Threatened childhood : Millions In India Deprived Of Their Right To Survival

YP Gupta
The Statesman, January 6

The UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report 2007 says that 47 per cent of India’s children are malnourished. And one-third of the newborns out of 25 million born every year are underweight, with the risk of impaired health and brain development. The UNICEF 2006 report says that India continues to have the highest number of malnourished children under five in the world. Madhya Pradesh is the worst-affected state, followed by Maharashtra, Orissa, Bihar, Rajasthan and UP. It is reported that half of the world’s 146 million under-nourished children live in three countries ~ India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Fifty-seven million are in India. Even sub-Saharan Africa is better off where 33 per cent of the children are malnourished.

The UNICEF 2005 report on the “State of the World’s Children” under the title “Childhood Under Threat” says that 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.

Malnutrition deaths

The UNICEF 2005 report also says that millions of Indian children are deprived of their rights to survival, health, nutrition, education and safe drinking water. And 147 million children live in kuchcha houses, 77 million make do without drinking water from a tap, 85 million are not immunised, 27 million are severely underweight and 33 million have never been to school.

The Supreme Court has ruled that children’s right to a dignified existence must be protected. The court also said that the government should work out a welfare scheme for the children working in pathetic conditions in hazardous industries. It is reported that 643 tribal children died of malnutrition between April 2005 and March 2006 in a tribal district of Maharashtra. The “Child Mortality Evaluation Committee” had earlier reported that around 160,000 infants die every year in Maharashtra due to malnutrition particularly in the rural, tribal and urban slum areas. The committee had deplored the indifferent attitude of the state government for its negligence. Orissa, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh faced a similar situation where a number of children died of starvation. Malnutrition reduces life expectancy and leads to low productivity. And this impedes the country’s economic development.

There is little doubt that the overall literacy rate in our country has increased to 65.4 per cent, up from from 52.2 per cent in 1991. Even then, 72 million children between five and 14 years do not have access to basic education. Their number was 105.7 million in 1991. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, MP, Orissa and Rajasthan have a higher proportion of out-of-school children.

Children in the developing countries are the worst victims of ill-health due to infectious diseases. A UN report on the status of children had said that 10 years after the world summit on children in 1990, more than 10 million children die every year from preventable diseases. Out of five million children who die each year in South Asia, about three million die of mal-nutrition. In South Africa, 96 children every day die of malnutrition. Over eight million children in the world die every year from the five killer diseases ~ pneumonia, diarrhoea, tetanus, measles and whooping cough. The UNICEF had reported that despite the immunisation programme against these diseases, 2.4 million children perished in India. Rajasthan, UP and MP account for more than 50 per cent of the infant deaths.

The rate of infant mortality (INR) reflects on the general health and economic conditions of a country. It represents the number of babies who die before the age of one out of every 1,000 live births. In the developed countries, it is as low as 6.7 in Sweden. The UNICEF has ranked India 49th in child mortality. The INR in India came down to 68 from 129 in 1971, whereas the country’s under-ive mortality rate is placed at 93 per 1,000 live births. Kerala has the lowest INR of 17 and Orissa has the highest at 114. Poverty, unhygienic environment and malnutrition among women in the reproductive age group are the main contributing factors for India’s high rate. It is planned to reduce infant mortality rate with nutritional supplements to children in the form of nutri-candy lozenge rich in folic acid, vitamins A&C, iron, zinc and iodised salt to protect them against micro-nutrient deficiencies that can stunt both mental and physical growth and development. The plan has been initiated in five districts of West Bengal and Gujarat and now covers over 3.5 million children in Bihar.

About 500 million children in Africa, South-east Asia, West Asia and Latin America do not get enough food due to poverty and they go to bed hungry every day; 100 million live on the streets and a billion are illiterates, two-thirds being girls. Around 25 to 30 million children in India spend their lives on the streets littered with sputum that poisons the environment.

More than 155 million children under five in the developing countries are affected by poverty. Forty million live in urban and 115 million in rural areas. The situation in Latin America is the worst. There are roughly 40 million children living on the streets in Latin America; 25 to 30 million are in Asia and 10 million in Africa. The lives of 20 to 25 million are disturbed in the developed world.

Street children suffer because of neglect, and there is none to look after their well-being. They work in a polluted environment and are often abused and exploited. They suffer from ill-health and become victims of infectious diseases. Their mental development gets retarded. The UNICEF has reported that 26 million children in the world suffer from brain damage due to iodine deficiency. In India, there are 6.6 million children suffering from brain malfunction. More than 70 per cent children in many states are anaemic because of iron deficiency.

Millions of children in the developing countries have become crippled. Nearly 40 per cent of the children under five suffer from protein-calorie malnutrition. And about five lakh children in the developing countries lose their sight every year due to malnutrition and ignorance. In India, 1.5 million children suffer from vitamin A deficiency against 40 million the world over. Children belonging to poor socio-economic groups mostly suffer from this affliction, and the incidence is higher in the remote tribal and rural areas and urban slums.

Child marriage

Will the introduction of genetically modified golden rice help to prevent blindness? A girl child is the worst victim as she is often neglected and is discriminated against because of preference for a boy child. Many of them in the low social status group die of malnutrition, while many suffer from infectious diseases. Child marriage is another social evil in our country. Early marriage causes early childbirth resulting in physical stress on the teenaged mother and underweight babies. This in turn accounts for the high infant mortality rate. Children are considered a nation’s asset and their welfare reflects on the nation’s prosperity and economic development. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India had earlier brought out shortcomings in the working of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). It said that the ICDS had done little in improving the health status of children.

It is thus important to invest more on improvement of their health status for better returns to sustain economic growth. A national commission for children has been set up to safeguard their childhood. Alleviation of poverty, providing education facilities and control of infectious diseases must get priority to protect their rights. There is a global campaign to improve the lot of children worldwide.

The author is the ex-Principal Scientist, IARI, New Delhi