Exhausted after a day of sightseeing in Mumbai, India, Kelly McJannett was delighted to get a seat on a train to Rajasthan. As the train pulled out of the station, Kelly settled down to eat the sandwich supper she’d bought along. But she soon lost her appetite. Looking out the window, she was shaken to see the stark images of poverty flashing in front of her as the train skirted a slum.
‘I couldn’t believe the sheer numbers of people who were living in such dire conditions,’ Kelly recalls.
‘I was also deeply shocked by the children, the fleeting glimpses of which revealed the swollen stomachs of malnutrition.’
Although there are now almost 200,000 millionaires in India, a joint UN and Indian Government survey completed last year shows almost one-third of children under the age of five across India are still classified as underweight and nearly 40 per cent are physically underdeveloped.