Present, Prime Minister

A mystery illness in Saharanpur, western UP, claims 60 young lives over the last two weeks. Endemic hunger continues to kill children in Maharashtra8217;s Thane district. In Tamil Nadu, an eerie quasi-religious ceremony involves the burying alive of female children for a few seconds. And we are not even talking of the tribal pockets of Orissa which records the highest infant mortality rates in the country.

It is difficult, therefore, to know where to begin when confronted with this difficult reality. Here the new Report has a useful tip: start at the very beginning 8212; the registration of births. A large number of children in this country, from evidence cited in the Report, are not registered and therefore cannot access state8217;s welfare systems, pitifully limited though they may be. Another important insight that bears reiteration is the link between maternal and infant health. This is what makes the level of maternal mortality a crucial indicator of infant and child health, yet India is not quite clear about its maternal mortality rate MMR although it continues to be unconscionably high.

Basics, get back to basics: that is the one lesson that emerges from the evidence garnered thus far. Take the alarming sex-ratio trends in the country which translates, according to some estimates, into 1.4 million missing girls in the age-group of 0-6. For years, administrators and government did not bother to respond to the trend 8212; even though it was clearly manifest in the nineties. The failure of the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994 to curb the practice of female foeticide was also quite patent, yet it wasn8217;t until Wednesday that amendments to the Act, making it more stringent, was passed in the Rajya Sabha. Finally, breaking the lethargy barrier is what it is all about. Unless India internalises a commitment to its children 8212; in its governance, in its politics, in its social practice 8212; its future is at risk.