What about the rights of a child?

What about the rights of a child?
THE UN convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified by the Government of India in December 1992. It is going to be two years since then, but there are no indications that the Government has even initiated steps to review its legislations, policies programmes and schemes relating to children to bring them upto the standards of the convention and work towards improving the lives of our children and their families.
Countries are urged to report not only on the progress they have made but on the constraints they face in implementing the convention. Accordingly, India. is expected to present the report stating that they have done so far in monitoring and implementation of the convention in the country.
Recently, Indian Council of Child Welfare (!CCW) has organised a three-day “national consultation” of development workers, activists, academicians and professionals who are working on children’s issues. This Government-sponsored programme was a purposeful exercise to gather inputs for the for mulation of the official Indian report.
This arm-chair exercise may help the Government to make a theoretically sound report but this exercise, undoubtedly was a futile one, said a senior development worker, preferring anonymity.
“As with other conventions and charters and international documents signed, I have a feeling that the Government of India uses them for some window dressing, for some outside propaganda,” says Swami Agnivesh.
Take the case of ILO convention against forced labour which was signed by India, and still the bonded labour has been flourishing. Again, India was one of the last countries to ratify the Rights of the Child Convention. And, how ironical is the case of Uttar Pradesh, where a Government order was issued restraining labour inspectors from investigating shops and establishments in which children are known to be working.
In the mean time, a group of concerned persons representing various disciplines, such as advocates, trade unionists, sociologists, economists, educationists and NGOs have got together, under the umbrella of “Butterflies”, a voluntary organisation working for the street children, to make an “alternate report”, on the situation of children. “While this report will be an alternate report of NGOs for submission to the committee on the Rights of the Child, its mandate will be to promote a social movement on behalf of children for the protection of their rights,” says Sonali Ojha, a working member of the “alternate report”. She & lds, will thus develop as a corporate action of NGOs and not just as an activity of an individual NGO.”
Interestingly, about 10,000 infants and children die in India each and every day, yet hardly known. Two-thirds of deaths can easily be prevented and managed at the village level. Jon E Rohde of UNICEF pointed out that the emergence of “Panchayati Raj” institutions offers a unique and remarkable opportunity to empower local communities, to accomplish major goals set out in the Constitution of India, and to demonstrate the power of democracy. “That is the reason,” points out Rita Pannicker, a social worker, “The ‘alternate report’ observes in its ‘special focus area’, the Government of India’s policy on children and the National Action Plan, being general in character, does not show shortfalls.”
The “people’s report” inquries “the cost of meeting the ‘goals’ set out by the Government of India in its various plans and whether the existing budget allocation is sufficient and that what is the increase in allocations required to meet the basic rights of the child”.