Delegitimising childhood

For children below the age of six, early care and education are essential. MINA SWAMINATHAN writes on a legislation that aims to derecognise the rights of a child and analyses the likely fall- out.

"LEARNING begins at birth" is the unforgettable opening phrase of the Jomtien Declaration of 1990, which concluded the World Conference on Education for All held that year. The phrase reminds us that early childhood, the period from birth to eight years, is the most significant period of human life, and a critical one for learning, since the rate of brain growth is maximum in the first two years of life, and 80 per cent of brain growth is completed by age four.

Clearly, learning and education, are not the same as schooling, which begins at different time (ranging from 4 to 7 years) in different countries. For the young child, it is important to ensure that the total surrounding environment and the available activities and influences are those which promote holistic learning and development. The words generally used to describe this are ECCD (Early Childhood Care and Development) or ECCE (Early Childhood Care and Education). But if one prefers to use a single popular word like "education", it must refer to that cluster of activities. ECCD must be suited to the young child's age and stage of development, the needs of the family and the cultural context. It need not necessarily take place within the four walls of a "school" nor need the children be in large groups more appropriate for older children. ECCE may imply a creche, where working parents and families need it or a parent support programme, or entitlements to enable working mothers to care for their babies for the first few months of life, or a preschool programme based on play, or even a coaching class to help children enter a coaching class to help children enter primary school.

ECCD is the most urgent need for the 161 million Indian children below the age of six, of whom 60 million or more live in poverty. It is also their basic right, enshrined in Article 45 of our Constitution. Yet the Government of India, which has ratified both the Jomtien Declaration and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) wishes, through the 93rd Amendment, to deprive young children of their rights forever. This infamous legislation aims to derecognise the needs and rights of the young child, to make sure that the State has no responsibility for the care and development of the young child, and that the family, and the family alone, is responsible. Surely this is the most anti-child move made by the State since Independence. Further, it is anti- poor, since early intervention is the best way to bridge the gap between the privileged few and the deprived majority, but with this step, only the children of the wealthy can have the privilege, not the right, to ECCD.

But this is not all. This cruel anti-poor legislation not only privatises the child and perpetuates inequality, it is also deeply anti-woman. For when the young child is derecognised, the services of the millions of women child care workers, the "first teachers" of the child, will also be delegitimised. These women can never be recognised as skilled or trained workers, or as teachers, deserving respect for their work, a developmental activity, and so entitled to a decent wage.

Strangely, the National Policy on Education (1986) clearly states that child care workers will be treated on par with primary teachers, and receive similar emoluments and working conditions. But now they will condemned to live forever as mere "volunteers", (though not by their own choice), and to receive only a meagre pittance cruelly called an honorarium, which is far less than the Minimum Wage available to an unskilled worker. Is this not crass exploitation of women, denying the worth of women's work and making a skilled task an extension of women's domestic role? An example of "voluntarism" of the poor, enforced by the rich?

If that is the plight of the one million or more anganwadi workers employed by the State, still worse is that of the several million "untrained" teachers working in the "unrecognised" private nursery schools, a grey area of the private sector which thrives on exploiting women's work. And is not the refusal to recognise day-care for the young, also promised in the NPE, a proof that the legislation is also deeply anti-labour, denying the needs and rights of working mothers?

But what is one more broken promise, to a Government which has already broken so many? to raise our voices against the anti- child, anti-woman, anti-poor and anti-labour policies and laws which are about to be imposed on us, we need to know more about the background. What could be the reason behind this otherwise inexplicable step? Why this sinister move to amend the Constitution? Is it merely to achieve the objective of ensuring the Fundamental Right to Education? But it has been clearly established and repeatedly emphasised that that can be done, after the Supreme Court's 1993 decision on the Unnikrishnan case, within the available laws and powers of the Government. Why then the zeal to amend the Constitution? Could it be that the group of distinguished persons at the helm of affairs, the scholarly Murali Manohar Joshi, his estimable political stalwarts, and the cohorts of brilliant bureaucrats, simply do not understand the damage that they are causing? This is hardly credible - whatever sins one can accuse the Government of, lack of brains is not one of them.

So let us look more closely into the reasons. It soon becomes obvious that the real reason cannot be opening spoken about or quoted as a reason - that is why the deafening silence. The first clue - for four years, there has been no response to any of the innumerable petitions, letters, memorandums, pleas and queues from numerous bodies all over the country, led by NAFRE (National Alliance for the Fundamental Right to Education); no response to the requests for interviews, meetings, dialogues, debates or discussions suggested by such bodies; no public appearances or statements beyond the usual platitudes; no answers to lakhs of letters resulting from signature campaigns across the country lying in heaps in the Minister's ante-room, read or unread; no response to impassioned pleas for transparency, for making public the contents of the Bill for scrutiny and debate; nothing but deafening silence. Rarely has the democratic process been so cynically subverted to serve hidden ends - one cannot help noticing that in this case the people whose rights are being trampled on are below six years of age and hence not yet capable of organised protest. But one also notes that the reasons, though obvious, cannot be spelt out without some loss of political image. And this second clue, in answer to the question - whose interests will be adversely affected - gives the game away.

The answer lies in the financial realm - in the grim and oft- expressed determination of the Government, at all levels political and bureaucratic, never to pay child care workers their due, a fair wage which would flow from recognition of early childhood education as part of the great ladder of development and education which is every child's birthright. And besides, once the lid is taken off the public sector, it would open the Pandara's box of the private sector. Not only would the millions of "first teachers" in that sector also have to be ensured a decent wage, but the private sector would have to be regulated, standards set and enforced, and the worst abuses prevented, since the State is obliged to protect the rights of the children, and not merely those in Government centres. The logic is simple - no money in the kitty, no money to invest in the child, so get rid of the baby with the bath water. But this cannot be said when rhetoric demands that the child be spoken of as a precious treasure, and future of the nation, for which all else can be sacrificed. Unfortunately, the Founding Fathers appear to have taken this rhetoric seriously, so the only thing left to do is amend the Constitution, silently, without talking about reasons, and get rid of the rights.

So a country which can afford a Pokhran, nuclear toys in the desert and war games in the mountains for the big children, cannot afford to pay for those who would nurture the little children. And since its not politically correct to say so, the big boys have to dress up in Fundamental Rights in order to furtively amend the Constitution and take away the rights of the little ones. It's time now for concerned citizens to call the bluff, and tear the veil of silence, to prevent childhood from ebbing legislated out of existence for evermore in our land. Those interested are invited to get in touch with NAFRE at nafre@crymail.com.

(The writer is a specialist in gender issues, theatre and children.)

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