'India’s failure of MDG will fail the world'

India’s failure to meet the target of MDG will fail the world, a coalition of NGOs said on the eve of half-way period for the MDGs, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 7, 2007, 21:00:23 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s failure to meet the target of Millennium Development Goals (MDG) will fail the world, a coalition of NGOs said on the eve of half-way period for the MDGs.

Adopted on July 7, 2000 at a United Nations summit by 189 countries, the coalition under the banner of Wada to Na Todo Abhiyan urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to involve people in government’s key anti-poverty progammes to make them effective.

For example, the National Employment Guarantee programme is more successful in states, where it is under citizen watch, said convenor of the abhiyan Amitabh Behar. The third Civil Society Review Report of the National Common Minimum Programme was also presented to the Prime Minister.

Rallies were organised in 12 states by NGOs to review government’s performance on MDGs, which ends in 2015. People from different walks of life participated in the rallies also aimed at creating awareness about the goals that the governments Central and state have to achieve.

The national mid-term checklist revealed that 80% of people living below $ 1 in South Asia are in India. The TB prevalence rate in India (344 per 100,000 people) is comparable to that of some of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. “On this date we are highlighting the key challenges that the government must overcome to address poverty, hunger, ill-health, illiteracy, environmental degradation and social exclusion,” Behar said.

The check list also says that despite the rapid strides in economic growth in the last decade, India accounts for the largest number of maternal deaths in the world and maternal and infant mortality rates are even worse than some countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

India is also home to world’s highest number of under nourished children.

Behar said, the progress made by India will significantly determine whether the world as a whole will be able to meet some of the most critical targets of MDGs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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