Between 1990 and 2003 in India, about 80 percent of the population was living on less than $2 a day. Today, that’s over 200 million people struggling to get by on this meager amount.

This poverty is especially evident in rural areas where people depend on farming to survive, and where good harvests are not guaranteed such as in the north, which is prone to droughts. When people don’t have enough money to afford nutritious food or basic medicine, children suffer, and child mortality rates rise. In India, 87 of every 1,000 children will die before they reach their fifth birthday. Most of these deaths occur in rural areas, where people don’t have access to proper medical care.

Fact File

South Asia is home to more than one-third of the deaths of children under five.

India is especially vulnerable since it has the largest population of children in the world. Poverty in India doesn’t exist solely in the rural areas—India has the second highest number of people living in slums in the world. India’s Dharavi slum is the largest in Asia, with hundreds of millions of people living in poverty and hunger without money for things like basic health care.

As a whole, South Asia has more people living in slums than anywhere else in the world. In 2001 the region had 253 million slum dwellers, a number that has grown by 54 million since 1990. The increase in slum dwellers is because of rapid growth and urbanization—when bigger cities become wealthier, millions of people migrate from rural areas in hopes of finding work. When they get to the city, though, all too often the only place they can afford to live is in the slums, where poverty and hunger are always higher.

In Sri Lanka, slums and small shantytowns exist throughout the capital city of Colombo and people living there exist without access to proper sanitation and without running water. Because of these things, and because people in slums live in such closer quarters, the rate of water-borne sickness is high, diseases like malaria are common and illness spreads quickly. Children are especially vulnerable because they are more susceptible to disease and poor health.

In slums:

• Tens of thousands of people live crammed together in close quarters.
• Houses are made out of sheets of tin and wood and scraps that other people have thrown away.
• When it rains the roof leaks and the water from the ground outside floods into the house.
• Dirty water attracts mosquitoes and some of them carry malaria, making people sick and causing deaths.
• The community is considered “unofficial” by the government so people aren’t allowed to access health care even when they do get really sick.
• There is no place for kids to play
• People are poor with not enough money for good food to eat

Have your students talk about some of these issues and about what life would be like in a slum. Have them talk about any similar experiences people in North America may have faced in recent history—for example the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Good News

Despite issues of sickness and poverty that many children face, Sri Lanka has done a good job of keeping its rate of child mortality low. In fact, it is recognized as one of the most successful developing countries in the world at reducing its rate of child deaths.