It has been nearly a year since the subject of child labour made it to the newspaper columns. The Dist-rict Administration in Mysore had swung into action then and redeemed a few hundred children below 14 years from places where they were engaged in work for wages, some in hazardous jobs. That happened in the wake of some city-based voluntary agencies and good samaritans taking up the cause of children. The situation is known to have come back to square one.
At the national level, the children's Right to Education Act has just come on centre stage, the Prime Minister himself propelling the move. More appropriately, it should have been described as the Children's Right to Schooling. Given the accepted fact that 60 out of 100 children admitted in primary class first year do not reach the 10th class across the country, fully implementing the Act in word and spirit is a tall order.
Karnataka is in the forefront of States taking many steps to stem the rising trend of children deserting the schools. The latest reported episode in Kerala with the highest literacy rate in the land, where nearly 2,500 schools have less than 100 students each, should be an eye-opener to the rest of the country.
Of the many rights that children in the country should never be denied are the Right to Play, Right to Live, Right to Nutrition, Right to Health and Right to Clean Environment apart from the aforementioned Right to Schooling (Education), either in the order listed or in some other order. The Indian society, not necessarily only the government, cannot absolve itself of its responsibility of not ensuring these rights to the children.
The failure on the part of both the society and the government in the matter of safeguarding children's rights and healthcare assumes demonic proportions considering that nearly 90,000 births take place everyday in the land on an average and children constitute one-quarter of the land's population.
Inaugurating a three-day international conference on 'Children's Health and Environment,' the Karnataka Governor rightly focussed on the total neglect of children's healthcare in rural areas of the land. Those areas shelter more than 20 crore children, totally outside the scope of any of the Children's Rights mentioned above.
Female foeticide, unheard of in any other part of the world and the land's lowest female to male ratio in the world have also remained unaddressed. Their expression portraying poverty, ignorance, ill-health and misery in life, would have been in focus if they were voters!
