Kunal Kohli writes about the health crisis confronting children in India

Right now, the top-of-mind issue in everyone’s mind is the economic recession that the global economy is going through. Companies are going through crises….many are, in turn passing on the crises to employees in the form of pay cuts and job cuts. 

Jobs in the white-collar segment are scarce, the general atmosphere is somber.  

Even as this crisis takes over our nation’s consciousness, 10,000 Indians died from entirely preventable causes. As many died the day before. And the previous day. And so on as long as anyone can remember. Such numbers of deaths happened last year too, when he economic crisis was still a few months away. These deaths happened even in the year 2005-2008, currently agreed upon as the best years in the Indian growth story.  

But these deaths did not make it to the news as breaking news.  

10,000 children die every single day in India. More than in any tsunami, flood, earthquake, war or terror attack. Reports released in the past few months reveal that:  

• 46% of children in India are underweight, 38% stunted and 19% wasted... their fate decided even before they turn three [National Family Health Survey, 2007]
• 53% children in India reported having faced one or more forms of sexual abuse [Ministry of Women and Child Development, 2007]
• There are 17 million child laborers in India [Government of India Census, 2001]
• 60 million children in India are out of school.

The child deaths form the small tip of the iceberg – of the hunger and poverty that an estimated third of adults in this country live with (28.3% according to he Human Development Report). We all know that children do not live in isolation - they belong to families, communities and society at large. They are always the most vulnerable victims of any situation, be it poverty, natural and man-made disasters, displacement, social biases and prejudices 

Why are we so easily able to ignore this crisis engulfing our children? Is it because they are children? Or because we don’t believe their situation can really change? Or because they can’t vote? Or because we weren’t really serious when we promised them their rights – to survival, development, protection and participation? Yes – these rights were promised to our children in 1947 and enshrined in the Indian Constitution. And reiterated in 1992 when India signed the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Children.

The persistence of these problems, their scale and severity call for more than philanthropic responses. Permanent change is possible only when children, their parents and communities are informed about their rights and engage with their local government bodies to address the root causes of their problems.  

But doing so on any significant scale will require at least 2 things to happen: 

First, we must start seeing children as citizens with rights as inviolate as our own, rather than objects of charity. 

Second, those policies and the everyday choices we make, must seek to address the root causes of children’s problems not just their superficial symptoms.