NEW DELHI: Child rights activists expressed unhappiness over the "inadequate" allocations for children's welfare in the Union Budget, particularly in the wake of the Nithari killings, an incident that focussed attention on the need to safeguard children's rights.

Of every Rs. 100 in the Union Budget, only Rs. 4.84 was set aside for children, according to HAQ: Centre for Child Rights. The Union Finance Minister reduced the allocation for children this year as against last year, when he had allocated Rs. 4.90. Despite claims to increase the social sector allocation, particularly for education and health, the child's share reduced by 1.23 per cent, the HAQ said.

`No holistic approach'

Education and child protection received better allocations in the budget compared to child health and child development. Out of the Rs. 32958.33 crore promised for children in the country, the share of development is 16.65 per cent, health 10.02 per cent, protection 0.92 per cent and education 72.4 per cent. With education receiving the maximum attention, the Government, once again, failed to focus on the child holistically, the HAQ claimed. With children being increasingly plagued by malnutrition, disease burden, the fall in allocation for health was a matter of concern. The allocation for child health fell from 0.55 per cent in 2006-07 to 0.48 percent this year.

There was an increase of Rs. 673.46 crore in fund allocation for the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). However, this was inadequate to meet the Supreme Court's directive to universalise the ICDS in 17 lakh habitations. There was a shortfall of 8.2 lakh anganwadi centres in the beginning of 2007-08, with only 8.8 lakh anganwadi centres being operational. "In fact, the promised allocation of Rs. 4,761 crore is insufficient to meet the cost of the operational anganwadi centres. On a simple calculation, if we divide the increase of Rs. 673.46 crore in the ICDS allocation this year into the sanctioned number of 1,33,235 centres to be established, only about Rs. 51,000 seems to have been allocated per centre per year. Further, dividing the amount by 12 months, it comes to only Rs. 4,209 per centre per month," the HAQ said.

The minimal increase of 0.01 per cent for child protection is largely due to the introduction of the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) that was introduced in the current budget with an allocation of Rs. 85.5 crore. Child protection constituted a mere 0.04 per cent of the Union Budget. While the total allocation for education has increased by 34 per cent this year, the share of child education has gone up by only 21.34 per cent.

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