Out of every Rs 100 spent by the Centre in the '90s, only 60 paise has gone to children's education, 40 on their development and 20 on their health.
The 2002-03 Budget is much kinder. It hopes to spend about Re 1 on education, 34 paise on health and 45 paise on child development.
Every sixth girl child dies due to gender bias. Yet, Balika Samriddhi Yojana, the first scheme to incentivise her birth, died after three years.
Health
About 75 million children are undernourished. India's biggest aided childcare plan, ICDS, reaches only 20 million, at a mere 19 paise per child per day.
The actual cost of reasonable childcare is a minimum of Rs 15 per day per child or Rs 200 crore a year.
Over half of child health budget comes from foreign loans, which the government often fails to spend. Yet it still asks for more money.
Education
We spend 1.5 per cent of GDP on elementary education. Still, about half of the children are out of school. They are all potential child labour.
The latest budget has 18 elementary education schemes, with outlays varying from Rs 1.8 crore to Rs 1,330 crore.
Three successive budgets allotted Rs 420 crore to the 1998-vintage Free Education for Girls scheme. There's no actual spending yet.