Word: jharkhand
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...care. Behind the screen of its phenomenal economic growth, the country continues to struggle with abysmally high rates of newborn deaths. According to national estimates, for every 1,000 live births, 39 babies die in their first month; a third of these don't survive their first day. In Jharkhand and Orissa, two of east India's most impoverished and underserved states, the numbers are worse still - 49 and 45 deaths per 1,000 live births, respectively. The neonatal mortality rate in China, by comparison, lingers under 15. "Just improving health services will not do," says Dr. Prasanta Tripathy...
...Ekjut and the Institute of Child Health teamed up to stage a regional intervention that would show moms how they could themselves reduce this risk. Their plan was to mobilize a few thousand women from a clutch of villages in one Orissa and two Jharkhand districts as part of a three-year trial (2005 to 2008). A similar project in the mountainous Makwanpur region of Nepal, where health facilities can easily be a six-hour walk away, required the Institute to organize local women into groups. In east India, it rallied an existing structure of "self-help groups," a national...
...since 1967, and sees any government building as an emblem of the state it seeks to overthrow. Naxal attacks usually occur at night, when improvised explosive devices, known as "can bombs," are set off inside the schools. Human Rights Watch researchers visited a school in Dwarika, a village in Jharkhand where no classes have been taught since a can bomb explosion severely damaged the building in November 2008. The wooden doors were shattered, and the walls cracked, making the brick building unsafe for students. Of the 250 students, only 50 had families with enough money to send them...
...damaging is the occupation of all or part of a school building by security forces, who use them as camps or barracks. Students are squeezed into the remaining parts of the school, which in many cases stops functioning altogether. Megha, a high school student in the Mohulia district of Jharkhand, says two-thirds of her school is occupied by troops. "We cannot go to the toilets, as they are used by camp people," she said in an interview with TIME. Other students complain of harassment - the girls feeling leered at, and the boys grilled for information about suspected insurgents...
...government school systems in Bihar and Jharkhand were already abysmal well before Naxal activity picked up this year. Average class sizes in the two states are 75 and 65, respectively, for a single teacher, compared to the national average of 40. Literacy rates, too, are well below the national average of 65%. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made development in Naxal-affected areas - including education - a priority, but the attacks and occupation threaten to undo what limited progress his government had made. In the Aurangabad district of Bihar, for example, the government approved about $28,600 to build...