The Tragedy of Childhood in India

The tragedy of childhood Posted by: "Sheetal - Karmayog" info@karmayog.org Wed Jan 18, 2012 8:00 am (PST) Cafe Economics The tragedy of childhood....Niranjan Rajadhyaksha The pathetic state of Indian children is at odds with high hopes about the potential of a country with a young population It is not easy being a child in India. The results of a survey conducted by the Citizen's Alliance against Malnutrition and the Naandi Foundation showed last week that far too many Indian children continue to be malnourished. Millions of children under the age of six are underweight, stunted or anaemic. It is well understood that the first six years have a lasting impact on future productivity as well as quality of life. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called it a national shame. Two independent reports on how little children are learning in school tell a sorry story as well. A global study of learning outcomes places India (more specifically the states of Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) at nearly the bottom of a pile of 74 countries. Only schoolkids in Kyrgyzstan did worse. Shanghai (a proxy for China) topped the league table in all three categories: reading skills, mathematics and scientific literacy. The latest report by activist group Pratham shows that fewer than half of the class V students tested could read the class II textbooks. Learning outcomes have fallen in recent years. Also, the two issues of malnutrition and poor educational outcomes could be linked: various studies show that inadequate nutrition in early childhood can affect school performance. To be sure, there are signs of gradual progress in many indicators of child welfare. Infant mortality continues to fall. School enrolment is now almost ubiquitous in even poor communities. Dropout rates have come down. The data on child malnutrition suggests that matters have improved a bit compared with the results of the third National Family Health Survey of 2006. However, the progress has been slow. Consider the data on infant mortality. India has to cut its child mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015 if it is to meet the fourth of the eight Millennium Development Goals that countries have agreed to. Data from the World Bank shows that India had an infant mortality rate of 81.4 in 1990; it has to thus bring this down to around 28 deaths per 1,000 live births by 2015. The latest data shows that there were 50 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2010, three points down from the previous year. Even a reduction at the current rate-3 points a year-will not help India reach its target. This pace of decline is inadequate given what India has committed to. The pathetic state of Indian children sits tragically at odds with the high hopes about the economic potential of a country with a young population in an ageing world. A country with such poor quality of future human capital could find it hard to absorb people into the modern sectors of its economy. It is well known that a vast majority of even Indian graduates are unemployable. Though throwing more money at the problems will not help by itself, it is worth seeing how much money the Indian government spends each year for the next generation. The numbers are not explicitly released, but one civil society organization has been assiduously parsing the annual budget statements to understand how much money is allocated to programmes that help children either directly or indirectly. Such analysis by HAQ Centre for Child Rights shows that in the national budgets from FY05 to FY09, an average of 4.45% of total government spending was allocated to children. Of the money spent each year, an average two-thirds is spent on education, one-third is spread equally between health and development programmes, and there is a minuscule portion spent on the protection of children. There is no single explanation for these failures to provide adequate nutrition and effective schooling. Some critics see in them an indictment of economic reforms. Others point to state failure. The paradox of weak human development amid rising incomes suggests that many problems have deep social causes, which is why India often comes out worse on these parameters than even some of the basket cases in sub-Saharan Africa, where incomes are lower and state capacity is weaker. For example, the persistence of malnutrition across income groups is also a result of factors such as gender equality (pregnant women do not get extra nutrition), caste rules (diets in many social groups are not well diversified), public health systems (the abysmal state of drinking water) and ignorance (inadequate breast feeding of babies or lack of micronutrients such as iron and folic acid supplements). The problems faced by Indian children arise out of complex reasons, and thus need a multi-pronged attack. Not every problem can be solved with higher budgetary allocations to flagship programmes such as the Integrated Child Development Services. Yet, there can be no denying the state of the Indian child is nothing to write home about. It's not something that a country that is betting on a demographic dividend should either be proud or confident about. Niranjan Rajadhyaksha is executive editor of Mint. Comments are welcome at cafeeconomics@livemint.com URL: http://www.livemint.com/2012/01/17212533/The-tragedy-of-childhood.html