Kerala - Kochi   

Doubts about State's ‘child-friendly' tag

KOCHI: Kerala is no longer the child-friendly State it was till the year 2000, with recent health and education indicators telling a totally different tale. Speakers at a two-day workshop organised by the UNICEF and the Press Institute of India here sought to burst the bubble of the ‘achiever State' which has social indices on par with the developed world. They brought attention to certain facts that had slowed down Kerala's social development.

At the workshop, ‘Millennium Development Goals: Sensitising journalists to the issues concerning children,' that concluded on Thursday, experts spoke on child rights, child and maternal health, girls' education and empowerment, and the child's environment. They laid stress on the safety of the child since child abuse, including sexual abuse, was on the rise.

The experts said that the gender advantage that the State flaunted could be disturbed in the long run if the decline in the child sex ratio (number of females per 1,000 males in the 0-6 age group), as was mentioned in the 2011 Census, was not stemmed. Another significant fact was the low percentage (20 per cent in urban areas) of employed women, despite a higher sex ratio in the adult population.

Lack of nourishment

Kerala, which remained a remittance-based economy, was facing problems such as higher morbidity and the highest consumption of medicines in India.

Though abject poverty was not a major issue in the State, there were malnourished children, probably because proper nutrition was not given to the child during its crucial period of development or because of the mother's anaemic condition. Still, Kerala had the best figures in the country in terms of public health indices, they said.

Sathish Kumar, chief of UNICEF office, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, gave the inaugural address on Wednesday. V. Murali, director, Press Institute of India, Chennai, welcomed the gathering. C. Gouridasan Nair of The Hindu spoke.

S. Subramanian, regional director, Directorate of Field Publicity, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting; R. Padmini, Child Rights Trust, Bangalore; N.S. Iyer, health consultant; Meena Divakar, publisher and journalist; and N. Ramakantan, Director, KILA; were among those who spoke.

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