Did you know that the divorce rate in India is going up like crazy? That the software industry heads the divorce rates, we heard of software engineers who have divorced in 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 4 months,… A software engineer gave us these statistics: In her batch of 18 classmates (all women), 5 are yet to be married and out of the 10 that were married, 8 are divorced. She has been out of college for 3 years now.
If urban India is only getting divorced in a hurry, wait, rural India is not far behind. A resident school that is situated in a rural area in Tamilnadu had advertised for applications for post of teachers. Out of the 300 applicants (all women) 75% were divorced.
A girls high school in villupuram was conducting regular medical check-up for its students between class 8 and 12 (age 14 - 18), when 2 of them fainted. On suspicion, they were examined and found to be pregnant. Then the school decided to do the pregnancy check for all its students and found that 28 students were pregnant.
In Thiruvallur District (north of Chennai), villages consist of agricultural labourers. These villages have faced the worst urban exploitation, the illiterate agricultural labourers have been rendered jobless through mechanisation of agriculture in the past decade, taken to the city for petty jobs, have had the remaining menfolk in the village completely get addicted to liquor, have traded in illicit liquor to survive, face police brutuality whenever there is a need to show 'cases'. Here people this year have a new trade - Water. Villagers are inviting private water suppliers to come and dig deep borewells in their lands to pump water till the bore runs dry in return for a few thousand rupees (which many of them have never seen before). When one section of the village has completely gone dry, the private operators do not have to look far, the other section of the village is waiting and welcoming them. And when one village has gone dry completely, the next village is waiting…poverty and sudden promise of money has pushed them to look at the water lorries with hope, the villagers on being queried about what will they do for their water respond, "we will get water from our Panchayat water supply", that is their level of ignorance.
Sirumalai near Dindigul in Tamilnadu is famous for its plantains. "Sirumalai pazham" is famous for its smooth, sweet taste. However, Sirumalai has been burning for some time now literally. The people living in the foot hills are used to the evening forest fires in the hills. It is said that the poor villagers on the hills are co-operating with rich contractors to set the trees on fire, they get doused after awhile due to wind and the half burnt wood is chopped and collected to be sold as charcoal and transported in lorry load.
