News Watch - PC's budget and children

Money for the children
The saddest thing in this state of affairs is that India has had a programme working in the villages and towns for the last three decades to address this window of opportunity as a solution for the vicious cycle of poverty, malnutrition of mothers and the resultant death of children under five—the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS).

Budget Wishlist |Child Protection to get priority within Child Budget: Unicef
It is expected that while Union Budget 2008 will see a quantum jump in social sector spending and specifically education, child protection will continue to remain largely unacknowledged. This component of child budgeting that covers the wide spectrum of trafficking, child labour, street children, orphan and vulnerable children, institutional care and adoption and care of homelessness is not likely to be adequately addressed.

Women and child schemes get the priority
He also allocated Rs 16,202 crore for 100% women specific schemes and Rs 16,202 crore for 30% women specific scheme. Further, the FM allocated Rs 7,200 crore in 2008-09 to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, representing an increase of 24% over the allocation in 2007-08.

Budget Shows Children not 'Politically Important'
World Vision India, however is concerned about the marked neglect of children and issues related to them in this budget, such as education, Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and health.

News Watch - Love, hope for shunned kids in India AIDS school

Love, hope for shunned kids in India AIDS school
They used to throw water on me and tear up my books," Komal said as she reminisced about her days at a regular school. "Still, I wanted to go to school, but one day my teacher said don't come back."

A take on the reality bites of child labour [Blog: Opinion]
Progressive step of expanding the scope of law to include Child labour prohibition law to include the child labour at hotels, dhabas and as house hold workers is much appreciated. But the same old story of legislation’s continue, though the laws are present, no one seems bothered about the enforcement, they are just meant to be black letters at the Government Gazette.

NUEPA's Educational Development Index (EDI) for states - southern states on top
The top 8 states include the five southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and the three northern states - Delhi, Chandigarh and Himachal Pradesh.

Poor Nutrition Causes One-Third of Child Deaths, Lancet Says
A quarter of those lives could be saved through simple programs such as promoting breast-feeding and handing out vitamin supplements, researchers including Zulfiqar Bhutta, a professor of child medicine at Pakistan's Aga Khan University, wrote in the Lancet today.

Needed: Legislation against child abuse
Though India claims to have achieved development goals in many sectors, it is yet to adopt a legislation against child abuse and there is no mandatory reporting and available infrastructure to curb the unfortunate practice.

Child scheme: Yechury asks PM to ensure Rs 12,000 cr in Budget
Sitaram Yechury said this amount should include Rs 2,500 crore “exclusively for improving the conditions of the Anganwadi employees and for providing them pension and other social security benefits.”

Women to have greater say in planning through gender-budgeting
The policy would be about incorporating a gender perspective and sensitiveness at all levels and stages of the developmental planning, policy and programme formulation.

The age of labour
Government officials and NGOs in Maharashtra want the Centre to increase the age limit for child labour to 18, up from 14 at present, which they feel will help curtail the exploitation of children in all kinds of business establishments.

News Watch - Babalog see Orissa hunger first hand

Babalog see Orissa hunger first hand
Sachin Pilot of Congress, Supriya Sule of NCP, Jay Panda, BJD, Shyam Benegal, nominated member to Rajya Sabha, and Shahnawaz Hussain from BJP made up the political quorum of the alliance — Feroze Gujaral and Gauri Karnik added the celebrity factor to the group. Supported by Unicef, the group visited four villages in two blocks of Cuttack district — Salehpur and Tangi. The first two were villages planned for a visit in advance.

Experts stress on importance of breast-feeding
Bhanu, a lactating mother, who works as a teacher in a private school maintained that after the two months maternity leave given to them which also are varies from one school to another, it is difficult for them to breast-feed their children properly and regularly.

A Democracy called India (Blog: opinion)
One such problem is child labour. The Parliament has banned all forms of Child Labour under an Act and yet this loss of innocence continues. While traveling to college everyday I come across a little girl less than ten years old standing beneath the familiar traffic light. Everyday she hurtles towards halted cars as soon as the traffic light turns to flaming red. She begs for money using steel can wrapped with marigold flowers and adorned with Lord Shiva idols.

Kid organises computers for tribals
Karan's dream of teaching computers to these underprivileged kids has been realized, with HP agreeing to sponsor 30 computers through the Sankya project of Rotary Club, Bangalore South.

New Research Shows Nutrition Programs Targeting Pregnancy and First 24 Months of Life Dramatically Improve Child Survival and Overall Health
A landmark series of research papers on maternal and child undernutrition published in the leading international medical journal The Lancet today shows that children will suffer irreversible damage into their adult life if proper nutrition interventions are not delivered before the age of 24 months.

Image courtest Hindu Businessline

Media watch - Budgeting with a compassion deficit

Sources: various blogs, FE, Guardian, Businesswireindia, Reuters, Telegraphindia, TOI, BBC

What is the future of the street children?
Well, the government is admitting that it is in a big quandry. What is most likely to happen is that eventually this brouhaha about child beggars will die down and these children will be allowed to go - with stern warnings.

Budgeting with a compassion deficit
But nothing highlights the tokenism of the budget to equity concerns more than the statement of the Finance Minister that ‘the issue of urban poverty and unemployment is equally critical’, but the Budget increases actual allocations for employement generation in urban areas from an incredibly low Rs 250 crore to Rs 344 crore for the whole country, and continues to exclude urban homeless, migrant, and slum dwellers from the national rural health mission and the NREGS.

Hindu India Aborts Females Illegally
Some in today’s India decided to expose the abortion atrocity. They masterminded an ingenious plan to film those in the medical “profession” breaking the law by killing female unborns.

ERADICATING MALNUTRITION: AN AGENDA FOR ACTION
In the ultimate analysis, we must recognise that malnutrition is a human problem that can be addressed by human solutions, provided the requisite social will exists to bring about enduring change for the better.

India's missing girls
Daughters aren't wanted in India. So many female foetuses are illegally aborted that baby boys now hugely outnumber baby girls, while a government minister has begged parents to abandon their children rather than kill them.

The Budget and the Missing Child
CRY asks that the government make the rights of children the focus and the key evaluation criteria of economic policy. At just over 4%, state investments in children are grossly inadequate, considering that they are 45% of our citizens, or even in comparison with other emerging economies.

Poor question "Shining India" as budget eyes growth
But behind the headlines of "Shining India" are worries that growth is failing to trickle down to the poor and the communist-backed government is concerned that a by-product of the boom -- a rising inflation rate -- is making many people poorer.

SHOCKING LOW
How a society treats its children, its poor and its terminally ill is a certain measure of its level of civilization. On each of these counts, Bengal hit a new and inhuman low recently when a series of government hospitals in Calcutta refused to operate on a seriously ill child because he was found out to be HIV+.

Kids get a raw deal in budgets
A quick glance of the social sector indices reveals that despite rapid growth in GDP and per capita income, children's health and education has not received the desired attention which reflects in the high levels of foeticide, malnutrition, illiteracy and child labour rampant across the country.

March denounces child trafficking
Kailash Satyarthi, chairman of the Global March Against Child Labour, says South Asia is a major source, destination and transit area for child trafficking of all forms.