People's Democracy

on file

IN Kokhorda at Tamluk in East Midnapore, life has changed for Pampa Ghuria. Her six year old son has not had cholera even once in the last three years. Her husband too has kept good health. No longer does she go to the woods every morning. The concrete toilet, the new addition to their thatched hut, has been a blessing.

Pampa’s is one of the eight lakh families in East Midnapore to benefit from concrete toilets and proper sanitation. Gone are the days of open-air defecation, embarrassing situations. West Bengal is one state where rural sanitation has taken tremendous strides.

Local governments have supported networks of rural sanitary marts to manufacture low-cost toilets. And the results are praise-worthy, especially in East Midnapore. Work on the project began in 1996 after many awareness camps for the villagers. Today (November 10), the coverage in East Midnapore is 100 per cent and 78 per cent in West Midnapore.

Around two million toilets have been constructed in the state in five years and the total sanitation coverage has increased from 12 per cent to 40 per cent………

A tabulation study done by the UNICEF last September shows that West Bengal has been healthily sanitised in the last few years. The overall sanitation coverage in the state is 65 per cent, which is well above the national coverage of 32 per cent.

--- The Indian Express, November 10

INDIA is among the four developing countries with the largest number of out-of-school children in the world, the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007 has revealed. Released here on Wednesday (November 8), the UNESCO report puts the number of out-of-school children, in the 6 year to 13 year category in India, at 13.5 million, with Muslim students being the most affected.

“There are 28 developing countries with over half-a-million out-of-school children each. Nigeria, Pakistan, India and Ethiopia are home to the largest number of 23 million,” the report stated.

It has further noted that this may be lower than the original figure, as the average absentee rate of students from schools was 30 per cent on the days that the schools were visited.

Quoting from a report undertaken by the Social and Rural Research Institute for the government of India, the UNESCO report noted that there were wide variations in the rates of the out-of-school children across the country, with the highest figures being recorded in north-central and north-eastern India……

According to the report, over 30 per cent of rural Muslim children in Bihar were out of school, followed by around 17 per cent in Jharkhand, 13 per cent in Uttar Pradesh and 11 per cent in West Bengal. About 32 per cent of the out-of-school children were reported to have been enrolled but dropped out later, while 68 per cent had never been enrolled, the report added.

--- The Asian Age, November 10