Universal Children’s Day

Editorial:
Yesterday, 20 November, was Universal Children’s Day. The day observed to mark the UN’s adoption of the Declaration of Children’ Rights in 1959. The Convention which followed is a legally binding treaty that obliges governments to “respect, protect and fulfil” children’s rights through their legislation and policies.
Children’s rights include the right to life, health, education, participation, and protection from all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. All children’s rights are equally important and reinforce each other. Now, let’s look at what India has achieved sixty-four years since it gained Independence and fifty-two years since the Declaration of Children’s Rights was passed. Back in the year 2001, the Census of India suggested that 12.6 million of our minors were engaged in the work-force we know as child-labour. Even at that time, statistics for the informal labour force contended that the number of under-14 years olds – the “hidden workers” – made to work was as large as 60 million. Since then, the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act has been amended to ban the employment of children in any kind of work. This, admittedly, has had only limited impact and NGOs working on child labour issues believe that as many as 20 million continue to be employed in private homes. Look around Sikkim, by how much do you think has the number of minors employed as domestic servants gone down since the Act was amended? A majority of the under-6 year olds live in families below the poverty line, although this figure could fluctuate with the every changing definition of BPL in our country. An astounding 43 per cent of Indian babies under the age of 3 years are underweight - a euphemism to soften the embarrassment of the fact that nearly half the babies born in India suffer from either short or long-term malnutrition. Given these statistics, it is easy to understand why one in every fifteen children born in India will not live past their first year.
Given this scenario, the observance of Children’s Day becomes important to draw attention afresh to the problems. In India, we observe Children’s Day on 14 November to mark Chacha Nehru’s birth anniversary. Unfortunately, however, the observance of Children’s Day has been reduced to a celebration of Student’s Day. As the statistics quoted above suggest, the children who make it to school [no matter how deplorable the condition of the schools], are actually privileged. It is the army on the streets which rummages through trash to pick a livelihood, the domestic servants engaged in household chores when they should be playing with friends, who need to be reassured that they are still important and that their problems are being addressed, one tiny step after the other. Or dump it. That would be plain hypocrisy. No one is really concerned. What should be done instead is to pick these children up, put them up on a dais, or better still, march them through the streets recounting the lives they live. The mirror will be turned on the people and the reflection will rattle some people into action. Another option would be to add more to the observance of Children’s Day in schools. Instead of class picnics and partying, we should perhaps show them how the underprivileged in their age-group subsist. If they grow up with the knowledge, may be they will do something about Children’s Rights when they grow up and sit in positions of power. As for us, the present generation, we can continue paying lip-service to these issues till the next generation grows up and does our work for us.