Tuesday, July 18, 2006

A controversial survey on India!!!!

India has been judged the sixth most dangerous country for children — even more dangerous than Afghanistan, the Palestinian Territories, Myanmar, and Chechnya!


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Unknown said...

WE ALL know that statistics and polls can be misleading but I did not realise quite how misleading until, last week, I was handed a list of the "world's 10 most dangerous places for children" based on a poll with inputs from a panel of more than 100 aid experts and journalists.

One look at the list, and you knew there was something wrong with it. And not only because India figured on it though many will question whether, despite widespread poverty, exploitation, and malnutrition, India can be accurately condemned as a country from hell for children. But even after allowing for the fact that India does not treat its children well, what seemed odd was the ranking. India was judged as the sixth most dangerous country — even more dangerous than Afghanistan, the Palestinian Territories, Myanmar, and Chechnya!

It requires a huge leap of imagination to suggest that children are more at risk in India than in countries where they are caught up in armed conflicts and civil war-like conditions. And, clearly, those who put the list together have it in spades with the result that only Darfur (Sudan), Northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, and Somalia are recognised as more dangerous than India.

In a list full of surprises, while India is named and shamed Sri Lanka is missing even though human rights groups such as Amnesty International have repeatedly highlighted the plight of "child soldiers" and other child victims of the ethnic conflict there. Many are also surprised that Sierra Leone, where children have been among the worst victims of a long civil war, is not mentioned. So, why India? The poll says: "It [India] is being hailed as a future economic powerhouse, yet 1.2 million children under five die from malnutrition every year. Child labour is outlawed, but rights groups estimate up to 115 million are forced to work."

Fair enough, but does it still make India the world's sixth most dangerous country for children? The Hindu put the question to organisers of the poll, Reuters AlertNet , a humanitarian news portal run by Reuters Foundation.

In a written reply, an official admitted: "We ourselves were surprised by India's inclusion on the list." She also said that the term "dangerous" was not explained to the respondents because it could "mean many different things" but they were given a list of factors which, the Foundation thought, could make a place dangerous/risky for a child. These were: physical violence of any kind (outside or within the family); mental violence; displacement; sexual abuse and trafficking; early marriage; child labour; a lack of formal identity, including birth registration; the absence of parental care; detention without sufficient cause; a lack of freedom of expression; discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity or disability; poverty; HIV/AIDS and other diseases; a lack of vital services (including education and healthcare); and hunger.

Of the four respondents, who picked India, one believed that all the above factors applied to it. The other three gave the following reasons:

1."The world's largest democracy, the third largest producer of food in the world, the third largest defence spender after United States and China, India, cannot protect its children. India is home to the 50 per cent of the world's hungry (over 380 million). The worst affected are children. According to the World Food programme, more than half of the children under five are moderately or severely malnourished, or suffer from stunting. India is a nation plagued by child labour. An estimated 60 to 115 million children are classified as working children — the highest number in the world. Deprived of their childhoods, most have never seen the inside of a school. No current figures are available for the number of children engaged in child labour, since the Indian government, proud of its human resources that are running Silicon Valley from the United States to Bangalore, does not collect such data."

2. "Many thousands of unborn daughters are aborted by parents who want only sons."

3. "Children bear the burden of poverty. They work in sweatshops or factories, usually in appalling conditions, for a pittance just to bail their parents from the wrath of loan sharks or poverty."

The poll said that a "large proportion" of the world's 218 million child workers were located in India. It also highlighted the condition of children uprooted by violence in Kashmir and the northeast as among the factors for choosing India.

The poll is part of a campaign by Reuters AlertNet to focus on humanitarian crises often neglected by the international media. The idea is to improve media coverage of "forgotten" emergencies and the "neglected voices." No doubt, a noble cause and there was much praise for the initiative when the issue was debated by British journalists and representatives of international aid agencies at a seminar in London last week. But, alas, the event was marred by the release of this sloppy, if headline-grabbing, poll.

8:52 PM
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1:35 PM

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