Healthcare, Water, Education: Factors contributing to the lack of essential services for children in India

 

Approximately 206 million children in India, nearly half of the country's child population, lack access to at least one of six essential services: housing, sanitation, clean water, nutrition, education, and health.

"The socio-economic conditions of the underprivileged are such that several members of a family often live in a single room without proper access to utilities; this makes obtaining an education a challenge for them," says aid development economist Amir Ullah Khan.

 

Despite tremendous progress in poverty reduction, roughly 206 million Indian children, nearly half of the country's child population, lack access to at least one of six key services, including education, health, nutrition, housing, clean water, and sanitation.

 

While more than half of India’s 460 million children now have access to basic services, the remaining children, particularly those in vulnerable groups, continue to face structural hurdles.

 

Children with disabilities, younger children, and those living in crisis-hit areas are disproportionately affected, and the continuation of these inequalities is related to unequal progress across regions and people.

 

While India has made progress in reducing multidimensional poverty, the country's poverty rate fell from 29.2% to 11.3% between 2013–14 and 2022–23. Investment in child welfare has plateaued globally, and the benefits of poverty reduction have not been distributed fairly.

 

Despite the existence of flagship government programs such as Poshan Abhiyaan, Samagra Shiksha, PM-KISAN, the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, the Swachh Bharat Mission, and the Jal Jeevan Mission, which have expanded access to nutrition, education, sanitation, and income support, their reach remains insufficient in the most deprived areas.

 

 The report emphasizes that while India is on track to meet its Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target of halving multidimensional poverty by 2030, further acceleration of effective programs is needed to reach the "last mile."

 

Additionally, global challenges such as climate shocks, political instability, and national debt are pushing families deeper into hardship, threatening to reverse hard-earned gains.

 

The lack of sustained, equitable investment in child-focused policies, especially in health, learning, and protection, continues to hinder progress.

 

UNICEF calls for institutionalizing child-focused budgets, strengthening public-private partnerships, and ensuring children’s participation in decisions affecting their lives to address these persistent deprivations.

 

Will robots lead to a future crisis in unemployment?

 

Robots in agriculture: Photo credit-freepik.com

 

Humanity cannot undervalue how quickly modern technology is changing many facets of daily life, the economy, and society. The internet has made it easier for people to communicate and plan their everyday activities. One thing people should keep in mind, though, is that artificial intelligence-controlled robots are not just science fiction anymore.

 

Robots have already replaced humans in several industries, including packaging and sorting in warehouses, coffee making, surgery, street patrol, and customer service. Scientists predict that the integration of robots into society will become commonplace and inevitable within the next ten years. Would this lead to a global unemployment crisis? That is the crucial question.

 

In the upcoming years, robots will continue to play a part in a variety of industries. Humanoid robots are employed in classrooms to instruct pupils, demonstrating the widespread usage of robotic technology in many areas, including healthcare, agriculture, the food industry, manufacturing, mining, and education. Robots are increasingly being used in the car manufacturing industry and defense activities by the military.

 

Even though a portion of the workforce will be replaced by artificial intelligence robots, experts predict that this will not result in the complete elimination of jobs but rather in a significant shift in the labor market. The global unemployment rate may not be rising significantly; rather, a large redistribution of jobs will be concealed by this macro-metric.

 

Society's inability to adapt to the rapid pace of change poses a greater threat than the robots themselves. The difficulty can be transformed into an opportunity for nations that make investments in education for the future, establish adaptable social support networks, and figure out how to properly share the advantages of automation. 

They will be able to use the human potential that has been liberated from routine to solve challenging issues, be creative, and enhance people's quality of life.

 

Humans and robots will collaborate in the future rather than fight each other. However, achieving this future calls for a level of preparation, human capital investment, and social cohesion never seen before. The only way to make the integration of robots a benefit rather than a curse is to actively manage the transition. 

DID AFRICA SEE THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC COMING?

The map of global infection of the coronavirus

After the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic in China, Europe and the USA, the initial thoughts about Africa by the advanced countries is that the African continent will be hit very hard with a high number of cases, because Africa, is a traditional place for the rapid spread of any viruses, fragile healthcare, and difficult fight against diseases.

Africa is popular not because of its treasures of gold, diamond, cobalt, silver, etc, but a continent with diseases and poverty. But the truth which the foreign media never mention is, apart from malaria that is prevalent on the continent, some diseases, including Aids, Ebola, nodding disease, etc, aren't natural, they were man-made.

Surprisingly, it appears that the coronavirus pandemic in Europe and the USA have become the front page news today, without much attention on Africa because the continent often referred to as the white man’s grave, due to the malaria that killed the white explorers, has the least infection of the coronavirus.

It is obvious that past experiences of the continent in dealing with diseases, prepared them fully to maintain strict medical rules to fight the pandemic than Europe and America. In my opinion, Africa needs applause for doing better towards the fight of the coronavirus than Europe and America.

At the moment, Africa seems to have a relatively low number of coronavirus. In fact, the high number of coronavirus infections around the globe, especially in Europe and America, despite having the best medical facilities, reveals that Africa has suffered certain diseases not because the continent is poor.

Africa is actually emerging from protracted crises, including strange diseases reinforced on them by certain governments, just to destabilize the continent’s economy, to slow down its growth as a measure to prevent the continent from being independent, and  also as a means to take control over the continent’s resources which superpower countries depend on for their survival.

Paradoxically, Africa did not turn out to be the most affected region of the coronavirus in the world, rather the USA, Spain, Italy, and other countries and regions classified by the United Nations as developed countries are those hard hit.

At the end of March to the beginning of April, COVID-19 was recorded in 25 countries in Africa, including landlocked states, such as the Central African Republic and small states Seychelles and Equatorial Guinea.

Since the outbreak, more than 27,385 cases of infections have been confirmed, with over 1,297 deaths recorded in 45 countries, hitting hard in South Africa, some countries in West Africa, and Algeria.

As a matter of fact, those superpowers or advanced countries that underestimate Africa during the coronavirus pandemic because of the fragile health care system must rather learn for Africa, how they are coping and preventing the high spread of the disease.

According to Worldometer, an  organization that collects global statistics and data pertaining to the coronavirus, so far, world infection stands at 2,834,136 and 197,373 deaths registered.