Breaking New Ground
From construction sites to slums, from Delhi to Mumbai and Pune and from urban sensibilities to rural contexts - we are constantly pushing the edge of our experience. Faces and places may be different but the challenge remains - of ensuring a life of dignity, equity and opportunity for a majority of our children.
For Children on the Move - Who Cares?
A consultation of groups working with migrant workers and their children
Platform for Action on Childhood Today (PACT)
As a fitting follow up to the Consultation in March (below) the PACT event of 2006-07 was a Photo-Exhibition at the India Habitat Centre in September 2006. It depicted the context of migration that gave birth to the idea of Mobile Creches. The Chief Guest, Smt. Renuka Chowdhury, Minister of State for Women and Child Development, inaugurated the exhibition and released two of our publications: “Labour Mobility and Rights of Children”, a report of the Consultation, and “Claiming Childhood”, an encapsulation of the Mobile Creches’ goals, rationale, strategy and programme.
Bal Adhikar Yatra
"You need to know, you need to demand - a functioning Anganwadi for every child”The Bal Adhikar Yatra (BAY) was conceived at the Convention on “Children’s Right to Food” held in Hyderabad in April 2006. The objective was to focus public attention on the plight and the rights of children under 6 years and create awareness about the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) as the only major state programme addressing this age group.
The B-A-Y is one tributary that has gathered force from the original Right to Food (RTF) Campaign – an informal network of NGOs, health activists, doctors, teachers and students – that grew out of a PIL filed in April 2001 in response to starvation deaths in Rajasthan. In November 2001, the Supreme Court of India directed the central and state governments to “universalize” the ICDS, one of nine food entitlement schemes impacted by the order.
This was the springboard for the “young child” lobby, with Mobile Creches in the forefront, to take the message to the people. Six months of campaigning and partner consultations culminated in the one-week long yatra of believers and activists in November that journeyed through the bastis of Shadipur, Dakshinpuri, Madanpur Khadar, Kirby Place, and many others ending in a public meeting. The larger campaign culminated at the Bal Adhikar Samvad on December 19, 2006, where a thousand people gathered, and Nobel Laureate Amartya Kumar Sen released “Focus on Children Under Six” (FOCUS), a fact-finding report on the young child and the ICDS and recommendations to make it work for all young children. This further fed into meetings with the Prime Minster, members of the Planning Commission and other decision makers.
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For Children on the move - Who Cares?
As the world's attention focused on President Bush, flying across the globe and the Indian sub-continent in early March, Mobile Creches, and some of its partners, were focusing on a different kind of mobility.
The Consultation on "Labour Mobility and Rights of Children", organized by Mobile Creches at the India International Centre on March 2-3, 2006, drew participants from 39 organizations representing the world of academia, NGOs, trade unions, funding partners, women's groups, people's movements, legal practitioners and the government. It was a great forum for exchange of ideas with people working with migrants in sectors other than construction - agriculture, brick kilns, salt-pans, stone quarries and sugarcane. The recommendations emerging from the consultation will feed into the consultation process of the 11th Five Year Plan 2007-12.
Recommendations from the Consultation:
• Mapping Migration: Enhance national data collection and pool micro pieces of information to understand the scale/nature of migration
• Identity & Entitlements: Institute Migrant Cells, issuance of identity Cards; facilitate access to public services
• Labour Laws: Ensure time-bound implementation of minimum wages, social security and maternity entitlements; new legislation with industry specific Tripartite Boards
• Childcare Services: At worksites/through ICDS; outreach cadre of childcare workers; adequate budgets with flexibility; minimum wages to the worker.
• Education: SSA to mainstream the migrant child; mobile schools, bridge courses, etc.; enforcing the law against child marriage for educating girls
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