2 cents, and a child's life could be saved

[peacedove]

Indian girl's one-rupee suicide

Half of India's children are malnourished, a UN report says

A 12-year-old Indian girl committed suicide after her mother told her she could not afford one rupee - two US cents - for a school meal.
Sania Khatun lived with her mother in a village north of Calcutta under a tarpaulin sheet provided by the state.

Sania normally ate nothing at school but on Friday saw classmates eating rice and asked for one rupee.

Her mother scolded her and when she returned from work found her daughter hanged from the ceiling with a sari.

"She wanted just one rupee... but her mother could not give her the money due to poverty," government official Nakul Chandran Mahato told the Reuters agency.

'Snapped'

The mother, Jainab Bewar, is a widow who works as a maid in the village of Paraspur, 200km (125 miles) north of Calcutta.

She normally fed her daughter with food she could get from the houses she worked in.

India's Telegraph newspaper said Sania was tempted by the sight of classmates eating puffed rice and oil cakes.

Ms Bewar told the newspaper: "I did not give her the money as I did not have it. I snapped at her when she insisted on it."

She and her sons never earn more than $13 a month combined, she says.

India has seen unprecedented economic growth in recent years but many remain untouched by the improvements.

A recent UN report said half of India's children were still malnourished.


news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4277980.stm

[monkeytrousers]

This is tragic but it has the effect of seeming all too common. I don't know what to say about it politically.

[peacedove]

I have to say soemthing.

What we have today: police states, irresponsible governments, uncivil societies, and selfish individuals

Many, many years ago, (I wouldn't tell now how many, perhaps people here would not believe it), I looked at the world and saw too much misery and wickedness.

I look at the world now and I see the same that I saw then.

I do not see an improvement in human rights. People continue to be abducted, detained, tortured, killed and disappear without trace.

Women and children are kidnapped, raped and sold into slavery.

Governments have abdicated their responsibilities, catering to the powerful mafias. The poor get poorer, the hungry get hungrier, and the rich continue to flaunt their riches.

In the Quran Allah says, when these are asked to spend on the poor, they say: "What! If Allah wished them to be fed, He wouldn't have made them poor".

And that is the attitude I see today.

Societies have become intolerant and uncivil.

Wars for controlling the resources of the world are in full swing.

Mankind has become selfish.

The planet is overburdened with irresponsible large scale exploitation.

And Nature is having its revenge.

Am I the one who sees the cup half empty, or has the world really gone mad, and sane voices are rare?