WEEK 9: On Friday we went on a community visit to distribute brochures for pregnant women and the parents of the children at the Day Care Centre and to call people to come and see the street play. In every house we are offered chai and welcomed; we went to Tamana’s house to find out that she won’t be returning to Day care whilst we are here as she is visiting family which was really upsetting that we didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.

We returned to the house for our development meeting, since being in India I’ve thought a lot about alternate development issues in comparison to issues in the UK. The issues that were raised were on slavery and trafficking within India, although both of which are regarded as illegal is still occurs in many parts of rural India. The laws put in place by the government are not necessarily enforced to the extent that they could be; although punishment in India is far more brutal. While certain laws are broken at home the system is regulated and reinforced by society, but some aspects of the law here are just disregarded as illegal such as littering, driving regulations, illegal drugs being grown and attendance at school doesn’t appear compulsory. If punishment was reinforced for example a fine to regulate the laws this may be a way to regulate this. In schools progression is not regulated, children move up by age not succession and teachers don’t seem to care as long as they get paid. We have witnessed many children not succeeding and having learning disabilities but not being provided and additional help, many of the families we spoke to were unhappy with the education there child was being provided but did not have the confidence to do anything about it. Unlike home where schools are monitored by Ofsted , the government just don’t have the money to run this and for as long as the deprived put up with it, it will pursue.

People even sell themselves or their children just to survive and then become trapped. The DVD focus’s on an Indian man who has witnessed these issues and has independently visited certain parts of rural India and Nepal, releasing slaves and then taken them to his village to teach them the basic’s of living in India and teaching them skills to make a living.

There was also a section on trafficking, in which business men promise the poorest families money if there child will work for them. To a parent in India this appears as possible succession for their child and money for the family. But little did they know there children were a part of the ‘circus’ and whilst on stage this may appear glamorous it certainly isn’t. Girls are an easy target as they are from rural parts of India they are generally un-educated, there were many cases of them being abused and treated poorly. In India 50 million women are missing, 25% of girls die before they turn five- mostly starved or neglected. Buried alive in pots or drowned in milk.

In the DVD we witnessed some women being freed, but there is still many more, when the police went to free the women with their family it caused a huge riot. Even the police don’t have any authority which is shocking due to the way prisoners get treated. For this to change citizens and the government need to want it to change and regulate the corrupt system.

After the meeting we headed to Amritsa, but as the journey was so far we had to stay in Pankota, it was extremely dirty and polluted reminding me of all the reasons I dislike India. We stayed in a hotel for the night, which cost the equivalent of 70p; not surprising as it had not water sometimes I wonder how is can be classed at a hotel. We awoke to the sweltering heat, which made Palampur look cold the lower w