On his first visit to Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest and most populous state, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim met the state’s chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and talked about the most fundamental priority of the World Bank – removing poverty from the face of the world. ?With UP being home to 8% of the world’s poor, there is no way we can be successful in our endeavour without being successful here in Uttar Pradesh,? he said, adding that it is for this reason itself that he made it a point to visit UP on his first official visit to India.
Hours later, he was giving practical insights on eradicating the ?stain of poverty from one’s consciousness? as he spoke to a group of schoolgirls in a non-descript hamlet of Tilshehri Khurd in rural Kanpur, UP’s largest and most congested city, once known as the Manchester of the East, on the importance of education and hard work in delivering them out of the curse of poverty. ?I too was born in a very small village in South Korea, which was poorer than India. But I have been able to reach where I am through education, hard work and dedication. You too can lift yourself out of poverty if you make up your mind to do so – it is possible,? he told Karishma, Mansi and Ranjana, who gifted him a portrait of himself along with a poem written on it in Hindi.
His next stop was at a health sub-centre in the same locality, where he met Ramila, Awasthi and Sabeera, the Asha workers at the Centre and Kamla Devi, the ANM and asked them the number of deliveries at the sub-centre in the last year and about the vaccination programme.
While speaking to Renu, an expectant mother, he realised that the sub-centre did not have the resources to deal with critical deliveries and in those situations, the pregnant mothers have to be rushed to city hospitals in whatever mode of transportation is available ? be it tractors or trolleys. Often, women give birth to babies on the way to the hospital. On hearing this, the moved Kim said that health sub-centres in the state needed to be strengthened so that such incidents are reduced and gradually averted. He also inquired from the Kanpur Divisional Commissioner Shalini Prasad about the literacy level in the district as well as its sex ratio. ?There is scope to increase awareness about the sex ratio so that female foeticide and infanticide are totally eradicated,? he said.
UP currently has a $148-million Uttar Pradesh Health Systems Strengthening Project that is funded by the World Bank.
The WB president?s visit to Tilshehri Khurd in Kanpur was to gain first-hand insight into the realities of rural life, which due to the paucity of employment avenues invariably compels migration to towns and cities. He visited the low-income Dalit neighborhood in Kanpur to see some of India?s urban challenges such as sanitation, drinking water and housing.
He interacted with the residents of the Maharishi Valmiki Nagar malin basti to learn about their efforts to secure vital services like water supply and sanitation and boosting their prosperity levels.