Media Watch - ICDS scheme: A success story from TN

Raipur in a fix over ‘boy orderlies’
A police force’s job scheme for children of its dead personnel is earning it praise, and some legal trouble, with human rights activists saying that employing the youngsters for a charitable reason is still a violation of child labour laws.

`Plan to make Delhi hunger-free'
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Sunday said her Government is formulating a food guarantee programme that would ensure food for all in Delhi and make it a hunger-free State.

Malnutrition a reality in Mumbai
That hunger exists in Mumbai is hardly a fact that needs to be established. And so, armed with a weighing scale, NDTV team visited the pavements of the city to randomly select and weigh children below the age of three

Can Indian laws adequately prevent child trafficking?
Every year lakhs of children go missing throughout India. A number of children are lured away from home and suffer abuse and torture. So what innovations are needed to change how we view our little ones?

Child trafficking is increasing in India
India harbours 19 per cent of world’s child population and almost 42 % of total population (1100 million) are children. And yet total expenditure on children in health, education, development and protection together is only 4.9 % of India’s total budget outlet.

Brave woman makes ICDS work
t's the anganwadi workers' personal motivation and dynamism which can really help the battle against hunger. NDTV's team traveled to Bikaner in Rajasthan to bring the story of Geeta Godaran, whose work has created a minor revolution in her village.

ICDS scheme: A success story from TN
At every anganwadi in Tamil Nadu, there is hot lunch, apart from satturundai, that's freshly cooked at the centre. Twice a week, egg is on the menu and on three days a week there will be vegetables, green gram or moong.

Children do not vote
As a nation we are not overtly mindful about protecting and nourishing our children who shall inherit this country from us. And, since children do not vote, they do not exist for political parties, although children under six years comprise 20 per cent of the population.

Indian children adding more blood to tainted diamonds?

Leonardo di Caprio may well be nominated for the Oscar for his role as the South African diamond smuggler in ‘Blood Diamond’, a film attempting to lay bare the thriving international trade in conflict diamonds that fuels wars and conflicts in several part of Africa. The movie, supported by Global Witness and Amnesty International, opened in India a few weeks ago and is showing in glittering multiplexes in the heart of Mumbai, just around the corner from the diamond markets of this bustling ‘financiapolis’ of India.

Over 90% of the world’s rough diamonds pass through these markets on their journey to Surat, the biggest small-diamond processing centre in the world 326 kms by road from the city. A Guardian Observer investigation alleges that ‘blood diamonds’ from Ivory Coast and Liberia are being illegally processed here.

According to the article, “The stones brought in by dhows and fishing boats through the shallow waters of Gujarat's ungovernable west coast make a laughing stock of attempts to stem the global flow of blood diamonds.” The Kimberly Process, set up by diamond merchants, NGOs, governments and the UN in 2003 governs, albeit loosely the trade in diamonds and should help prevent the use of diamonds to fuel conflicts.

But the Kimberly process does not make any mention of child labour that is reported to be so prevalent in Surat, adding more blood the already tainted stones. Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Children Foundation) alleges that over 30,000 children are stuck in this trade in Dickensian conditions. These claims are stoutly denied by the industry.

And why not? Reports [1, 2] allege that over the years the diamond cutting industry has resisted unionisation or bringing itself under the purview of the Indian Factory Act that promised minimum wages and benefits for its workers. This is done by keeping the number of workers in each unit under nine (the legal limit requiring registration under the Act) and registering hundreds of small units. And it is in these units that the children are lost without a trace.

Diamond cutting is on the top of the list of ‘hazardous work’ that the law prohibits children from work in. And these are the children who sweat and toil, losing out on their childhood to add small value the ‘bling, bling’ that is the fad. The Kimberly process is meeting at this time to review the working of the ban.

Would they stop to consider for a moment the children in Surat, who are churning out these diamonds, paying with their own blood?

Media Watch - Millions of children undernourished: India PM

Journeying into dark lives of India's street kids
These poor kids flee their homes for a better life in the huge metros and get gobbled up in the narrow by-lanes, or stinking sewers of the railway stations or bus-stops which are, according to one estimate, home to some 3,000-odd poor young runaways.

Indian PM says millions of children undernourished
Some 50 million children aged below six are covered under the 45 billion rupees ($1 billion) Integrated Child Development Services scheme, but it has been poorly implemented, Singh said in a letter to state chief ministers after an adverse health ministry report said.

Britain boosts funding of India`s `Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan`
Under the new programme, Britain wants to get every primary-aged child in India into school. It is part of Gordon Brown`s dream to persuade developed countries to pull their weight to get every child in the world into primary school, sources said.

Madhya Pradesh has India's most malnourished kids
The government and other agencies have launched many programmes. However, tribal areas remain largely untouched. The much-hyped Bal Sanjeevni Abhiyan scheme launched in the state has, many say, failed to ensure nutritional security to tribal children.

Surviving child labour with optimism
'The zari work does not require child labour,' says Mohammad Saddam Hussain, 12, with a lightness that is indicative of his natural age. His insight, however, has a richness of an aspiring insider. 'The zari work is so tedious that no adult will take it up if he is not trained early in childhood.'

Media Watch - 18 million street children and Nithari surprises you?

18 million street children and Nithari surprises you?
Paedophilia in Goa, organ trafficking in Nithari, gang rape in Bhiwandi - it's just the first week of the year. I think we need more than a dance on stage and a hush hush bash. We need schools

Child tracking system on govt radar to slash missing cases
The UNICEF has also come up with a proposal for child tracking system, with a pilot-testing project already underway in Lalitpur district in Bundelkhand region. According to UNICEF officials, the project revolves around maintaining a baseline date related to children and, also, providing and assisting in all services for children.

Child murders show India's poor live below justice
"The police said 'you people just give birth to children and leave them on the streets -- and then you want police to find them when they go missing'", Lal said, outside the house where his daughter's skull, bones and clothes were found eight months later.

Noida — The mirror of Indian society
What is worrying about the Nithari killings is that nobody seems to have fully understood that Noida holds a mirror up to Indian society in which we should all be able to see our faces. In that mirror, if we dare to look, we will see a society that has long accepted that India is a country in which there are civil privileges and not civil rights.

Media Watch - Putting child at risk

Noida — The mirror of Indian society
If you are poor, nameless and living in one of the shantytowns that border glittering new towns like Noida then the police will not bother to even register a case because they know your child counts for nothing.

PROGRAMMES AND POLICY MEASURES FOR CHILD WELFARE
Children constitute principle assets of any country. Children’s development is very important for the overall development of society and the best way to develop national human resources is to take care of children.

Sunil Jain: In school, but not really learning
At the all-India level, it found the proportion of children in the first and second standard who could read the alphabet in their native languages is up by 4.2 percentage points, from 70.3 last year to 74.5 per cent this year.

Putting children at risk
Physically and emotionally immature in comparison to adults, and without representation in a democracy, children certainly deserve more than the average protection from our welfare state.

Oprah's academy: Why educating girls pays off more
the benefits of girls' education, in terms of improving health, women's empowerment, and family well-being, probably does make girls' education the highest-returning social investment in the world.

Toys 'could help 200m children'
Programmes using basic toys could boost educational achievement of 200 million developing world children not reaching their potential, a report says.

Web plea rescues Canadian child
Canadian police have taken a child from an allegedly sexually abusive situation after the child's anonymous e-mail plea for help was picked up in Australia.

Media Watch - SOS for Children

An SOS for children
Without safety nets for the poor that would enable them to access basic health and education facilities for their children, it would be well nigh impossible to save our children from the malaise of trafficking, abuse and child labour. Indeed, as our economy takes huge strides forward, we cannot forget the vulnerable need special attention.

Siddharth Agarwal: Fixing ICDS
The need is to focus our attention on the delivery of the public health system to the millions of underprivileged city dwellers who despite being in the neighbourhood of India’s growing millionaires, continue to suffer social, nutritional, health and capability deprivation.

Government continues to sit on policy for child development
A majority of the recommendations of the policy — child crisis intervention centres, special coaching for slow learners, recreational facilities, free legal services for children who get into trouble with the law — have yet to be discussed by the various agencies likely to coordinate in the implementation of the policy.

Centre to create database on missing children
"We will create a database about missing children based on the records that we get from the states," Minister of State for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told reporters here today. The ministry of women and child development has written to all state governments, seeking data on missing children.

Mumbai’s street fighters
They are the street children of Mumbai, numbering in thousands. Local NGOs put their number at 20,000, but the United Nations estimates that there are about 2.5 lakh street children in Mumbai.

Eagle's Eye: Get an anganwadi on demand
The government has to set up an anganwadi centre within three months of demand from a settlement that has at least 40 children under six but no centre to cater to the nutritional needs of the children.

Commission for protection of children by January-end
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, that will comprise a chairperson and six members, will have the power, among others, to enquire into violation of child rights and recommend initiation of proceedings in such cases.

Child killer suspects undergo ‘truth’ tests
Forensic experts prepared to apply truth serum to a businessman and his domestic help who are charged with killing at least 17 people, mainly children, officials said.

Threatened childhood : Millions In India Deprived Of Their Right To Survival
Over one billion children, half of the world’s population of children, have been denied their childhood. Poverty and AIDS have prevented the world to meet the goals on their improvement. Their rights to a healthy life as adopted in the 1989 convention are often endangered due to the failure of governments to carry out human rights and economic reforms. It is reported that some 540 million children lack adequate shelter; 400 million have no access to safe drinking water; 270 million lack health care amenities and 140 million ~ mostly girls ~ have never been to school.

Rescued child workers benefit from NGO’s outreach programme
Until the law was passed recently, it was legal to employ children of any age as domestic servants in India. Now anyone employing a servant younger than 14 faces up to a year in prison.

Media Watch - Nithari: Whose children where they?

New law to ensure against repeat of Noida child killings
The proposed law provides protection against sexual abuse as stipulated under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Sexual offences in the draft bill include sodomy or manipulation of the child’s body for penetration, oral sex, fondling, display of private parts and exposing him/her to pornography.

Whose children were they?
And who will acknowledge that in some way each one of us was responsible for what happened to the children of Nithari village?

India orders high-level probe into child killings
India ordered a high-level probe on Wednesday into the discovery of skulls and bones of at least 17 people, many of them children, at a house outside New Delhi which police say is a gruesome case of serial killing.

80% of India's districts have declining sex ratios
India already abysmal sex ratio figures are getting worse by the day, with 80% of its districts recording declining child sex ratios since 1991, as thousands of girl-children are killed before or at birth.

Poor kids appeal to Prez to ensure safety
In a memorandum submitted to the President, 'Badhte Kadam', an organisation of street children asked the government to ensure the effective implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) regulations.

NHRC raps Delhi Government for Child labour
The National Human Rights Commission has asked the Chief Secretary and Secretary, Labour Department, NCT of Delhi to respond to a news published in a leading English daily stating that children are being employed at a number of places in Delhi, despite prohibition.

Media Watch - India’s children at bottom of hunger heap

Independent Appeal: Children in slavery
Until the law was passed recently, it was legal to employ children of any age as domestic servants in India. Now anyone employing a servant younger than 14 faces up to a year in prison.

Kids often hungry as India grows richer
while new money and new foods transform the eating habits of some of India's youngest citizens, gnawing destitution continues to plague millions of others. Taken together, it is a picture of plenty and want, each producing its own set of afflictions.

Imminent work ban a ray of hope for child labourers
The Orissa government has set up a ministerial committee headed by Chief Minister Navin Patnaik to study child labour problems and look into rehabilitation aspects. The panel was formed in the wake of the central government ban on employment of workers below 14 years in 'dhabas' (roadside eateries), restaurants, hotels, motels, resorts, spas or other recreational centres or as domestic helps.

Expo for `little arts'
The exhibition was part of the prize distribution function of the 41st All-India Child Art Competitions-2006 organised by city-based Child Art Club at Ravindra Bharathi.

Children done the role of social reformers
They may be young but they are well informed and articulate. On being asked what is the biggest concern facing the children today, they say without hesitation - child labour.

India’s children at bottom of hunger heap
Indian children are worse than the United Nation’s sub-Saharan poster boy with rickety arms, swollen belly and protruding eyes symbolising malnutrition and hunger.

Indian NGO frees 50 bonded child labourers
The children, all boys aged between eight and 14, children of poor farm labourers in the eastern Indian state of Bihar had been brought to New Delhi to work in small factories making elaborately embroidered fabric called ‘zari’.

Dalits discriminated against in ICDS
Caste discrimination continues to hamper the objectives of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). This has been pointed out by a report — “Focus on children under six”, brought out by Right to Food Campaign, highlighting the pitiable condition of children below six years and the need for balanced nutrition, health and pre-school education for them.

Malnutrition kills two kids in Madhya Pradesh
Rs.3 billion was earmarked for providing nutritious diet to undernourished women and children - Rs.1.9 billion more than the previous year. But according to the government's Child Growth Monitoring Drive, 80,000 children in the state continued to suffer from severe malnutrition.

YEAR-END REVIEW - TOWARDS MORE ACCESSIBLE, INCLUSIVE AND QUALITY EDUCATION
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the flagship programme to achieve the goal of Universalization of Elementary Education for all children between 6 to 14 years, has a budget provision of Rs. 11000 crores in 2006-07. The goal of SSA is Universal Retention by 2010.