THE ORPHAN PROBLEM By Poulomi Pavini

There’s a child, born to parents who have been poor for generations, not allowed to educate themselves or their children, ostracised from main society for centuries.

There’s another child, born to some parents, but left with none, thrown outside a hospital or left in a park to die or to survive on his own with no one to love him.

You would think that both these children deserve the same sympathy and at least the same amount of care from the Government. The Planning Commission of India did not think so.

As a result, the first child gets support to go to school, to study in college, to set up a business while the second …. Well, if the second child is lucky enough to reach an orphanage, which is less than 1% statistically, then the child has access to food, some education till age 18 and then, at age 18, is shunted out on the streets again! The reason why so few of the second category reach orphanages is a lack of focus on such children. Most districts in the country do not have the required five orphanages for different age groups and sexes and over a hundred districts do not even have a single orphanage. Sometimes abandoned babies and children are put in some juvenile justice home before being transported to another district.

Why this neglect, you may ask? It could be for many reasons .. in India there are always more beneficiaries than funds and these children have no one speaking for them so they get lost in the humdrum, they do not influence votes having no parents who are voters, they are not even a nuisance so in society they have little or no meaning/relevance/influence.

Are these reasons good enough? No! Are the numbers so little that we should forget about them? Well, you decide. There are an estimated 2 crore orphans in India which is equal to the population of Sri Lanka. There could be more, but the Government has never had a survey of these children.

With no parents, these are children of the Government. You know how parents strive and save and spend on their children, specially on their education, coaching and job or business efforts. You might wonder if the Government does the same for these children. Again, dear reader, you decide, in 2018-19 Government spent Rs 792 crores on Child Protection and about 16,000 croroes keeping Air India afloat. (By the way, if Rs 792 crores sounds a lot, it is less then a rupee per child per day, that is for food, clothing, education and medical needs!) The Government does do a lot for children in the first example. For children of SC/ST/OBC and minorities there are nearly Rs 4000 crores in scholarships, besides higher education opportunities, coaching for competitive examinations, free hostels, loans for setting up businesses and even sponsorship for studies abroad. I ask you, dear reader, if any child in the country is weak, is not a child abandoned in a dustbin just as weak? Do these orphans deserve just as much support, if not more. What’s even more heartbreaking is, statistically 70 percent of our population is SC/ST or OBC. So there is a 70 percent chance that any random orphan was originally a SC/ST/OBC. So, if such children had not been abandoned then they would have had more support and more facilities from the Government. Sounds funny, and wrong, doesn’t it?

I am often asked, “Why don’t we put more kids up for adoption?”. The answer is simple, adoption is not a significant solution to the extant of the orphan problem, because the numbers don’t add up. Each year since 2014, less than 6000 children per year have been adopted all over India. That’s less that 30,000 children in 5 years and the number we are dealing with is estimated to be 2 crore!

So what is the solution? Elementary, my dear reader. A small policy change, a focus on these children would change the world for them. Something as simple as a survey, can tell the Government the numbers we have to deal with. Small steps like ensuring every district has a orphanage, adding the word orphan to schemes benefitting other weak children, making sure each child without effective guardians reaches a Government facility. Changes that would be ten little words on paper, would mean the difference between life and death for a child on the road. 70 years we have been independent, 70 years we have forgotten about these children. 70 years too long… …. We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer ‘Tomorrow,’ his name is today.