E D I T O R I A L

INVISIBLE CHILDREN

NO poet has ever missed to appreciate the innocence of children and no mother has felt ever so happy to nourish and sing lullaby. Yet children in this great country never tired of boasting of being an ancient civilization are in peril. Every year 2.5 million  children die largely due to preventable illnesses. India accounts for one in five of global child deaths.

India has the dubious distinction of being home to one third of the world's malnourished children, and the country's rate of malnutrition at 47 per cent, is the same as of Ethiopia.  Over half of the world's undernourished children live in just 4 nations, India (57 million), Bangladesh (8 million), Pakistan (8 million) and China (7 million). More than half of the world's underweight children live in South Asia. According to UNICEF figures. Another 15 percent are in East Asia and the Pacific, 12 percent in West and Central Africa, 11 percent in Eastern and Southern Africa, 5 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 3 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. Other countries with the largest numbers of undernourished include Nigeria, Ethiopia and Indonesia, with 6 million each, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Philippines, with 3 million each, and Vietnam, with 2 million. Only developed west certainly takes care of their children at least till they are five year old.

United Nations Children's Fund study for 2006,  "Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition" reveals half the world's underweight, undernourished children come from South Asia, compared with one-third from sub-Saharan Africa. In India, girls suffer more from malnutrition than boys. Survival is tough for them as ten million girls are aborted every year in this splendid country that boasts of soon becoming part of comity of super powers. Women and expectant mothers suffer, as men not only control the purse strings, but also the food stores.

The State of the World's Children 2006: Excluded and Invisible speaks loudly and clearly about the world's most vulnerable children, whose rights to a safe and healthy childhood are extremely difficult to protect. These children are beyond the reach of development campaigns and are often invisible in everything, from public debate and parliament and state assemblies, to government statistics and media attention.

There are other startling facts.  According to one estimate India has 375 million children, more than any other country in the world. Resource allocations by the State remain quite inadequate for survival and healthcare needs of infants and children. They suffer from lack of development like education and have little protection from disease and exploitation. Worst is the case with the poor of children of migrant labourers whom we can always see loitering and begging. They are easy prey to the exploitation by sex maniacs and cheap labour contractors. Big cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad are prime examples of this. A visit to the national capital brings out constantly this harrowing picture where 40 lakh people live in slums. Malnourishment, poor hygiene and lack of health care often lead to early deaths. These deprived and neglected children are no one’s concern as both the government and the courts even at the apex level are busy dealing with the rich and the affluent. Only this week in the hot summer thousands of jhugis were ordered to be demolished by the Supreme Court despite these people being there since 1970s. Who would listen to small children?

It is common for rural family members in many parts of Bihar, Orissa and other states in India to alternate days when they eat. The result is that 46.7% of Indian children are underweight, and 44.9% of them are growth-stunted. In comparison, in China - which also has a wide and growing gap between rich and poor - those figures are 10% and 14.2%, respectively. According to the United Nations Human Development Index. Life expectancy is seven years less than in China and 11 less than in Sri Lanka. Mortality for children under five is almost three times China's rate, almost six times Sri Lanka's, and greater than in Bangladesh and Nepal.

Why do more children die in India? Some repulsive contrasts offer an insight.  Rich India slipped from 124th out of 177 countries to 127th, according Human Development Index. In 1991, 26% of rural households were in debt. By 2003 that had jumped to nearly 50%, although in some states, such as Andhra Pradesh, four-fifths of the farmers were in arrears. Punjab, a prosperous state by  many standards is no exception as farmers indebtedness is concerned. Tens of millions of small farmers ended up losing their land and are landless laborers. In contrast, each of those 311 billionaires takes in about $17.5 million a day.

India is spending far more on defence than the social sector like tackling malnutrition, health and education.  Take these cases.  India has launched a 30-year program to build a fleet capable of projecting power into the South China Sea in Indian Ocean. It has purchased Jaguar bombers from Britain and has negotiated for 66 Hawk fighter-bombers for $1.43 billion. The price of a single Hawk could supply a lifetime of clean drinking water to 1.5 million people.

The UNICEF report implies that at least 600,000 deaths of children under five can be prevented by simple health interventions, improved sanitation, and better food avail Polio remains a serious threat, notwithstanding a massive campaign to eradicate it.  Children continue to die of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, typhoid and diphtheria. Anemia affects the vast majority of pregnant women and teenage girls, stunts children’s growth and is a leading cause of maternal death.  Diarrhoea, often caused by unsafe drinking water or poor sanitation, is the second leading cause of death among children. Access to clean drinking water has improved in recent years, but 122 million households lack toilets. School enrollment is increasing, but retention and completion rates remain low.

China has indeed made remarkable progress, bringing down its malnutrition to just eight per cent. This has helped preventing deaths. Poor progress in the war against malnutrition erodes a primary Millennium Development Goal set by the United Nations — halving hunger and eradicating extreme poverty by 2015. Fighting malnutrition means tackling poverty, improving education, ending marginalisation of girls and other social inequalities. Malnutrition is just not the availability of food and India has right now sufficient, but its equitable distribution. This brings us the fundamental question of development with equity. Despite steady progress in many poor countries, the pace has lagged in others, threatening to cripple related U.N. initiatives aimed at controlling disease, boosting education rates and spurring economic growth.

Fifteen million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. Of these 12.1 million are in sub-Saharan Africa. Every minute a child under the 15 dies of AIDS. Every day nearly 1,800 children under 15 are infected children under 15 accounts for 13 per cent of new global HIV infections and 17 per cent of HIV/AIDS deaths annually.

What makes UNICEF sit up and worry is the harsh reality, since 1990, the starting point set by the United Nations, the rate has fallen just 5 percentage points from 32 percent to 27 percent. The goal is to bring the rate to 16 percent by 2015. Currently there are about 146 million children under 5 who are moderately or severely underweight. This is a big task particularly when inequality is increasing in most of the countries. The risk of endangering the well being of an entire generation is very real and urgent action is needed to safeguard the country's present and future.

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