Growing Up and Away: Narratives of Indian Childhoods: Memory, History, Identity by Vijayalakshmi Balakrishnan

Author:Vijayalakshmi Balakrishnan [Balakrishnan, Vijayalakshmi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP India
Published: 2011-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

V

For its ambition, the NPC (reproduced over the past 4 pages) is a remarkably succinct document. In 1,114 words divided into seven sections, the drafters reshaped the texture of the relationship of the State with the child. In the first sentence, the relationship of the ‘nation’s children’ with the State is definitively restated. While excluding all of the children who cannot be claimed as the nation’s, the first sentence also explains how the State views the child. Unlike in the past, children were not viewed as dependents; instead, they were now perceived as ‘assets’, an investment priority for the future growth and development of the country.

The executive now had direct responsibility and would, through Parliament, be held to account for implementation of progress. Administratively, it meant the nodal agency, the Ministry of Education, could claim developmental resources, on behalf of children rather than plead for welfare.17 During the first four Plan periods, government expenditure had been tailored primarily towards welfare of the dependent child. With the policy resolution in place, development funds were now available to be used on behalf of children.

From the Fifth Five-Year Plan launched in 1975, both child welfare and child development would be supported by the State, following the commitment made in the second sentence of the NPC, ‘Their nurture and solicitude are our responsibility.’ Though this commits the State to provide for both the welfare and development of children, policy attention and by extension greater resources would in the future be focused on interventions for child development.

The rest of the first paragraph explains the government’s motivation for shifting from welfare to a development framework:

Children’s programmes should find a prominent part in our national plans for the development of human resources so that our children grow up to become robust citizens, physically fit, mentally alert and morally healthy, endowed with the skills and motivations needed by society. Equal opportunities for development to all children during the period of growth should be our aim, for this would serve our larger purpose of reducing inequality and ensuring social justice.

The two sentences articulate a single idea about the position of children in the view of the State. That the State exists to transform society comes through in the second sentence. By investing in children, the State expects to effect that social transformation. So, by itself, the development of children is not a goal for the State. This idea is amplified in the first sentence, which explains that the investments in children are purposeful; they are designed to develop a particular type of citizen, the kind who would be useful.

The statement of goals, which articulates the State’s acceptance of responsibility, is followed by a long section on policy measures. The first paragraph, which reads is promising:

It shall be the policy of the State to provide adequate services to children, both before and after birth and through the period of growth, to ensure their full physical, mental and social development. The State shall progressively increase the scope of such services so

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