Last week, on the same day that the Norway story came to light, a 15-year-old girl was separated from her alcoholic father by the Hyderabad Child Welfare committee and sent to live with her grandparents. A relative had reported the case of the girl who was being physically abused by her father, and her mother had passed away. A few months back, the same committee had separated another 15-year-old girl from her upper middle class family because she was being physically abused and threatened by her family members. Only after a reconciliation was the class X student sent back to her home. If the Indian laws also step in to act firmly in favour of “threatened and abused” children, then why is the Norway case of Indian parents Anupama and Chandrasekhar, arrested for the “repeated maltreatment of their child/children by threats, violence and other wrong” creating such a furore back home? Is it because such cases of the law proceeding against errant parents are more the exception than the norm in India? Indeed. [caption id=“attachment_543781” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Firstpost[/caption] Child rights activists I spoke to point out that the cases of the sort mentioned above are few and the law is, for all practical purposes, more an ornament on paper. Under the Juvenile Justice Act, any child who is threatened or abused, physically, sexually or morally, is seen as vulnerable and if need be, should be separated from his or her parents and provided with legal help. But though child welfare committees have existed in India since 2000, they have not been able to evolve an effective mechanism to ensure every child in its jurisdiction is 100 percent safe. In most cases, the existence of such committees is unknown and very few are even aware of the kind of work they do. Isidore Phillips, chairman of the Hyderabad Child Welfare committee is critical of the Indian cultural mindset that justifies the “Indian style of parenting” is “good for the child and is in his/her best interest”. This Indian style that is rooted in the “Spare the rod and spoil the child” adage uses a liberal mix of scolding, slapping, scalding and abuse to ensure the child is disciplined. “We were brought up this way, aren’t we good people’ and ‘Yes, I did break his bones but I did that to discipline him and in his interest’, is not an acceptable defence”, says Phillips. Research all over the world has shown that violent methods are not good or healthy ways of parenting and teaching. The Norway episode ought to be a wake-up call for Indian parents, and those who lack skills in bringing up their children in a non-violent way, should be offered help and counseling. To instead argue that Norway looks at Indian parents as a tribal, pre-historic lot and why pressure ought to be put on countries like Norway to get rid of their western glares and not pass judgement on the Indian or Asian way of parenting would be to catch the wrong end of the stick. The fact of the matter is while we call our children the citizens of tomorrow, we do not care about their today. As I write, a seven-year-old has been thrashed to death by a hotel owner in Nellore in Andhra Pradesh because the child’s parents owed him 2000 rupees and the child refused to do the work assigned to him. The same day that the Norway story broke, there was a case from Visakhapatnam where a mother had scalded the cheeks of her seven-year-old daughter for having taken out ten rupees without permission. Yesterday, a school teacher broke a child’s arm for not having covered her books. Last week, there was the case of a teacher in a school in East Godavari district who allegedly forced a class I student to drink urine. Such cases are bound to happen so long as teachers and care providers aren’t trained to handle different kinds of children. Hardly any school in India does a safety audit and neither the parents nor the schools care unless a horrible tragedy takes place. Shouldn’t the safety of the child inside a school be non-negotiable? The takeaway from the Norway story should be to ensure that the style of parenting in India is rooted in treating the child as an equal, with rights. Move away from the unequal relationship it is now, where threat, blackmail and bribe are the much-preferred tools. The Indian foreign ministry is not inclined to intervene in what it sees is a private matter. More importantly, it is concerned about the grey areas in the case and do not want to get dragged into a potentially embarrassing diplomatic situation. But perhaps for the sake of seven-year-old Sai Sriram and his two-year-old sibling Abhiram, it should step in. They should be the focus of concern of those who are trying to correct some wrongs committed by the parents. “Child rights” isn’t a term only for the children on the street; your and my children have as much right on how they are brought up as we as parents do. It is time to write the epitaph for `We are like that only’.
Though child welfare committees have existed in India since 2000, they have not been able to evolve an effective mechanism to ensure every child in its jurisdiction is 100 percent safe
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