Why this is a historic moment for India's children
Happy belated Children's Day!
This Children's Day was special for many reasons. We are going through a nationwide campaign against corruption and black money, and our honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leaving no stone unturned for its success.
In his Goa address, he said, "I am doing this for the poor, toiling and honest people who are working hard to survive. So that they can get their own home, their children get good education and their parents get care". As a child rights practitioner, my eyes lit up with hope at this care shown for India's children and its poor people.
This Children's Day was also special because it has been 24 years since India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
The UNCRC is the primary international instrument to make countries accountable on their efforts or lack of them, towards improving the lives of all children, rich or poor, girl or boy.
And thirdly, we have just completed a year of signing up to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, many of which are about children's survival, welfare, protection and education. These reasons truly made this Children's Day and the UNCRC week a special one.
1992-2016: State of India's children
On December 11, 1992, India ratified the UNCRC promising to ensure the rights of survival, protection, development and participation for all its children in the country.
The year 1992 also holds significance in the history of India as it is the year India took a decisive step liberalising its markets for the products from worldwide leaping into globalisation.
In the last 23 years, India grew at a pace of an average four-five per cent of GDP per year. While India prospered economically since 1990s, it also vastly improved its performance on indices such as infant mortality, literacy rates and maternal mortality.
India has achieved several Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the predecessor of the SDGs. For example, India reached the target for reducing poverty by half (Goal 1) by official estimates - and is close to doing so by international estimates.
India has already achieved gender parity in primary school enrolment (Goal 3) and almost reached parity in secondary and tertiary education. India reduced hunger by half (Goal 1) maternal mortality by three quarters (Goal 5).
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| PM Narendra Modi. (Photo credit: Reuters) |
However, India did not achieve the goal 4, on child and infant mortality (approximately 1.3 million under-five children died in 2013); and improving access to adequate sanitation to eliminate open defecation (Goal 7). It is hoped that the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao and Swachh Bharat campaigns will soon help us realise these goals too.
The process of rapid economic development has produced new social realities. It is leading to huge inter and intra-state migration and throwing up new challenges like education and care for ''children on the move'', "street children'', and "out-of-school" children.
According to the Census 2011 there are still eight crore Indian children who are deprived from education. The other dimension of the rapid socioeconomic change is the large number of families moving to cities for livelihoods.
Academicians and specialists working on urbanisation estimate that by 2030, almost half of the one billion population of India will make cities and towns as their homes (currently urban population is at 31 per cent, according to 2011 Census).
Therefore, these new realities ask for reconfigured policy focus and implementation.
Need for bigger budgets
Since 1960s, there is a demand from the civil society and educationists to increase the public spending on social sector schemes but despite assurances by various governments, their budgets have only declined as is shown in the figure above.
According to the World Bank, in 2012, the public expenditure on health was four per cent of the GDP. However, in practise, a large percentage of this remains underspent or is diverted to meet political promises and priorities.
Although in a positive development, allocations for children-related schemes have gone up, to ensure that we make India the best country for children we still have a long way to go.
This will be possible only if there is a government that is committed to children's rights and displays political will towards realising it. And thus, I am hopeful that we can make this a historic moment for India's children.
We have a prime minister committed to the welfare of all especially children and as a child rights practitioner, I would like to see the government use the extra revenue received by the government through the Voluntary Disclosure of Income scheme, and the revenue that will be earned as part of the anti-corruption demonetisation drive towards social sector schemes, particularly towards the welfare of India's 40 crore children.
This will also help us achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and thus we can take a giant leap towards making India, a truly child-friendly country.