Life in India is worse than in Bangladesh
In an article, How Bangladesh is outperforming India, leading Indian journalist notes that as annual growth of India’s Gross Domestic Product slips below 5 per cent, Bangladesh is racing ahead at 8%.
“Life expectancy for males and females in Bangladesh is 71/74. In India it’s just 67/70. When you research below this broad picture the difference becomes even more striking,” he continues on his weekly column for The Hindustan Times, also published on his website ITV.In.
“First, take children. Neonatal mortality in India is 22.73 per 1,000 live births, its just 17.12 in Bangladesh. Infant mortality is 29.94 in India versus 25.14 in Bangladesh. Our under-five mortality is 38.69, theirs is 30.16. Now, come to women. In Bangladesh 71 per cent above the age of 15 are literate, only 66 per cent in India. In Bangladesh female labour participation is 30 per cent and rising, ours is 23 per cent and has fallen by 8 per cent in the last decade.”
For Thapar’s full article:
http://www.itv.in/index.php?option=com_sentiments&view=detail&sid=1134&Itemid=3
Thapar’s career as a journalist has been hurt badly by his tough questions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government. In 2007, Thapar tried to do a TV interview with Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat. He asked Modi if he had an image problem since Muslims viewed him as “mass murderer.” Thapar was referring to the riots in the state in 2002, when 790 Muslims were killed. Several independent observers and studies showed that Modi had failed to stop the killings. Modi abruptly ended the interview, though his staff served sweets and chai to Thapar and his team.
Since 2014, after Modi became Prime Minister of India, Thapar’s career effectively ended as a TV interviewer with both CNN IBN and India Today not renewing his contracts. In 2016, Ministers and leaders of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party also stopped appearing on Thapar’s shows.
Son of an army General, Thapar studied at The Doon School in Dehradun and the Stowe School. While at Doon, Thapar was the Editor-in-chief of the school magazine The Doon School Weekly. In 1977, he graduated with a degree in Economics and Political Philosophy from Pembroke College, Cambridge. That year he was elected President of the Cambridge Union. He went on to get a PhD in International Relations from St Antony's College, Oxford.
