To draw up a list of child developmental areas that are a matter of concern in the State, the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has decided to compile a child rights index.
The commission will collate taluk-level data of various indicators, including health, education and child protection. The commission has come up with a questionnaire that will have to be filled in by the zilla panchayat chief executive officers. After this, the data will be sent to experts for analysis.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child will be the guiding document for the commission. There are eight domains that this index will measure — protection, participation, survival, development, health, education, crime against child, and crime by child. Experts and academicians working in the area of child rights have been roped in for the exercise. The commission is consulting 18 departments on the project.
Kripa Alva, chairperson of the commission, said that while various NGOs have conducted evaluation of child development indicators, this was the first time a government-appointed body was doing so in Karnataka.
Target
The project is expected to be completed by June, and the commission plans to hand over the document to the new government so that they can work on the priority areas and provide greater focus by stepping up the budgetary allocations for certain areas.
P.S. Srinath, Registrar of the Institute for Social and Economic Change, which is helping the commission evolve the index, said the index would be similar to the Human Development Index and would give direction to policymakers.
Activists working in the field of child rights have called this a positive move. Vasudev Sharma, executive director of the Child Rights Trust, said it would help chalk out short-term goals and measure to what extent development has taken place. “For instance, this index will help understand the urban and rural divide among children and what the special focus needs to be on in backward districts. Each region will require intervention based on the problems peculiar to it,” he said.
