Out of India The Globe’s Stephanie Nolen reflects on being a student of India – and what she’s learned over five years about the fate of a critical superpower Powered by THE GLOBE AND MAIL PRESENTS: Out of India PHOTO: CANDACE FEIT. COVER IMAGE: CANDACE FEIT LEGAL DISCLAIMER Copyright © 2013 The Globe and Mail. All Rights Reserved This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. THE GLOBE AND MAIL PRESENTS: Out of India couple of days after I moved to India in November, 2008, a public relations official from UNICEF took me out for a fancy A lunch (which, alas, doesn’t happen to foreign correspondents nearly as often as you might think.) We went to a restaurant with white walls and exposed brick, and ate Japanese food with lacquered chopsticks – it was all very New India. Over lunch, she mentioned, almost in passing, that nearly half of Indian children are malnourished, and that that statistic hadn’t changed one bit, despite the fact that the country had posted 10 per cent economic growth for nearly a decade. “Wait, what?” I said, putting down my chopsticks. “Why not?” And so a few days later I was on a train into the heart of Old India – to rural Madhya Pradesh, the district with some of the highest child malnutrition rates anywhere in the world, higher even than African countries with chronic cycles of famine – to try to figure out why not. In many ways, what I saw in that village was familiar to me from years of reporting on food crises in Ethiopia and Malawi. Babies with limbs like twigs; empty grain boxes; kids who looked five years old but told me they were actually 10; despairing, weary mothers. But Malawi has no booming economy, and its government isn’t pouring billions of dollars into social welfare schemes like India. I was stumped by that village, and by the question of why malnutrition persists in superpower India. (cont.) THE GLOBE AND MAIL PRESENTS: Out of India In the end, the answers I started to piece together – you’ll read them in the following pages – began a line of inquiry, a fascination, that shaped all the rest of my years in India. I also covered big business deals and plenty of hard news here. But the stories that drove me as a reporter – and the ones that elicited the strongest response from readers – were about something else, the country we don’t see on the “Incredible India” billboards or hear nearly as much about. These stories, a baker’s dozen of which are collected here, examine the twin forces of caste and gender and all the painful ways that they continue to shape life for so many Indians. They are stories from a side of India that I had to work to see, to struggle to decipher, and they are the best tool that I think I can provide to readers who seek to understand this critically important nation. I was supported and enlightened by a great many kind people in my time in India, and I am grateful for their patience – particular thanks to Sudha Varghese, Harsh Mander, Tripta Narang and Katherine Hay. My gratitude also to the many Globe and Mail editors and colleagues who backed and enhanced the Breaking Caste project, and helped me to share the remarkable story of the girls over the years. Prerna – “the school called inspiration” – was mine. Stephanie Nolen July, 2013 New Delhi, India THE GLOBE AND MAIL PRESENTS: Out of India CONTENTS A school called inspiration 6 Land of the rising son 18 If India is booming, why are its children still starving? 25 India’s troubling miracle 35 What’s better than a miracle school for ‘untouchable’ girls? Two schools, for a start 44 Two is enough 56 Dying to get ahead 65 Sister Sudha’s dilemma: You can unlock the potential of India’s most oppressed girls, but they still have to find a place to use it 72 Dowry schemes lure girls into bonded labour 83 The dire straits of being single and female in India 90 Girls interrupted 95 Can horror over rape change a culture? 103 Rape victim’s death renews anger, sorrow, and calls for change 106 Five years in India: False miracles and real inspiration 109 THE Globe AND MAIL PRESENTS: OUT OF INDIA PHOTO: CANDACE FEIT A school called inspiration More than 40 years ago, a teenager in India began a lifelong journey that took her far from her comfortable home to be with the poorest, most reviled “untouchables.” Eventually she created a school where outcast girls, the lowest of the low, can learn everything from math, Hindi and English to championship karate – and, most of all, self-esteem. But when they graduate, will their country have a place for them? Stephanie Nolen reports, in the first of a series THE Globe AND MAIL PRESENTS: OUT OF INDIA DANAPUR, BIHAR, INDIA – The sky is still dark, with silent envy as she sets off; the respon- the air still cool, when Poonam is roused by sibility is immense. the shrill blast of the housemother’s whis- But Poonam, at 15, brims with confidence: tle. Tousle-haired, her face crinkled with She will get her high-school diploma, then sleep, she bundles her bedroll and shuffles go to university and get a bachelor’s degree. with her friends out of their crowded dorm And then she will be a teacher, she says - and to the lawn. the best kind, who always takes the time Still yawning, she takes her place in the to make sure students understand. In Poo- front row of three ragged lines and begins nam’s whole community, there are only 10 to swing her arms and legs. This half-hour people who can read, but she is undeterred. of exercise wakes her, and she is giggling “If I try, I can be and I can do anything,” by the time the girls head back inside. She she says one evening. She sits with a few fills a small plastic tub from a hand pump other girls in the circle of a lone light bulb, and gives herself a quick bucket bath. Then, eking out a last hour of study. Her voice is back at her bunk, she lifts her uniform filled with conviction. “If I don’t try, I won’t from its small steel case, smooths its pleats be able. But trying will take me far.” and puts it on: knee socks, grey kilt, white It is a beautiful idea - beautiful, and com- blouse, heavy shoes. Biting her lower lip, pletely unfounded. she wedges her long hair back in two bar- There’s a popular image of India today, rettes. of technology start-ups, call centres, film She lines up for a plate of bread and daal sets, even a space program - the emerging and a steel cup of watery yogurt, and eats superpower in the business pages, the one squatted on the veranda out front, her Hindi the government splashes on its “Incredible notebook propped in front of her for some !ndia” billboards. last review. But Poonam lives in another India, one By 7 a.m., she is on her way - her pink she shares with three-quarters of her 1.2 bil- glasses perched on her button nose and her lion fellow citizens. backpack pulling down her shoulders - out In the official India, “untouchability” - the the gate of the girls school and up the road. social exclusion of Dalits, the people at the Of the 125 girls here, Poonam has shown bottom of the Hindu caste system - is an herself one of the brightest, and rupees have antiquated, illegal practice, countered with been saved to send her and a few others to a plethora of affirmative-action schemes. private school. The rest of the girls watch But in Poonam’s India, caste is still rigidly 7 THE GLOBE AND MAIL PRESENTS: OUT OF INDIA enforced, in her village and most other rural about Bihar, a state far to the north. There, areas. It’s the India where a million girls she reads, the people are so poor that they have gone “missing” in the past six years be- sleep by the roadsides, in mean little huts or cause of sex-selective abortion, and where no shelter at all. female work-force-participation rates are The girl puts the magazine down and tries among the lowest in the world. to picture it. Her parents own a plantation, Poonam is a Dalit and a girl in India’s where they grow ginger and rice and pep- poorest state. The odds stacked against her per. They are not rich, but they are prosper- are immense. ous. The workers on their farm have less, of It is an article of faith here that urban- course, but her parents pay them well, they ization and economic growth are bringing have sturdy houses and she plays with their greater equality. For some people, in the children in the yard after school some days. biggest cities, this is indisputably true. But She tries to picture people so poor they Poonam is the acid test: In her India, in her must sleep at the roadside. She can’t.. And lifetime, will it ever be enough just to work she decides, in that moment, that she will hard and have a dream? one day go to see for herself.