Children's cause needs to be taken up urgently by the society. Understand their needs and be their advocate. Give them a happy childhood and great future to look forward to.

1. BE AN ADVOCATE OF CHILDREN’S CAUSE
If you watch children’s world from their perspective you will see wide gap
between their need and society’s performance. We talk a lot about children’s
welfare but they are mostly lip services. Children’s needs are never our
priority and that is mostly because they can not advocate for themselves. Let
us see some of the areas that need our urgent attention.
Let us start with the rock bottom. I am talking of street children. Many
consider them alien and either deny their existence or treat them badly,
without considering the fact that they are the product of our callousness and
society’s fault of not being able to be all inclusive. Government feels
satisfied by making few homes for them. As per new data most of these
homes lie vacant. Most of these homes are very mechanical and stereotyped.
They do not understand the needs of these different kinds of children.
Homes can be made of bricks and cements, but, you need people with heart,
to work for them, who have to bring these children inside these setups and
have to make the homes interesting for them, to retain them for their
upbringing. Retired people, unemployed youth and house wives who have
spare time should be harnessed into the job and should be remunerated. It
will solve these children’s problem and also decrease the depression of the
groups serving them.
Next let us come to issues of juvenile justice. Children with socially
unacceptable kind of track record need to be retrained and brought back to
mainstream. Legal system does not have properly trained personnel to look
after these children; neither do you have enough socially responsible
ombudspersons to look after their interest. Homes are not sufficient in
number and quality is much inferior than you can expect from a concerned
society.
Then there is a huge group of children who have illnesses and disabilities,
who need separate kind of services which are grossly lacking in our society.
You need people with special interest in them to specialise and cater them.
Government and NGO need to collaborate, and try to come up with special
facilities for them.
Now come to children staying in their own homes and normal schools. Little
bit of aberrant behaviour causes lot of intolerance from seniors. Adults don’t

2. know how much aberrant behaviour, of their own, children have to bear
with! For small faults children are bullied, abused and isolated. In the
fashionable intellectual world they are even given a diagnostic tag of
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder or
autism spectrum disorder. I don’t deny the existence of these entities; I just
want to remind these umbrellas have to be smaller and should not include
children with minor behavioral issues.
All social groups like Dalits, women, and victims of natural and social
adversities usually find their voice in political circles because some body is
there to empathise with them. Children find it difficult to get a proper voice,
I don’t know why. After all, we all were children at some point of time with
our own set of difficulties, though by adulthood blissfully forgotten. Those
of us, who have interest in the area and feel responsible, should come up and
start looking for avenues to improve the life of children. Happy childhood is
guarantee card for future happy nationhood.
Devashish Konar MD
Consultant Psychiatrist
Mental Health Care Centre
West Bengal
Mobile: 9732221712