Life in Rural Andhra Pradesh
More than two out of every three Indians live in the countryside and over half of Indians work on the land. India is still overwhelmingly an agricultural society. But that society is in crisis. Between 2001 and 2005 nearly 90,000 farmers, overwhelmed by debt, killed themselves.
The children that SLA cares for come mainly from the rural villages of the East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, near the market town of Tuni, where the Light of Love home is located. Tuni is about 5-10 miles from the Bay of Bengal coast. East Godavari has the third highest proportion of Dalits in Andhra Pradesh.
Life for these people is extremely precarious. The area is afflicted by drought and cyclones, and disease is a constant threat. Basic healthcare is beyond the reach of the majority who hover on the breadline, working gruelling hours as farm labourers for wages that barely buy enough food.
A bad harvest, an accident or illness, and people quickly become destitute. With no social safety net, they are prey for moneylenders. Many are forced to sell themselves and even their children into servitude as bonded labourers, or "paleru". This is illegal, but it suits powerful landlords. There are about 15 million Indian children working as paleru.
Many villagers look for work elsewhere as migrant labourers, leaving families behind. Some bring home AIDS. Most are totally ignorant of the risks of unprotected sex. Unaware they are infected, they pass the virus on to their families. AIDS has orphaned several dozen of the children we care for.
Our Indian partner NASA discovered these children while doing its social work among the dispossessed of East Godavari. NASA also found children begging in the streets, scavenging from rubbish dumps and rescued many from working as paleru.
Even though life in Tuni is often nasty, brutish and short, the most striking feature is the resilience of the people. We are inspired and humbled by their ability to rejoice in the simplest, most human things in life: love, friendship, generosity, hope.
