Together They Would Travel

Let me start out by saying that I know that I am privileged. Privileged to have been born to two parents who love me and care for me unconditionally, privileged to have been raised in a family that could afford for me to take ballet lessons and send me to summer camp, privileged to have grown up in an area with safe, worthwhile public schools, privileged to have had the support of friends and family as I've screwed up as many times as I've succeeded, privileged to have a college education, a great job, a wonderful husband, a bright future...

But until we moved to India, I hadn't ever considered how many of those privileges stem from the fact that I am a citizen of the United States of America.

Maybe you've always been genuinely patriotic, maybe you're one of my amazing friends who served our country in the military or a volunteer corp, maybe you've lived outside the country and came to the same realizations I have, maybe it's just me. But if you have a few free minutes this morning, before you leave to exercise one of your greatest rights and duties as an American citizen, casting your vote for our next President, I hope you'll read my thoughts.

The wealth divide in India is extreme. 33% of Indians live at or below the poverty line, that's over 400 million people.

Here are just a few of the ways in which that disparity affects the people of this country:

90 million females are illiterate
20% of children ages 6-14 are not in school

In some states, over 60% of girls who are enrolled, drop out before completing 5th grade

Infant mortality is as high as 63 deaths per 1,000 live births

1 in 5 women die during birth

More than 122 million households are without something as simple as a toilet
In 2010, one bride was murdered every hour due to unmet dowry demands
45% of Indian women are married before the age of 18

Child marriages result in the abandonment of a formal education, unsafe pregnancies, and a restriction of freedoms for community participation

51% of men and 54% of women think that wife beating is justifiable
61 million children have stunted growth as a result of severe malnutrition

I'm going to offer one more, more personal example.

I've mentioned in past blogs that we have a house keeper here. What I haven't mentioned is that we have a house keeper because we feel obligated, as a family who earns a middle class salary, to create a job. Most middle and upper class homes in India have at least a housekeeper, but many also have cooks and nannies. This is not unusual. And here's why: for one hour a day, seven days a week to clean our home, our house keeper asked for a salary of 1, 500 rupees a month. That's less than $1 a day.

Yes. Cost of living is much less here. But to put that salary in perspective; our rent for our large but simple, furnished apartment comes out to about $600 a month, and basic+ groceries cost us around $100 a month. Bus transportation from our apartment to and from my office (a very short distance), and a few weekend rides, costs approximately $20 per person a month. We are living within the same means as my middle class peers, all of whom were raised in middle class families, and simply perceive this divide as part of normal life.

For the millions in India living in poverty, their children have almost no chance to make a better life for themselves. Our house keeper was married off at 18 to a man who drinks her salary and then beats her. She had a baby within the first year of their marriage, but tries her hardest to avoid having a second. Each month she scrapes together $60 to send her child to school. Some months she doesn't have it. The reality is that even if her daughter makes it through elementary school, high school is a reach and college a fantasy. An economical cycle will put her child in the same situation she was put in.

In contrast, 4% of the world's wealthiest billionaires come from India. India's billionaires alone make 10% of the national income and in 2008 before the crash, that statistic was 22%.

So how does the US stack up? Currently 16% of Americans, approximately 47 million people, are living at or below the poverty line. A number that started climbing after the housing bubble burst in 2006 and got worse after the stock market crashed in 2008. And our billionaires? Like in India, they make 10% of the entire national income.

Increasingly, our children are going hungry, our people are going without necessary medical care, and our renowned social welfare programs are collapsing. But in 2012, I am still undeniably proud to be an American. Because as an American I had the right to cast my ballot, from thousands of miles away, and vote for the candidate I trust will create the future I believe in.

It was a motto my grandparents and parents lived by and is an unwritten tenent of our country; our children will do better than we did. Because I am an American, I get to have that dream too.

When you vote today, I hope you will be thinking about what this election means on a grand scale for the increasing wealth divide in our country. Our country that has provided us with the incredible rights to education, clean water, hygienic and safe public spaces, shelters from fear and poverty and better lives for each successive generation.

Please vote for the candidate you truly believe can make our country better not just for you, but for everyone.

I gathered these statistics from:

Together They Would Travel

Sunday, November 11, 2012

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Monday, November 5, 2012

Proud to Be an American