India, one of the largest land areas in Asia—large enough to be considered subcontinent by many—has made significant contributions to the world as its engineers, businessmen, artists, doctors, and scientists share their knowledge and skill internationally. Unfortunately, this positive image of the country overshadows an alternate reality: the country’s extreme poverty and struggle with education and healthcare.
It is true that India’s economy is one of the fastest growing in 2020 and the fifth largest globally; the country boasts a GPD of $2.94 trillion. Despite this, the country struggles to adequately provide for many of its citizens in healthcare, education, and financial opportunity.
Health and Wellness
In healthcare, India spends just over 1% of its GDP on health expenditures—lower than its less financially advantaged neighbors like Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. India’s patient to doctor ratio is the lowest in the world at less than one per one thousand people, mostly due to a combined lack of trained physicians and an unwillingness to work outside of urban areas.
More than 57 million people fall into poverty each year as a result of unaffordable healthcare expenses, leading to a fatality rate of 2.4 million Indians per year who die of treatable conditions. Forty percent of healthcare locations that are available do not have an ambulance to take critically ill or injured patients to care facilities.
Children bear the brunt of the struggle in India, and the infant mortality rate is high. Children under five who succumb most often do so due to undernutrition, which claims the lives of half of those who do not make it to school age. One-third of the world’s total population of children whose growth has been stunted due to inadequate nutrition are located in India, accounting for nearly 47 million children. An addition 300,000 children die each year of diarrhea.
Learning and Teaching
On the education front, India does not fare much better. Nearly 186 million women in India cannot read or write a sentence in any language. However, women are not the only ones who receive lower than average education. Roughly 313 million people in India are illiterate (with nearly 59 percent of them being women), and the adult literacy rate hovers just under 75%. The teacher to student ratio across the country averages approximately 24 to 1, and a third of Indian schools are even lower than this ratio. This prevents students from receiving the individualized attention that they need during their critical early learning years.
As they grow, students struggle to progress in their education. In urban areas, around 40% of students aged 15 or higher fail to secure the opportunity to pursue further education; in rural areas, this number jumps to nearly 70%. Only approximately 11% of Indians have a degree.
Conditions Worsen
Unfortunately for the millions of people who call India home, conditions only continue to deteriorate across many sectors that support quality of life. The cost of education has risen significantly over time, leading many families—especially in rural areas—to choose other options instead of further pursuit of education. A large majority of teachers (upwards of 90% depending on the area of the country) are unable to pass the Central Teacher Eligibility Test, which means that even students who can attend school are not receiving the education they deserve. However, many children opt out of school entirely or after only a few years, as families rely on children as sources of income.
This struggle with income arises from a number of contexts, but one of the most pressing remains unemployment. Unemployment numbers for adults continue to trend high as those children who were not able to finish school now lack the proper education for work as adults. The country’s infrastructure is also too weak in many areas to support consistently available jobs, especially in rural areas.
Healthcare continues to deteriorate nationwide, as hospital and care facilities are limited. Soap and water are not sufficiently available, and so many aspects of basic hygiene that can prevent illness and contamination are lacking. Additionally, public defecation remains a problem in both rural and urban areas; approximately 12% of the population defecate wherever it is convenient, and this number surges to 72% in rural areas. This human waste contaminates water sources and has led to the pollution of up to 75% of India’s surface water.
What to Do
Understanding the situation in India is only the first step toward solving some of these problems. Those with academic skill can work to solve the country’s struggles at a textbook level, while the average person can contribute to charities working hard to address India’s many issues and bring a better quality of life to the millions of people who reside in this country.
