The Sorry State of Children in India : A Snapshot of figures and facts

Children is the future of any society/nation but In India, children has no future. Despite government's many schemes and policies, the country is home to large number of destitute children. The present article is written on the occasion of Indian Children Day, focuses on problems and perils faced by the children. India's children is one of the very youngest and they are the future of the world, but lack of support and facilities made the children to remain poor and uneducate, and less civilised citizens of the country, which is not good for the country in the long run. We have no time to think twice to take actions to improve the children condition in the country.

Children's Day is celebrated across India on November 14, the birth anniversary of the first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru, fondly called Chacha Nehru. He is often cited as saying that children should always be carefully and lovingly nurtured, as they are the future of the nation and the citizens of tomorrow. He said this more than 70 years ago when the country got independence from the British, but the children of India has not got freedom from many evils that have been persistent for many years. Various governments have spent millions of rupees for the welfare of children, companies spend a lot on children's welfare in the country, many NGOs in the country are working hard to remove the problems of the children, yet they fail to do so. According to official and unofficial statistics, more than half of the children in the country are facing chronic poverty, severe malnutrition, no protection for their lives, and of course lack of proper health care and education facilities led them to remain poor and hunger for many years.

End of Childhood Index 2017 ranks, India at 116 among 172 nations assessed for threats to childhood and the report says, "many children" in the country are "missing out on childhood." Three of India’s neighboring countries did better on the index — Maldives was ranked 48, Sri Lanka was ranked 61, Bhutan, 93 and Myanmar, 112. Launched to coincide with International Children's Day on June 1, 2017, the report has found that nearly half of all deaths (in India) in children under 5 years of age are attributable to under-nutrition.

The index is part of a new report 'Stolen Childhoods', from Save the Children, which assesses children missing out on childhood. The index scores reflect the average level of performance across a set of eight indicators related to child health, education, labour, marriage, childbirth and violence. In all of these indicators, India performed worst and scored 754 points where as China and Sri Lanka scored 928 and 903 points. In the category of child stunting, India’s position is worse than many African nations.

According to the report, one in every 21 children being born in India are dying before reaching their fifth birthday, whereas 47 million youth of upper secondary age are not in school. While India has the highest number of stunted children in the world, it also accounts for the largest number of child laborers under age 14 among all nations. 10.3 crore girls in India were married before they had turned 18 and 50% of all adolescent births occur in just seven countries which includes India. The stunting rate among Indian girls is also very high with one-third of girls aged 15-19 being stunted even as in most countries stunting rates are higher for boys than for girls.

A very recent report ‘Bridging the gap: Tapping the agriculture potential for optimum nutrition’ jointly by ASSOCHAM and EY has revealed that towards the end of 2015, 40% of the Indian children were undernourished. About 37% of our under-five children are underweight, 39% are stunted, 21% are wasted and 8% are severely acutely malnourished, and only about 10% children under the age 6-23 months were reported to receive an adequate diet. The prevalence of underweight children was higher (38%) in rural areas compared to urban cities (29%).

According to statistics mentioned in the Friends of Salaam Baalak Trust website, India has 440 million children. That's more than the entire population of North America (USA, Mexico and Canada put together). Every fifth child in the world is Indian, but 79% of children under 3 have anemia and half of children have reduced learning capacity because of iodine deficiency. 50% of children do not attend school regularly and over 50% have faced some kind of sexual abuse, and over 20% of them severe abuse and half of children also face emotional abuse. Every minute, 9 abortions of female fetuses take place in India; and only 41% of births are registered, according to another study.

Here are some facts and figures of the Sorry State of the Children in India.

1. At 48 million, India has the largest number of children under the age of 5 in the world who are moderately to severely stunted
2. In India, one-third of girls aged 15-19 are stunted.
3. More than 21% of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are married in India.
4. In India’s rural schools, a 2014 study showed that just under half of children in fifth grade were able to read a basic second-grade text. In arithmetic, half of fifth graders could not subtract two-digit numbers, and only about one quarter could do basic division.
5. 9.6% children between 6-23 months in the country receive an adequate diet.
6. 38.4% children under 5 years are stunted (height-for-age)
7. 21.0% children under 5 years are wasted (weight-for-height)
8. 7.5% children under 5 years are severely wasted (weight-for-height)
9. 35.7% children under 5 years are underweight (weight-for-age)
10. Only 2.5% children born at home were taken to a health facility for check-up within 24 hours of birth.
11. 24.3% children received a health check after birth from a doctor/nurse/LHV/ANM/ midwife/other health personnel within 2 days of birth.
12. 58.4% of children between 6 months – 5 years were anemic
13. Child population comprises of 13.12% of the total population of the country as per Census 2011
14. As per Indian Census 2011, 43,53,247 children are working (as child laborers) in the age group of 5-14 years
15. The total number of children aged 0-6 years is 158.79 million, according to 2011 census
16. Census 2011data has revealed that 78 lakh Indian children are forced to earn a livelihood even as they attend schools while 8.4 crore children don't go to school at all.
17. 94,172 cases of crimes against children were registered in the country during 2015
18. There are 444 million children in India under the age of 18 years. This constitutes 37% of the total population in the country (Indian Census 2011)
19. 10,854 cases of child rapes under section 376 of IPC were registered in the country during 2015
20. 8,390 cases of ‘Assault on Women (Girl Child) with Intent to Outrage her Modesty’ were reported during the year 2015
21. 3,350 cases of ‘Sexual Harassment’ of children were registered during the year 2015
22. 97 cases of ‘foeticide’ were registered in the country during 2015
23. 41,893 cases of ‘kidnapping & abduction’ of children were registered during the year 2015
24. India has the second highest number of obese children in the world after China; with 14.4 million children in the country have excess weight, according to one study.
25. A US report on human trafficking states that India is one of the world’s main hubs for child sex trafficking.
26. According to Girls Not Brides — a coalition of NGOs working to end child marriage — 47% of Indian girls are married by the age of 18.
27. According to a Campaign against Child Labour (CAC) study, India has 1, 26, 66,377 child laborers of which UP has 19, 27,997 child laborers.
28. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra are five states for having India's biggest child labour employers - Over half of India's total child labour population works in these states. India's biggest hub of child labour is Uttar Pradesh and it accounts for almost 20% of India's child laborers.
29. 94.8% of rape cases saw children being raped by someone they knew, not strangers.
30. According to data from Delhi Police and the ministry of women and child development, as many as 20 children on an average go missing in the national Capital every day. And only 30 per cent of the kids are reunited with their families. The rest remain untraced. Since 2013, as many as 29,663 minors have gone missing in the city and Delhi Police have failed to trace 19,832 of them, data show. Majority of them are pushed into child labour, flesh trade, domestic service or begging racket.

Apart from the above statistics, children in the country are facing countless problems are only few of the many problems they face. I urge the governments, policy makers, and bureaucrats and NGOs and the society should come forward to reduce the burden of the children in the country.

Sources:

1. End of Childhood Report 2017 (Published by Save the Children) (for 1 – 4 facts)
2. The State of the World's Children 2016 (Published by UNICEF) (for 5 fact)
3. National Family Health Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4) (for 6 – 13 facts)
4. Indian Census 2011 (for 14 – 18 facts)
5. Crime in India 2015 (for 19 – 23 facts)
6. https://www.savethechildren.in/articles/statistics-of-child-labour-in-india-state-wise (for 27 - 28 facts)
7. https://www.savethechildren.in/resource-centre/articles/recent-statistics-of-child-abuse (for 29 fact)
8. https://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/delhi-police-data-kidnappings-ministry-of-women-and-child-development/1/884004.html (for 30th fact)
9. Image Source: https://newsd.in/38-children-india-age-5-stunted-growth-hunger-index/

Article is written by Mr. Ramesh Kotnana.

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