on the edges (part 2)

This year 400,000 children will be born in our country of India - and will die before they see a second sunrise.

That's what a recent study says - the report was safely tucked away in the inside of one of our national newspapers.

A full 2 million under 5 year olds die each year in our land. Half the population of New Zeeland.

The tragedy is compounded when we understand how 'preventable' most of these deaths are. The cruel fact is that with all our development and with half of NASA allegedly of Indian origin - we still have so many - so very very many who are on the edges.

The term 'marginalised' itself is problematic. It seems to imply that there are a lot who are 'well off' and a few - the fringe - who are not. A fat well-populated round dot with a thin edge.

Perhaps our society is shaped more like a tree - or a pair of lungs - with a huge surface area, mathematically spread out to maximise exposure. We seem to have is an almost unbroken strand of the margin - of those straining to get through through life in some way or else - with those on the inside being the exception (though dominant and visible) to the rule.

My brother Stefan illustrates this with a mixed-media dyptich called "Child of God." In the second part (shown left), a mono-chromatic destitute man walks on gold foil, and a cut-away shows a colour photo of an adorable and well nourished child.

So much of this poverty is deeper than just lack of money or land. Much has to do with the state of our hearts - and how we relate to each other.

Take child birth in some of the villages that Sheba worked in, for example. After birth, mother and child are both prohibited from eating because of certain local patterns of belief. Or the villages where we used to work Jharkhand where virtually none of the local women would come to the hospital for ante-natal checkups. If the woman is brought at all it was only the last straw - and then too many times male relatives refused to donate blood - "you donate" they would tell the treating staff at our hospital.

It is heartening to know that there are brave people who are making a difference. We recently received the annual report of the Emmanuel Hospital Association.

We were privileged to work with EHA in Chhatisgarh and Jharkhand and continue to be amazed and encouraged by the breadth, commitment and impact that EHA is having. Our colleagues who work in the rural parts of our nation can easily have made choices to further their careers with lucrative employment options. Despite the 'global economic crisis' our health care industry in India is booming. A hospital head told me that if they wanted, they could turn the whole hospital into a treatment centre for Nigerians, who find it cheaper to fly to Bombay and get treated here than go to Europe for the same.

For all the faults that any institution has (not to speak of sets of institutions) - we know that the average EHA hospital or community health and development programme is changing destinies on a daily basis. With all of the challenges that our country faces, we also have so many opportunities to shape history.

We are acting on our itch to be back where we started - in the last week of October we plan a short visit to the Nav Jivan Hospital at Satbarwa in Jharkhand state - where we started our life together - and where so many of our dear friends continue to work faithfully. We hope to be a small encouragement to these silent - and unthanked - heroes.

How about you? And what about me? What are we doing to shape the future of our country? Are we going to wait for our children to read the same sorry statistics of infant death? Are we going to allow another silent generation of people on the brink to grow up around us?