Orphans in India

 I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy with their families. But something often disturbs me with a random thought of children without families or someone to really take care of them.

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 in a dumpster, or left in a park, to die or to survive on its own, no idea where to get food from, or even how to get food, nowhere to go, and no one to love him/her.

It would be natural to think that both these children deserve sympathy and affirmative action in some form, if only from the voice of conscience that resides deep within us. That conscience speaks to the Government to take care of the destinies of these siblings in distress.
As a result, in the above example, the first child gets benefitted under government schemes to go to school and college, coaching, hostels, reservation, loans and even sponsorship for studies abroad.

The second child? Well, if he/she is lucky enough to be in the 0.5% of all orphans that get to, through a rare concatenation of events, reach an orphanage, then the child has access to some food, limited education (only till age 14) and then at age 18, is shunted out to brave the streets again!
There are over 2 crore orphans in India; more than the total population of Sri Lanka! This figure is from a detailed study by SOS Children’s Villages. The ChildLine portal of the Government states that “UNICEF estimates that there are 25 million orphaned children in India in 2007” and, “Another study estimates that there are about 44 million destitute children and over 12 million orphan and abandoned children in India”. The Planning Commission and the Government have never had a structured survey of these children. For all we know, this figure could be much higher!.

On the UNICEF database, there are official figures of vulnerable children from countries like Chad, Ethiopia and Indonesia, but the row for India is blank. Due to never officially researching the numbers, the Government has never been aware of a large number of children who have been left out of the progress story of our country.
Why do such little numbers reach orphanages? The answer is simple: because there is little infrastructure or for these orphan children. One in five districts in the country does not have even a single orphanage, and majority districts don’t have the minimum three orphanages needed (one for children of less than 6 years of age and one each for boys and girls of 6-18 years respectively).
The heartbreaking irony is that, statistically, 70 per cent of our population is SC, ST or OBC. It goes on to mean that 70 per cent of our orphan children would obviously belong to these communities. It is a doubly cruel tragedy for orphans from the SC/ST or OBC lineage, who in another world would have had more support and more facilities from the Government, but now, due to the misfortune of not having parents, are left to fend for themselves.

Of all solutions available, the utopia is adoption. However, it is not a significant solution to the extent of the orphan problem. Because the numbers don’t add up. Adoption in India is consistently less than 6000 children per year, thus addressing only the tip of the iceberg.
The Indian Constitution has been kind, the body of Law has been magnanimous in taking care of those left behind, and where it has lacked, a humane society has tried to pick up the slack. But for 70 years too long, we have forgotten about the children that we see every day, but don’t hear or think about.

“ 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.”So try your best to help them in whatever way possible. Share your experiences and give your suggestions in the comment below. Our little acts of kindness could built them a bright future.

Rhythma Agarwal