Mathew Rongmei
Come November 14, a teacher-children-parent friendly software, the first of its kind in India by Induj Innovation, will be launched on Friday to mark the Children’s Day.
It is a social network on mobile for teachers, students and parents for the benefit of safety, development and to create awareness among them. It can be operated in any mobile phone even without internet facility. Well, this is what a private telecom has initiated to show concern for children’s safety in today’s deteriorating social scenario.
International Children’s Day is observed on June 1, but we in India particularly in all educational institutions celebrate the day on November 14 every year, coinciding with the birth anniversary of India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who was fond of children and wanted them to excel in every field as he believed that they are the foundation of India’s future.
All parents love their own brood. They hone them for their brilliant future with basic necessities, good advice, good values, and most of all, guard them from bad influences. Children on the other hand, expect love, time and attention from their parents.
Nevertheless, all this only exists within the realm of normal families. What about the orphaned, abandoned and underprivileged children? In the strife-torn Northeast region alone, there are thousands of poor children from rural and urban areas who continue to bear the brunt of abject poverty. They are often half-starved; forced to claw their way to streets for survival or concede to commercial sexual exploitation. Varied difficult circumstances and poor economic conditions of the parents are increasingly giving rise to eventual development of ‘a new generation of street children,’ who have lost their childhood and innocence at very early stage of life.
It is pertinent that on this occasion, we sit back and delve into the issues of health, occupation, sexual exploitation and life security of needy children from rural and urban areas of the north east. This neglected lot who are supposed to be assets of the region/country are instead becoming scourges of the society, and every day what we find in the newspapers are full of rapes and murders of young girls, and tortures of domestic help or human trafficking of children for brisk business.
Today, there is a need to revisit the Indian law and government policies meant for children to figure out whether they are reforming them or harming them. The child-friendly Juvenile Justice Act which has been so far meant for care and rehabilitation of children in legal conflict under 18 years, is now debated and decided by Union Cabinet for a change in the present judicial policy with more stringent penalties against child offenders on account of growing crime rate.
Child labour in domestic homes is still rampant in every state and there is neither enforcement mechanism nor a comprehensive rehabilitation plan even though the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act (CLPRA) has been passed to prohibit employment of children below 14 years in domestic and hospitality sectors.
The government urgently needs to ponder upon creating public awareness and community engagement in curbing the social menaces and improving the living conditions of the poor parents who should actually be taking care of their children. Of late, the Centre has come up with a new scheme under the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry, which encourages community involvement in the upbringing of destitute and orphaned children. It is indeed a welcome step. Parents may invest their entire earnings and the government may sanction the best budget, yet all this will have no meaning if the environment outside our homes and schools is not conducive for children to grow up. In the absence of public awareness and community involvement, all our efforts will be but a futile exercise.
I conclude with the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “If we wish to create a lasting peace we must begin with the children.”
