What to make of this place?

Early hours this morning, and while night decided to withdraw her great gift of sleep, jet lag gave me instead a couple of hours to read and think. Reflecting on what I wrote in my last post about the contrasts in India brought me back to the question that I heard asked a few times before we came out here – “Isn’t India wealthy enough to look after itself?”

We arrived into a spacious modern airport, travelled through a busy bustling city, saw some wealthy people in fine cars. Shouldn’t we just leave it to them and go to work elsewhere? After all India’s GDP / capita has risen 70% in the last 10 years. But look at other figures. The inequality index for India has risen from 45 to 51 over the same period (UK is around 35 by comparison) so the poorest are still being left behind. And even after all this growth the GDP/capita for India is less than 3% of what we produce and earn in the UK.

Meanwhile India is home to a third of the world’s poorest people. According to a recent BBC article ( http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34398449) 40% of the world’s malnourished children are in India, and there are still woefully high levels of infant mortality – 1.3 million children die in India each year from easily preventable illnesses like diarrhoea, pneumonia and malaria.

So what do I make of this place? Beyond the first impression it seems clear to me that there is a vital job to be done, and still a vital role for Save the Children. How they go about it is what we’re here to learn, and it’s time now for us to head off into the city.

 What do you make of it?