The kids are not alright here

According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2010, Delhi has 12 lakh children under six years, and approximately half of them live in resettlement and urban slums.

Since women in these areas are all economically weak — often single earners having little support from the government in bringing up their children — they are forced to adopt a makeshift arrangement for the kids in the form of casual oversight by neighbours or by their own elder children.

“I will join school again once my younger brothers are old enough to take care of themselves,” says 11 year-old Anjali, resident of a JJ colony in Dwarka. At a jan sunvai (public hearing) on ‘care and protection issues of young children living in urban slums and resettlements of Delhi’ held earlier this week, Anjali had pointed out that she used to go to school, but was pulled out after her brothers were born.

As her mother needed to go to work to make ends meet, Anjali was given the responsibility to look after her younger brothers. Parents are often compelled to leave them alone, locked up in their rooms or carry them to work such as construction sites. This exposes kids to all kinds of roughness of life and language.

In a Basti level survey of 1,380 households by Delhi FORCES in 2012, 75 per cent women in the sample households were working. Half of them spent four to six hours away from their houses. Delhi FORCES is an informal network of some 40 NGOs.

According to the survey, their childcare arrangements are as follows — makeshift arrangements (46 per cent), with siblings (20 per cent), at workplace (5 per cent), alone (3 per cent), anganwadi centres (6 per cent), creche (1 per cent for a few hours), and at home (19 per cent).

As a result, children are vulnerable to not only injuries and accidents, but also sexual assault and health anomalies, as well as lack of education. No wonder, most such children grow up to be ignorant and unpolished, full of emotional and psychological scars, and land of the wrong side of the law.

The city government’s interest in and recognition of this problem have been negligible. The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) has only a three-hour care provision for three to six years old, and no provision of creches for younger children. The Rajiv Gandhi Creche Scheme has limited coverage and budget, and only 17,000 children are covered by it in Delhi.

Due to this lacunae, older children get tied up in sibling care duties and lose out on schooling, a denial of their right to education, says Mridula Bajaj, convenor of Delhi FORCES.

“The quality of care they can provide to their siblings, when they themselves are in need of care, can be imagined. Women from slums and resettlement areas draw attention to this situation, to accidents, to losing children, to sickness and thier fears of abuse,” says Bajaj. A huge problem has been created in the city due to lack of attention to the need for protection and care of young children of economically weaker sections.

Women and child development minister Kiran Walia says it is wrong to say that the government is not concerned about the needs and requirements of children born in slums or resettlement colonies.

“HUB centres provide adequate space, ambience and facilities for children, and lactating and pregnant women. Ten anganwadi centres are attached to each HUB,” says Walia.

“The HUB also acts as an extension resource centres for 10 anganwadi centres. At present, we have set up 15 HUBs, and eight of these have been especially set up in north-east district, which is a minority district,” says Walia.

Schemes related to supplementary nutrition, immunisation, early child education, referral and growth monitoring are also provided by the Delhi government under the ICDS scheme.

Frontline magazine assistant editor T K Rajalakshmi, however, says the issue of child safety, nutrition and well-being are inextricably linked with universal public provisioning of services. “The piece-meal approach of the government, targeting one age group in exclusion of the other, serves no good,” says Rajalakshmi.

National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) member Vandana Prasad says the authorities must respond immediately to the rights of children under six years, who have been largely marginalised in all laws and policies.

“It is a shame that there continues to be such a lack of basic childcare services in this large and rich metropolis, where survival depends on wage work by all adults, men and women,” says Prasad.

“The recent rapes and murders of very young children in Delhi highlight their vulnerability with respect to protection, poor status of nutrition and inclusive education. They also highlight the problems of inequitable development, and our inability to provide children with equal opportunity,” says Prasad. The NCPCR is committed to pushing the city to take responsibility to provide quality public services to all children, he adds.

The importance of safety, protection and care for young children cannot be underestimated.

The impact of prevailing situation on health, nutrition, morbidity and mortality of women and children has been captured by the National Family Health Survey, but its impact on the emotional stability of children, their social relationships and impact on learning has nowhere been captured.

Recent research has shown how adverse care-giving experiences can affect brain structures and functions, and how in turn these impact psychological and emotional development of a child.

It is imperative that civil society wake up to negligence of a large group of children and decide policy framework and budget to ensure a just future for Delhi’s kids.