India Touts Drop In Poverty, But Deaths Tell Different Story
"We are small people. What can we really do about this?" asks Surendra Prasad, perched on the steps outside the Patna Medical College and Hospital in the state capital of Bihar in eastern India.
Inside, two of his young children are recovering in the intensive care unit. His wife has also been admitted, in shock after another child, their 10-year-old daughter, Mamta, died along with 22 other children who ate a free school midday meal in their village last Tuesday. Authorities say the food was tainted with high concentrations of toxic insecticide.
Mamta's grandmother breaks down describing how the little girl slipped away.
"She was saying to me, 'Don't worry — everything will be all right,' then suddenly she died," says the elderly woman, her face etched in grief.
The pain that has enveloped the village mourning the loss of its children is compounded by unrelenting poverty. These families, like hundreds of millions who inhabit rural India, live in the shadows of the spectacular economic rise that has lifted millions of other Indians out of poverty in the past decade.
This week, India's Planning Commission trumpeted a record drop in poverty, saying it has fallen from 37 percent of the population to 22 percent over the past seven years.
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