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 - In 2007, India let its children down

In 2007, India let its children down
For a country with a child population of over 445 million, of whom 126 million are less than five years old, the unearthing of 20 dismembered bodies of missing kids at the fag end of 2006 was a shocking revelation of how India neglects its children. Most of children had been sexually abused and mutilated. One year later, India continues to be among the worst performers in the world in terms of ensuring that children have the basic right to survive, even though policies and processes for their protection and development are in place.

'Biscuits can't replace mid-day meals in schools'
In what could strengthen the government's case in not letting "100 gram biscuit packs" replace hot cooked mid-day meals in schools, the Supreme Court-appointed special commissioners have slammed the lobbying by members of Parliament to undo the current scheme.

Missing Children in India Status Report NHRC (Blog post)
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has published a new report on Missing Children in India. It gave a number of recommendations. It can be downloaded from their website http://nhrc.nic.in/

Including the disabled
The World Bank report 2006 (forthcoming) states that both educational attainment of all persons with disability and the attendance of Children With Disability (CWD) are far below national averages. Thirty-eight per cent of CWD aged 6-13 are out of schools. Almost three quarters of all children with severe disabilities are illiterate and do not attend school.

Lekhpals told to prevent malnutrition
Moreover, facts like 74.7% of pregnant women had never gone for the three mandatory ante natal care visits, close to 92% mothers never consumed iron folic acid tablets for 90 days and about 71.8% women didn’t go in for institutional deliveries reflect inter-generational transfer of malnutrition.

India’s ‘common’ child abuse problem needs a community-based response

India’s child abuse report released by Ms. Renuka Chowdry, Union Minister for Women and Child Development department, on Monday was a body blow. The survey found that two in three of the over 12,000 child surveyed in 13 states across the country have suffered some form of abuse. More than half of the children surveyed reported having been sexually abused and 50% of these children reported that the abuse was from a ‘persons known to the child or in a position of trust and responsibility’. More often than not, the child did not report the abuse at all.

There have been warning signs. In July 2006 Reuters released a survey that found India to be the sixth most dangerous place for children. India fared worse than conflict hotspots like Afghanistan, Palestinian territories, Myanmar and Chechnya because of the high incidence of child labour as well as female foeticide and infanticide.

Then the ‘Horror of Nithari’ happened. The country and the world watched in horror and disgust as the remains of 34 children and youth were pulled out of the gutter of a high value suburb close to the national capital, New Delhi. These were children from the nearby village of Nithari that were lured by sweets and other platitudes, abused, sexually assaulted and killed with impunity.

“We always say our children are safe, we take good care of them, these bad things don't happen here. We never had any kind of introspection that this is not true," said Ms. Chowdry according to the English service of Al-jazeera.

In the wake of Nithari the government framed legislation that would strengthen child protection in the country. The initiative envisages creation of child protection units at the state and district levels and more involvement with the families and children of the community to create a safety net for children in crisis.

The saying ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ cannot be more poignant than in dealing with cases of child abuse. This latest report calls for stiffer penalties and a better system for dealing with cases of child abuse quickly that children will feel secure to come out and report abuse. While legislation and fast-track courts address the governance issues, the capacity of communities to protect children needs to be built up so that we nip this challenge in the bud.

World Vision has been responding as a priority to the rising incidence of child labour, child trafficking and other violence against children. In communities where World Vision works, child protection committees have been created to monitor children’s well being and protect them. Every village has a child protection committee consisting of community leaders, especially women, children, district and Panchayat (grass roots governance body) leaders and is tasked with making sure that children in the community are safe and secure from abuse, trafficking, violence and are educated and protected.

More is needed. It is not very often that any government would bring out a report that tells such a negative story. “The courage of our Women and Child development minister is to be appreciated,” says Dr, Jayakumar Christian, National Director, World Vision India, “But, if we do not move urgently to reverse these findings, the next such report may tell an even more dismal story.”

And by that time we may have lost another generation of our children.

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.

Media Watch - Children of a lesser god?

Sources: Business Standard, TOI, RXPGnews, HT, Hindu

Children of a lesser god?
In cities and towns like Mumbai, Agra, Kanpur, Firozabad and Moradabad, to name just a few, where one face of Indian youth is flourishing in the multiplex-mall culture, there is another side where children in the same age group are probably working 18 hours in factories which fail to provide even basic comfort levels.

Give details of missing kids: HC to DGP
Taking serious note of 712 children missing from various areas in the state for the last one year, the Allahabad High Court directed the DGP to provide their disaggregate district-wise gender and age details on the next date.

When street kids smile through the lens
The exhibition titled 'Children of the world', being held in the city, has 40 photographs of street children from nine countries, including India. It is not the usual kind of exhibition where you step around to look at the portraits on the walls.

CBI to inquire into alleged child adoption racket
The Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), an autonomous Body under the Ministry of Women & Child Development, responsible for keeping a check on international adoption has suspended Preet Mandir's license last July after the with immediate effect after it was reported that the adoption home was allegedly involved in selling babies to foreigners for $12,000.

New light on child labour
Highlighting the plight of children working in hazardous industries, the film intends to sensitise society and the parents who send their young children to work in order to "augment" their income.

Media Watch - 5 kids will go missing the next hour

Sources: TOI, Hindu, NYTimes, HT, IE, Indiatogether, Hardnewsmedia, Indian Catholic, NDTV

200 bonded labourers freed in Hazaribagh
Nearly 100 child labourers along with another 100 bonded adults including women, were freed from a brick kiln near Ramgarh in Hazaribagh district on Saturday and brought to Ranchi from where they boarded trains to their respective states.

Girl child unspoken curse
The situation has worsened since 2003, when ultra-sonography and sex-determination technology became accessible to the remotest parts of Chambal, one of the most backward areas in the country.

Beyond punishment
A considerable body of research shows that corporal punishment can never make a child learn or behave better. Yet, the practice is widely prevalent.

Even Amid Its Wealth, India Finds, Half Its Small Children Are Malnourished
In this young nation, where 40 percent of the people are under 18, figures released by the government on Friday offered an alarming portrait of child health: Among children under 3, nearly half are clinically underweight, the most reliable measure of malnutrition.

Website to track missing children launched
Launched by Don Bosco National Forum for Youth at Risk in association with UNICEF, www.missingchildsearch.net will be closely watched and monitored by child welfare organisations in all major cities in the country and a search will be generated immediately.

Largest children population state lagging in childcare
child security had become an important concern in the post Nithari scenario but the issue was a broader one, involving the rights of the young child in the framework of security, protection, development and participation.

Ultrasound may result in `misguided treatment'
The available imaging technologies employed during pregnancy may not always be accurate, and therefore, may not enable correction of birth defects, feels a group of dedicated paediatric surgeons.

Flesh trade to beggar mafia: Mumbai capital for missing children
Maximum city Mumbai is also number one when it comes to missing children. In 2006 alone, Mumbai’s missing minor registers recorded 948 children as untraced.

5 kids will go missing the next hour
In fact, missing children is the veritable black hole in law-enforcement. As an investigative series from several states will show, just like Nithari, where police failed to even acknowledge the problem, elsewhere, too, the typical police response is: the missing child is the parents’ problem, not ours.

Paying a steep price for motherhood
The deaths come at a time when the state government of Madhya Pradesh is strongly advocating institutional deliveries as the mantra to combat high rates of maternal deaths in the state. Unfortunately in the state the campaign exists in the advertisement hoardings, newspaper advertisements and in media, thanks to efforts of public relation department of the state.

Indian PM meets 9-is-Mine delegates
20 children led the 9-Is-Mine delegation to the Prime Minister on 1st February, 2006. The Prime Minister received them at his residence on 7 Race Course Road, and spent exclusive time with the children.

Nithari’s Auschwitz
How many more Nitharis will have to happen to change the way the police and administration function in our ‘incredible, superpower’ India? Are the children of the poor in India eternally condemned in abject poverty, often homeless, without a childhood, trapped as child labour and now guinea pigs of perverse psychopaths, murdered and raped and chopped up in many parts, while the stunningly insensitive nexus of the police and the government plays footsie?

Children in India yearn for better future
India’s constitution is termed as best written human rights documents with several articles on children’s welfare and development. Alas, despite quantum jump on several fronts during last five decades most children are yet to become national priority and many provisions remains on the papers only

Corruption in ICDS schemes
The villagers say the Anganwadi centre does not function and the anganwadi worker goes missing for most part of the year. For example, it's already 9.30 and it's still closed. It's supposed to open at 7.

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.

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 - 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.