NEW DELHI, NOV 18: High-profile bureaucrats from the six Union ministries concerned with the welfare of children took up the cudgels for the country's 100 million homeless children and demanded greater funding for children's welfare, education and health programmes.The secretaries and other top officials of the Ministries of Social Justice and Empowerment, Women and Child, Labour, Family Welfare, Human Resource Development and representatives of multilateral aid agencies and non-governmental organisations working with children had a face-to-face with Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha. The interactive meeting, organised by Prayas, a Delhi-based organisation working with homeless children, was called at the behest of the Finance Minister.As the Finance Ministry begins its preliminary exercises for budgetary allocations in the 2000-2001 budget and gets down to number-crunching for the Ninth Five Year plan, each of the Ministries concerned with children's welfare came armed with facts and figures tobuttress their argument why governmental funding should be beefed up.While India is a signatory to the convention of the Rights of the Child, the situation on the ground is daunting with millions of children denied basic rights. ``The rights of the child are meaningless unless we can meet the needs of the child,'' said Amod Kanth, Joint Commissioner of Police, who has been associated with Prayas since its inception.Even if some child could get a better chance in life through adoption, the laws governing adoption in the country were discriminatory, said Asha Das, Secretary in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.Richard Young from UNICEF called for special efforts to reach out to the ``unreached'' children, those in situations facing multiple deprivation like lack of sanitation, drinking water, education and health care.Noted social activist Vidyaben Shah pointed out that 10,000 children die every day in India due to malnutrition and diseases. The long-term solution to this situationcould result only from investments in educating the girl child.The plight of the disabled children was taken up by B L Sharma, Commissioner, Disabilities, in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.Sinha gave them a patient hearing, expressed sympathy but made no promises. His advice: involve panchayati raj institutions and urban local bodies in child welfare schemes, push for voluntary social action and coordinate efforts for better and more effective utilisation of the limited resources available.Underscoring the limited resources available with government, Sinha said the efficacy of different welfare schemes had to be reviewed. And since there were no less than 16 ministries dealing with different aspects of child welfare, what was needed was a nodal agency to coordinate efforts and avoid overlapping of work, the Minister suggested.On the need to increase budgetary allocation, Sinha said ultimately it would hinge on the status of the economy. ``If economic growth takes place in themanner we want it to, then many of these problems would disappear,'' he said.
