Bengaluru: The Centre for Child and Law, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), has released an India Child Rights Index (ICRI), which provides a comparative status of children in all states across three domains: Nutrition and health, education, and protection.
According to the index, in nutrition and health, Kerala, Manipur, Sikkim, Goa, and Tamil Nadu are the best-performing states. In education, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Maharashtra, and Karnataka lead the way. Nagaland (1), Manipur, Uttar Pradesh (2), Bihar (3), West Bengal, Gujarat, Odisha (4), Rajasthan and Jharkhand (5) are the best performers in child protection.
The methodology explains the disparity in child protection index. "With respect to child protection domain, the interpretation of standardised scores is slightly different. States and Union territories may not be compared purely on the basis of crime figures. An increase in crime numbers may be on account of certain citizen-centric initiatives undertaken by police, such as e-FIR filing mechanisms or women's help desks," it stated.
The index was arrived at after considering about 60 parameters. Data was extracted from National Family Health Survey, Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), and National Crime Records Bureau, and standardised.
"While this data is available in public domain, the challenge for people who are working on child rights is to understand, compare, and make sense of it. So we're making this modest effort to make the data more engaging and more useful for people. With this, there should be data-driven advocacy which can impact child rights advocacy," said Neetu Sharma, head of Centre for Child and Law.
Karnataka is in the mid- range in most of the parameters. It has done well in education, breaking into the top five. In nutrition, it is 17th, while in child protection, it is ninth, with 17 states doing better. Karnataka has high instances of stunting, wasting, underweight, and overweight among children.
"It's somewhere in the middle. It's not really doing great, neither is it too bad. Being a southern state, it can do better," Sharma added.
WHAT THE INDEX SAYS
Child protection
1. Nagaland
2. Manipur, Uttar Pradesh
3. Bihar
4. West Bengal, Gujarat, Odisha
5. Rajasthan, Jharkhand
Child education
1. Tamil Nadu
2. Kerala & Himachal Pradesh
3. Punjab
4. Maharashtra
5. Karnataka
Child nutrition
1. Kerala
2. Manipur
3. Sikkim
4. Goa
5. Tamil Nadu