Article Source : : Sahara Time, Mumbai

Author : Sujata Madhok*

Date of Issue : Nov 26 2005

Title of Article : Kidding with child's rights

Details :

It strikes one as strange that Children's Day went past without the announcement of major plans and programmes for children. As a nation we seem to lack a real commitment to the young. It is a rare politician who has the heart and commitment to devote to children's interests.

Children ages 0-18 currently comprise as much as 41% of our population. Yet children hardly figure on our public agenda. Perspective planning for them and their growing needs, stage by stage, is inadequate. The net result is serious shortages of paediatric facilities, schools, teachers and so on.

It was in 1974 that the Government laid down a National Policy for Children. Nearly two decades later, in 1992, it drew a National Plan of Action for Children. The current decade has seen a flurry of "action" for children in the form of the National Charter for Children 2004, as well as the National plan of Action for Children, 2005. These measures are largely a response to international pressures from bodies like the United Nations.

Currently on the anvil is a National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights as well as a Central Nodal Authority for Combating Trafficking.

India's children hold out tremendous promise but also pose formidable challenges. The first challenge is simply ensuring that infants (and their mothers) survive, India accounts for 20% of annual child deaths in the world. The infant mortality rate is a high 64 deaths per thousand live births. The Government now promises to bring it down sharply to below 30 by the year 2010. Again, it hopes to dramatically reduce maternal mortality from 540 deaths per 100,000 live births to below 100 deaths.

The National Rural Health Mission, which is meant to provide health facilities to the underserved rural areas, is expected to play a part in reducing infant and child mortality. However, it needs to be remembered that mortality rates have stagnated in the post-liberalization years. Healthcare interventions alone cannot improve children and women's life chances in an adverse macroeconomic climate where the food security of millions of people is at risk.

Globalization has brought with it widening disparities and the impoverishment of large numbers even if it has brought growing wealth to the elite and an upwardly mobile section of the middle class. The children of the poor bear many of the adverse consequences of loss of livelihoods, a crisis in agriculture and increasing migration. One of the documented consequences, for instance, is the large-scale employment of girls in cottonseed farms in Andhra Pradesh, since farmers squeezed by poor returns from the multinational seed companies cannot afford to pay adult wages.

The halving of government investment in rural development and rural infrastructure in the 1990s (from 11.1% to 5.8%) sharply aggravated the crisis in the countryside.

While many farmers have resorted to suicides and continue to do so, massive numbers of rural people have resorted to distress migration to the cities. Distress migration puts infants and children at risk of both mortality and morbidity, as they are more vulnerable than adults. Migration is inadequately captured in research data and planning for migrant populations has consequently been ignored. One consequence is urban squalour. It is no secret that child mortality rates in urban slums are far higher than in planned colonies where civic facilities like clean drinking water and sanitation are available.

Census data does not always capture the status of children living in areas that officialdom defines as "unauthorized" and  'illegal' colonies. They remain uncounted and underserved. Quips Razia Ismail of the India Alliance for Child Rights, "These are de facto and de jure unauthorized children"

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, launched in 2001, has a series of laudable national commitments to provide education to all. The goals that "all children in school by 2003", "all children complete five years of primary schooling by 2007" are so far goals, not achieved realities.

However, official data suggests an upswing in enrolment and retention of children in schools and a reduction in the gender gap between education of boys and girls. There is a welcome official focus on girls education, with a new programme for girls in educationally backward districts. There is also clearer recognition that if education is to be universalized, deprived communities will have to be targeted. Unfortunately the political will for special focus on the minorities and the disabled is limited.

After a battle for control of the 2% Education Cess, which had been grabbed by the Finance Ministry, there is finally to be a separate Shiksha Kosh with the entire cess collection going into it. Education Secretary Kumud Bansal recently announced that outlays on the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Mid-Day Meal have doubled in the current Budget. Bansal says, "it is more than likely that India will reach a sustainable threshold literacy rate of 75% by 2007."

Of course numerous gaps between promise and performance persist. For instance, only 2% of disabled children get formal education.

On universal education, the Government is finalizing a controversial Bill for free and compulsory education. Activists underline the fact that the Government still refuses to acknowledge the right of children below six years to early childhood care and education and that of children ages 14-18 years to education.

Besides the universalization of education is the problem of child labour. India accounts for 30% of child labour in the world and universal schooling seems to be the most obvious solution.

A greater acceptance of the concept of child rights, moves towards child budgeting (which involves measuring amounts spent by governments on children), the adoption of the National Plan of Action and a Children's Commission that is adequately empowered to deal with violations of child rights, on the lines of the Human Rights Commission, are among the measures that could promote the future of children.



*The writer is a senior journalist.