Integrated strategy critical

Tragically, at a time when the nation has been talking of achieving high growth rate, a recent report has pointed out that 38.7 per cent children in the country suffer from stunting. The percentage is much higher than the global prevalence of stunting at 23.8 per cent. In fact, India ranks 114 in the list of 132 countries surveyed as per the latest Global Nutrition Report (GNR) 2016.

Though still home to one-third of the world’s 159 million stunted under-five-year-old children, India has made remarkable progress by reducing its rate of stunting from 48 per cent in 2006 to 38 per cent in 2014. China ranks 26, which are 106 notches above India, even after progress made by the country. Significantly, India almost doubled the rate of stunting reduction in the past decade compared to the previous one. As is well-known, stunting may result in delayed mental development and reduced cognitive capacity.

While, on the one hand, stunting still remains a major problem in the country due to under nutrition and malnutrition, which is widely prevalent in rural areas, on the other, obesity has been affecting children specially in urban areas. This also reflects the prevalence of the widening levels of income among the population, with one section falling prey to over nutrition while another suffering from under nutrition.

The report also called for urgent attention in tackling the rising percentage of those who are overweight and, in particular to the high rate of diabetes. The growing non-communicable disease burden has also an effect on children and youth. Apart from this, seven out of 10 children are anaemic and 42.5 per cent under five years underweight.

Given the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme launched in Panipat, Haryana, a State that has one of the worst sex ratios (830 girls to every 1000 boys), the Government has released funds to Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, MP, Punjab and UP to rectify the imbalance.

Another vital problem is that of child labour and the recent Child Labour Amendment Bill, 2016, passed in Parliament’s Monsoon session. This has raised serious concerns by UNICEF along with various child rights activists. As the amendment allows a child to help out in family enterprises, the UN agency stated that the provision would affect children from poor families and legitimize family work, causing further disadvantage to them as there is a lot of outsourced work carried out from homes.

The Bill makes employment of a child below 14 years in any occupation or processes, except in family enterprises, punishable by a jail term of up to two years and even provides for penalty for parents. “Under the new Child Labour Act, the more invisible forms of child labour and exploitation may go unseen and the most vulnerable and marginalized children may end up with irregular school children, lower levels of learning and therefore subsequent dropping out of school”, UNICEF chief of education in India, Euphrates Gobina has observed.

It is indeed distressing to note that as per official figures, India has 33 million children between 0-18 years of age, engaged as child labourers, being highest among Scheduled Tribes (ST) at 6.7% and Scheduled Castes (SC) at 3.9 per cent, according to 2011 Census.

There are also umpteen examples of children being employed in hazardous occupations and exploited by employers with low pay and no health back-up. As per available figures, there are around 8.33 lakh children trapped in child labour in India. The 2011 national census found the total number of child labour, aged 5–14, to be at 4.35 million, and the total child population to be 259.64 million in that age group. Though there has been partial control in child labour, still India has the highest number of such labourers under the under the 14. In fact, in Central India, thousands of children work in mines, factories etc.

While under the National Child Labour Project, children in age of 9 to 14 years rescued from work are enrolled in Special Training Centres, which provide education, vocational training, mid-day meal, health care etc, the Labour Ministry notes the funds given to States are inadequate to tackle the large number of working children.

The enforcement agencies have a vital role to play in this regard and only children who work in their families after attending school should be allowed. It in indeed unfortunate that child exploitation is allowed to continue though politicians talk of progress and achieving high GDP growth without tackling the ground realities. It is an irony that laws that are meant to protect children from hazardous labour are ineffective and not implemented properly.

Though the Government has focused on the rural sector, the neglect of these areas has compounded the problems of children. Apart from widespread poverty and squalor, trafficking of children is a major issue and still needs to be tackled effectively. As per a report, four States – West Bengal, Assam, Bihar and Odisha – accounted for over 60 per cent of the missing children in the country, with the share of girls being around 60 per cent or more over the years.

Poverty-stricken conditions in these and neighbouring States contribute largely to trafficking. Traffickers lure parents with lies about the possibility of better education, domestic work and a nurturing atmosphere. The children are lured to leave their places of origin and many of them fall prey to trafficking. Often parents knowingly send their children to save them from hunger and degraded conditions of living.

Girls from poor families find their way to trafficking rackets in India and abroad. According to a report in India Today last year, girls are “sold openly” in Patna and Agra and auctioned for their virginity. Likewise, incidence of rape of children has increased in recent years, specially in metros and big cities, with little action by State Governments.

While children’s education may have improved to some extent after the Right to Education and mid-day meal scheme, the problem still persists in backward districts. Moreover, the quality of education is very poor along with lack of sincerity of teachers. Though drop-out rates have decreased over the years, even now these are high and a child dropping out of school to work is quite common.

The other problem relates to health facilities being provided in rural areas. Contamination of drinking water is rampant in many districts as also lack of sanitation. Though the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has made headway in the past year and may help tackle communicable diseases among children, the results remain to be seen. Likewise, the impact of Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, which provides cashless health insurance cover of Rs 30,000 per annum on family floater basis to BPL families of five people in the unorganized sector, needs to be ascertained.

Meanwhile the Ministry of Women and Child Development unveiled a new app to fight malnutrition under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). The application has been geared to automatically alert anganwadi workers to a child’s nutrition status through colour-coded graphs. The application is expected to work in eight States – Chhattisgarh, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, and its success rate should be under the scanner.

Summing up, it goes without saying that children, who are future torch-bearers of the country, have to be given adequate cheap and healthy nutrition and easy access to education so that they could join the mainstream of life and activity. Introduction of mere policies and schemes is only a beginning to the desired end.

By: Dhurjati Mukherjee
INFA