RIGHT TO EDUCATION

As rightly said by Swami Vivekananda that “Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man “; a human mind is blessed with the unique ability of thinking indigenously. However, to ensure that we help the seed of great thoughts to grow we need to empower a child with the ability to read, write and think rightly. A child’s mind is blank as a white paper and with age we either shape it to perfection or corrupt it with the dreadful things. With education we give the child an insight into the world and the various ways of life and amidst plethora of choices to choose what he/she thinks is correct.

A child should be provided with the right to be educated not only to help him act judiciously but also to enable him to earn a living. We have to understand that if we want the country to grow we will have to give the economy more of skilled labour. Today as we look back we realize that the country has been plagued with unemployment and poverty and to actually be able to underline the cause-effect relationship, illiteracy has been the root cause. We need to ensure the children with an environment which is conducive to sustainable and inclusive education whereby a person becomes educated and not merely literate.

A country can only develop if its citizens are literate. Hence the government should ensure that all the children of the nation have the accessibility to the basic education. The government should make sure that its policies for the education of the children are just not on the papers but are also effectively implemented on the ground level. Nelson Mandela, the first democratically elected president of South Africa,quoted “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.

- SRIRADHA GUPTA
  MAEM (Sem I)

INVISIBLE VIOLENCE

Violence is often misconstrued to hover around physical harm. Yet to decode the acrimony of violence one must also delve into the emotional jolt that it metes out to the victim. The vicious claws of Child Violence stretch not only up to the bodily injuries caused to a child but also creep up his psyche. Child violence often finds its roots in domestic violence.  A child, who witnesses physical hostility amongst his family members, becomes indirectly affected by violence as well, even if at a subconscious and indirect level. The direct beat up of children within the four walls of his house often tampers his soul for life, not just his body. The reasons for inflicting such pain on harmless toddlers vary from attempts at taming them to moulding their innocently rebellious minds to gross love for sadism. Elders fail to often understand that even though they own their children but they cannot for any motive enslave them.

If we were to actually enumerate the effects of violence the list would probably be unending; however it becomes an absolute necessity to list out what adversities the violence creates in an un-moulded mind. A child’s mind is as impressionable as it can be and violence would leave it marred forever in every aspect of his/her life. The child who has faced violence at home or surroundings would have a depressed mind and probably fathom anger and react at situations in a manner that would be uncalled for. Apart from this, the violence would ensure that the child develops an inferiority complex that would be a major deterrent in any progressive thought or action that the child would want to take.  Not to forget, the physical impairment that violence causes in the child. A child’s entire life could be ruined if the violence is at an intolerable level.

A child that is brought into the world is a responsibility and it is time that he/she is stopped being treated as an entity. Each child deserves a life wherein he/she develops fearlessly. Of course it is equally important that we do not make a child callous in the endeavour of giving him/her a violence free environment. However, it is strongly advocated that the sense of judgment should be imbibed in the child because of accountability to the world at large and not because of fear. We must understand that with the essence of being physically and mentally inferior to anybody else would never help in the process of the child’s personality development. Nothing could ever be achieved with violence and probably nothing ever will be. So, let us all try and work constructively towards making this world a better place for the coming generations to live in.

- SRIRADHA GUPTA
  MAEM (Sem I)

NO FREEDOM OF CHOICE

It is true that a mother gives birth to a child, but it is equally true that the child brings with it into this world a whole new generation. It gives birth to the entire family as with its advent a family begins, a mother is born, a family evolves and the void of ageing grandparents fill up. It probably is like that in a utopian world and not the dark and despaired world that a child is born into today.

A child, no matter which family or city is he/she born into faces the deepest of challenges and violation of basic rights. There is no freedom to neither breathe free nor make his/her own choices. The world thrusts upon this blank mind its own ideas of religion and rituals, education system and to make matters worse a defined set of moral values. The ability to decide what is right or wrong shall always be the prerogative of a free mind and not one which has been fed with pre-conceived notions and ideas. Probably why, we have stopped having a second Einstein or a Tagore. In fact the previous line just shows what we have become. Our inspirations are also set and probably cannot deviate. We certainly cannot idolize a street side vendor who probably has been fighting all odds to live an honest life or a school teacher who with his/her brilliant academic records could have landed a better job but chose to live in the rural areas to help the children there a better life.

Since the day we are born to the day we die, all that we do is conform to ideas that have been propagated and moulded over the centuries and which probably hold little or no value today. Everybody seems to be talking and making bold statements about a child’s right to education but what are we aiming at? A set curriculum that a child needs to read or a given combination of subjects that we think the child needs to study so as to ensure him/her to get a befitting job later in life. Is this what education means? Well, it is more than difficult to agree to it because with the current mode of education we are only making a child “literate” per se.

Education was meant to give us an idea of how to deal with various situations in life, to help us build a conscience so as to be ensure that we leave this world a better place than the one we were born into. However, this seems to be a distant dream. I personally think that the whole energy encircling the “child rights” issue is being galvanized into a wrong direction. We need to understand what we think is a child’s basic rights. Apart from clean air to breathe, food to eat and a shelter we must provide for an environment that would be conducive to a child’s free thinking.

A child’s mind is an empty space and if we can make endeavor to give him situations where he can use his own judgment to deal with it we would in the true sense of the word give him/her “freedom”.  Then probably the generation next would not be thrusted upon with ideas that they do not believe in and inspirational poems like “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high ...” would be considered normal and not utopian.

-SRIRADHA GUPTA
MAEM (Sem I)

ROUTINE IMMUNIZATION IN INDIA

Introduction
On a global stage, India has appeared to be one of the biggest producer & exporter of vaccines all around the world. Its contribution towards reducing the under 5 mortality rate worldwide due to Vaccine Preventable diseases (VPD’s) is no insignificant. Such a contribution on a world stage only propels us to believe the success of health sector at home with closed eyes. Yet, the real picture appears to be different. At home, VPD’s result in over 5 lakh deaths annually and one third of the world’s unimmunized children belong to India. Such worldwide contribution & domestic figures do not sit hand in hand with each other. They demand an enquiry into reasons for such contradictions. These reasons are what we look into through the course of this blog, and what remedies can be adopted to fix the situation.

Highs and Lows
It is not our case that India has produced dismal performances in the field of Routine Immunization throughout. The battle against completely eradicating Polio in the last couple of years speaks volumes of India’s performance and capability to fight the problem. Also, the performance during the decade 1985-95, when India launched its Universal Immunization Program (UIP), was phenomenal as the coverage reached the mark of 70-85%. Yet geographical diversity, lack of awareness, high population growth rate, lack of effective monitoring system, inability of health sector to keep up with delivery services & many more have traditionally been responsible for achieving satisfactory results. Since then, surveys conducted by agencies like National Family Health Survey, UNICEF have shown that the coverage under UIP has reduced by 15-40% in the following decades. These numbers vary across different states. Thus, Independent India has seen its share of success at different times, while battling with its traditional problems throughout making the task of achieving 100% Immunization coverage seem elusive.

A Brief Description of  Problems
Lackluster performances on part of the Government & some uncontrollable factors have together proved to be a big rock in the path to prosperity.
On one hand, factors like high population growth, lack of awareness, & geographical diversity are factors that cannot be neglected. According to the latest census, conducted in 2011, 29 children are born in India in every 60 seconds. Population has been a big problem for India in various sectors, and it sure is a bigger one in securing complete Immunization. Also accompanied by it is the problem of geographical diversity & awareness. Reaching out to everyone defying the tough terrains of nature is not as easy a task as it might sound. Combine it with lack of awareness, especially in isolated villages; the problem becomes even more complicated. A coverage evaluation survey by UNICEF found that 26.3% people surveyed had no idea about the need of Immunization. There is a viewpoint existing that focusing only on polio eradication has further worsened the situation. While the campaign neglected UIP, the door to door nature of the campaign has made people entirely dependent on health workers.
On the other hand, Government’s inability, or lack of interest has proved to be another hindrance in fulfilling the task. Even if for once, the Polio campaign proved that if government is willing to back something, factors like population, geographical problems & awareness can be tackled with time. But no accountability, corruption, inappropriate allotment of funds has shown us where the government stands. It ultimately aims to work for the rich private sector by presenting privatization of health sector as the only solution to all problems.

What can be done?
Notwithstanding Government’s allegiance to the private sector, there are a whole lot of things that can be done to ensure better delivery & results. For the starters, the government & bureaucracy have to show that they are willing to work for the cause with full determination by allocating appropriate funds, establishing channels to ensure accountability, and developing an effective monitoring system. One area where we currently lack is Research & development. So, new R&D centers need to be established for working out cost effective methods. On the ground level, NGO’s & other groups have to be organized for generating awareness across different regions. A blueprint of the entire campaign for UIP can be designed on the lines of Polio eradication program; only if the Government is willing to do so.

Conclusion
Independent India has come a long way in fighting the Vaccine Preventable Diseases in its history of 60 odd years. However, it is still lacking in results as effective as the developed world & work needs to be done for that. Such results have mainly been due to lack of commitment on part of the system. To promote the private sector, it is imperative that public sector is shown in poor light. Thus, it is for us to determine which path is it that we want to travel on, as that will make all the difference.

- SRIRADHA GUPTA
MAEM (Sem I)

CHILD RIGHTS IN INDIA

An Introduction:
In a globally changing atmosphere, when a Democratic set up is the order of the day, Child rights have been looked upon as an obvious & compulsory measure to empower the youth of a country with the wealth of knowledge. Since, nation-states look upon their youth population as their flag bearers in future, legislations have been drawn up to insure the development of these children in a Rights based system. India has been no different than the other democratic systems of the world in this context and it has come up with various legislations & Constitutional rights for the overall development of its children. Some of these rights include right to compulsory elementary education, right to be protected from employment in hazardous industries till the age of 14 years, and many more.

Various Child Rights Legislation in India:
The designers of Indian constitution were well aware that for a young nation to flourish, its youth had to be taken care of. Also, in an environment when the country had recently witnessed partition, and freed from the clutches of Imperial forces, the government knew that it had to take the responsibility of nurturing the children’s future in its own hands. With no proper economic model in function, and most of the population either displaced, or suffering under extreme poverty, or both, educating children was the last thing families were concerned about. In was in this scenario that the government came up with right to compulsory elementary education and right to be protected from employment in hazardous industries as fundamental rights of every child. Right to early childhood care was also included in the constitution & the states were directed to look upon their children as a welfare measure.
Building on this constitutional groundwork, following governments maintained their commitments towards contributing to the needs of children by introducing various legislations. The centre came up with anti-child trafficking laws, laws against child abuse, Right to education act,  laws against child marriages, and many other provisions.

The Role of Judiciary:
The biggest problem in tackling atrocities against children in India has been the attitude of successive governments. Child rights have often been looked upon as welfare measures rather than legal rights of children. It has been against this mindset that the judiciary & various legal practitioners have often fought. The case of Bachpan Bachao Andolan Vs UOI & ors has been a landmark case in the history of implementation of child rights in India. Through this case, the judiciary expanded its scope of forcing the government to work towards where its commitment lies. The introduction of juvenile justice boards, child welfare committees etc. have been judiciary’s other contribution towards development of child rights in India.

The Grim Picture:
Despite various legislations on part of government and judicial activism, the true picture of child rights in India has been rather grim. The framework appears to be there on paper, but those for whom this framework has been built continue to suffer in dark. Two plausible reasons for this can be:
The UN convention on the Rights of Child ( UNCRC) provides for minimum freedom and entitlements for every children regardless of their race, color, gender, religion, birth status, etc. However, this has exactly been the problem with India. In a society which is mired with caste & religious equations, reaching out to poor children with no social status has been the most difficult problem. It is mainly the children belonging to poor, low castes, and minority religious groups that have been victims of atrocities with no help in sight. They are seen on streets, at various construction sites, working at tea stalls & restaurants. No one has bothered to help them because of the threats they might have to face from religious groups, or gangs.
On top of all this, the market has contributed more to this problem. Even though the nations are together marching to attain a democratic order worldwide, they are also accompanied by an economic model looking to control everything. Thus, big companies have pressurized governments to reduce on rights & promote a competitive environment.  In this competitive environment, children from poor economic & social background are looked upon as cheap labor rather than flag bearers of future. Thus, even though the governments seem to care about their children on face, they have been secretly rolling back all the help they can offer.

Conclusion:
Till the time these children are looked upon as cheap labor by a market dominated model, rights and equal opportunities for children will continue to be seen as a threat by the prosperous ones.


- SRIRADHA GUPTA
MAEM (Sem I)