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INDIA / POPULATION
STORY: INDIA / POPULATION
TRT: 6:00
SOURCE: UNFPA
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: RECENT, INDIA
1. Wide shot, boat on the Ganges, Varanasi
2. Med shot, statues of deities
3. Wide shot, Taj Mahal
4. Various shots, city skyline, Mumbai
5. Various shots, crowds, Mumbai
6. Various shots, train stations
7. Various shots, Ranjith Kumar Singh in Delhi train station
8. SOUNDBITE (Hindi) Ranjith Kumar Singh:
“In the village we don’t have many schools and they can’t get a full education.”
9. Various shots, construction site, Delhi
10. Various shots, people in Delhi train stations
11. Various shots, construction
12. SOUNDBITE (Hindi) Ranjith Kumar Singh:
“I came to Delhi so that I can earn some money and give my kids new opportunities.”
13. Various shots, traffic
14. Various shots, people in the street
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Chandramouli, Census of India, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India:
“The basic objective is to review the past, assess the present, and plan for the future.”
16. Various shots, Chandramouli working
17. Various shots, street scenes
18. Med shot, Ranjith Kumar Singh returning home from work
19. SOUNDBITE (English) Chandramouli, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India:
“We present a complete picture of the social, cultural, economic and demographic profile on the basis of which the country’s planning is based.”
20. Various shots, street scenes
21. Med shot, group of girls studying
22. Med shot, elderly woman getting healthcare
23. Med shot, elderly woman
24. Various shots, Ranjith Kumar Singh cleaning himself
25. SOUNDBITE (Hindi) Ranjith Kumar Singh:
“The first month I felt very sad. I didn’t know anyone. I was all by myself. I slept alone.”
Various shots, Ranjith Kumar Singh leaving for work
26. Med shot, Ranjith Kumar Singh at construction site
27. SOUNDBITE (Hindi) Ranjith Kumar Singh:
“Delhi is very costly. I am not that educated so I can’t get a job for 15,000 or 20,000 rupees per month.”
28. Various shots, construction
29. Various shots, Ranjith Kumar Singh at home with family
30. SOUNDBITE (English) Ena Singh, UNFPA:
“A lot of our work in India is addressed to providing good quality, temporary, contraceptive methods to people so that when they want them they can have them.”
31. Various shots, Ranjith Kumar Singh with family
32. Various shots, people in the street
33. Various shots, farmers in Bihar
34. SOUNDBITE (English) Ena Singh, UNFPA:
“There has to be a range of contraceptive services, including female and male sterilization, but also including spacing methods.”
35. Various shots, child birth
36. Various shots, Ranjith Kumar Singh in Bihar
India - home to nearly twenty percent of the world’s population. A sea of people flood the streets of main cities including New Delhi, one of the most densely populated where more than 10,000 people squeeze into every square kilometer and a steady stream arrives daily.
Among them, 24-year-old Ranjit Kumar Singh, a former farmer who left everything behind to come here, desperate to make a better life for his children.
SOUNDBITE (English) RANJIT:
“In the village we don’t have many schools and they can’t get a full education.”
Ranjit is just one of more than three hundred million people who’ve migrated from India’s rural areas to major cities hoping to reap the rewards of India’s current economic boom.
SOUNDBITE (English) RANJIT:
“I came to Delhi so that I can earn some money and give my kids new opportunities.”
But this kind of migration, together with an explosive population growth of an average of eighteen million people each year, is beginning to weigh heavily on India’s already stretched State resources. All this has left many here wondering just how can the country deal with its drastically growing needs?
SOUNDBITE (English) CHANDRAMOULI:
“The basic objective is to review the past, assess the present, and plan for the future.”
Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, Dr. C. Chandramouli says one of the keys to ensuring the mounting needs of its some 1.2 billion citizens is getting an accurate accounting of the people in the first place. And so, a census – the largest in the world - is taken every decade, making sure to include those, like Ranjit, who’ve relocated.
SOUNDBITE (English) CHANDRAMOULI:
“We present a complete picture of the social, cultural, economic and demographic profile on the basis of which the country’s planning is based.”
The data is critical he says in order to make sure India’s government can improve infrastructure, and appropriately allocate and increase health and social service budgets to eventually provide basic services for all of its people.
And Ranjit is counting on that planning, as he quickly realized that life in the city proved more difficult than he ever imagined.
SOUNDBITE (Hindi) RANJIT:
“The first month I felt very sad. I didn’t know anyone. I was all by myself. I slept alone.”
With little schooling, finding a decent paying job in the city was a challenge. Ranjit eventually found work as a security guard at a construction site, but the pay was minimal, and there was no insurance.
SOUNDBITE (Hindi) RANJIT:
“Delhi is very costly. I am not that educated so I can’t get a job for 15,000 or 20,000 rupees per month.”
Ranjit is now making only 6,000 rupees monthly, the equivalent of a little more than 100 US dollars. He did manage to pinch his pennies and two years later saved enough to bring his wife, Anju and their two sons to live with him and from there, things slowly began to turn.
Ranjit is getting ready to enroll his children in school, and while he doesn’t have formal insurance, the family does have more access to medical care than they did in their village.
But they have decided to delay having any more children, an expense that would be too hard to bear right now.
SOUNDBITE (English) Ena Singh, United Nations Population Fund:
“A lot of our work in India is addressed to providing good quality, temporary, contraceptive methods to people so that when they want them they can have them.”
Ena Singh is the Assistant Representative of the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, in India. She says that voluntary family planning efforts like Ranjit and Anju’s, as well as large scale efforts to help slow the rate of India’s population growth, also plays a crucial role in helping the country keep pace with its burgeoning needs.
SOUNDBITE (English) Ena Singh, United Nations Population Fund:
“There has to be a range of contraceptive services, including female and male sterilization, but also including spacing methods.”
Methods, she says, that include encouraging young couples to postpone having children until after a few years into marriage.
As for Ranjit, he still believes that despite the difficulties adjusting, moving to the city was the right decision.
Something made all the more clear when he journeyed back to his hometown and found himself encouraging his own relatives to migrate.
SOUNDBITE (English) RANJIT:
“I am bringing everyone from the village here, so that they can learn and they too can teach their kids.”
His brother Ranashish was listening to him it seems, he quickly decided to visit Delhi to get a taste of city life. For now, Ranjit and his family, like the hundreds of millions of others who risked everything to start over from scratch, are left to dream and hope that their country can keep pace with its staggering rise.
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