NEP 2020

In the context of child development, nutrition refers to the availability of safe, adequate and nutritionally diverse food essential for healthy growth and cognitive functioning. This availability is determined by a child’s socioeconomic conditions, geography, the state of welfare and educational institutions. These factors are responsible for shaping children’s diets and reflect underlying structural disparities.

UNICEF highlights India’s ranking in the Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI), to be 26 out of 163 countries; it has become an immediate threat to the rights and survival of children in India. According to CCRI, India is among the countries where children are exposed to extremely high risks from environmental hazards such as heatwaves, floods, cyclones, and air pollution.

In India, inclusive education has emerged as an area of increasing interest for policy, judicial and educational initiatives. Ensuring that children with disabilities and students in minority institutions can access quality education is not only a legal obligation under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE) but also a key component of social inclusion and rehabilitation.

India has one of the strongest legal frameworks for child protection in the world. Yet, for millions of children, the law still remains only a promise on paper. Policies like the National Policy for Children (2013) and the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 ( “JJ Act”) show this commitment. The objective of the JJ Act, as its Preamble states, is to provide for “the care, protection, development, treatment and social reintegration of children by adopting a child-friendly approach… in the best interest of children and for their rehabilitation through institutions and bodies established under the Act.”

Mental well-being is an integral component of a child’s general development, but one of the most overlooked aspects of child rights in India. Increased incidences of stress, anxiety, and depression in children over the last few years has sharpened the focus on the issue. The COVID-19 pandemic also laid bare how weak and unapproachable the available support systems are, particularly for rural and marginalized children.

As we have completed the first quarter of the 21st century, the budget of 2025-26 would be the 73rd annual budget of India. The first budget was presented in 1947 and this would be the 8th consecutive time Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman is presenting the budget in the Indian Parliament. While presenting the speech the finance minister mentioned the great telugu poet Gurajada Apparao’s quote, ‘Desamante Matti Kaadoi, Desamante Manushuloi’; which means that a country is not just its soil, a country is its people’ and this line summarizes the vision of this union budget. This budget mentions the next 5 years as a unique opportunity to attain ‘Sabka Vikas’ facilitating balanced growth in all the regions.

In a recent judgment, the Supreme Court of India addressed the complex issue of the circulation and viewing of child pornography, alongside its decision on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) regarding the distribution of explicit content on social media. A bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, with Justices J B Pardiwala and Vikram Nath, provided critical insights into the legal nuances of these activities, particularly in light of a controversial decision by the Madras High Court.

The Act of ‘Sanyasa’ is a well known concept in Indian society given its spiritual history. According to vedic literature, ‘Sanyasa’ refers to the purification of everything and is performed by existing in the ‘Samsara’ or the cycle of life, death and rebirth while denouncing all worldly material possession. The idea of Sanyasa  originated in India as part of the Hindu religion as the final phase of a devotee’s life. 

The recently passed New Education Policy cleared the decades old confusion regarding the definition of  inclusive education by adopting the definition provided by Rights of Persons with Disability Act 2016, according to which inclusive education means as a system of education where children with and without disabilities study together and the system of teaching and learning is suitably adapted to meet the learning needs of different types of students with disabilities. However, Indian education system has had a history of confusion between integration and inclusion and the it continues to use these terms interchangeably.

Education can be used as a weapon to eradicate poverty. The implementation of this realisation seems to be glaringly missing in the working of the developing world. A plethora of issues plague the education system in such nations as they often thrive on disconnect and lack of state accountability. The state seems like a distant entity lacking will to advance an impactful change.