The Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous (180 million) and arguably most backward (per capita income: Rs.10,817 per year; adult literacy 56.6 percent) state, is known for the stoicism and resilience with which its long-suffering populace stomachs bad news. Even so the languorous dovecotes of the state government in Vidhan Sabha, Lucknow have been set aflutter by a recently released United Nations Childrens Fund (Unicef) report which indicates that children in Uttar Pradesh are worst off worldwide.
Titled State of Children in Uttar Pradesh, this first-of-its-type report prepared by the state’s planning department in conjunction with Unicef, discloses that every second child (age group 0-14) in the state is malnourished, one in four has not received vaccination of any type and that the state ranks # 1 countrywide in the incidence of child labour and accounts for 23 percent of all child kidnappings.
Among other grim statistics, State of Children in Uttar Pradesh (Unicef 2008) highlights that:
• Of the 2.5 million children who die prematurely in India every year, close to 4 lakh die in UP.
• Across the state’s 70 districts, 30-54 percent of children don’t receive any vaccination. In at least 10 districts, more than 45 percent have not been vaccinated. (According to the Central government sponsored National Family Health Survey 3, only 22.9 percent of UP’s children are vaccinated against BCG, DPT, measles and polio).
• 38,000 women die in childbirth every year. Of them half die at home and another 10-15 percent on the way to hospital.
• Only one in 20 newborns is breastfed within an hour of birth. (Breast feeding within the first hour reduces chances of death by diarrhoea to less than half).
• Of the total number of children afflicted by fatal Japanese Encephalitis (JE) countrywide, 60 percent are in UP. Deaths from JE in the state have consistently risen from 35 in 1994 to 228 in 2005.
• Of India’s 72 million undernourished children, 12 million live in UP. Every second child in UP is undernourished.
• Fifty-two percent of children in UP are underweight — much higher than the all India figure of 43 and way beyond the Sub-Saharan percentage of 28.
• Of the country’s officially admitted 20 million child labour, 20 percent work in UP.
• Every third infant born in UP has low birth weight — below 1,200 grams.
• More children are murdered in UP — 39.2 percent of all across India — than in any other state.
• State of the Children highlights a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses in hospitals as a “critical challenge”, particularly for children.
• The state ranked third in the country for the number of child rape cases registered.
Unicef’s Lucknow-based state representative Nirmal Hettiarartchy expresses shock and bewilderment. “Beyond these statistics, are millions of children, the future of the country, who lead miserable, blighted lives. The challenges highlighted in the report need to be addressed immediately,” he says.
Ironically V. Venkatachalam, principal secretary of the state government’s planning department which co-authored this devastating indictment, derives some satisfaction from the fact that UP is the first state to produce a State of the Children Report. “It demonstrates the state government’s seriousness of intent to address the issues of children’s health and well-being. Though a lot has been done for children here in the decades after independence, this report warns us that a lot more needs to be accomplished,” he says.
Referring to the Millennium Development Goals enshrined in the Millennium Declaration signed by 194 nations (including India) in 2000, which inter alia pledged to reduce under-five child mortality rate by two-thirds and maternal mortality by 75 percent by 2015, the report observes: “The prospect of attaining these targets by 2015 seems doubtful. At present, facilities available for neo-natal care in different districts of UP are almost negligible. Under-standably, the survival right of the child is threatened.”
As is the survival of India’s most populous Hindi heartland state.
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)