Somini Sengupta, former Delhi Bureau Chief of The New York Times, Speaks on the Paradox of Childhood Today in India

�A lot of [India�s] challenges can be measured in the lives of children,� Somini Sengupta said during her talk Freedom�s Future: Learning and Destiny in India Today. It was February 10th and the talk was part of the South Asian Studies Council colloquia series. Sengupta, former Delhi Bureau Chief of The New York Times, gave a moving speech on the paradox of childhood today in India, and the threat it poses to India�s future.

Gifted with the rare talent of being able to observe her surroundings without passing judgment, Sengupta�s skills as both journalist and lecturer are impressive and captivating. She began her career at The New York Times in 1995, when she reported on everything from local Borough of Brooklyn news, to crime, politics and the emerging South Asian community of New York City. Starting in November of 2001, she was given temporary international assignments, being posted in the Middle East, then Africa, and, in 2005, becoming the first South Asian American to serve as the Delhi Bureau Chief. She completed that post in August 2009 and is currently on leave, working on a book about the India she knows, and raising her young daughter.

A petite and elegantly dressed woman, Sengupta has a penetrating and engaged stare. Perhaps as a result of years of on-the-front reporting, she gives the constant impression of granting people her undivided attention. However, far from being intimidating, this intensity serves only to put people at ease and make them feel important. After only a few minutes with her, it is easy to understand why she�s a journalistic success.

During her stay here at Yale, she made several talks and was able to give a number of people the pleasure of having a meal with her and speaking about modern South Asia and the other places she has been to. She marvels at the dramatic change she�s seen over the last few decades in American understanding and interest in South Asia.

Growing up as a Calcutta-born immigrant in Canada in the 1970s, she remembers �having to explain to people that I was the other kind of Indian.� Her family then moved to California, where they became part of the South Asian, and specifically Bengali, population. But there weren�t many young people around Sengupta�s age, and she grew up within a culture very different from the one she had left back in Calcutta. After graduating Berkley with an English degree, she wasn�t ready to make the plunge into graduate school and a life of academia. So she took a job with the LA Times, and found that she really enjoyed the work of a journalist. While getting on-the-job training she was �constantly having to explain even to my editors what South Asian even meant.� When, three years later, she became a reporter for The New York Times, she continued to have to explain herself. When she mentioned Bollywood, she used to have to write a follow-up clause explaining that it was �India�s mainstream cinema.� Today such a clause would be almost laughable. People were frequently asking her if she was reporting on the Southeast Asian community. �I had to explain that, no, it was a different part of Asia.�

Today everything is different. �It�s exciting just to see how many people here who are not of South Asian decent, are interested in the region,� She says of the diverse scholars associated with the South Asian Studies Department here at Yale. Not only has that, but media attention in general allowed Sengupta to have an incredibly diverse target audience. She says that the media and scholarly shifts can largely be attributed to the �hug shift� which has taken place in India�s economic and political expansion over the last few decades. India has dramatically expanded its international negotiating clout, and the rest of the world has had no choice but to learn about the country and the region.

Critical developments in political and economic power have fostered a rise of education in the West on India. But it is the level of education in India which Sengupta spoke on. Though it was a bitterly cold day with thickly falling snow, over thirty people braved the elements to come listen to her speak.

Sengupta�s talk was framed in an anonymous rural Indian village, cleverly dubbed �The Future.� In The Future, every morning, children in tired clothing walk to the excuse of a building which serves as their school, empty rice sacks under arms to use as chairs, and text books which are written in a slew of languages and don�t teach the same material. Some have no text books at all. Most don�t have shoes.

Sengupta took her audience on a sobering tour of the educational crisis in India. Only two out of three teachers of the school in The Future showed up for school, and one was an hour late. Similar stories are told across India. Teachers jobs don�t pay well, and many teachers practice absenteeism and simultaneously work at different government posts, such as voter registration, which actually pay more.

�[The children] come here to learn,� Sengupta quotes an Indian university graduate volunteer at the school, �They leave learning nothing. One day they will curse us.�

India�s greatest threat to democracy, Sengupta says, is that curse. India may have a democratic structure in government, but everyday life in India is far from democratic. India may be expanding as an economic and diplomatic power, but it is not supporting a large percentage of its most vulnerable, and valuable, citizens: its children. 60% of forth graders in India are functionally illiterate. Those who manage to gain a decent education do so in expensive private institutions which mostly utilize the International Baccalaureate program, or through private tutoring.

There is a substantial problem within the Indian public education system. And, across India, there is hunger for education. A hunger which is sewing hope for a better future. �Something [in India] has changed,� Sengupta says, �Something substantial.� Destiny used to be written in the womb. �Only a few, with names like mine, were destined to go to school.� Today, people see education as an opportunity for upwards mobility. Even though the quality of education available to many Indians is virtually non-existent, the desire for education is growing, and the void is being acknowledged within the government. The 2009 Right to Education bill requires all children under 14 to attend school. Ambition is filling the youth of India, and many of their parents are clamoring for their children to have a better life. From a young woman who put salt in the family food until they let her go to university, to the illiterate parents rushing off to night school to learn English so they can help their children in school, Sengupta paints a picture of ambition. �It�s as if someone left the door open, and these kids just walked in,� She says. It is these kids who the young volunteer fears will someday curse their country. Kids who want a chance at the new life that India�s phenomenal growth and expanding international role hint at, but haven�t yet reached them.

There is yet another significant population of children whose real hunger prevents them ever experiencing hunger for education. Even though there have been no widespread famines in modern India, the level of child malnutrition is startlingly high. Though NGOs and other aid groups do their best to feed these youngsters, a shocking 42.5% of Indian children are underweight. Anemia is high among both mothers and their children. Despite India�s recently established $1.3 billion network feed center, implementation efficacy is low. The most at-risk group, those under 2 years, has hardly been targeted at all.

And yet, �For all the dreadful statistics and anecdotes, most Indians are incredibly optimistic. Dreadfully optimistic. They are awash in ambition.� For now, school children across India are sustained on that ambition, and hope for a new life. Sengupta, to, has a streak of unshakable optimism.

The amount of suffering and brutality she has seen since she began reporting abroad would have disheartened most people. It was after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that Sengupta decided she wanted to go abroad. On November 15, 2001, she published an article about abusive parents in Brooklyn. Suddenly, on November 28th, she was writing in the World section. Reporting from Ankara, Turkey. Her stint in the Middle East lasted seven months. After a return to America where she reported on the recent influx of refugees, Sengupta became a Times� international correspondent on twenty African nations. She was in Africa to report on the second Liberian civil war in as many decades, the outbreak of ethnic conflict in Darfur, Sudan, continued conflict in the Ivory Coast, war in the Congo and more. As 2004 became 2005, she left Africa to take up a new job as Delhi Bureau Chief. But even though she never intended to be a war correspondent, she found herself reporting on the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Maoists in Nepal, and ethnic violence throughout the South Asian region. She was also faced with the Tsunami crisis.

Sengupta has reported on many of last decades violent and horrific acts. From civilians killed by poorly aimed air strikes in Iraq in 2004, to the 2008 Hotel bombings in Mumbai, she has seen life and death from a lot of angles. And yet, she continues to take a balanced look at the world. When asked what keeps her going in spite of all that she has seen, she smiled and shrugged a little, �You get out, and you see something whimsical on your path.� When asked if she�s ever had the urge to get involved herself she shakes her head. �I�ve always wanted to be a fly on the wall,� She says. For her, the great part of her job is getting to know people completely different from herself, to step into their shoes, and get to a snippet of them, and their lives. Being able to reach that kind of comprehension, though, takes more than an open mind and a quick pen. �Unless you do the homework before, you can�t land up at a place and write a story that makes sense,� Sengupta says. If she knows she�s going to write a story, she reads ever book, and calls ever expert she can find. If she�s running to report on a sudden and unexpected event, she grabs all the information she can. �I�ll be making last-minute phone calls, driving up,� She laughs. But it�s also about knowing how to ask the right questions. Especially when she�s working through a translator.

Along with the memories of ugliness and pain, there are moments of hope. She reported on the end of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, which has been one of her favorite stories over the years. �When was the last time I was among the struggle to create a country?� She asks. There was so much hope among the people, she said.

It is that hope which she dwells on. Even as she talked about the curse which the children of India may well impart on the country if it continually fails to help them, she also tells about the hope which makes these children strive to learn and participate in an ever-expanding opportunity pool. She tells about a young boy without any real education, who dreamed of being an astrophysicist. Parents hoping their children can have a better life. Sometimes people don�t even have a concrete opinion about why they want education for their children. Sometimes, Sengupta says, the answer is vague, but powerful. �I want my daughter�s life to be different from mine,� One mother told her.

She doesn�t have a solution to the problems she is pointing out. She sees it as her job to expose the problems, and the fact. Her job is to point out inconsistencies and areas of progress. �The challenge that India faces,� She says, �Is enormous. No country [in a democratic setting] has faced that before.� This challenge will be played out in the lives and opportunities of India�s children. There is hope for a better future throughout India, and with great hope comes the potential of great success, or great disappointment.