Dr Vishiesh Verma
Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru the First Prime Minister of India was the most popular national leader, who loved children very much. India celebrates Children’s Day on November, 14 to mark the birth anniversary of Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru since 1957.
He said about it, “I am particularly happy that the children of India have made this day (14 November) as their own. No greater honour could have been done to me and no greater say can came to me than to feel that these buds and flowers in the garden of India have given me their affection. May they all have opportunities of Growth and development which are their right and due. My love and blessings to all of them”
Pt. Nehru was never a teacher, nor education has ever been his chief concern except at times he availed himself of the opportunity of addressing the students or education officers. Education in general and higher education in particular always attracted his attention who so ever was the education minister whether Moulana Azad, M.C Chagla or K.L.Shrimali, it was Nehru who really shaped the country’s education policies. He believed that some of the basic problems of India’s under-development are associated with lack of education. At the Avadhi session of Indian National Congress (1955) he said, “We require an education for the purpose of achieving the national aims and social objectives of free India.” By ensuring universal suffrage and by eliciting the involvement of masses in the development work through community programmes. Nehru brought the masses face to face with functionality of literacy, thereby sowing the seeds of motivation in them. The effect of all this was, the percentage of literacy rose from 16.6 percent in 1951 to 24 percent in 1961. Besides at primary and secondary school levels many reforms were introduced during his time.
He strongly believed that education is not less important than even defense and felt unhappy when certain states diverted funds allotted to education to other fields in the wake up of the Chinese aggression in 1962, speaking at the Education Ministers conference at New Delhi in 1963 he lamented, “I was much pained by the fact that owing to the emergency, education has suffered some set back in some States because they were trying to save or divert money to some other object. I think it is not a very happy outcome to think of education as less important than anything including soldiering.”
Nehru was in favour students doing social service in villages. He wanted students to go to villages and work with the rural people for the development of villages. This idea of Nehru later developed into the National Service Scheme (NSS).
During his visit to USSR he had appreciated the students over there being initiated in the army training. He sent a delegation from India to find out the details of its functioning and later the same type of training was introduced at college and school level in India as NCC training.
Education to Pt. Nehru was “Means to an end and that too social and national end”. Besides, he said “Right education must be an all round development of human beings…… harmonizing of our internal conflicts and a capacity to co-operate with others.
He attached great importance to the practical aspect of education, it is conspicuous from the following few sentences from the letter which he wrote to his daughter (Indira) when she was residing and studying in a hostel of Vishwa Bharti University.
“I think I have told you that it has long been my desire that a part of your education and every boy’s and girl’s education should consist of real honest work in a factory or in the fields. Unfortunately this can’t be arranged in India under present conditions but this idea of mine will give you some notion of what I think of education”.
“The very object of going there is to learn from the sufferings, discomforts and misery which surround and wrap up the great majority of people. To see the drama of real, to become akin to a small extent at least with the masses to understand their view point and get to know how to work so as to raise them and get them out of their misery.”
November 14 now remains a mere a formality to celebrate Chacha Nehru’s birthday. Those who run the Republic have scant regard for the children. What we can’t ignore is the fact that even today in our country children are silent sufferers of abuse in one form or other be it child labour, malnutrition or sexual.
Half a century has gone by leading to various changes in Political, Social and economics conditions of India. It has reflected in education which is now given due importance. The Free compulsory education Act was passed by Indian Parliament on 4th August, 2009 which is popularly known as the Right of the Children to free Compulsory Education Act (RTE) and it describes the modalities of provision of Free Compulsory education between 6 and 14 years under the Article 21-A of Indian constitution. Through this legal arrangement India became one of the 135 countries to make education a Fundamental Right of every child when the Act came into force on 01/04/2010. But lack of School infrastructure makes mockery of RTE. There are 23 crore children studying in the Schools, RTE guideline are: All Schools must have teacher student ratio of 2:60 for classes I-V and 1:35 for classes VI-VIII.
Implementing the Act has created problems since there is shortage of 1.2 million properly trained teachers. Thirty Six percent of all sanctioned teaching posts are lying vacant. Lack of School Infrastructure makes mockery of RTE. Nobel laureate Kailas Satyarathi says 43 lakh children still reported to be working five years after the “Right to Education Act” promised to bring them to School. Laws are hardly catching up with crimes, is evident from national data. Against 43 lakh child workers 147 cases were registered under the prohibition of Child Labour Act.
Child Right and You (CRY) reported on 26/06/2015 that there has been a significant increase in 53% in working children in the age group of 5-9 Years in Urban India.
Around 75% of the child labour especially the 10 plus age group which was hired in agriculture (declared non-hazardous) these children miss School, which is a huge impediment to their overall growth and capacity building.
On the other hand, Child Rights have recently become a priority. In 1990, Indian Government ratified the U N Charter of the Declaration on survival, protection and development of children, acceded to the convention of Child Rights and signed a document titled, “A World Fir for Children”. Consequently, the Indian government is mandated to provide basic child rights such as protection and education. To administer these rights, the Commission for Protection of Child Rights (CPCR) Act was created in 2006. By 2014, 29 out of 36 Indian States have Commissions that are enforcing child protection Policies. In fact country’s protection laws for children are similar to the US, but we are not vocal about enforcement.
According to the census 2011, 41 percent of India’s population is under 18 years, yet only 4.5 percent of total budget is earmarked for children. Expenditure on education was just 3.3 percent of GDP in 2013-14 with 1.4 million children between the ages 6 and 11 are still out of school. While the total Union budget went up by 7.78 %in 2014-15, the budget for children increased by mere 4.97 %. In the global context, 40 % of the world’s undernourished children and 35% of world’s low birth weight babies are in India. Of all the child deaths in India, 50% can be attributed directly or indirectly to malnourishment. Mid day meals was introduced to fight lack of nutrition and incentive for continuing studies.
Around 15 children disappear every hour in the Country. Data on the missing children was placed in the Parliament in 2014 showed that over 3.25 lakh children went missing between 2011 and 2014 at an average of one lakh children every year. About 55% of those missing were girls. 45% children have remained untraceable till date. Increase in Urbanization has led to a rise in crime against children. While there was 24% increase in crime against children between 2010 and 2011, it has risen by 52.5% between 2012 and 2013.
An agency ‘Save the Children’ at Delhi has registered 6816 cases of sexual crimes against children during the past 3 years. It is happening when there is POCSO Act (Protection of children from sexual offenses) 2012.
Celebrating Pt. Nehru’s birthday and thinking of under privileged children would be incomplete without quoting Gabriela Mistral a Noble Prize winner, “We are guilty of many errors many faults but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life, Many of the things we need can wait, the child cannot. To him we can’t say tomorrow. His name is today.”
(The writer is a former Reader Coordinator of University of Jammu.)
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