The Hindu : An impassioned plea from Chennai's children

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 26, 2004

National

National - Elections 2004

An impassioned plea from Chennai's children

Ramya Kannan

A painter arranges cutouts of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, in Chennai. -- AP

CHENNAI

Can politicians go to the hustings ignoring one-third of the country's population — even if it cannot vote?

A third of India's estimated one billion people cannot vote, because they are underage. However, underage does not mean uninterested.

This year, children have decided to participate, to make a point, by preparing their own manifesto.

The Children's Manifesto is their point. This manifesto comes from one of the largest apolitical, secular party of people in the country, urging the politicians to sit up and take note.

The manifesto, drafted on behalf of the children by Child Relief and You (CRY), lists seven demands that Chennai's underprivileged children have raised: recognise all people below 18 years as children, ensure free and compulsory education for all children, free health care, food security, elimination of all forms of child labour — hazardous and non-hazardous — and equal treatment of all children irrespective of gender and socio-economic status.

Drawn up after long consultations with representatives of field level workers, advocacy groups and leaders of rights movements, the manifesto lists not only these seven primary demands, but also includes a whole series of supplementary demands to ensure that their conditions are fulfilled. These focus on revising the National Policy for Children, establishing a national commission to look into child rights issues and ensuring transparency and accountability in all matters of governance.

In an impassioned plea, those who drafted the manifesto called upon "all citizens of the nation to speak up on behalf of our children. We urge you to hold representatives, political parties and policy makers and most importantly, yourselves accountable for ensuring child rights for all children in the country."

Reeling out statistics to bolster the demands, the document talks of how 57 years after Independence, 60 million children under the age of six years live below the poverty line, almost two million die every year before they reach their first birthday and less than half of the country's children between six and 14 years go to school.

Representatives of CRY have already met members of the Congress Working Committee and the Left parties to urge them to consider the demands. "We have had a positive response from the Left parties — the demands are anyway already contained in their agenda," said Ingrid Srinath, CEO, CRY. "This is the beginning of our campaign to persist on raising these issues consistently," she added.

Handbills are being distributed to the public and member-organisations have been asked to spread awareness about the list of demands. "We hope to target between one and five million people in our mass mobilisation campaign. We are already working in 13 States (in 2,347 villages and slums) through 171 projects. E-mails and signature campaigns have been planned," Ms. Srinath said.

Interactions between children and politicians are also on the cards. "We are not hoping to change governments or the way people vote. But like our founder said, `What I can do I must.' Let's vote for child rights."

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