India independence overshadowed by poverty

from The Telegraph

By Peter Foster in New Delhi

India has celebrated 60 years of Independence with a sombre warning from the country's prime minister that the economic progress of the past decade must be employed to improve the lives of India's numberless rural poor.

Speaking today from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi, Dr Manmohan Singh described India's malnutrition rates as a "national shame" and called for a nationwide effort to eradicate the scourge in the next five years.

Evoking the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Singh said that India would only be truly "free" when it had succeeded in raising the 300m poorest citizens out of poverty, placing them on a new path to productivity.

"Gandhi's dream of a free India will only be fully realized when we banish poverty from our midst," he told an audience of children and dignitaries from behind a bullet-proof screen.

He spoke after raising the national flag in the same spot where the Union Flag was lowered in 1947.

The sound of ceremonial canon echoed round the 17th Century fort which was once the seat of power for the Mughal Empire.

"The problem of malnutrition is a national shame," he said. "I appeal to the nation to resolve and work hard to eradicate malnutrition within five years."

Despite a decade of eight per cent economic growth almost half of India's children are under-fed, with some 160,000 Indian children dying every year before they reach their first birthday.

In some north Indian states poverty rates exceed those of sub-Saharan Africa, a situation which Dr Singh pledged to rectify with massive investment in schools, healthcare and the agriculture on which two-thirds of India's population still depend for their survival.

"We are a young nation," he said, striking a note optimism about India's potential for the future if these key issues could be addressed.

"Once unleashed, the energy of our youth will drive India onto a new growth path."

Pakistan, the Muslim state carved out of British India at Partition with which India has fought threes over the last 60 years, was mentioned only obliquely as Dr Singh said India's progress was intimately bound up with the "prosperity and well-being of our neighbours."

Security for the celebrations was tight, with more than 70,000 troops and paramilitary forces deployed after a general threat from Al Qa'eda to target New Delhi and other capitals belong to US allies.

The Taj Mahal, India's biggest tourist attraction, was also subjected to higher security after police said they had received a "specific threat" against the iconic Mughal monument to loss and love.

Although the Taj, commissioned by the Mughal emperor Shah Jehan in 1632 is one of India's best-known symbols, some hard-line Hindu groups consider it an unwanted reminder of centuries of Muslim domination in India.

In the disputed territory of Kashmir which has been in the grip of an Islamist insurgency since 1989, hard-line and moderate separatist groups united to impose a general strike which shut down the streets of the capital, Srinagar.

The northeastern state of Assam also provided a reminder of the communal tensions which continue to bubble in India 60 years after the trauma of Partition - in which up to a million people died in ethnic violence.

Separatist rebels fighting for autonomy for the oil and tea-rich state have killed some 30 civilians this week, including women and children, and all of them singled out for being Hindi-speakers.

And in eastern India, where an armed Maoist insurgency is feeding on the growing sense of social dislocation felt by India's rural poor, leaflets were distributed ordering a total boycott of the national celebrations.