November 14, celebrated as children’s day every year is a way of paying a tribute to Chacha Nehru. ‘Children’ …the word itself holds synonyms like innocence, delicacy, playfulness and all loving tenderly words for them.
Though India still celebrates the day every year, but the question here arises is that how many ‘children’ in real sense celebrate this day or any day of their life for that matter? Schools organize events and activities that their students thoroughly enjoy, but there is an entire populace of young ones that are left ignored on this special day – the downtrodden street children, children who are below poverty line and many other such ignored strata of society. With their entire childhood being lost in construction sites or the small-scale industries, their tiny hands are not just made for this.
Even a little scratch to our own kids makes us to rush them to doctors or put a band-aid. But this doesn’t mean that we have to act really insensitive towards someone else’s kid who also feels the pain. On one hand we see parents buying all expensive gifts for their kids, on the other hand we cannot ignore how many children are dying of hunger every minute.
On this children’s day itself more than 3 lakh children died of hunger globally. What kind of justice is being done to these little souls? It’s a very common statement of people that they can’t do much about the children in other corners of the world. But what exactly are they doing for the children of their area? Child labor still exists in spite the fact that the government has made efforts to prohibit child labor by enacting Child labor laws in India including the 1986 Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act. It states that children under fourteen years of age could not be employed in hazardous occupations.
According to UNICEF,there are an estimated 218 million children aged 5 to 17 in child labor worldwide, excluding child domestic labor.So how this childrens day actually made any difference in the lives of these million of children who according to Pt Nehru,are the ‘future’ of nation?
When the future itself is dying today, what kind of global development do we talk about?
Celebrating Children’s Day is about giving children the right to enjoy and grow into healthy and educated citizens of the country. It should not be just limited up to your own domain. If you can teach your child the value of sharing with others what they are lucky to have, then not only your child will grow into a responsible human being, but also another child who otherwise could have ended up being a delinquent, will have a difference in their life.
Thus, belonging to the educated strata of society, I think we all should take an initiative of revolutionizing at least life of one child around us, who is not as privileged as we are.
So maybe by next children’s day we may have a new generation of children who are capable of transforming their own children’s world!