Eleventh Five Year Plan

Towards Women’s Agency and Child Rights 209• Recognizing that children are best cared for in theirown families, strengthening family capabilities tocare and protect the child.• Ensuring institutional care to those children whoneed the same.• Involving PRIs, VOs, and urban local bodies inimplementation, monitoring, and evaluation bydevolving powers and resources to the Panchayatlevel, and providing them with technical andadministrative support.• Recognizing ‘Child Budgeting’ as an importantpolicy analysis tool to take stock of developmentinvestments for children and identify gaps in resourceinvestment and utilization.• Strengthening capacity of families and communities,police, judiciary, teachers, PRI representatives,bureaucrats, and other implementation personnelwho deal directly with children.ELEVENTH PLAN INITIATIVESDEFINING AGE OF THE CHILD6.112 Recognizing everyone below the age of 18 aschildren and respecting their rights will be an importantEleventh Plan initiative. The challenge will be toamend all legislations and laws to ensure a uniformdefinition of children, as stipulated under UNCRC andJJ Act. The Child Labour Act and related legislationslike The Factories Act, 1948, The Mines Act, 1952, ThePlantation Labour Act, 1951, The Merchant ShippingAct, 1958, The Motor Transport Workers Act, 1961,The Beedi and Cigar Workers (Conditions of Employment)Act, 1966, The Bonded Labour System (Abolition)Act, 1976 continue to prohibit employment ofchildren under 14 years only. The ITPA, 1956 drawsheavily from the Indian Penal Code 1860, whichdefine a child as someone who is less than 16 years ofage under ITPA as well.ENSURING EARLY CHILDHOODDEVELOPMENT AND CARE6.113 As per Census 2001, the country has approximately60 million children in the age group of 3–6 years.The 86 th amendment to the constitution, making educationfor children in the 6–14 age group a fundamentalright, leaves out under six years of age. It is for thisage group that early childhood care in the form ofchildcare programmes, crèche programmes, and preschoolinterventions are critical. Current figures suggestthat preschooling under ICDS and other privateinitiatives covers about 34 million children; approximately26 million children are left out of preschoolactivities. Thus, the gap between the number of preschoolchildren and available preschool services islarge. Moreover, there are disparities in provision ofECCE in rural and urban areas. As per findings of astudy conducted by the National Institute of UrbanAffairs (year), though the share of urban populationin the country is approximately 27.78% (expected togo up by 33%), corresponding provision of ECCEfacilities in these areas is insufficient. Urban slums areunder-represented in ICDS.6.114 Early childhood care and rights of workingmothers are interconnected. Exclusive breastfeeding,recommended for the first six months of life, beforecomplementary feeding is introduced, requires constantproximity of mother and child. The Eleventh Planwill, hence ensure Maternity Entitlements to supportexclusive breastfeeding.ICDS6.115 Currently ICDS is the only programme thatreaches out to millions of women and children livingin remote villages, dhanis (small settlements), andsaporis (river islands) in our country. It is and willcontinue to be the flagship programme of theMoWCD. However, during the Eleventh Plan, ICDSneeds to be restructured in a manner that addressessome of the weaknesses that have emerged and is suitablefor universalization. The programme must effectivelyintegrate the different elements that affectnutrition and reflect the different needs of children indifferent age groups. For the purpose the programmeneeds to be restructured in a Mission Mode with aMission Structure at the central level and a similarstructure at the State level. The MoWCD will prepareproposal for restructuring along these lines so thatthe restructured programme can become effective on1 April 2008.6.116 Universalization with quality entails that theexisting ICDS scheme is thoroughly examined andevaluated to identify gaps. Various surveys show that