GURGAON, India - But with every glass-and-steel skyscraper and high-tech call center that goes up, a slum also rises. And efforts to demolish those slums have only pushed thousands of migrant worker families like Gudiya's to squat in the very structures they are building, hanging their laundry on clotheslines strung between support beams.
Those are jobs that were promised to you, Amurkn.
In the absence of clean drinking water and flush toilets, cholera and other diseases spread quickly, and many people suffer hacking coughs caused by inhaled paint fumes or cement particles. About 70 percent of children at construction sites are malnourished, compared with the national average of 21 percent, according to a study last year by Mobile Creches, a nonprofit that provides day care and schooling for about 1,800 children at 24 construction sites in New Delhi.
Under India's ancient caste system, manual labor such as cleaning latrines, sweeping streets, hauling loads, and firing cooking bricks is stigmatized as work performed by those at the bottom of the hierarchy.
You know, the work Americans won't do (which is why we need all the illegals).
Members of lower castes make up 70 percent of India's 1.1 billion people, and millions of them are flocking to cities, hoping for better jobs and better living standards - if not for them, then for their children. --more--"
Gee, the Indians sound just like any other parents that mean well for their kids, huh? Maybe we are not so different after all!
