. Ignorance about how an infant should latch on correctly to the lower areola exists not just among mothers but also doctors, nurses and healthcare workers.

Breastfed children’s diets do not contain enough proteins and other growth micronutrients. “It is also important to include vegetables and fruits and (a) variety of whole grains like bajra, sorghum, millets and so on,” said Dalal. “They (the children) should not be exposed to junk foods like biscuits, wafers, street foods like batata-vada, bhajiya, (nutritional supplements like) Pediasure, Horlicks, high sugar/jaggery foods, sugary drinks and cakes and pastries.”

The WHO recommends that the child be introduced to solid and semi-solid foods–called complementary foods–at six months, as breast milk is no longer sufficient to meet the needs of the growing body, the CNNS report noted. However, the complementary foods fed to most children lack proteins and other micronutrients, said Dalal. “They are monotonous and watery and do not contain seeds, nuts, legumes and animal proteins,” she said.

Multi-disciplinary approach
Nutrition cannot be improved by standalone programmes and India’s attempts at tackling multiple forms of malnutrition are diluted, said Khandelwal. “Health fads, yo-yo diets, poor environmental factors, exposure to domestic violence, smoke or alcohol during the first 1,000 days also impact stunting,” said Khandelwal.

“Many issues around income, education, gender, women empowerment, poverty, social inclusion/welfare schemes, sanitation etc are related and known to have an impact on nutritional status of the masses,” she added. “All these have to be addressed under a smooth harmonised multi-sectoral strategy guided by effective leadership to have a sustained impact.”

Khandelwal emphasised the need for multidisciplinary strategies. “Right now, most programmes and policies are a bunch of single-focus top-down initiatives with no conversations between the multiple sectors who should be talking and assuming collective responsibility to advance science and translate those into public health policy/action,” she said.

A plan for improving diagnostic and tertiary care, providing trained staff and enhancing the capacity to deal with issues related to malnutrition are necessary, Khandelwal pointed out. “Let us not associate nutrition with merely how much and what to eat but all other related behaviours to have a meaningful impact on public health and nutrition,” she added

This story was first published here on Healthcheck.

(Iqbal is an intern with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

The post 38% Of Indian Children Under 4–Poor And Rich Alike–Are Stunted: Study appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: Anton_Ivanov / Shutterstock.com

Last Thursday, the head of the UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF), Anthony Lake, arrived in Amman, Jordan after a heart-wrenching tour of war-ravaged Yemen. ‘Stop the war,’ said Lake. It was a clear message. No subtlety was needed. ‘All of us,’ he said, ‘should feel ‘immense pity, even agony, for all of those children and others who are suffering, and they should feel anger, anger that this, our generation, is scarred by the irresponsibility of governments and others to allow these things to be happening.’

Lake’s message has gone unheeded. As is the voice of all those who have tried to raise discussion of the atrocity done to Yemen. Last night, the charity group Save the Children raised the alarm once more. In a brief report, Save the Children said that more than a million children who suffer from acute malnutrition live in the areas where cholera has swept the country.

‘After two years of armed conflict,’ said Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s country director for Yemen, ‘children are trapped in a brutal cycle of starvation and sickness. And it’s simply unacceptable.’ Kirolos’ teams in the hardest hit areas find ‘a horrific scenario of babies and young children who are not only malnourished but also infected with cholera.’ The combination is deadly. What lies ahead is apocalyptic: mass deaths of children from a combination of hunger and disease.

In June, UNICEF reported that a Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes. These deaths are not tragedies. They are crimes.

The war in Yemen, prosecuted by Saudi Arabia and its allies and backed with weaponry from the West, has destroyed the country’s food, water and health infrastructure. In January 2016, Saudi aircraft bombed a water desalination plant north of al-Mocha. This bombing run, which lasted minutes, left the million residents of the Yemeni city of Taiz without water. Piped water is no longer an option for most Yemenis. They rely upon water tankers; this water has become more expensive as fuel prices have skyrocketed. Last month, Gabriel Sánchez of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Yemen said that in one district, ‘our teams are seeing an extremely poor sanitation situation and insufficient access to clean drinking water.’ Absence of clean drinking water has helped fuel the cholera epidemic which broke out this March.

Aid groups, from the UN and elsewhere, as well as citizens groups across Yemen have tried to address the crisis, but the scale of this human-made disaster is enormous. Four out of five children in Yemen need some humanitarian aid. No aid agency can solve this crisis if the war continues – particularly if the fragile infrastructure continues to be bombed and if repair of this infrastructure continues to be prevented. Saudi Arabia has blockaded this country and bombed its main port. This has not only hampered the work of charity groups, but it has also meant much needed supplies for repair have cannot reach Yemen. The country is being isolated into desolation.

On Tuesday, the country director for Yemen of the UN Development Agency (UNDP) Auke Lootsma said that 60 per  cent of Yemen’s population does not know where their next meal will come from. Lootsma, who is based in Sanaa (Yemen), spoke to reporters via a videoconference. Save the Children said that a million children are near death by cholera. Lootsma offered double the figure. ‘We expect the cholera outbreak to continue to wreak havoc despite the best efforts of the UN agencies’, he said. Over 90 per cent of Yemen’s food is imported. With a combination of Saudi Arabia’s blockade, depleted foreign exchange reserves and poverty in the country, food is out of the reach of families. Yemen, Lootsma said chillingly, ‘is like a bus racing towards the end of a cliff.’

Terrible stories come from the edge of the cliff, including that desperate Yemeni families have begun to sell their children for food. When the UN’s coordinator for emergency aid, Stephen O’Brien, came to brief the UN Security Council in May, he said, ‘Families are increasingly marrying off their young daughters to have someone else care for them, and often use the dowry to pay for necessities.’ Such survival tactics, on the backs of children, will have a long-term impact on Yemeni society. This war is driving people to great barbarity.

Saudi Arabia’s war aims can never be met in Yemen. That is now clear. It simply cannot bomb the country into submission and it does not have the ground forces to enter Yemen and defeat the various rebel groups that defy it. An attempt to get the Pakistani military to enter the conflict on its side failed in 2015 when the Pakistani parliament took a neutral position on the war. In March of this year, the Pakistanis sent a brigade to defend Saudi Arabia’s southern border. This shows that Saudi Arabia, by far the best equipped military power in this conflict, now fears the war will move northward into its own territory. Yemeni rebels have fired crude scud missiles into Saudi Arabia and at both Saudi and Emirati ships that enter Yemen’s coastal waters. These attacks—one against an Emirati ship yesterday—show that defeat of Yemen’s resistance to Saudi Arabia is not on the cards.

Meanwhile in the Hadhramawt region of Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula (AQAP) continues to make gains. In February, the International Crisis Group released a report that said that AQAP ‘is stronger than it has ever been.’ AQAP and its allies have become indispensable to the Saudi air war, providing crucial ground troops in Aden and elsewhere. Fighting units such as Humat al-Qidah and al-Hassam Brigade are well-supplied by the UAE and Saudi Arabia to protect Aden. They are direct beneficiaries of this war. The Crisis Group suggests that AQAP ‘is thriving in an environment of state collapse, growing sectarianism, shifting alliances, security vacuums and a burgeoning war economy. Reversing this trend requires ending this conflict that set it in motion.’ The point about state collapse is important. 1.2 million Yemeni civil servants have not been paid since September 2016.

Meanwhile, the West continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, offering these arms sales as a way to sanctify the war. The West with these sales is utterly complicit in the Saudi-led war.
The West’s complicity extends to the manner in which it has allowed Saudi Arabia to yoke this obscene war with its paranoia about Iran. Saudi Arabia argues that the rebel Houthi group in Yemen is a proxy of Iran and that Houthi capture of Yemen cannot be permitted. It is the impetus for this war. What is needed, however, is not a war to destroy Yemen, but the opening of a serious process for Saudi Arabia and Iran to talk about their broad disagreements.

In Istanbul, during an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation around Israel’s actions in Jerusalem, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran shook hands and spoke for a few minutes. Adel al-Jubeir (Saudi Arabia) and Javad Zarif (Iran) later offered warm words about their meeting. These are little gestures. But they need to be magnified. Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran not only fuel the war on Yemen, but also the war on Syria. They will certainly be a major factor in October when US President Trump has to offer his recertification of the nuclear deal with Iran. If the US goes to war against Iran, it will partly be because of Saudi pressure to do so.

How to prevent the atrocity that is taking place in Yemen? The war must end. That is now a consensus position among the humanitarian community. Arms sales by the West must be stopped. Pressure for a grand bargain between Saudi Arabia and Iran must increase. A million to two million Yemeni children’s lives are stake.
 
Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013) and The Death of a Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016). His columns appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.

This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.

Courtesy: Alternet
 

The post A Million Children at Risk of Death by Cholera in Yemen appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Forget RSS-run Shishu Mandirs and Muslim madrassas. Textbooks prescribed by even ‘secular’ central and state education boards in the country promote religious, caste and gender prejudice

What we learn and teach about history and how the process of this learning has been crafted or developed, shapes our understanding of the events of the past. This understanding of the past influences our ability to grapple with the present and therefore also the future. Such knowledge, if both rich and varied, can also make and break convictions of both the teacher and the taught.

In 1947, India made a historic tryst with destiny. Independent yet partitioned, after extensive and careful deliberation, we opted for a democratic structure outlined in the Indian Constitution. Whether state –
directed or autonomously ensured, education in such a democratic polity should have been committed to free enquiry, fair and equal access to knowledge, both quantitative and qualitative, inculcation of the right to debate and dissent. The only restrictions and limits to when and at what junctures what kind of information could be shared with the child should have been pedagogical.

In short, the equality principle in any democracy simply must extend to education. In quantitative terms, this means the right of every Indian child to primary and secondary education. UNICEF figures shamefully record how we have failed, having as we do 370 million illiterates (1991), half a century after we became independent. 
But qualitatively, too, the equality principle within the Indian education syllabus, especially related to history and social studies teaching, in state and central boards, is sorely wanting. 

Wedded to the equality principle, the democratisation of our history and social studies syllabus should have meant a critical revision of both the periodisation, approach and content of the material taught because, pre-Independence, history writing under the British was infested with colonial biases. This has not happened. As a result, in most of our texts and syllabi we continue to perpetuate the colonial legacy of portraying ancient India as synonymous with the Hindu and the medieval Indian past with the Muslim. We have, over the years, further accentuated the colonial biases with sharp and more recent ideological underpinnings linked with the rapid growth in the political sphere of the Hindu Right. 

Hate language and hate-politics cannot be part of history teaching in a democracy. But, unfortunately, prejudice and division, not a holistic and fair vision, has been the guiding principle for our textbook boards and the authors chosen by them.

Over the years, our history and social studies texts, more and more, emphasise a prejudicial understanding and rendering of history, that is certainly not borne out by historical facts. Crucial inclusions and exclusions that are explored through abstracts from state board texts, ICSE textbooks and college texts as well, quoted extensively in stories accompanying this essay, bear this out. 

What the RSS and other rabid organisations with a clearly political objective would have us believe about history has been succinctly summed up by the accompanying abstract of an NCERT (National Council for Educational Research and Training) report. The report enumerates instances that clearly reflect the bias of the organisation that has sponsored them.

Hate language and hate-politics cannot be  part  of the history project in a democracy

What is far more worrisome and needs careful and equally studied examination is how the textbooks in use in most of our states under the ambit of the state textbook boards, as well as the texts of prominent national boards, echo the same historical precepts, misconceptions and formulations. Sometimes in a diluted or scattered form, but more often with the same resultant damage.

The dangerous patterns woven through the syllabus in general and the history and social studies curriculum in particular, for the young mind, need to be traced carefully. They reveal how the average Indian text looks at the historical and present question of caste-based discriminations, community-driven stereotypes and, as significantly, what we teach students about the status of women, then and now.

These patterns, distorted and prejudicial as they are, will open our eyes to the process that has actually contributed to mainstream secular space being dominated by the discourse dictated by the Right. We will then begin to understand how certain manipulated discourses and imageries that have been pulled out for public consumption over the past decade–and–a–half find instant and widespread resonance in civil society.

What am I referring to? How come the crude allusions to Muslims as ‘Babar ki aulad’ in the mid–eighties and the charge of ‘forced’ conversions against Christians in the late nineties finds a silent acceptance in the marketplace of popular ideas, and even dominates the media? This is because many of post–Independent India’s textbooks have been unable to offer a clean, holistic, rational and multi–dimensional vision of the past that includes a historically honest portrayal of how different faiths arrived on the shores of this sub-continent. Our textbooks are, similarly and suspiciously, silent on the motives behind thousands of Indians converting to different faiths over generations. Instead, through allusions and exclusions, they strengthen the false claim that in a vast majority of cases these conversions happened under force. 

Are we, as citizens, concerned about whether our education system encourages the creative and thought processes, develops the quality of thinking in our young, whether our attitude to learning and teaching engenders the processes of inquiry? If yes, we need to examine whether our school textsbooks tackle the question of free inquiry, dissent and debate.  We need also to pay attention to specific inclusions and exclusions within the content of these texts.

Other crucial questions also need to be raised.  How do Indian texts specifically deal with the fundamental question of race, origin, culture and faith on the sub–continent?

It is surely impossible to speak about apartheid in the world context without linking it to the birth of South Africa under Nelson Mandela as an independent nation. or to understand slavery in the modern context without knowledge of the role of colonial powers in Africa or, equally pertinently, the whole phenomenon of the American War of Independence and Abraham Lincoln. But do Indian textbooks reflect the ability to examine social inequality, specifically the caste system, as it emerged and was legitimised historically and how it continues to exist today, perpetrating an exploitative and unjust social order? 

Can a young student of social studies really seek to understand the caste system without, first of all, being informed of modern–day social and economic apartheid that 16–17 per cent of the Indian population continues to be forced to live under today? There is hardly any Indian text that honestly and candidly sketches out the indignities that continue to be perpetuated on Indian Dalits today.

The life–sketch of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar is restricted to his contribution as the ‘architect’ of the Indian constitution. The serious challenges he posed to the pre–Independence struggle and the Brahmanical order, or his radical conversion to Buddhism as a method of ‘social and political emancipation’ (10 lakh Dalits converted to Buddhism on October 14, 1948) find scant or no mention at all in ‘secular’ Indian textbooks. 

This blinkered vision of Indian social disparity extends to the fashion in which Dr. Ambedkar is portrayed for the young and the struggles that he led are depicted. On December 25, 1925, Ambedkar burnt copies of the Manu Smruti at Mahad village in Maharashtra. This was a strong political statement against the domination suffered by Dalits, epitomised in this Brahmanical text that has laid down the code of a social order which regards ‘shudras’ and ‘women’ together as deserving of no rights. The incident finds no mention at all in any Indian school textbook, revealing a sharp upper caste bias that has excluded real inquiry into these events and movements. There is no attempt at a critical look at texts like the Manu Smruti that have, since their being written several centuries ago, reflected the attitudes of vested interests. In fact this Brahmanical text itself receives favourable mention in Indian school textbooks.

As extension of the same argument, some of our average Indian textbooks continue to label Christians, Muslims and Parsees as ‘foreigners,’ and moreover depict Hindus as “the minority in most states of the country”. They selectively speak about the “immoral behaviour of Catholic priests in the middle ages” while exonerating the Brahmins and the Indian ruling classes. What is the message that we send out to the growing child with these factual misrepresentations and deliberate exclusions of some historical events and modern day social realities when it comes to the conduct of the Brahmanical elite? 

Our textbooks are, similarly and suspiciously, silent on the motives behind thousands of Indians converting to different faiths over generations. Instead, through allusions and exclusions, they strengthen the false claim that in a vast majority of cases these conversions happened under force

The same college textbook in Maharashtra that speaks at length, and with a fair degree of venom, about Islam and its violent nature is silent on what many ancient Indian kings did to Buddhist ‘monasteries’ and bhikus during the ancient period. (King Sashanka of Assam is reputed to have destroyed several monasteries). What then are the conclusions that a critic needs to draw about the motivation behind these selective inclusions and exclusions?
Exclusion is a subtle but potent form of prejudice. If, therefore, the average Indian textbook is silent on the motivations of many a ‘Hindu’ king who employed officials to raid and destroy temples in the ancient and medieval periods, simply because he could be certain to find wealth there (King Harshadev of Kashmir is one such, referred to by Kalhana in his Rajatarini), is there a not–so–subtle attempt to allow the popularly cherished belief that temple breaking was the ‘Muslim’ rulers favoured prerogative, to fester and grow? 

Rabid observations on Islam and Christianity are overtly visible in excerpts of the books conceived by the RSS and used for ‘teaching’ in the Shishu Mandirs. For discerning observers and educationists, this commitment to indoctrination that pre-supposes injecting small yet potent doses of poison against an ‘enemy other’ is not really surprising when we understand the true nature of the ideological project of these outfits. 

The content of RSS texts has invited sharp criticism by the NCERT committee (see accompanying document). To find blatantly damaging statements within the texts of schools run by the RSS is one thing. But to have ‘secular’ Indian textbooks — ranging from those produced by some state textbook boards, to recommended texts for the study of history at the graduation level, as also some ICSE texts — containing discernible strains of the same kind of caste, community and gender prejudice reflects how mainstream Indian thought has not only swallowed a biased and uncritical interpretation of history but is cheerfully allowing this myopic vision to be passed down to future generations.

Take, for instance, a textbook recommended for the final year Bachelor of Arts students in history in Maharashtra. The chapter titled ‘Invasion of Mahmud of Ghaznavi’ is cleverly used by the author to launch a tirade against Islam itself. The content of this textbook could compare favourably, chapter and verse, with sections of Shishu Mandir texts that, are in other parts, far more direct, having nothing positive to say about Islam or Christianity. 

As critically, how do our history and social studies’ textbooks approach the complex question of gender? What is the underpinning of analysis on critical gender issues within these books? How do our textbooks explain notions of ‘pativrata’(worship of the husband), sati (widow burning), child marriage, burning of women at the stake (called ‘witch hunting’ during the medieval ages), polygamy, polyandry etc. to the child?

There could be no more derogatory references to women than those contained in the Manu Smruti, an ancient Indian Brahmanical text. But it receives uncritical and passing mention in most Indian textbooks.

There is no attempt to outline the oppressive ‘Brahmanical Hindu’ code contained within the Manu Smruti. The code outlined in this text has significantly influenced how women have and continue to be treated within the family structure and in society, as also the base fashion in which treatment to ‘shudras’ has manifest itself in Indian society. 

What were the variegated facts, and, therefore, what is the multi-layered truth behind the emergence of different faiths on the sub-continent? The historical account is not an over-simplified one of Babar ki aulad, armed with swords, forcing reluctant victims to convert and smashing down their temples in the bargain. Unfortunately for proponents of a hate-driven history, facts tell a different story. 

The tale of the often-ruthless methods that Portuguese Christians took to effect conversions in Goa may be more recent but it is by no means the whole story of how Christianity arrived on the shores of the sub-continent and found deep and abiding routes. That is an inquiry that is more complex, more varied and far richer in detail. 

In a Maharashtra college level text, he chapter on Mahmud of Ghaznavi is used as ripe occasion to launch  a tirade against Islam itself

The record of persons opting to convert to different faiths, be it Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity Islam or Sikhism, is a worthy exploration in itself. Honestly told, it could offer vital insights on the impulses of ideas and motives as they have driven humankind over the ages. It is, however, a subject that has been significantly ignored except through banal references to ‘syncretism’ and ‘synthesis’ that are left thematically and conceptually unexplored. 

The subject of shifts and changes to different faiths is educative, simply because if fairly approached, the process will throw up different sets of reasons and varying motivations for these actions, these changes of faith that persons opted for. The differences and variety would depend upon the period when the change took place, the region within India that we would be looking at and, finally, the method employed for the conversion itself.

None of the mainline Indian textbooks really do justice to this subject. We often find a single sentence reference to the fact that Islam first came to the shores of the Malabar coast through the regular visits of Arab traders who enjoyed a long-standing relationship of trade and commerce with India. But the next sentence immediately shifts gear to the other way that Islam came to the Indian sub-continent — through the ‘invasions’ in Sind. From thereon our children are told in graphic detail of the numerous ‘invasions’ but nothing of the coming of Islam through trade and the formations of living communities that resulted. 

Many conversions to Islam or Christianity in the modern period of history have also coincided with the passage of emancipatory laws liberating bonded labour. This allowed oppressed sections the freedom to exercise choice in the matter of faith. These sections, then, exercised this choice, rightly or wrongly, perceiving either Islam or Christianity to be more egalitarian than Hinduism’s oppressive system of caste.

There were several instances of conversions during the second half of the 19th century in Travancore, for instance. Educational endeavours of missionaries and the resultant aspirations to equality of status encouraged many persons of ‘low’ caste to change faith and through this to a perceived position of equality. For example, the first ‘low’ caste person to walk the public road near the temple in Tiruvalla in 1851 was a Christian. Around 1859, many thousands converted to Christianity in the midst of emancipatory struggles that were supported by missionaries in the region: for example, the struggle of Nadars on the right of their women to cover the upper part of their body, a practice opposed by the upper castes!

There are so many fascinating examples. Large-scale conversions to Islam took place on the Malabar coast not during the invasions by Tipu Sultan but during the 1843-1890 period. These were directly linked to the fact that in 1843, under the British, slavery was formally abolished in the region. As a result, large numbers from the formerly oppressed castes, bonded in slavery to upper caste Hindus moved over to Islam, which they perceived, rightly or wrongly to preach a message of equality and justice.

Trade and commerce finds dry and peripheral treatment in our texts as do the impact of technological developments through history. Religious interpretations and explanations often pre-dominate, with little attempt to explain how ideas and thought-processes travelled across continents and borders; the means and modes of communication etc. are hardly explored. 

Our secular texts are completely silent on the ideology that killed the Mahatma despite the fact that the RSS was banned by the government of India following his assassination

Within the Indian sub-continent, this century saw the emergence of different streams of thought that contributed significantly to the struggle for independence against the British. It also saw the emergence on the sub-continent of processes, fully encouraged by the British, of exclusivist and sectarian trends within the broader national movement that chose to articulate their worldview in terms of narrow religious identities.

Within a few years of each other, we saw the birth of organisations like the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League, as also the Akali Dal and the Rashtriya Sayamsevak Sangh. This process of the emergence of different communalisms that contributed in no small measure to the final vivisection of the sub-continent, with all its attendant stories of vengeance and horror is extremely selectively dealt with in Indian textbooks.

Put simply, all these texts speak at length about the birth and misdemeanours of the Muslim League, the Muslim communal outfit that contributed significantly to the politics of the period. No mention is at all made to the birth around the same time of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, both Hindu communal outfits that contributed in no small measure to the sharp polarisations and schisms at the time. 

Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination is fleetingly mentioned without the ideology that drove Godse to kill him being mentioned, leave alone explored. The fact that the RSS had to face a ban on the question, too, is blotted out to the young student of modern Indian history.

With these kinds of interpretations and inclusions of historical facts in our regular texts, coupled with the repetitious discourse within civil society that has, in recent times, taken a vicious form—and which selectively heaps the blame for partition squarely on the Muslim— is it any wonder that communities and citizens of the country continue to carry the burden of being dubbed ‘traitors’ and ‘anti-national?’

The young student of history in India, therefore, can without compunction put the entire blame of the partition of the sub-continent on the Muslim League and Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s shoulders. The bias does not end here. While the Muslim League receives detailed treatment in the average Indian text, it does not give a single line to Hindu communal outfits. 

In furtherance of the same theme, there is no attempt to either explain or detail that the Muslim League enjoyed a limited hold over only sections of the Muslim elite and landed gentry; that many hundreds of thousands of Muslims participated actively in the struggle for Independence against the British; that the idea of Partition was backed by a miniscule section of Indian Muslims; that the artisan class which constitutes a large section of Muslims demonstrated actively against Partition.

In short, if you read an average Indian text, be it from the state or central boards, the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS bear no part of the historical blame for Partition. The crime is worse compounded by the fact that Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination is glossed over, often receiving no more than one sentence in explanation. 
The ICSE History and Civics textbook, Part II for Std. X, devotes a whole chapter to the ‘Formation of the Muslim League’. But there is no mention at all of Hindu communal organisations. 

And to top it all, here is what the same ICSE text has to say about Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination: “Mahatma Gandhi toured the hate-torn land of Bengal, trying to put a stop to the communal frenzy and salvage the people from ruthless communal slaughter. While celebrations and riots were still going on the architect of the nation was shot dead on 30th January by Nathuram Godse”. There is no further comment on the assassination, or the ideology that drove the assassin. Neither is there any mention of the fact that the government of India banned the RSS following Gandhi’s murder because of Godse’s close association both with the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha. There is no information on the trial of the assassins of Gandhi, the justification by Godse of his act and so on.

Similarly, the Social Studies text for standard VIII of the Gujarat State Board, has a tiny sub-section titled, “The Murder of Gandhi”. This reads thus: “After Independence there were severe communal riots in India. Gandhiji tried his utmost to suppress it. Many people did not like this. Gandhiji was murdered at the hands of Godsay on 30th January 1948. ”

Again, no words of explanation of the ideology that was responsible for the murder of Gandhi though painstaking efforts are made in this and other texts to explain the ideology that partitioned the sub-continent. 

It appears logical and inevitable for the stated political project of the RSS and its Shishu Mandir-style education to offer such an immutable approach, a series of unquestionable absolutes, to the young mind. How else can the RSS organisation, whether it be at the shakha or the Shishu Mandir level, create a social and political atmosphere where selectively half-truths and blatant falsehoods dominate all discourse? How else does one create an environment where critical questions are never asked, leave alone answered? And, worst of all, prevailing social inequalities, indignities and humiliations are left unaddressed. In short, leave the social and economic hierarchy unchallenged?

But the fact that independent and democratic India’s ‘secular’ texts reflect, with sometimes uncanny similarity, the very same disregard for a growing and inquiring mind, apart from being laced with a series of questionable formulations that hide gender, caste and community–driven bias is what requires urgent and specific attention. And remedy.   

(This article has relied heavily on the research work that the writer has 
undertaken as the Co–ordinator of KHOJ, a secular education project)

Archived from Communalism Combat, October 1999, Anniversary Issue (6th) Year 7  No. 52, Cover Story 1

The post How textbooks teach prejudice appeared first on SabrangIndia.