The curse of innocent children.

A battered 2 year old girl has been lying in ICU at AIIMS hospital in Delhi for 12 days. She has undergone 2 surgeries on her brain, suffered 2 heart attacks and is now in a critical condition. She was abandoned by her parents in the care of one woman who then left her with a teenage girl who is herself an abused orphan. Apparently the child fell and was crying so the girl bit her and then left her at the hospital. Republic Day on January 26 is the most important statutory holiday in India celebrated with parades all over the country where various floats based on local themes entertain crowds much like Thanksgiving Day parades in the US. The difference is that children from government schools, which means from poorer backgrounds, are forced to wait for hours and march for long distances without proper food, water or toilet facilities. In a tableau organised by Devas Municipal Corporation in MP a boy of about 10 years of age was promised Rs 5 and some snacks if he stood under a running tap of cold water during the march past. This on a bitterly cold January morning. The shocking thing is not that a child was treated with brutal indifference but that he accepted to undergo this torture for just Rs 5, equal to 10 cents. India has 3 million child laborers who work in informal sectors such as servants in households, in the diamond industry, in extremely hazardous fireworks industry and as servants in restaurants and hotels. This could be an underestimate as children can be seen working in filthy conditions everywhere one goes. Drive along any highway and you will see children working in brick kilns, on farms, taking orders in every roadside tea shop, swathed in fumes of hydrochloric acid in workshops reconditioning old car batteries and in every labor intensive industry. They are paid little, beaten if unable to fulfill their quota and sexually assaulted. When you have too much of anything it is not valued. Poor people keep on breeding without having the means of looking after their children. Politicians say nothing because they can get votes by doling out freebies with taxpayer money and more poor people provide cheap labor increasing profits for companies. The irony is that this government has passed a law promising severe punishment for anyone ill-treating an animal. No law to protect beautiful, innocent children. It is urgent that children have the right NOT to be born.