India: Child Abuse, The Other Half and NRIs · Global Voices
Kamla Bhatt

A few days ago a study about child sexual abuse in India was released and the findings of the study were pretty disturbing. If you recollect Mira Nair's movie “The Monsoon Wedding” had an underlying theme of child abuse in India, and that was probably the first time that this taboo subject was addressed by a mainstream filmmaker.
Pooja of Instablogs writes:
“The sanctimonious pride with which we espouse Indian family values has been proved to be a myth. The ugly truth is out – one out of every two Indian children has suffered some form of abuse…
The study surfaces an alarming figure of child abuse. It shows that 53 percent out of over 17,000 children reported one or more forms of sexual abuse. This is the first time the government has done such an exhaustive survey on the controversial issue of child abuse. “
(Photo Credit – Matthieu)
However another blogger Zoey is a bit skeptical about the statistical methodology and rigor employed in the study. She writes:
I'm a bit skeptical, primarily because none of the stories I've read have defined the exact boundaries of physical or sexual abuse, nor have they addressed the issue of methodological rigor.
While Zoey is skeptical about the statistical methodology she wonders if mainstream media will do any kind of thoughtful follow-up either about the statistical methodology or the child abuse issue.
From child abuse we move to the other half of India, the other India that has no business or IT graduates. Nita talks about the other India in her post The Spirit of India, which is essentially a photo essay. Through her pictures she highlights and shows how the other India lives in the city of Mumbai, where 37 percent of the population are migrants.
But, what about the other half of India that are engineer or management graduates and make a life outside India? How do these Non Resident Indians (NRIs) live? Ram Krishnaswamy writes in Churimuri that not All NRIs Aren't Rich:
If truth has to be told, my reading is that people living in India, especially the middle class, have a lot more spare cash than Indian NRIs. It is a myth that NRIs have a money tree growing in their back yards.
Ram, who lives in Australia gives a run down of how NRIs make it other societies and what it takes for them to survive. He writes:
By the third week in most young NRI households, all funds are gone and they are using their credit cards and waiting anxiously for the next pay packet.
In other words it is hand-to-mouth living for most young couples, in what is basically a Credit Card Society. There is no such thing as savings, especially with low interest rates it is just not worth saving anything in a bank.
We wind up this week's round-up with a look at Laurie Baker, a British architect who became an Indian citizen and spent many years working in India. Bakerji as he was fondly called pioneered low-cost housing in India. Arzan Wadia, an architect and blogger located in New York has an extensive post on Bakerji with links to other bloggers.