| The situation of the children in India |
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40% of India's population is below the
age of 18 years |
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About 60 million Indian children under the age of 6
live below the poverty line. |
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Children from 100 million families live without water
at home. |
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Children from 150 million families live in households
without electricity. |
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Less than half of India's children between the age
6 and 14 go to school. |
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A little over one-third of all children who enroll
in grade one reach grade eight. |
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One in every ten children is disabled in India. |
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95 in every 1000 children born in India do not see
their fifth birthday |
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70 in every 1000 children born in India, do not see
their first birthday |
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Only 38% of India's children below the age of 2 years
are immunized |
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74% of India's children below the age of 3 months are
anemic |
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More than one in three women in India and over 60%
of children in India are anemic |
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Acute respiratory infections causes of child mortality
(30%) followed by diarrhea (20%) |
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One in every 100 children in India between age group
of 0-14 years suffers from acute
respiratory infection |
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Almost one in every five children in India below the
age of 14 suffers from diarrhea |
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30-40% of the India's population, which is largely
economically deprived, spends over 70% of their total expenditure on food. |
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Amongst married women in India today, 75% were under
age at the time of their marriages |
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While one in every five adolescent boys is malnourished,
one in every two girls in India is undernourished |
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23% of India's children are underweight at birth |
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58% of India's children below the age of 2 years are
not fully vaccinated. And 24% of these children do not receive any form
of vaccination |
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More that 50% of India's children are malnourished |
| The Girl Child |
| In addition to the deaths
of infants and children due to malnourishment and disease, innumerable and
unrecorded numbers of girl children are killed within hours
of being born while many others are killed in the womb itself. Patriarchal
norms, low status of women and preference for male children are the primary
reasons that threaten survival of female children in India. The alarming
fact is that female infanticide or fetuses has increased over the past few
decades. While in 1960 there were 976 girls born for every 1000 boys, in
2001, there are only 927 girls for every 1000 boys. |
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1out of every 6 girls does not live to
see her 15th birthday |
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Of the 12 million girls born in India, 1 million do
not see their first birthday |
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Of the 12 million girls born in India, 3 million do
not see their fifteenth birthday, and a million of them are unable to survive
even their first birthday |
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One-third of these deaths take place at birth |
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Every sixth girl child's death is due to gender discrimination |
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Females are victimized far more than males during childhood |
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1 out of every 10 women reported some kind of child
sexual abuse during childhood, chiefly by known persons |
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1 out of 4 girls is sexually abused before the age
of 4 |
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19% are abused between the ages of 4 and 8 |
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28% are abused between the ages of 8 and 12 |
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35% are abused between the ages of 12 and 16 |
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3 million more girls than boys die every year |
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Female mortality exceeds male mortality in 224 out
of 402 districts in India |
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Death rate among girls below the age of 4 years is
higher than that of boys. Even if she escapes infanticide or feticide, a
girl child is less likely to receive immunization, nutrition or medical
treatment compared to a male child |
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53% of girls in the age group of 5 to 9 years are illiterate |
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Every year 27,06,000 children under 5 years die in
India. And the deaths of girl children are higher than those of male children |
| Child Labor: Children
are often treated as the "property" of the very adults who are
supposed to take care for them, being ordered around, threatened, coerced,
and silenced, with complete disregard of them as "persons" with
rights and freedoms. |
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17 million children in India work as per
official estimates |
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They work for 12 - 15 hours a day and earn less than
Rs.3 per day. |
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They work with explosives, metals, and poisonous gases
from the age of 3 - 4 years. |
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A study found that children were sent to work by compulsion
and not by choice, mostly by
parents, but with recruiter playing a crucial role in influencing decision |
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When working outside the family, children put in an
average of 21 hours of labor per week |
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19% of children employed work as domestic help |
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90% working children are in rural India |
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85% of working children are in the unorganized sectors |
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80% of child labor is engaged in agricultural work |
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25% of the victims of commercial sexual exploitation
in India are below 18 years of age |
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Millions of children work to help their families because
the adults do not have appropriate employment and income thus forfeiting
schooling and opportunities to play and rest. |
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Children also work because there is demand for cheap
labor. High incidence of child labor is a result of high incidence of adult
unemployment. |
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Large numbers of children work simply because there
is no alternative - since, they do not have access to good quality schools |
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Poor and bonded families often "sell" their
children to contractors who promise lucrative jobs in the cities and the
children end up being employed in brothels, hotels and domestic work. Many
run away and find a life on the streets |
| All
children have the right to be protected from work that interferes with their
normal growth and development. Abandoned children, children without families
and disabled children need special care and protection. |