A in the case of our country, means the inequalities afflicting, in particular, Dalits and Scheduled Tribes. A look at the map of India points unquestionably to a clear and evident conclusion: where the social development indicators are low, the violations of human rights are high. There is a clear correlation between a lack of literacy, especially of the girl child, and infant mortality rates, malnutrition, and an adverse sex ratio between women and men. In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, some 35% of the population live below the poverty line; literacy rates are barely 50% - and in various parts of these States, far less for women; and infant mortality rates vary between 75 and 96 per thousand. These are areas from which the Commission receives vast numbers of complaints, not only in respect of civil and political rights, but the entire range of economic, social and cu!tural rights. They need to be contrasted with Kerala where, with over 90% literacy, the infant mortality rate, for instance, is only 16 per thousand - comparable to certain countries inWestern Europe and where an alert civil society is, more readily, capable of attending to human rights violations locally. 2.13 - Not surprisingly, therefore, the Commission has, with increasing stridency, been urging 2.1 4 policies in the economic and social sector that are truly responsive to the needs of the most vulnerable in our smiety: free and compulsory education upto the age of 14 years, as article 45 of our Constitution requires and as our Supreme Court has determined to be a Fundamental Right; primary health facilities to provide the potable drinking water and levels of maternal and child welfare essential to a life in dignity; food and nutritional standards essential to fulfilling the potential of a h m a n being. The Commission is gratified that, in recent months, there is a greater realization among the major political parties that there is no easy road to national salvation that avolds these issues. For its part, the Commission has &It the need to be increasingly pro-active in respect of issues that raise fundamental questions of equity and justice in our counw: the rights of Dalits and the atrocities perpetrated against them, the displacement of populations, especially tribals, by mega-projects; issues of food scarcity and allegations of deaths by starvation; the unconscionable cruelty of child-labour, especially in hazardous industries and child prostitution; the rights of women subjected to violence and discrimination; the rights of minorities and issues of religious tolerance, to mention but a few of its principal concerns. It is also evident that, for the Commission, the right to development, in all of its ramifications,is becoming central to its concerns, for it is this right that provides the integral link between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights, on t b other, between the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the Vienna Declaratbn of 1993. 2.15 If there is a correlation between the Human Development Index and respect for human