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Countries that have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) have taken on the obligation to support the realisation of the four categories of children’s rights- survival, protection, development and participation. Following its ratification in 1992, India has taken a range of measures in the realm of legislation, policy and programmes for ensuring a better status of children in the country. It submits periodic reports, the first one being in 1997, to the Committee on the Rights of the Child to provide a sense of progress towards fulfillment of the UNCRC commitments. These documents which outline the interventions undertaken in the country are considered by the Committee and concluding observations shared with the government.

Due to past and ongoing endeavours of the government, there have been quite a few milestones with regard to all-round development and protection of country’s children. There have been improvements regarding children’s access to primary education, child health indicators- including infant mortality ratio,  immunization rates, and sanitation services. There, however, remains a list of issues which need to be acted upon. If we genuinely wish to make our society ‘child-friendly, we need to move ahead with an accelerated pace, stronger political will and concerted efforts.

The Convention also sets out the obligation on States to invest adequately in the rights of children, and requests states to actively mobilize resources towards this purpose. Despite the obligation, decisions about how resources are allocated continue to defy a whole spectrum of child rights. Budget impacts children's lives in several ways by allocating funds to programmes that cater to children’s needs, and when government spending on child related issues faces cuts, the rights get undermined. The Government of India has been focusing on child budgeting for more than a decade now. By disaggregating spending on children in total public expenditure, the tool has helped assess the extent to which children’s needs are being addressed through the channel of national budgets. These efforts need to be strengthened by incorporating a child perspective at all levels and stages of the developmental planning, policy, programmes and delivery mechanisms. This in turn will help recognize the challenges children are subjected to and the deficiencies in the budget for addressing these.

There are significant variations in allocations made by different states for child-focused expenditures. It is encouraging that Child Budget Statements (CBS) are developed by some of the states too, like Kerala, Bihar; many more are in the process of initiating it. This is indeed important, as provisioning of several social sector services, like public health and sanitation, education, which directly affect children is the responsibility of States. While States are dependent on flows from the Central government, they need to prioritise spending on these social sectors. The State governments can play a critical role in generating an enabling environment in this direction by promoting prioritization of child related issues in the state budgets. Where states are unable to do so, the implementation of important social schemes with a direct bearing on children gets adversely affected.

A state making strides in this area is Assam. Pushing an agenda of comprehensive budget reforms, Assam introduced a whole slew of measures for systematic child budgeting. In preparation to the 2019-20 Budget, dedicated capacity strengthening programmes were conducted for select departments, to enhance their skills for making child budgeting more meaningful. As plans to make the exercise more systematic are underway, the department officials at different levels participated in series of child budgeting deliberations, and gained insights for applying the tips at work. The Statement on allocations for children was revised to segregate the allocations into two - schemes which are fully meant for children are reported in Part A, and Part B includes allocations that fund child specific interventions within a larger scheme. The document is richer as the new Statement also provides a rationale for schemes captured there, this helps check any misreporting.

While efforts by the Assam government deserve to be applauded, more states can make a similar move ahead by following a strategic approach. Different rights of children are threatened by budget cuts that government resorts to for meeting its target of fiscal prudence. Focused efforts directed at enhancing spending on essential sectors like health, education, protection and ensuring that the best interests of children are taken in any investment and budgetary decision are key. Concerted efforts can strengthen the process of child budgeting further by ensuring participation of greater number of departments. Not only is it important to ensure robustness in reporting in CBS, a renewed focus on modifications in existing schemes along with designing new schemes that can adequately address child specific threats is called for. This would enable better planning from the lens of the children on the part of the government.

 

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Happy Pant at happy@cbgaindia.org