Immunize your kid or face action

Parents or guardians who ignore proper immunization or don’t provide food to their children may get penalized, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 15, 2007, 01:24:14 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Parents or guardians who ignore proper immunization or don’t provide food to their children may get penalized, if the new draft being envisaged by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) gets fortified.

The first national consultation on the draft of the new legislation sought to provide legal backing to rights of children under six years of age. The Constitution provides Right To Education to children in 6-14 age group but there is no specific law for children under six years of age even though the Constitution speaks of giving dignified life to every child.

“We have to come up with an enabling law so that promises made in the Constitution are delivered,” said NCPCR chairperson Shantha Sinha. In the new legal framework, the commission has recommended four suggestions —nutrition, health, special protection measures for children in areas of disturbance and right to early childhood care and education — under which rights of children should be protected. “Now we submit our recommendations on the new proposed law to the government for further action,” said the panel member Sandhaya Bajaj.

The need to have a legal framework was felt as even after several government interventions the country still grapples with low levels of immunization, access to health care and high levels of infant mortality rate. The states like Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan have fared poorly on children development indicators.

About 45 per cent of Indian children are under-weight, the figure more than that for Sub-Saharan Africa. Analysis of National Family Health Survey II and III indicates that the malnourishment rate in India has fallen by just one per cent in the last eight years despite the government spending several thousand crores of rupees on Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICDS) and other child health schemes.

The commission says the Constitution provides for right of a child to live a dignified and healthy life but in absence of a legislative backing, the overall condition of children remains abysmal.

"The Constitution requirement has not been fulfilled", a commission member said.

The experts also made presentations stating how the new proposed law can make government accountable.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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