The problem

THE size of India’s child population – now nearly 400 million or 40% of India’s total population – is starting to impact on the way we think about our future. If at one plane our population represents a vast demographic advantage in an era of economic renewal, especially in the context of ageing populations in other societies and countries, it is also a vastly underprivileged group, requiring substantial investment of resources and intellectual capital in order to realize the promise the young hold for India’s socio-economic and political future.

India’s children bear the burden of multiple disadvantages – viz. the country accounts for the world’s largest numbers of working children. Over 50% of our children aged between 1-2 years are not fully immunized, and 46% of children under the age of three are underweight. These and other deprivations have been brought into sharp focus in the latest National Family Health Survey, released earlier this year. These deprivations are also unsurprisingly concentrated in states with overall poor human development and governance performance.

Yet, reorienting the country’s planning processes and systems to focus on ‘children’ as a category deserving of attention remains a challenge. Two factors contribute to this. First, there is a general failure to keep in view the ways in which wider economic, social and political processes impact on the daily lives and prospects of children. We are unable to be forward looking in assessing how decisions made today may impact on the prospects of the current generation of children as they grow into adults. Short-term thinking characterizes India’s planning process. An example of this is the way in which planning has not considered the impact of global economic changes on the demand for child labour and the steps that need to be put in place to check demand for unskilled low-paid wage labour.

Second, is the inability of our public planning and delivery systems to think beyond narrowly defined sectoral and organizational lines. Policy instruments that force different line ministries and departments to come together and think creatively and innovatively are yet to be developed. ‘Convergent’ planning has been strongly urged for many decades – however, the truth is that in the rush to execute annual plans and seek resources, departments remain inward looking, responding to a narrow understanding of their mandate. Yet on reflection it is obvious through our own lived experiences that life decisions straddle many ‘sectoral’ compartments, requiring strategic choices to be made regarding how we spread our resources among the often competing demands of well-being, aspiration and security. The costs of trade-offs made in these respects should not be borne by the poor and, least of all, by children.

Providing every family and every child with a social safety net that protects their access to quality basic services including clean water, sanitation, nutrition, health and education as well as to the foundations of a reasonable quality life such as decent work and access to justice, is an ideal towards which public policy should strive. The planning process needs to be based on such a vision and support investments and implementation mechanisms that ensure that the vision does not remain at the level of rhetoric. Development planning will also need to focus more sharply on raising the living standards and social status of disadvantaged groups whose experiences reflect histories of neglect and whose children are likely to be locked into an intergenerational cycle of deprivation if they continue to be neglected.

Indications are that such a shift is finally starting to take place. The 11th Plan Approach Paper clearly states that ‘development of children is at the centre of the 11th Plan’, and outlines commitments to the universalization of ICDS, strengthening of pre-primary schooling, improvement in the quality of education and attention to child mental health. There is also a welcome focus on the most vulnerable children – including street children, trafficked children, victims of sex abuse, differently-abled and HIV affected children and children affected by conflict or natural disasters. Notably, the plan document also recognizes that the demographic profile of India is changing and reflects on the ‘talent supply shortages’ that indicate that children and young adults will be under-utilized unless provided new life skills. Nurturing the capacities of India’s children must, therefore, drive the policy agenda forward.

Many opportunities exist for ensuring that this renewed focus on children and young people moves beyond policy discourse to form a central dimension of the agenda for reform in the social sectors. The Ministry of Women and Child Development’s National Plan of Action for Children, and the newly established National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, provide an integrated framework and mechanism for maintaining the focus on children. Legislative initiatives, such as the Right to Education Bill aim to redefine state policy and reframe basic services commitments as the rights of citizens. Public accountability through citizen monitoring such as the PROBE reports (1999 and forthcoming), the Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER), the Focus on Children under Six (FOCUS) report and the recent Child Abuse study commissioned by the Ministry for Women and Child Development are all examples of a new dynamism being shown by civil society and policy-makers in promoting the interests of children.

Support to these new policy frameworks and institutions needs now to be embedded through bringing about organizational reforms in service delivery. The participation of both children and the wider community in planning processes at local level is critical. Local planning needs to be built around acceptance of a core set of goals that make child well-being a non-negotiable aspect of local development. A simultaneous focus on ensuring the expansion of rights for women – not only as mothers, but more importantly as citizens – can only strengthen the social context in which future generations are raised. Localizing processes of resource allocation, decision-making and accountability will help reduce the constraints that emerge out of a vast bureaucratic structure with a distant centre and a focus on upward accountability.

There are already successful initiatives that have expanded local accountability and resulted in community empowerment in India’s development story which offer lessons. Policy-makers and implementers need to seize the opportunity and act now if India’s children are to be protected and productive in the future. This issue of Seminar brings together analysis and proposals towards deepening the discourse on child-oriented planning.

RAMYA SUBRAHMANIAN