India

And we think we have problems in the US.

Improve child care: Plan panel
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
Friday, January 20, 2006
NEW DELHI, JANUARY 19:

If the 10th Five Year Plan has failed the country’s children, most conspicuously in arresting infant and neo-natal mortality, can the 11th Plan do better?

This was the question that worried experts gathered for perhaps the first major consultation in the process of conceiving the 11th Plan. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said that India needed to be a little clearer on what really works for it. ‘‘It is good to focus on inputs, but it is also important to focus on outputs,’’ he observed, while addressing the two-day consultation, jointly organised by the Planning Commission, UNICEF and the Institute of Human Development, which ended on Thursday.

The present moment is full of contradictions, and the participants recognised this. While India is on the growth trajectory in economic terms and has the demographic advantage of having one of the youngest populations, it has to contend with a huge backlog of deprivations and great inequalities along regional, gender and community/caste lines.

Health of the newborn was regarded a crucial area of neglect, with 50 per cent of infants dying within the 28th day; 20 per cent on the day of birth itself. The reasons for this vary from poor coverage of child health programmes to a tendency of concentrating on initiatives like polio-eradication at the cost of other, more important ones. The participants argued that the focus on child health should shift to child-mortality reduction in the 11th Plan. This, they believe, is relatively easy to achieve through the deployment of a specially trained community-based child health provider — ASHA — in every village by 2012 (the last year of the 11th Plan), mandated to deliver healthcare at the doorstep.

Related to health was nutrition, a crucial aspect of child survival. Here too it was felt early childhood should be in focus. Since the family plays an important role at this stage, it was felt that initiatives in improving nutrition should be routed through the community and family.

On school education, there was a consensus that the flagship programme, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, must continue, but should also focus on quality education. At the same time there must be the targeted enrollment of disadvantaged groups, like SC/STs, working children, children with special needs, even while educational opportunities are expanded for girls. There was also a felt need for strengthening the school supervision system through independent institutional mechanisms; focusing on professional development of teachers, and creating more space for non-profit, non-state actors in elementary education.

Lack of access to water and sanitation severely impacts children’s lives. Given this, there was concern over hand pumps — once seen as a major infrastructure to reach potable water to every Indian — being in a state of disrepair and neglect as also a lack of investment in their maintenance. Since pipe water will remain a pipe dream for millions, it is important to address this huge crisis.

Similarly, the provision of toilets was very unsatisfactory and child-unfriendly. An example from Purnea, where a local school was converted into a community toilet, with the children driven to study under trees, highlighted the general reality.

The participants therefore called for ensuring that all households get sustained access to potable water in a phased manner.