The Plight of India's Poor Children
By Colin de Souza
India is home to 16 per cent of the world's population and it forms only 2.42 per cent of the world's land area. India is also home to one of the largest illiterate populations in the world. It has the highest number of working children and one of the lowest female-to-male ratios. India's 400 million children constitute more than a fourth of the country's population.
A large majority of these children live in villages and urban slums, in conditions of abject poverty and near starvation. Hundreds of thousands of them are homeless. Many more are displaced every year in the name of development and progress. Lands are acquired for 'public purposes' while the benefits seldom reach those who are displaced. Large numbers of children are also rendered homeless as a result of floods, cyclones and earthquakes that have become almost a regular feature in India. Among the survivors of the devastating tsunami which hit India's eastern and southern coast on December 26, 2004, the worst-affected were children. Many of them lost both parents in the disaster.
UNICEF Report
A recently released UNICEF report entitled "The State of the World's Children 2005" focuses on how poverty, conflicts and HIV/AIDS threaten childhood and check the growth and development of children to their full potential. The report says that the rights of over one billion children worldwide are violated because they are denied one or more of the basic services necessary to survive, grow and develop.
According to Michel Saint-Lot, UNICEF's representative for the southern Indian states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, a total of 640 million children in developing countries do not have adequate shelter; 500 million have no access to sanitation; 400 million have no access to safe water; 270 million do not have proper healthcare facilities; 140 million (the majority of them girls) have never been to school; 90 million are severely deprived of food; and 300 million lack access to information (radio, TV or newspapers). He said India is home to one-fifth of the world's children. But, he hastened to add, "We should not be daunted by this figure. If we can improve the lives of India's children, we will lead the way and dramatically improve the situation of children globally. The policies and legislation which are in place have to be transformed into action." Mr. Saint-Lot was speaking on the occasion of the UNICEF report’s release in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka.
According to surveys, the infant mortality rate in India is 70 per 1,000 births. The main cause of infant mortality is infectious diseases. Though coverage under the polio immunization program is 100 per cent, the country still has a long way to go in children's immunization against other diseases, says Dr. B.C. Benakappa, a well-known pediatrician and founder of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health in Bangalore.
Child Labor, Abuse and Trafficking
Poor children throughout India are often the victims of sexual abuse and exploitation by unscrupulous adults (who force them to work long hours for a pittance). India has the largest population of child laborers – 20 million according to official estimates and 50 million according to NGOs. Thirty per cent of the country's estimated nine million prostitutes are children. A bonded child laborer rolls an average of 1,500 beedies a day for a wage of nine rupees (about 20 U.S. cents). While child laborers account for 20 per cent of the country's GDP, they are paid only 20 per cent of the wages they are entitled to (sometimes amounting to as low as three rupees (about seven U.S. cents) a day. Karnataka State ranks No. 2 in India, after Andhra Pradesh, as the "supplier" of children for trafficking. Children from Kerala State are transported to work in fish-processing units in neighboring Karnataka.
There have also been reports of children being sent to Arab countries to be used as jockeys in camel races and for begging at Mecca. Using children for begging at Hindu religious centers like Tirupati and Dharmasthala has been a prevalent practice for centuries. Trafficking in girls for the flesh trade has also existed for a long time.
The risks that children face outside their homes are innumerable, the most common being sexual abuse. "Ninety per cent of the girls run away from home to escape domestic violence," says a spokesperson of Bosco Yuvadaya, a Bangalore-based NGO working to rehabilitate street children. While a majority of the girls end up in brothels, the boys are forced to beg and do menial jobs – apart from being sodomized. A study conducted recently by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of India states: "In Bangalore, the majority of children who go missing belong to the lower middle class. They are often kidnapped by those known to them or an acquaintance and are trafficked to Mumbai, Delhi, Allahabad and even West Asia. Of the large number of children reported missing every year, only a lucky few are rescued by police and NGOs."
Child Victims of HIV/AIDS
Healthy children represent a healthy nation. Any analysis of children's health in India must be undertaken against the backdrop of three very important issues: globalization and liberalization (which make social services and healthcare increasingly unaffordable for the poor); environmental degradation (caused by dumping of industrial wastes, indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources and water and air pollution); and societal attitudes that discriminate against the girl child.
According to UNAIDS (the United Nations program on HIV/AIDS), 170,000 children in India – the Indian government continues to squabble over the number – have been infected with HIV/AIDS. At the same time, the number of AIDS orphans is estimated to be 1.2 million. Children affected by the virus, whether they are children of victims or those who are infected themselves, live out their lives on the fringes of society, ostracized by people they call their own, unloved and uncared for. Juvenile diabetes is reported to be taking on pandemic proportions. The Indian government has joined hands with UNICEF and decided to thrash out a two-year program to deal with problems faced by AIDS-affected children or orphans.
Child Marriage
Despite a ban, child marriages take place all over the country. The Census of India 2001 reveals shocking details about child marriage. It says 6.4 million Indians under age 18 are already married. The number of those married before attaining the legal age (18 for females and 21 for males), is even larger at 11.8 million – 4.9 million females and 6.9 million males. This is not all. As many as 130,000 girls aged below 18 are already widowed and another 56,000-odd have been divorced or separated. Similarly, 90,000 men aged below 21 have already lost their wives and more than 75,000 have seen their marriages break up. The incidence of child marriages is expectedly higher in rural India. The 2001 census records the state of Rajasthan as having the highest (5.61) percentage of underage married people (roughly one in every 18 people below the legal age is married) and Kerala the lowest (0.82 per cent).
Rigorous efforts are being made by all states in India and the federal government to tackle all these problems with the urgency and care they demand. Only time can determine the extent to which those efforts are successful.
(Quotes and data that appear in this article are taken from Deccan Herald, The Hindu, The Times of India and other leading English dailies of India, and from the book Children in Globalizing India (2002), edited by Enakshi Ganguly Thukral and published by HAQ: Center for Child Rights, New Delhi.)
(Colin de Souza is a journalist of wide experience. He worked as Chief Sub-Editor of Economic and Political Weekly of India from 1966 to 1978 and as a Senior Sub-Editor on Khaleej Times, an English daily that enjoys the largest circulation in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, from 1978 to 1997. He now lives in Bangalore, India.)
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Reader's Response
Freedom From Murderous Sadhus Needed
The condition of India's poor children, as described by Colin de Souza, is indeed pitiable. It will improve only when we succeed in freeing the Indian polity from the clutches of murderous sadhus. Indian politics today is a prisoner of Hindu al Qaeda. The terror unleashed by them needs to be contained not only in India but also in Europe and America. The Hindu al Qaeda perpetuate male domination, child exploitation, inhuman life styles and irrational religious practices.
Kulamarva Balakrishna, Padubidri, Karnataka, India
June 15, 2005