Sreelatha Menon: Slumdog millions

NGO mobilises children to change govt approach to issues concerning child rights

NGO mobilises children from northern states in an attempt to change the approach of governments as well as political parties to issues concerning child rights.

Last year, in November, about 200 Salims, Jamaals, Latikas and their friends from villages and slums of eight northern states camped near Rajghat in New Delhi preparing a rights document to be presented to the government.

These were young “parliamentarians”, some of them living with their families, some rescued from child labour but not as helpless any more as the unfortunate Dickensian trio of Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire.

They had been mobilised to form small local children clubs, 100 of them, with members specialising in four key areas of education, health care, protection and participation. In fact, one of them, Jyoti, a class IX student from a slum in New Delhi, has been giving sleepless nights to the local municipal councillor with demands for street lights and drinking water, unlike Latika in the film who is trafficked and turned into a prostitute.

Each of these club members were articulate and aware of the issues concerning them. They were demanding that 25 per cent of the Budget be allocated for children, from the current level of less than 10 per cent. Besides, they were seeking the opening of a medical centre and a school in every village, a child protection force and a child adalat.

The clubs are formed by World Vision, an NGO, and the young “parliamentarians” under the Indian Alliance of Child Rights, a grouping of 100 NGOs. These clubs work under the umbrella of the Rashtriya Bal Vikas Sabha.

A paid adult worker mobilises children, helps them group, gets them to elect representatives, and then lets them run the club, guiding them through a planned schedule of action as well as the issues they themselves take up, says World Vision.

These clubs also have child protection committees which keep an eye on trafficking. In Chandigarh, the protection committee was able to prevent a trafficking incident, according to the NGO.

The children presented their demands to Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes, who made at least three visits to Rajghat to hear them out.

Now, the children’s assembly has sent a report to the Congress manifesto committee, led by Pranab Mukherjee. Other political parties are to receive their demands soon.

The NGOs say the ultimate goal is to see each of these clubs engage permanently with local bodies like panchayats and municipal ward members.

World Vision says a localised institutional mechanism to monitor the protection of every child in the locality can have no substitute.

That mechanism is yet to emerge and all hopes are fixed on the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and its chairperson Shanta Sinha.

Meanwhile, it is cinema-like literature that is etching on people’s mind the best possible report on the state of the country’s children. What an Oliver Twist, Pather Panchali or a Slumdog Millionaire can say in a single shot or a few pages cannot perhaps be conveyed through the lifeless data of a million Unicef reports.

The latest report on Indian children is by NGO Haq and it says that of the 164 million children till the age of 6 years, seven million live in slums and between seven million and 21 million below the age of 10 do not go to school.

Haq gives a suggestion to ensure that the rights of the 441 million children are protected: Convergence and coordination of all existing initiatives.

Now that needs a will to save every child.