In August 2006 a Reuters Alertnet poll classified india as the most dangerous country for children. Two months later the Human Development Report 2006 ranked India one of the world’s worst providers for children. Unsparingly State of the World’s Children 2007 fingers India as the worst performer for under-five mortality rates. Dilip Thakore reports The recently concluded year 2006 was marked by the publication of several well-documented studies by reputable international organisations highlighting the pathetic neglect of children’s education and welfare in developing countries of the third world — including fast-track, shining India — in agonizing detail. In August on the eve of the country’s 59th Independence Day celebrations marked by a spectacular avionics display of first strike capability of the Indian Air Force over the skies of New Delhi, came a Reuters Alertnet poll which classified India as the most dangerous country worldwide for children. Two months later the annual Human Development Report of UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) ranked India 126th in its international HDI (human development index), and one of the worst global performers in terms of nutrition, healthcare, water, sanitation and education provision for children. Moreover unsparingly, the annual State of the World’s Children 2007 (SWC 2007) report released on December 12 by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) ranks India the 54th worst performer worldwide in terms of under-5 mortality rates (74 per 1,000 cf. 4/1,000 in Sweden) and indicates that almost half (47 percent) of booming India’s children below five years of age — the global workforce of the 21st century — is moderately to severely underweight with an equal percentage (i.e 58 million children) moderately to severely stunted. Although presumably for reasons of diplomacy and political correctness SWC 2007 refrains from identifying and editorially criticising the world’s most child-hostile nations, it predicts that the developing countries of the third world are unlikely to fulfill their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) ratified by 192 countries (including India) or attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by all member nations of the United Nations at the Millennium Summit in September 2000 (see box p.58). However the statistical tables appended to SWC 2007 make it abundantly plain that in terms of the sheer number (if not percentage) of children deprived of essentials such as healthcare, education, formal identity and protection, or facing early marriage, and hazardous labour, India is the contemporary world’s worst offender. According to Unicef’s previous year’s report (SWC 2006) if the MDGs are met within the next decade, 300 million additional hitherto excluded children worldwide will have access to improved sanitation by 2015, 100 million to improved water sources, 60 million to adequate nutrition, 115 million to primary education and the lives of 5.5 million children will be saved in the year 2015 alone. But the report laments that at current rates of progress towards attaining the MDGs, 170 million children worldwide will remain deprived of sanitation, 70 million of safe drinking water, 50 million of adequate nutrition, 80 million of primary education and 3.8 million under-fives will die…
