Children have conventionally been valued, if at all, as future citizens. Not only do children face marginalisation on account of their gender, caste, race, ethnicity and class, just as adults do; they experience being unimportant simply because they are children. That childhood itself is precious and needs to be cherished, protected and invested in, is a fairly recent understanding.
Experiences from across the world show that children are among the most vulnerable when local economies are opened up to global market forces without making adequate investments and safeguards for the poor and marginalised. The experiences are most traumatic in countries which opened markets in a situation where children were in any case at risk. World Bank reports analysing the effects of the financial crisis due to exposure to global markets in Mexico and Thailand found that children were withdrawn from school, entered hazardous jobs and prostitution rings, and suffered from development damage due to malnutrition. These effects continued long after the economies recovered.
In India about 60 million children under the age of 6 exist below the poverty line, and every second child is malnourished. Almost 2 million children in India die every year before reaching the first birthday. One in 11 dies before the fifth birthday. 7 to 8 lakh children die every year from easily preventable diseases like diarrhoea. Children of 100 million families live without water at home; children in 150 million households are without electricity; less than half of Indias children between the age 6 and 14 go to school and a little over one-third of all children who enroll in grade one reach grade eight. After 56 years of independence we have failed to protect our children.
• Child Relief and You
Clearly, such a grave situation calls for urgent and persistent
investment in the rights of children. However, the response to such concerns has
been contrary. While the urban rural poverty gap has reduced progressively,
regional disparities across the country have increased; a concern also raised by
the President in his
Republic Day speech
in 2000. Indian society is increasingly
polarised and the gap between the rich and poor is widening. In the era of globalization, opening of markets has brought FDI, the IT boom, greater consumer choice and also lower job security and suicides among farmers and labourers due to rising indebtedness and unemployment.
The government spending on the social sector as a proportion of national income was lower than that of the 80s. The Public Distribution System is now available only to the poorest of the poor - those with income of less than Rs. 300 per person per month in 1998-99. This definition leaves out large numbers of poor people. For the 60% of the population, including children, dependent on agriculture the higher costs of fertilisers, pesticides and seeds are making it virtually impossible to survive. On one hand while selling, farmers receive a fraction of the price of a decade ago. On the other food grains, prices have jumped (10.2% for rice) in the 90s affecting the ability to purchase basic food requirements and have resulted in mass hunger among the rural poor. Unsurprisingly, in such situations of distress, women and children suffer the most.
The shift towards casual and contract labour in the face of adult job insecurity further worsens the situation for children. Lack of adequate employment opportunity for the parents makes them use the worst survival strategy- sending children to work make up the gap in family income. Evidence from Andhra Pradesh shows that 60% of the 247,800 children working in cottonseed production had dropped out from school to replace adult earning lost when corporations consolidated the family farms for cash crop plantations. Male migration to urban areas in search of jobs sees more and more women left in villages to fend for the household and care for children. Girls in particular get pulled into sibling care and housework forcing them to forgo education and the opportunity of childhood.
While Central Government allocation towards elementary education has seemingly increased it is still not adequate for providing quality education to the millions of out of school children. Under-qualified and underpaid "para teachers" will impart education to first generation learners. These children will be handicapped in competing with those educated in formal schools and find it near impossible to break out of the cycle of poverty they have been trapped in for generations.
While private schools providing expensive education are burgeoning across the country, government schools are being closed down in the guise of non-performance. School closure and land sale for commercial complexes in Ahmedabad in 1998 and closure of thirty schools in Indore in 1999 are reported.
Of late, instead of increasing investments in health and making services more accessible, the state is not only withdrawing from providing health services to the poor, it is encouraging commercialisation of health care services. Currently three-fourths of spending on health is made by households and only one-fourth by the government. This often pushes the already vulnerable poor into indebtedness; in over 40% hospitalisation episodes, costs were met by selling assets or taking loans. Yet large numbers of Indian children live a life continually threatened by malnourishment, disease and death with no solution in sight.
We will continue to fail on our promise as a nation unless children and their communities participate in evolving child friendly policies that address their real needs. Only then will we be able to build a world of possibilities that gives all our children a chance.
